• Club2Club festival, Turin / photo by Kimberley Ross

SPIRIT EXIT

The musical vortex of the Italian composer and modular synth virtuoso Caterina Barbieri rewires time and space. Her music stands alone in its ecstatic intensity and cataclysmic emotional impact. Marking the debut album on her new label Light Years, Barbieri now delivers her most profound release yet — a journey through inner-space as vast as a universe and as intimate as a heartbeat. The Spirit Exit opens and we fall in.

For the album tour marcel_weber/MFO developed a new stage show, in collaboration with the visual artist Ruben Spini. A long time collaborator, art-directing much of Barbieri's visual work, Spini presents video projections, whereas mw/mfo delivers the lighting design and scenography: a grand drape of plastic foils.

PAST PERFORMANCES

11th Jun 2022 - Primavera, Barcelona, ES
18th Jun 2022 - LOST festival, Labirinto della Masone, IT
25th Aug 2022 - Mutek.ca, Montreal, CA
10th Sept 2022 - WOS festival, Santiago de Compostela, ES
16th Sept 2022 - Volksbuehne, Berlin, DE
23rd Sept 2022 - MUNCH x Ultima, Oslo, NO
1st Oct 2022 - National Hall, Dublin, IR
5th Oct 2022 - Indigo Festival, Ljubljana, SI
7th Oct 2022 - RoBot Festival, Bologna, IT
26th Oct 2022 - Barbican, London, UK
30th Oct 2022 - SemiBreve festival, Braga, PT
2nd Nov 2022 - Culturgest, Lisbon, PT
5th Nov 2022 - Club2Club, Turin, IT
6th Nov 2022 - Ekko, Slettebakken Kirke, Bergen, NO
22nd Nov 2022 - Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, NL
24th Nov 2022 - Mutek.mx, Mexico-City, MX
10th Dec 2022 - Dampfzentrale, Bern, CH
14th Jan 2023 - Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, FR
21th Jan 2023 - Chroniques, Aix-en-Provence, FR

PERSONAL NOTES

To build a live show matching the celestial nature of the new album, we aspired to blend Ruben's Time-Blind tour visuals with my lighting and atmospheric work from the Light Years tour. It was clear that stage tech needs to be hidden, its efficacy visible only in transformed, seemingly natural ways. No pristine digital LED screen behind Caterina, no framed video image at all, no stroboscopes or pixel-lamps blinding the audience. Only the illusion of natural light phenomena.

At earlier occasion (during the Light Years show at Sala Apolo, in Barcelona) I used scenography as spatial intervention: some sort of construction site in the middle of a beautiful venue, with David Lynchian undertones. Extending on this, I started research into fabrics.
Using fabrics and projections allows for a multitude of arrangements and intertwined effects. Ruben's imagery projected from behind looks ephemeral, partially shining through, protruding into the fog. Like a sunset blazing through a door somewhere in the back of the stage.
Furthermore foil draping work like curtains, drooping in vertical folds, it give the stage an air of an elegant ballroom; even when the working lights are on. It might also excite a bit of anticipation in the audience before the show starts. The drooping veil merges harmoniously with the wafting ground fog – another important quality. Here the emphasis lies on thick layers of low-hanging clouds, not on a dry-ice cover below ankle level.
Last-but-no-least, an mw/mfo trademark, shapes of light are added to work their magic. Extending the ethereal character of Caterina's music into the space, and -at times-  blanking out the confines of the venue, submerging the audience in a seemingly indefinite world.

Caterina, Ruben and I share similar views in art, aesthetics, philosophy, so the process of show-development was mutually inspiring, put simply: very smooth. I think collectively we developed something magical, celestial, something to be proud of!  –m