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Keep Your Hands Off (2009) – Sebastiano Dessanay

Keep Your Hands Off is a multimedia work that combines fine art, animation and sound sculpture. The focus of the piece is a collection of Russian Avant-garde paintings. Images of these paintings and sound recordings with a Russian theme are manipulated to produce a visual & sonic exhibition.

Here’s the video:

Keep Your Hands Off from Sebastiano Dessanay on Vimeo.

Here is a description of the piece by Sebastiano and credits for the video:

This multimedia work has been conceived in order to bring back to life some Russian Avant-garde paintings from last century in form of a virtual exhibition. The slogan “Keep your hands off, bourgeois!”, inscribed on a painting in the collection, inspired the title of this work.
The musical inspiration came directly from contemplation of these paintings. Twelve were chosen from the collection (totalling nearly sixty works) according to my personal taste. The sequence in which the paintings are revealed emphasizes their visual contrast and is further supported by sonic contrast, each painting being assigned different musical sources, in close relation with the aesthetics of the Russian Avant-garde music and visual concepts.

DVD Credits:

Music and visuals by Sebastiano Dessanay

Russian voices: Lenin (political speech, 1919-20), Leon Trotsky (political speech, ca. 1938), Dmitri Shostakovich (radio message broadcast, 1941).
Manipulated short music fragments from: Modest Mussorgsky (Pictures at an Exhibition), Arseny Avraamov (Symphony of Sirens, version by L. Amigo & M. Molina), Yuli Meytuss (Dnieper Water Power Station), Alexander Mossolov (The Steel Foundry), Sergei Prokofiev (Toccata in D minor), Dmitri Shostakovich (Symphony No.2).
Other music samples and noises recorded in Birmingham by the author in April-May 2009.
Also thanks to Leonid Nikishin, Vera Khait and Tatiana Dardykina for their vocal contribution and Zsófia Faragó for her ‘modified’ piano practice.

Original Russian paintings property of Araba Fenice Art Gallery, Cagliari, Italy.

Motion Graphic Design by Pawel Stec.
Cover Notes by Margherita Dessanay.
Cover Design by Stroke.

For more information about Sebastiano on this site, please visit Dessanay, Sebastiano – Info

To see and hear more of Sebastiano’s work, please visit his website: www.sebastianodessanay.com

2011: 02/16
POSTED BY: Simon Pratt
CATEGORY: animation
feature
fine art
music
sound
visual
TAGS: avant-garde
Contemporary Music
multimedia
Russian
sound art
virtual exhibition
1 comment

Ragtime (1993) – Mauricio Kagel – Part 2 of Hudderfield Festival 2010 Features

At this year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Mauricio Kagel’s work was performed on three occasions. This is testament to the remarkable work of a sorely missed artist. The three works performed were Streichquartett I & II (1967), Les Inventions d’Adolphe Sax (UK premier) and Kantrimiusik (1975).

Kagel is perhaps best known for his work in music theatre (such as Match (1964)) although he worked in many mediums. One of my favourite pieces by Kagel is the Ragtime-Waltz from the 41 pieces that make up Rrrrrrr… (for further information google, “Aeon AECD 0311″). I have a recording of the version for piano for two or four hands. Sadly I couldn’t find a version of this piece for piano online to embed in this post* but I did find a recording of Ragtime (1993) which is (I think) similar in nature. Hope you enjoy it!