FOG
After thousands of years of human existence, and even in the last 250 years when progress has accelerated significantly, the number of unknown things still remains immeasurably superior than what science has been able to explain so far.
Humankind, as individuals and as a society, is led by the desire for knowledge in order to give meaning to what is unknown.
The exploration of undisclosed territories of knowledge is the way that one uses to reach a deeper understanding of oneself and the surrounding space.
By pushing the boundaries of rationality one can discover what lies in the mist of the unrevealed.
FOG is a live-performed audiovisual piece that explores the balance between the comfortable feeling of the known and the uncomfortable exploration of the limits of one’s incomprehension.
Aimée Portioli is a Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer who records and performs as Grand River.
Portioli makes experimental electronic music with rich emotional colours. Her work, influenced by minimalism and ambient music, is atmospheric yet rhythmically complex, incorporating a wide range of contemporary compositional and production techniques.
The name Grand River evokes nature, scale, and movement, all key forces in Portioli’s work. Her first release as Grand River was 2017’s Crescente EP, which was named by XLR8R as one of the best releases of the year. She followed this with her debut album Pineapple (Spazio Disponibile, 2018), which garnered praise from The Quietus among others, while its follow-up Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes (Editions Mego, 2020) was positively received by Resident Advisor and The Verge, and was elected among best albums of 2020 by Inverted Audio. Her work has separately appeared on compilations by Ghostly International, Tresor, and Longform Editions. Her third album All Above is released in 2023 once again on Editions Mego among one of the last releases of the label.
Since 2016 he has had a tight partnership with the musician Grand River, with whom he created audio-video shows and performances where light music and videos intertwine in a unique experience. They have performed at venues such as the Triennale Museum in Milan, the Barbican Center in London, and Teatro de la Laboral in Gijon. While working with studios Ciceri also worked independently participating with installations and live performances in several international events and venues including Terraforma, Nextones, and Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2020 he started a new collaboration with musician, and member of the band Nine Inch Nails, Alessandro Cortini working on video clips at first and then developing the visual content for the improvised live performance Nati Infiniti which premiered at the Berlin Atonal in 2023.
In his works, Ciceri mixes different media and techniques to achieve richness in the details and what he calls a “flowing esthetic”. For his animations, he often uses automated movements created with generative software or physical motorised gears.
duration: 45'
live performed audio-visual piece
concept, musical composition, arrangements and sound design by Aimée Portioli
concept, visual art and filming my Marco Ciceri
PAST SHOWS
Tresor 31, Kraftwerk, Berlin, DE
NODE Festival presents Staccato, La Torre, Modena, IT
DAVE Festival, Dresden, DE
Barbican Centre, Main Hall, London, UK
WOS Festival, Santiago De Compostela, ES
Triennale Milano Teatro, Milan, IT
Stereolux, Nantes, FR
Théâtre Hexagone, Scène Nationale Arts Sciences, Meylan, FR
In addition to her studio albums, Portioli also creates original sound art installations and worked with 4D spatial sound on several occasions.
Portioli has performed as Grand River at major international venues and festivals, including Barbican Hall, CTM Festival, L.E.V. Festival, MUTEK, Kraftwerk, Funkhaus, WOS Festival, Berghain, and many more. She collaborates with visual artist Marco Ciceri on special A/V performances and for the light design of her new All Above live tour.
Since 2016 she runs the label One Instrument that invites artists to respond to a unique creative brief – to create a piece of music using just one instrument.
Aimée Portioli holds a bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Linguistics and Communication of Milan. Her thesis explored the psychology of the communicative function of music in media.
Her work today is motivated by similar questions of sound and music as a form of communication that goes beyond language.
Marco Ciceri is a Berlin-based Italian media artist. He studied at the Faculty of Design and Art at the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, in which his thesis, “Reality”, he created an installation that exposed the ever more present difference between live and mediated reality.
In 2014 Ciceri worked with London-based studio Marshmallow Laser Feast on an installation commissioned by the Lisbon Architecture Biennale. In 2015 he moved to Berlin to become part of the motion graphics studio Pfadfinderei. With them, Ciceri worked on live shows for various musicians and participated in the creation of visual installations at venues and festivals, including MIT Boston, Berghain, Funkhause, Sonar and Martin-Gropius-Bau. In his career, he also held workshops about visual music at the Goethe Institut Indonesia and the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.