Nicola Ratti presents “Automatic Popular Music” (extended version)

For the premiere of “Automatic Popular Music,” in collaboration with RomaEuropaFestival, Nicola Ratti presents an exclusive site-specific installation. The setup is designed in collaboration with LL Edizioni, the platform producing the album. Over four hours, the audience is invited to enter and stay as they wish, with no stage; the sound will fill the entire Sala Re Enzo. Space and perception become abstract concepts, with dimensions and orientation as malleable mental projections akin to lumps of modeling clay.

Ratti himself explains about his performance: ‘I think its peculiar aspect is not so much in its content, based on material from the new Automatic Popular Music album, but in its form and fruition. The possibility of using the entire space of the hall through a capillary distribution of the sound sources and the choice of extending the duration of the performance to four hours generates a space of ambiguity that places this ‘event’ in an ill-defined zone that oscillates between a concert, a sound installation and a sound-art work without belonging to any of these categories. But the most interesting aspect of this ambiguity is that it generates margins of action on the part of the audience that are not usually allowed during a concert or exhibition. People who come can choose where to stay, how to stay and how long to stay. They can choose to listen to what is happening in a specific area, take an interest in it, let themselves be bored by the repetitiveness and then change their seat, their listening spot or go. I don’t want to use the term fluidity but basically that is what this performance allows, an active enjoyment and listening, where you choose where and how and for how long.”