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PICO: Un parlante de África en América”

Preview: Saturday 10 October 2020, 12-5pm
Exhibition: 11 October – 13 December 2020
Venue: Auto Italia Southeast, London

PICO is a new programme of sonic inquiry led by artists Invernomuto (Simone Bertuzzi and Simone Trabucchi) & Jim C. Nedd plus contributions from Don Alirio, Axis Arkestra, Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Rabz Lansiquot, Larisa Kingston Mann, Edna Martinez, Christelle Oyiri, Jeanpi Perreo, Sidney Reyes, Shannen SP and more TBA. In this exhibition, the documentary film PICO: Un Parlante de África en América (60 minutes, HD film, 2017) examines the rich and flamboyant tradition of picós: vivid, technicolour, wooden structures housing powerful sound systems, which animate Colombian street parties, bars and restaurants.

Picó’s history starts during the time of slavery routes, when Colombian port towns such as Barraquilla and Cartagena played a pivotal role in granting access to the trade including, later, emergent technologies and cultural products as well as vinyls from across West Africa which from the 1960s were used local producers for the circulation and dissemination of music outside of mainstream radio and record production, bringing an explosion of African sound to the streets, dominated by the newborn genre called Champeta, which brought together Salsa, Latin and Caribbean music and later developed in the adjacent genre Guarapo.

These new Afro-Colombian sounds, reverberating from the culture of picó, came to represent acts of freedom in a national context divided along the lines of race and class. The film explores how these physical contexts enable communities to come together and re-define social relationships against the backdrop of racial capitalist subjugation, looking at picó culture within a global discussion on the role and potential of sound system cultures as sites of sonic resistance through a digital programme of text, mix and image commissions led by an international community of producers, DJs and artists for whom sonic practices are communal devices to explore the global resonances of African diasporic sound within music production. This investigation will also include a newly commissioned public work by Jim C. Nedd, installed on the facade of Auto Italia’s project space. This will draw from the lens of documentary film and explore the political potential of music in public environments of celebration and dissent.

Invernomuto is an artist collective that brings together Simone Bertuzzi (b. 1983, Piacenza, Italy) and Simone Trabucchi (b. 1982, Piacenza, Italy) who live and work in Milan. They have been collaborating as Invernomuto since 2003, focusing primarily on moving image and sound, while often integrating sculpture, performance and publishing into their practice.  Bertuzzi and Trabucchi have developed individual lines of research into sound with the outlets Palm Wine and STILL, respectively. Invernomuto won the Museion Prize 1 (2017) and were finalists for the MAXXI Bulgari Prize (2018). Recent exhibitions and screenings include 58th Venice Biennale, Italy (2019); Tate Modern, UK (2018); Manifesta 12, Italy (2018); and Nuit Blanche 2017, France (2017).

Jim C. Nedd (b. 1991, Verona, Italy) lives and works in Milan. Nedd is an Afro-Colombian interdisciplinary storyteller, involved in sonic environments and visual arts. Founder of the band Primitive Art alongside Matteo Pit, Nedd also operates as a photographer in advertising and editorial projects, as well as part of the Toiletpaper collective assisting Pierpaolo Ferrari.