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I met Lucrezia De Domizio, Baroness Durini,
in 1990, in Milan. More than thirty years have passed. She started
working with Joseph Beuys in the early 1970s. I was a music composer
for Merce Cunningham, with John Cage. It was in that year that
she started the legendary newspaper-magazine RISK Arte Oggi,
which included the participation of personalities such as Claude
Levi-Strauss, Pierre Restany, Harald Szeemann, Bob Wilson, Lina
Wertmüller, Umberto Eco, Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano, Paolo
Soleri and many more. It was in that same year of 1990 that we
started to collaborate on mutual projects.
Lucrezia De Domizio Durini started collaborating with Joseph
Beuys in 1971. Beuys was born in 1921. Celebrations for his hundred
years could not fail to count on a celebration of this fifty-year
partnership with Lucrezia, who was the one who most dedicated
to the work, thought and memory of the German master around the
world.
It is important to underline that Beuys was not an artist of
those whose works are placed on the walls, to decorate environments.
Beuys was a philosopher and a profound interpreter of human nature.
Thirty-five years after his death in 1986, his ideas are more
present than ever.
The book Joseph Beuys and Lucrezia De Domizio - De Rerum Natura,
was made with a selection of my texts written at Lucrezia's request,
from 1991 until today. There are 33 texts. They are not all I
wrote for her... there are more texts. But, all these texts gathered
in De Rerum Natura talk about Joseph Beuys and about her. They
are a way to get to know Joseph Beuys' work better and to immerse
in this fantastic fifty-year project designed by Lucrezia. Many
of the photos are rare and show this magnificent path.
Now, in 2021, Lucrezia De Domizio inaugurates the first museum
in the world dedicated to Beuys' work and thought.
The book De Rerum Natura is released as part of such moment.
But, there is still a movie and a concert dedicated to Lucrezia:
Cometa!
Well, Lucrezia De Domizio is a kind of human comet, bright star
in the skies, in jet speed!
I made this composition based on the comet Churyumov - Gerasimenko
The name Churyumov - Gerasimenko is often synthesized as 67P,
and designates a comet that has a 6.45-year orbital cycle around
the Sun and a maximum speed of 135,000 km/h. Its dimensions are
4.3 x 4.1 km in its largest extensions. It was first observed,
and photographed, by Russian astronomers Klim Ivanovych Churyumov
and Svetlana Inanovna Gerasimenko in 1969, whose names were given
to the comet.
On March 2, 2004, the ESA European Space Agency launched the
Rosetta mission: a spacecraft whose purpose was to land on the
comet and transmit data about the composition of the asteroid
to Earth.
More than ten years after its launch, on November 12, 2014, a
segment of the Rosetta spacecraft, Philae, landed on the surface
of the comet, being the first spacecraft to land on a comet.
I transported the topographic information of the comet to Virtual
Reality, reconstructing it inside a virtual environment. I determined
13 points on the surface of the comet. Each of them would be
the location of a specific set of sounds, of a sound gestalt.
There are two dimensions here that refer to the musician - a
first, in the elaboration of these thirteen different compositions,
or sets of sounds; and a second, in their interpretation. Thus,
once the first dimension is established, the interpreter is invited
to dive and travel inside the comet. Each time the interpreter
approaches one of the thirteen sound fields, it becomes more
present. The role of the interpreter is in his or her trajectory
- and, therefore, in time, in a fourth dimension - and also in
the transformation of those sounds.
It is the shape of the comet that determines the temporal relations
between the thirteen events - but these relations are also designated
by the trajectory of the interpreter, that is, the person.
There is a film - with the same title as the musical concert
- The Comet, which can be viewed simultaneously or separately.
Lucrezia De Domizio Durini is a comet, but she also is a volcano.
Throughout all these years, she is driven by untiring energy,
by an unparalleled speed.
So, I made the film with images captured inside the cockpit of
a Formula One car, in full competition. In fact, there are two
images, which merge throughout the film, and also images of comets.
Here, I worked on three plans. A first, the still images of the
various comets that have passed through Earth. A second plan,
with images captured inside the cockpit of a Formula One car
at high speed. These images create a kind of neuronal modulation
at the level of the phenomenon known as optical flow. After a
while, the images, always repetitive, seem to change. A third
plane brings us hundreds of small circles that "approach"
us, as if we were traveling in outer space at a very high speed
- but here, the small circles move more slowly, creating a different
involvement at the level of the optical flow.
Thus, both the book De Rerum Natura - a clear and direct reference
to Lucretius - and the concert and film The Comet are part of
the inauguration of this new museum.
There is also a lecture of mine - Truth and Fundamentalism -
on something about the illusions that have ruled the world; the
projection of another film and concert both titled Gone With
the Wind, which works on the illusion of our senses.
Celebrating Beuys' centennial, all this is a sincere tribute
to Lucrezia De Domizio but also the world of Italy that may be
at the center of a new Renaissance.
Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta, 2021
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joseph beuys
lucrezia de domizio
emanuel pimenta
De Rerum Natura (book on paper)
AMAZON (English, italiano, português)
De Rerum Natura (ebook - academia.edu)
(English, italiano, português)
Truth and Fundamentalism - lecture
(in Italian, with captions in English)
COMETA (movie and concert)
GONE WITH THE WIND (movie and concert)
Emanuel Pimenta speaks about the book
(in Italian, with captions in English)
Emanuel Pimenta speaks about Cometa
(in Italian, with captions in English)
Emanuel Pimenta speaks about Gone with Wind
(in Italian, with captions in English)
index of names in the book
program - inauguration of the museum
English
programma - inaugurazione del museo
Italiano
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