SHAPE+ is a new European platform for innovative music and audiovisual art co-financed by the Creative Europe programme. Running for the next three years, SHAPE+ will foster exceptional emerging talent, connecting them to local communities and audiences through collaborative residencies with multiple artistic outcomes, commissioned artworks, as well as one-off presentations and performances. Combining an open call and a curatorial selection, the platform members will select a roster of artists to support each year. For more info go to shapeplatform.eu
SHAPE+ supported artists at Terraforma, Nextones, Il Pianeta, and Tranceparenti with one-off shows by Aho Ssan, Marina Herlop, Perila, Bella Baguena.
Stefanie Egedy is part of a SHAPE+ residency realised in the context of Una Boccata d’Arte with artisan Laurent Jacquemod and videomaker Giovanni Sambo.
Stefanie Egedy investigates sound as a composer of conceptual pieces, music, commissioned works, and dance music. Currently, she is focused on researching possibilities with low-frequency sound, bodies and subwoofers. Her artistic practice stems from installations to live performances as sonic propositions. Sub-bass, bass, infrasound, subwoofers, and their capacity to make themselves present in a space, are the foundations of her work. Alongside the possibilities of interaction between human/architectural bodies and sound waves, using field recordings, analogue & digital synthesis.
Aho Ssan – Terraforma 2023
Aho Ssan is the artist name of Paris-based Niamké Désiré. After studying graphic design and cinema, he began to compose electronic music and create his own digital instruments. Shortly thereafter he went on to win the Foundation France television prize for his soundtrack to the film of Ingha Mago in 2015 and has worked on several projects related to IRCAM/GRM in France. His debut LP «Simulacrum» was released on the 7th of February 2020 via Subtext Recordings. Based on the concept of Jean Baudrillard, it navigates through society’s presentation of inclusivity and equality against my own experience of growing up black in France. Aho Ssan debuted “Simulacrum” at Berlin Atonal 2019.
Bella Baguena – Tranceparenti 2023
Bella Báguena is a Spanish trans non binary woman who works with different disciplines such as music, performance, jewelry and other media. Bella centers her artistic production in a gender self examination and an intuitive, emotional process, using her voice, body movement and identity, as well as objects, spaces and technologies, to create sound, video, sculptural or performative pieces in which the emotional charge and thought load of the trans woman’s identity becomes the key.
Perila – Il Pianeta 2022
Perila is a St. Petersburg-born, Berlin-based sound and visual artist, DJ and performer exploring sensitive borderlines and depths of subtle matter. Her sets are thick narratives drifting through rich sound palette immersing a listener into pretty personal trip. Constantly shifting moods and textures of mixes create comfort space for emotions to float, merge, evaporate and ride in a deep context.
Marina Herlop – Nextones 2022
Marina Herlop is often described as a pianist, a lingering remnant of her classical training. But what strikes the listener on Herlop’s breakout track miu is the intricate trickery of her voice, tracing rhythmical clusters around the subtlest of musical beds, in a technique inspired by Carnatic music of Southern India. miu, the opening track of Herlop’s new studio album Pripyat, was among the first songs that the young Catalan artist made on a computer, after two albums – 2016’s Nanook and 2018’s Babasha – that brought spectral elegance to the sound of piano and voice.
BABAU is part of a SHAPE+ residency realised in the context of Nextones 2022 with artists Bienoise and Flora Rabitti.
BABAU is the duo composed of Luigi Monteanni and Matteo Pennesi, both also founders of Artetetra records, tape label concerned with the latest developments in the concepts of digital folklore and transglobal exoticism during late globalization. BABAU is best defined by a pastiche combining the fascination for World Music 2.0, Fourth World galore and Mondo Voyeurism with the latest abstractions in computer music’s compositional techniques, which they call ‘Quinto Mondo’ music. Through the years they have played in festivals such as Club To Club, Fusion, Saturnalia, Outernational Days, Mondo Muzak and Camp Cosmic and have collaborated with Kiosk radio, NTS, The Wire, Sun Araw, Simon Reynolds, Senyawa and many others.
In 2023, Terraforma also hosted two educational activities supported by SHAPE+:
– Whitney Wei in conversation with architects Bengt Carling and Matteo Ghidoni (Salottobuono): “Architecture and the Musical Experience”
– Christine Kakaire “The importance of the archive as related to Black music innovation”
Award-winning culture journalist and critic Christine Kakaire will moderate a panel with secret guests to be announced soon. The panel is supported by SHAPE+ platform, co-funded by the European Union.