Biennale Zagreb: Mauro Lanza & Andrea Valle – Systema Naturae

Systema Naturae is about discovery. It is a meditation on the process, rather than the act. It depicts the ways in which we classify, organise and most importantly give name to the minutiae of the natural world. The project draws inspiration from two traditions: phantasmagorical catalogues of animals, plants, and minerals, such as the medieval bestiaries, herbariums and lapidariums, and Linnaeus’ taxonomy exhibited in his work Systema Naturae.

Each composition in the cycle is structured as a catalogue: a collection of short pieces with fictitious Latin names thematises individual branches of nature or natural sciences. Through a four-part “play” – Regnum Animale (2013), Regnum Vegetabile (2014), Regnum Lapideum (2016) and Fossilia(2016/17) – Mauro Lanza and Andrea Valle created a vast, wide-open metaphor of the world that reflects our own histories of observation and categorisation. Through an amalgam of medieval imagination and rational classification, the cycle explores the way in which history and modernity can coexist in sound.

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Composer Mauro Lanza was born in Venice, Italy. He is known for combining classical instruments with unconventional sources of sound such as toys, sound machines, and different found objects. His music is also often used in interdisciplinary projects such as dance and video-opera.

Andrea Valle is a composer and researcher from the University of Turin, whose work combines computer programming and analogue instruments. For example, in the project Vedute della luna scritte in Braille, he uses the hybrid instrument Rumentarium, which he built and programmed himself, in order to create a piece about Galileo’s descriptions of the Moon surface, in which engines, tins and Lego blocks produce uncommon, weightless sounds.

Programm:

Mauro Lanza & Andrea Valle: Systema Naturae

Regnum animale, for violin, viola, cello and electromechanical devices
           Regnum vegetabile, for flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, cello and electromechanical devices
           Regnum lapideum, for flute, saxophone, percussion, piano, guitar, viola, cello and electromechanical devices
           Fossilia, for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, percussion, piano, guitar, violin, viola, cello and electromechanical devices