Press

The voices of refugees flow like rivers in Yuval Avital's artwork. The loudspeakers play elaborated sounds of the local flowing waters Dora to which should be added elaborations of recordings of local flowing waters.

“When I started reading the image titles for each scene, I became fully immersed in this theatrum mundi microcosmos and the elaborated sounds of the accordion for me became physical materials within it: rivers, shadows, sand, ruins, minds. Many of your works as an architect, Daniel, remind me of the gesture of the accordion’s bellow [opening in and out]: it is a sonic lung that is breathing”.

Il dialogo sonoro, creato in esclusiva per il London Design Festival e il progetto al suo interno MSCTY EXPO, “Meditations on Theatrum Mundi” di Yuval Avital e l’opera visionaria del celebre architetto Daniel Libeskind “Theatrum Mundi” – realizzata nel 1983 e composta di 12 disegni astratti a colori, sarà presentato all’interno del progetto #LDF in programma dal 12 al 20 settembre.
In un estratto della conversazione tra Libeskind e Yuval, moderata da Clare Farrow, Libeskind afferma di aver fatto i disegni combinando immagini di città e nuovi sensi di direzione, che tendono a distruggere il tessuto morale ed etico della città. Le città producono nuovi fenomeni, nuove idee, nuovi sensi dell’essere. Theatrum Mundi’ parla di un mondo che è completamente insignificante sotto ogni punto di vista se guardato dalla prospettiva dello spirito della città. Dal canto suo il Maestro Yuval Avital spiega che ‘il termine “Theatrum Mundi” rappresenta storicamente un’idea del mondo come falso palcoscenico che cela la verità nella vita. Ricordo di essere andato nel mio studio a Milano per lavorare alla composizione e di aver guardato gli occhi delle persone che camminavano verso di me, con le loro maschere, e c’era qualcosa di simile al terrore nei loro occhi. C’era una sensazione, uno stato di pericolo imminente. Quando ho iniziato a leggere i titoli delle immagini di ogni scena, mi sono immerso completamente in questo microcosmo “Theatrum Mundi” e i suoni elaborati della fisarmonica sono diventati per me materiali fisici al suo interno: fiumi, ombre, sabbia, rovine, menti. Molti dei tuoi lavori come architetto, Daniel, mi ricordano il gesto del soffietto della fisarmonica [che si apre e si richiude]: è come un polmone sonoro che respira’.

“Sounds, vocalisms and vibrations of an oriental mantra on which gestures, dances and choreographies from the world are intertwined in livestreaming. A challenge dedicated to prayer, meditation and creativity to express fear, spiritual breath, vulnerability but also inner strength and hope. Human Signs is the performance series realised by Yuval Avital, multimedia artist and composer of Israeli origins, resident in Milan, that every Tuesday on his Youtube channel releases online this 90 minutes of hymn to life.”

 

 

“Meditations on ‘Theatrum Mundi’ is a sonic response in 12 movements by Yuval Avital to Daniel Libeskind’s “Theatrum Mundi”, 1983, a series of 12 abstract works.
The composition interprets the visual artworks as ‘mandalas’ and their titles as poetic vectors. The results are almost cinematic: layers of sound, like messages in Morse code, travelling through space and time in all directions, occasionally tuning into an accordion melody, but only momentarily”.

 

 

“Never before had Yuval dreamed of creating such a monumental work, which required a year and a half of research (and preparation) and such an imposing deployment of resources, instruments and musicians. On paper #Urla was presented a sonic opera unfolding along the streets of the Sassi of Matera, placed on the final day to be the climax of the festival, but in practice it was a true triumph of bagpipes, cowbells, arbresche, sonic carnival masks, guitars, percussions and bands that not even the Materans had never seen in a single day. “.

(Editorial, Rolling Stone Magazine, September 2019 Italy)


‘The tour is best started on the 3rd floor […] while the Italian Avital examines in his two expansive video and sound installations Foreign Bodies and Lands V2 the relationships of man and Nature. Moving through a kind of visual-acoustic tunnel with video imagery of women in nature scenes, one reaches an apocalyptic space in which seemingly random objects try to connect with the viewer‘


‘It’s The Rattles Garden, the poetic dimension that the multimedia artist Yuval Avital has created for the territory of San Floro, Calabria, with the desire to create a synesthetic meeting place for the voices and stories of the countries of the Mare Nostrum’

‘È Il Giardino dei Sonagli, la dimensione poetica che l’artista multimediale Yuval Avital ha progettato per il territorio di San Floro in Calabria, con il desiderio di creare un sinestetico luogo di incontro delle voci e delle storie dei paesi che si a affacciano sul Mare Nostrum.’


‘Driven by the wind, which abolishes boundaries and distances, these bells coming from every corner of the Mediterranean will come together to generate a single sound, in which the history, culture and tradition of each donor country will echo‘

‘Sospinte dal vento, che abolisce i confini e le distanze, queste campane provenienti da ogni angolo del Mediterraneo si uniranno per generare un unico suono, nel quale riecheggiaranno la storia, la cultura e la tradizione di ogni paese donatore’

‘Avital's 'Fuga Perpetua' is the subtle opposite of a platitudinous dogmatic theater [...]. His performance is an insistent Lamento, circling around displacement and shelter, that makes little use of language, but even more intense one of the sounds (of the sea) and visual visions projected on a double screen. [...] The message is unmistakable: Europe owes it to its Western Christian and humanist tradition to remember its human values’

‘What will stick most in one’s mind in the end of an extraordinary concert are the faces. Faces of people who had to escape from their homelands and who are telling about that with gestures and facial expressions, mute but eloquent. Faces marked by the eternal flight, the 'Fuga Perpetua'. [...]’

“When the river flows, not during the summer, in which it is exhausted, it produces a white noise, that similarly to white colour, is a sound that contains all the sounds. The ancient Greeks were used to go to the river and listen it for compose their melodies. And all these melodies are truly there, because the river has all the frequencies inside itself, it is a complex sound”.

“An allegorical opera that starts from the biblical text to face the contemporary topic of the fight between Good and Evil”.

Yuval’s “Giobbe” (Job) is an artistically fascinating and profoundly impressive message of the music-theatrical against increasing right-wing populism and anti-Semitic defamation worldwide. It is a reminder against forgetting and indifference, but it also offers hope, as did its Old Testament model”.

“A visionary score that whirls together voices, sounds and images in an ancient biblical text, a classical performers cast of excellence, ancestral notes of traditional religious cantors linked with a powerful video-art creation. All this is JOB, the new icon-sonic opera by Israeli composer Yuval Avital that sets in the scenographic context of Rome’s Terme di Diocleziano from May 30 to June 1”.

“Job makes us reflect on the fragility of fortune and on the need to open ourselves to the other, to keep in mind that we, born under a lucky star, can at any moment find ourselves on the other side, forced to flee, in need of help, strangers. Job requires us to put ourselves in the other’s shoes, it tells us without compromises that the future is not in our hands and that the needy people of today could be replaced by our son or brother tomorrow”.