6 HOURS, 2 SCORES, 12 ROOMS

Andrea Cusumano performance
Marino Formenti music

6 HOURS, 2 SCORES, 12 ROOMS is the name of an extended performance that Andrea Cusumano and Marino Formenti have conceived for the spaces of the Nitsch Museum in Mistelbach.

It is both uniform and parallel: Cusumano and Formenti have written two independent scores – one performative, one musical – that enter into a dialogue with one other over time.

The original (and shared) starting point is an object owned by the Cusumano family: a letter the artist’s German grandfather wrote to his son (and the artist’s father) from the front, in the middle of the Second World War. 

Written under extreme conditions and in Kurrentschrift, a form of cursive handwriting that is no longer used or even understood in the Germany of today, the letter was initially difficult to understand: various attempts to decode the letter at first looked like little more than blank sheets of paper.

There is one element that without doubt connects the works of Cusumano and Formenti: an expressive, somehow archaic force which commentators have often recognized. It is for this very reason that the artists have opted not for a joint performance, but to work on two self-contained, independent scores: 

OGGI S’INNALZA TACITO E CUPO (‘Today He Rises Silent and Sombre‘) by Andrea Cusumano 

and 

FUNERALE DELLA MEMORIA (‘Funeral of Memory’) by Marino Formenti for player piano, church bells and other instruments,
that together will comprise

6 HOURS, 2 SCORES, 12 ROOMS.

Andrea Cusumano is a multimedia artist, performer and filmmaker. 

His works have been exhibited at renowned international festivals from New York to New Delhi. He has taught theatre and performance at Central Saint Martins and at Goldsmiths in London. He currently lives and works in Palermo, where he runs CeSDAS (Centre of Experimentation for Applied Dramaturgy in Space).

Marino Formenti is a pianist, composer, performer and conductor.

Best of New York Times 2015, ‘A Glenn Gould for the XXI Century’ – (L.A. Times). Installations and performances @ Palais de Tokyo Paris, Art Basel, MUMOK Vienna, Albertina and other venues. 
Collaborations with Georg Baselitz, Michael Haneke and Gustavo Dudamel, Maurizio Pollini and others.
Artist in Residence @ Lincoln Center New York, Beethovenfest Bonn and others. Conductor @ Teatro alla Scala, Salle Pleyel Paris and other venues.
Belmont Prize for Contemporary Music, Munich 2008
Formenti and Cusumano have shared an artistic and personal friendship since the 1990s.
 

Together, they have worked on: 

MISSA (Wiener Konzerthaus, 1997)
‘Le Ali della Farfalla’ (MADRE Neapel, 2005)
Festival Letterature, Rome 2019

Registration: anmeldung@nitschmuseum.at