The Sounds of the MAO arrive at the Mercato Centrale Torino
Sound installation Co-existence by Shigeru Ishihara and video Buddha10. A Fragmented Display on Buddhist Visual Evolution by Alessandro Muner in the Antiche Ghiacciaie at Mercato Centrale Torino
The exhibition Buddha10, which can be visited until September 3, 2023, extends from MAO to Mercato Centrale with Shigeru Ishihara’s sound and site-specific installation – created on the occasion of the artist’s live performance inside the Antiche Ghiacciaie last February 3, 2023 – complemented by Alessandro Muner’s video, which features fragments of Buddhist statues on display at MAO.
The operation, which is part of a larger project of collaboration with the Museum of Oriental Art, aims to consolidate Mercato Centrale’s link with the artistic and cultural life of the area by establishing a solid and lasting relationship with one of the city’s main museums. In fact, Mercato Centrale was created with the aim of generating an open and lived space, a place of art and relationships, knowledge and food, in which the return of artistic and cultural content is placed within the framework of a design that has characterized the project from the beginning: the very simple idea that the places of life and the places of art can no longer remain separate.
Site-specific project in three stages at the Antiche Ghiacciaie of the Mercato Centrale, in collaboration with the MAO Museum of Oriental Art of Turin, curated by Chiara Lee and freddie Murphy within the Buddha10 A fragmented display on Buddhist visual evolution.
During his artistic residency at MAO, sound artist Shigeru Ishihara reworked various sound sources he recorded in Japan on the occasion of Buddhist and Shinto folk festivals. Inspired bythe rituality that permeates the temporary exhibition Buddha10, the artist acoustically explored the museum’s settings, rearranging the tracks he had previously composed. Taking advantage of the natural reverberations that characterize the various rooms of the museum, Ishihara brings to fruition a sound experimentation capable of simultaneously extracting and abstracting the essential characteristics of acoustic sources, defined by the artist as “shamanic material”. Ishihara then added other tracks recorded on site, making use of them both for a live performance held on February 3, 2023 at the Antiche Ghiacciaie and for an original composition currently installed inside them, Co-existence, in which the sounds captured in the MAO spaces resonate in the Antiche Ghiacciaie in a process of continuous contamination. Inside them – cathedral/figurative temple – Ishihara, a modern shaman, records a traditional sound ritual with contemporary sensitivity in an attempt to transcend its intrinsic specificity and make it universal.
Shigeru Ishihara
Shigeru Ishihara aka DJ Scotch Egg/Scotch Rolex is an artist from Tokyo. In the early 2000s he was part of the underground music scene in Brighton, UK, where, under the alias DJ Scotch Egg, he started a real genre, breakcore. In 2007 he co-founded the duo Drumeyes with Eda, a percussionist from the cult Japanese rock band Boredoms. Moving to Berlin in 2011, his music absorbed new styles and influences, such as hip hop, trap, and dub. Here he co-founded the record label Small But Hard, with which he released several musical projects including Devilman (with Taigen from Bo Ningen and Gorgonn) and DJ Scotch Bonnet & Sensational. In 2016 he founded a pop duo project: Waqwaq Kingdom (Jahtari, Phantom Limb) with Kiki Hitomi (King Midas Sound), further extending his musical palette. His most recent works include collaborations with Turkish MC Ethnique Punch (Epic Istanbul) and Shanghai artist Gooooose (SVBKVLT). In 2021, under the new alias Scotch Rolex, he released “TEWARI,” a kaleidoscopic album produced during his 2019 art residency with Nyege Nyege Tapes in Kampala, Uganda.
Alessandro Muner
The near-year-long Buddha10 exhibition brings to the attention of the general public the themes associated with non-Western ritual and religious objects, starting from the Chinese Buddhist art collection of the Museum of Oriental Art of Turin. Displaying never-seen-before Buddhist sculptures and reflecting on the exposure, research and experience of Buddhism and its representation in the great Chinese cultural landscape, the exhibition aims to transcend geographical boundaries and enter a broader Asian context. Divided by themes, the curated itinerary erases the sense of time and space and brings together surprising objects, cutting-edge scientific investigations and immersive digital experiences. musical palette. His most recent works include collaborations with Turkish MC Ethnique Punch (Epic Istanbul) and Shanghai artist Gooooose (SVBKVLT). In 2021, under the new alias Scotch Rolex, he released “TEWARI,” a kaleidoscopic album produced during his 2019 art residency with Nyege Nyege Tapes in Kampala, Uganda.
MAO Museum of Oriental Art
MAO is one of the most important museums in Italy and Europe for its expertise and research of Eastern art.
The collections boast almost 2,300 works ranging from the Neolithic period to the beginning of this past century, plus more than 1,400 archeological finds dating to pre-Islamic times from the Iraqi digs at Seleucia and Coche.
The permanent exhibition area is divided into five galleries each devoted to a corresponding cultural area: South and Southeast Asia with works from the Indian subcontinent and from Indochina; China, the cradle of a centuries-old, proteiform artistic civilisation; the Himalayan Region with its fertile interaction between Indian and Chinese cultures; Japan, a land with original artistic developments that arose from the encounter between Asian and European cultures; the Islamic countries bearing witness to the extraordinary artistic effervescence that extended from Central Asia to the Mediterranean.