Enrico Coniglio - The Fragile Identity of Natural Sound

A central figure in the field of field recording research and a member of AIPS – Archive Italiano Paesaggi Sonori, for many years Enrico Coniglio (Venice, 1975) has been pursuing an original form of dialogue between the acoustic elements of reality and electronic sources: two different practices of "environment-building", of reconstructing physical or imagined places through a sensibility attuned to change.

With Enrico we talked about the role the artist takes on in pursuing and sharing his research, the delicate balance between reproduction and reinterpretation, and whether or not it's necessary to involve the audience in the creative process as well as in the "reading" of the work that results from it. What matters is having the chance to talk about it, but above all to listen, and to finally give due importance to the spontaneous languages through which the world speaks to us.

Where does your particular interest in natural sounds come from? Did you have mentors who guided you into this field, or is it more of an innate inclination?

My interest lies in environmental sounds, where the naturalness of a context can either prevail or give way to its own artificiality. It's in the uncertain outcome of this confrontation that my ear, my curiosity, gets switched on. I was born in a city marked by vast spaces of silence, Venice, which today is unfortunately shrinking, partly because of mass tourism and its effects on everyday life.

Ever since I was a child, my ear has been trained to listen, finding musicality in everything around me. Recently I dug out some old cassette tapes from the '80s and found recordings I'd made with a portable Toshiba, back in innocent times, when I still knew nothing about the history of phonography, apart from a few Futurist musical works. I used to carry that walkman around with me, in the Cadore mountains, recording fountains, birds and grazing cows — little souvenirs of the places I loved, to be listened to again once back home.

Unlike other figures in this field, your artistic expression involves an ongoing dialogue between the acoustic sources of the real world and artificial ones — which, in some cases, end up blending and merging into one another. Does working in this direction feel more like a delicate "intrusion," or an attempt at dialogue and exchange between the two dimensions?

For a few years now, especially thanks to some recent artist residencies, I've been developing the idea that the concept of "margin" could serve as a new interpretive model for the contemporary soundscape. My research moves precisely along that uncertain boundary between nature and artifice, landscape and manscape, in order to show that, for many areas of the Italian territory, clear-cut distinctions no longer seem possible.

To answer your question, I'd say it's more an attempt to make different sound sources talk to each other, in that grey area where the various pieces of the landscape come to overlap. There isn't so much an aesthetic intention behind juxtaposing seemingly opposite sounds, as an attempt at reconciling them — even painfully — reflecting the acoustic experience of the world we live in. Though in musical composition, space and time are of course bent and redefined at will.

As an artist, do you feel more like a channel for something that already exists but goes unheard, or the vehicle for a more strictly personal point of view on reality?

There's no doubt that creative thought sometimes seems to arise in completely unexpected ways. This has often led me to fantasize that human beings are equipped with invisible receptors, antennae capable of picking up stray signals coming from who knows what dimension. But maybe all of this simply comes down to the huge amount of input we're exposed to every day, which then combines on a subconscious level and can give rise to intuitions that sometimes turn into creative actions. What's certain is that representing a place in the form of a soundscape composition can only reflect a strictly personal interpretation of reality, while at the same time expressing the transposition of a broader worldview.

"Astrùra" and "Solèra" form a diptych (the "Bragos series") recently released by experimental music label Silentes and dedicated to the Venetian lagoon. This is an environmental and sonic context you've returned to more than once: what kind of relationship has developed with it over the years? What developments led to your most recent work?

A few years ago, when I was just beginning to sharpen the concept of "topo-phony," I had in mind a more imaginative Venice, so the picture I painted of it was undoubtedly more musical. Today I'm more interested in documenting the identity of the place and giving back an image closer to observed reality. Over the years, the theme of the sound of marginal areas has become increasingly central to my approach to researching the territory: the "land-and-water" environment of the Venetian lagoon is an ideal field of study in which to apply this research model.

Thanks to Stefano Gentile, the label's owner, I was able to give new voice to recordings dating back to 2010, gathered during a foggy spring day around the lagoon's inlet, which became the Bragos series. With "Astrùra" and "Solèra" — two 10-inch records named after types of lagoon seabeds, accompanied by some wonderful photographs by Stefano himself — the flow of field recordings, while playing a leading role, is propped up by harmonic breaths that unmoor the listener from reality, creating a kind of bridge toward a dimension where imaginative thought is free to wander. Either way, neither record is meant to offer a nostalgic image of Venice, but rather to prompt reflection on its fragility. In the liner notes I wanted to pin down this idea: "The soundscape is a subjective construction in constant flux, and its evolution therefore goes hand in hand with the evolution of the territory itself."

Over the years you've also taken part in several artist residencies. Tell us a bit about how these experiences unfold and what you've learned from them.

During 2015 I was invited to Campania twice, to document the soundscape first of the Fortore area, in the inland Benevento countryside, and then of Irpinia, in the Avellino area, both close to the Apennines. The first residency took place in June as part of LIMINARIA 2015 – #unmappingtime, organized by Interferenze, Scafando and Tabularasa eventi. The second, titled AQUA MATRIX, took place in December and was organized by Flussi Art Media Festival in collaboration with the Irpinia Madre Contemporanea association.

During the residencies I had the chance to explore the area, guided by members of the various associations, through the practice of field recording, and finally to present it all in the form of listening sessions offered to the public at the end of the stays. Although the landscapes were fundamentally different — Fortore more bucolic, Irpinia harsher, partly also due to the seasonal gap between the two residencies — what I took away from both experiences was, in either case, very much the same. The scenic beauty of certain urban, rural, mountainous and marginal areas of the Italian territory is due to their particular isolation, their distance from major traffic routes, and thus to the fact that they've escaped, even if only partly, the logic of land exploitation.

Aside from the chance to visit new places, meet a lot of great people, and enjoy fantastic food and wine, the experience of an artist residency gives full meaning to field recording and to the performance, or installation, built from the sound material gathered. Offering the inhabitants of a place the sounds of the very place they live in is not a trivial thing to do, for many good reasons: the main one being that, coming back to the question asked above, through the eyes of an outsider you become the vehicle for a different narrative of everyday reality. A narrative that can set in motion positive dynamics for a community's sense of belonging, and prompt a reflection on its local identity.

The art of field recording takes on a particular meaning in collective listening within specific spaces, aided by purpose-built amplification. Does fixing a work onto a physical format serve, for you, as documentation of work carried out in a given context, or does it constitute a genuine "album", a different perspective on the same project?

On one hand, I think many musicians see the "physical format" as the finish line marking the end of a period of work — we were just talking about this recently with our friend Giovanni Lami (Lemures): placing a mark on the ideal timeline of one's own evolution, which allows you to move forward. Knowing that my music has been fixed onto a physical medium gives me a sense of security, even though I'm well aware of the obsolescence that the objects surrounding us are subject to. I think it's simply a narcissistic need to leave a trace of one's passing, and in any case I still feel I belong to the cult of the material object, of its design. That said, I firmly believe in the power of digital distribution of high-quality audio files, which among other things rewards the most demanding ears and allows for wider reach. As you may know, together with my friend Leandro Pisano, I run the digital label Galaverna, which, besides distributing the work of artists engaged in various ways with field recording practices, aims to foster a reflection on the sound landscape starting precisely from the concept of "post-digital".

Back to the experiential dimension: we've already exchanged views on the necessity and/or usefulness of giving listeners the tools to gain a deeper understanding of the genesis of a sound research work, whether through guided listening sessions or through workshops and participatory performances. Some artists prefer to keep an aura of secrecy around their work, handing the public a "finished object" that reveals certain practices or suggestions on its own; others instead strive to play with their cards on the table, including and involving the listener as much as possible within a project, even going so far as to assign them the role of co-author. What's your point of view? Do you think it's in some way necessary to "take a side" — that is, to clearly define the roles — or that a balance needs to be found?

There's no doubt everyone has the right to present themselves however they wish: what matters, in my view, is declaring, even implicitly, the kind of approach being taken. It's not about building barricades, I think it's simply a matter of honesty, especially for those who work mainly with digital devices. From the listener's point of view, everyone then has the right to enjoy the performance simply for what it is, in an off-the-cuff way, not overburdened by induced explanations and meanings; a purely emotional, uninformed perception.

From the point of view of whoever presents the work — let's call them, for simplicity, a sound artist — attempting mediation instead, unveiling the mystery (the exact opposite of the concept of acousmatic sound, where the causes of the sound are not revealed), can be a way of bringing the audience closer to a fuller understanding; and, not least, of showing that one is genuinely working on sound, that a cause corresponds to one or more effects.

It is undoubtedly important to have an attentive and curious listener in front of you, but revealing the tricks of the trade doesn't trivialize your work in the least. For years I felt the duty to declare this allegiance, to the point of writing a manifesto on the subject. Today I've taken this need even further with the collaborative project Tavoloparlante (with Nicola di Croce), in which, with varying degrees of participation and a strong desire to play, we invite listeners to become co-authors of the performance.

What has been, for you, the most interesting field experience so far, or the one that gave you the greatest expressive possibilities?

Recently a friend, Enrico Ascoli, passed me a sound design job for the BBC: a precise list of Venetian "sound effects" to be produced for a radio drama set in the Jewish ghetto. I immediately accepted with enthusiasm, I live five minutes from the area. Too bad the story is set in the 17th century: I had to avoid every sound considered foreign to that historical period.

I'm telling you about this experience because it was the most difficult and frustrating challenge we've ever faced. When you go out onto the street and press the dreaded "rec" button, you realize that today there isn't a single minute when the sky isn't crossed by a plane taking off from Tessera airport. There's no moment when a motorboat isn't stirring up the water of the inner canals. When a wheeled suitcase doesn't go by, a mobile phone doesn't ring, a camera shutter doesn't click. What was supposed to be a couple of days' work turned into an almost two-month ordeal. Much to the dismay of my wife and a few friends, who were also dragged into this absurd search for the sounds of an illusory city. Only to realize that there is no everyday life of some mythical past, not even in the most remote corners of the city. We can only document the present, honestly. How did it end up? Hours of recordings, far more hours of editing. Schafer's soundscape is lost here, it's a fake, a deception. The City of the Doges is just a cut-price mask, barely satisfying a frivolous craving for the picturesque.

To wrap up, any listening recommendations for those who'd like to get into the art of field recording?

Honestly, I'm not very good at giving recommendations. In no particular order:

Brian Eno – "Ambient 4: On Land"

Jana Winderen – "Energy Field"

Luigi Nono – "La fabbrica illuminata"

Janek Schaefer – “In the Last Hour”

Daniel Menche – "Raw Recording Series (Volume One)"

Eric La Casa – "The Stones Of The Threshold"

I'll stop here. In truth, most of the field recordings work I find interesting today is distributed as a free download by labels such as Gruen rekorder, Crónica, Impulsive Habitat, Green Field Recordings, Galaverna (shameless plug!). Have a browse — you can't go wrong.

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