Describing Spaces/Designing Borders

Space is one of the most fascinating and ambiguous concepts in human thought: rooted in bodily and sensory experience, it has been gradually conceptualized as measure, container, relation, surface, and depth. From Aristotle‘s notion of topos to Descartes’ extension, and up to the dynamic and relational visions of contemporary phenomenology, space has always been central to our ways of inhabiting, thinking, and creating. In music, space is never just a container, but becomes an active agent in performance: it is written, traversed, modified. Sound draws its borders, gestures shape it, listening reinvents it. Describing Spaces/Designing Borders stems from these reflections: a sonic and performative inquiry into how space can be described through sound and shaped through the body in relation to the instrument, technology, and other instruments. In particular, the cello — in its acoustic, augmented, and hybrid forms — becomes the medium through which to explore thresholds between proximity and distance, between presence and multiplication, between corporeality and environment. Space itself becomes a body of listening. The program presented consists in three pieces: “Gagliarda” (2001) by Francesco Filidei, exploring the space of the surface of the (prepared) cello; “PIETÀ” (2012-2025) by Lisa Streich, in a new version with a new motorised installation system entirely built and designed by the performer; “Geography. Borders” (2024) by Alessandro Perini (German première), for cello, tape and live electronics.