Music Efforts for Green Activism
Environmental sound art performance
Avant Festival 2025
Experimental sound art and vocal improvisation exploring the negotiation of human and non-human presence in a polluted landscape, based on field recordings of an industrial cement plant in Puglia, Italy.
Developed as part of the MEGA residency (Music Efforts for Green Activism) under the mentorship of Nicola Di Croce, this project explores the disruptive acoustic ecologies and sonic debris of the southern Italian industrial landscape. Working alongside violinist Kieli and sound artist Eropi, our fieldwork focused on the COLACEM cement plant in Soleto, investigating its environmental footprint through site-specific listening, observation and field recording. From these traces, we sought to cultivate an eco-acoustic dialogue with the plant's pervasive industrial drone, attempting to attune to its frequency and negotiate a space of shared resonance. The process culminated in an improvised performance for three voices and violin sustained by the continuous drone. Here, the machine's steady frequency serves as a sonic proxy for the friction between an ecosystem, its community, and the overwhelming presence of heavy industry. The piece was premiered at Avant Festival 2025, the avant-garde electronic music festival in Puglia, Italy.
MEGA 2025 is an international advanced program in sound art and experimental music that brings together artists and researchers in a collective learning environment. Through practice-based research, mentored by Margherita Pevere, Filippo Rosati (Umanesimo Artificiale) and Nicola di Croce, MEGA 2025 fosters critical approaches to contemporary sonic practices, with a strong emphasis on fieldwork, experimentation and environmental justice.
All images by MEGA.