Marko Ivic

Statement

I was born and raised in Venezuela (1988) to a Croatian father and an Italian mother. Regardless of a happy childhood, full of mixtures and contrasts, home has always been a virtual place for me, and the feeling of belonging an abstract phenomenon that constantly demands questioning and reinventing. The search for a way to express myself spontaneously engaged me with music and later took me to Croatia, where I developed and studied as a classical pianist. Although music has always had an essential role in my life, it soon became obvious I needed to explore my own physicality on stage, and the aesthetic possibilities offered by the visual arts. It turned out that technology and live electronics functioned as a bridge to articulate all the diversity I felt I needed. Movement, music theatre, photography, performance art, composition, improvisation, installation performances, they all flourished after I moved to The Netherlands back in 2013. Nowadays my artistic focus is set on interdisciplinary performances, and more recently, the exploration of the installation format and collaborations related to photography and sculpture, always connecting and re-connecting with sonic experiences. My research is motivated by approximations to exuberant aesthetics, human identity, the body, and metaphysical aspects of our existence. A connection to the piano and my interest in live electronics is constantly pushing me to find new sound dimensions involving the use of software and sensors, in an attempt to re-articulate my personal experience and explore the relationships between the instrument and my body.

GlogauAIR Project

The piece is an exploration of the relationship between a pianist and a piano. This relationship is taken out of its music-making context and represented in space as the interaction of two bodies, two objects. Their interaction is characterized by their difference in dimension and mass, as well as the significance of the actions of pulling and endlessly rotating. Even if pianists never take their instruments with them, having to literally “carry” the piano makes the pianist’s role comparable to the one of Sisyphus. However, both bodies share aspects in common: both have interventions, such as the piano leg and the fabrics around the pianist’s body; both bodies are exposed (the piano lid is removed, and the pianist’s chest is naked); both are “monitored” by mics. By suppressing the music-making aspect, the installation focuses on the objective physical interaction, and its resulting sound. Moreover, we could say the soundscape is created out of existing shared “inner realities”: it is as natural for a piano to generate string related vibrations when moved, as it is for a human body to have a heartbeat and breath. The Rondeau Over the last months I became fascinated with the format of an installation, and how it removes most of the performative rules of interaction between performers and audience. More specifically, the ritual of music and its codexes were completely absent, opening up new perceptual opportunities. Connecting with my personal investigation of my relationship with the piano, I got intrigued by the idea of a pianist manipulating the piano as an object in a (non musical) space, incessantly. The development of this idea and the wish of a repetitive scenario led me to define the movement as a never-ending circular one, which firstly connected with the rondeau as a circulating dance form, and later to the well-known music form that deals with the repetition of thematic material. Rondeau became then a possibility to exemplify the representability of music, transposing structural components into the space and body and then back to soundscape. It monitors the sound of non-musical actions and organizes them in the form of a rondeau. The structure of the piece coincides with the form of a classical five-part rondo (ABACA), organizing and articulating all the generated material created during performance: speed, direction and intensity of the turning, choreographic aspects of the performer i.e. decisions regarding what and how to do with the body, and organizing the generated sounds and their amplification and processing. The resulting soundscape is an ever-going machine-like sound (the piano rotating) with reminiscence of vibrating piano strings accompanied by aleatoric rhythmic patterns created by the vital signs of the performer. This sounds are amplified and (subtly) effected live to create new textures connected to specific sections of the rondeau. Once sent to the speakers, the room becomes an immersive sound space through which the visitors can navigate. Time will be set within the context of movement and trajectory; the rondeau could then for example take the circumference as a fixed reference to determine its duration and organize sound, dividing it to create its different sections (ABACA).

CV Summary

PERFORMANCES

• 2017 Simulacra Studies for performer, video and sensors, by Solomiya Moroz Huddersfeld Electric Spring Festival, UK Nocturne Performance / Installation by Samson Young Exhibition at Kunsthale Duesseldorf, Germany
• 2016 Short wave apocalypse or the box Music Theater production by Solomiya Moroz Amsterdam Fringe Festival Music Theatre production by Marko Ivic Conservatorium van Amsterdam
• 2015 Not Only Futurists Music Theatre production by Jerzy Bielski Winner of 1st prize of the Jury at Amsterdam Fringe Festival
• 2013 Now what? Music Theatre production by Marko Ivic, Zagreb, Croatia

GRANTS

• 2016 Art Residence: Research on wireless sensors for performance. Studio for Electro-instrumental Music (STEIM) Amsterdam, The Netherlands Amsterdam Schools of the Arts Funds (AHK) Financial grant for Music theatre production “IF”

MUSIC & SOUNDTRACKS

• 2017 Soundtrack for Goat Song, a physical theatre production by Espen Hjort, Theatre Utrecht, NL
• 2016 Soundtrack for The Container, dance performance by Andreas Hannes SNDO, Amsterdam, NL Soundtrack for Celebration of life!, theatre production by Espen Hjort, Theaterschool Amsterdam, NL
• 2015 Piano piece no.8 by Marko Ivic, Splendor hall, Amsterdam, NL
• 2014 Soundtrack for Lineage, Olga van de Brandt’s short animation, Utrecht, NL
• 2013 Music Album From Within – Marko Ivic Own improvised Electro-acoustic Music, Vienna, Austria Soundtrack for Bart Lindemann’s short animation Fing, Genk, Belgium

Gallery