Activity - Invernomuto and STILL | MACBA Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona

Thursday, 22 July 2021

Simone Bertuzzi and Simone Trabucchi have been collaborating as Invernomuto since 2003. Their practice focuses mainly on the image in movement and on sound, although sculpture, performance and publications are often integrated into their work. On this occasion we will project Negus, one of their film essays dealing with sound, colonialism and the diaspora. For his part, Simone Trabucchi, accompanied on this occasion by Devon Miles, presents STILL, an homage to popular-based culture, with an extravagant and hypnotic mix and updating of dancehall, dub and the Jamaican musical tradition, which rejoices in the legacy of bubbling and how it plays with pitch and playback speeds.

Negus by Invernomuto

Negus explores the convergence of history, myth and magic through the complex and contradictory legacies of Ethiopia’s last emperor. In Italy, during Mussolini’s fascist rule, Selassie I was presented as a black demon, justifying Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. A moment in time that coincided with the peak of Rastafari in Jamaica, which acclaimed Selassie as its living God and the risen black Christ. Negus feeds on the vacuum between these two irreconcilable realities. To all this must be added the double presence of Lee “Scratch” Perry: he looms as a spiritual ghost over the Black Ark, his former recording studio in Kingston that burned down in the ‘80s, and as the master of a ritual fire ceremony in Italy to re-invoke the spirit of the last emperor of Ethiopia.

STILL

It is precisely these connections between Italy, Ethiopia and Jamaica that make up the starting point of STILL, another of the manifestations and returns of Simone Trabucchi’s artistic research into popular music. Accompanied on this occasion by the Afro-Italian vocalist Devon Miles, they embark on this new iteration of their piercing review of the European colonial past and homage to popular-based culture, with an extravagant and hypnotic mix and updating of dancehall, dub and the Jamaican musical tradition, which rejoices in the legacy of bubbling and how it plays with pitch and playback speeds.