Marco Fusinato is a contemporary artist and noise-musician whose work takes the form of installation, photographic reproduction, design, performance and recording. Fusinato’s work has been presented in many international exhibitions, including All the World’s Futures, 56th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2015); The Imminence of Poetics, 30th Sao Paulo Biennale (2012); SUPERPOSITION: Art of Equilibrium and Engagement, 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018); and Australia: Antipodean Stories, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan (2019). His work was also included in Soundings: A Contemporary Score, the first ever exhibition of sound at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013) and Sonic Youth etc.: Sensational Fix (2008–10), a European travelling exhibition of artists that have collaborated with the New York rock band, Sonic Youth.
Edited by Alexie Glass-Kantor and Michelle Newton
Texts by Kate Crawford, Branden W. Joseph, Alexie Glass-Kantor, Chus Martínez, Thurston Moore, Stephen O’Malley, Elizabeth Povinelli and Bruce Russell
Designed by by Žiga Testen and Marco Fusinato
Co-published with the Australia Council for the Arts
Softcover, 408 pages, 21 x 28 cm
ISBN 978-0-646-85617-9
DESASTRES is an experimental noise project that synchronises sound with image and takes the form of a durational solo performance as installation. Marco Fusinato is performing live in the Australia Pavilion for the duration of the 59th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. He uses an electric guitar as a signal generator into mass amplification to improvise slabs of noise, saturated feedback and discordant intensities that trigger a deluge of images onto a freestanding floor-to-ceiling LED wall. The images are sourced via a stream of words that have been put into an open search across multiple online platforms. There is no theme as such, rather the immersion of sound and image is open for the audience to interpret and make sense of. The intent is to create some kind of hallucination, elation in disorientation and exhaustion from confusion. The work is an invitation for audiences to come together within a high-intensity concentration of energy. What can’t be seen, can be felt: sound as physical matter which creates a transformative experience.
This expansive publication features a new essay by Branden W. Joseph, professor of art history at Columbia University and an extensive interview by curator Alexie Glass-Kantor with Marco Fusinato. It also includes texts by critical theorist and filmmaker Elizabeth Povinelli, AI researcher and author Kate Crawford, writer and curator Chus Martínez, and musicians/outre-guitarists Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Stephen O’Malley (SUNN O)))) and Bruce Russell (Dead C).
Alexie Glass-Kantor is a curator, advocate for the arts, and the Executive Director of Artspace, Sydney. Since 2014 she has led the opportunity for co-curated and artist-led projects with peer institutions in fourteen countries, including: Jonathan Jones, untitled (transcriptions of country), Palais de Tokyo, (2021); 경로를 재탐색합니다 UN/LEARNING AUSTRALIA, Seoul Museum of Art (2021); Taloi Havini, Reclamation, Dhaka Art Summit (2020); Mel O’Callaghan, Centre of the Centre, UQ Art Museum (2020) and Le Confort Moderne (2019); Angelica Mesiti, Relay League, Art Sonje, Seoul (2019), and Kunsthalle Tbilisi, Georgia (2018); Helen Johnson, Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), London (2017); and Nicholas Mangan, Ancient Lights, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015).