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Serafiniana was inspired by Luigi Serafini’s “Codex Seraphinianus”, an incredible illustrated encyclopedia of an invented world, that I happened to stumble upon in the Rare Books Department. Although its’ three-hundred-and-some pages are written in an unintelligible yet beautifully intricate script, I was immediately drawn in by Serafini’s surreal and bizarre, brightly colored drawings of fantastical flora, fauna, and abstract scientific illustrations. We see bleeding fruit, plants with caged citrus, trees that migrate by swimming with propeller-like roots, as well as hybrid creatures such as the horse crossed with the bottom of a jewel incrusted caterpillar, a hippopotamus frozen in a sheet of ice, and a rhinoceros whose horn connects to his tail in a large arc from which hang mobile-like objects. Serafini presents us with an alternate point of view to reality, one that is at once familiar and surprising, that invites interpretation and decoding. It is the kind of book you can loose yourself in, that suspends your concept of time as you escape into its strange pages.
This piece stems from the imagery and experience of exploring the book, and aims to present a different way of hearing, often involving a dialogue between antiphonal choirs of instruments. The work is divided into three movements, which progressively slow down, interspersed by quasi-improvised bridges. The amplified concert master serves as a filament running through the varied textures, like the mysterious cursive writing in the book. The harp is also amplified and electronic sound-files are employed to create a sense of other-worldliness. A clock-like motive returns three times throughout the first two movements, reminding us of “real” time, while the last movement features stretched gliding soundfiles fused with the orchestra, warping our sense of time.
As the art critic Achille Bonito Aliva once commented on Serafini’s work: “The world is not seen as a frozen place, but as a space of imploded emotions”.
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