Invernomuto, VERNASCACADABRA, 2024

VERNASCACADABRA is a series of compositions for ocarina as a part of an artistic journey through the history of music routes that Invernomuto has been carrying out for years, starting from the sound and the imagery it generates. The ocarina is a wind instrument made of terracotta, whose name derives from its shape, which resembles a small headless goose (“oca” in italian). It is claimed that the instrument was invented in Budrio, near Bologna, around the mid-19th century, and then it spread to many geographic areas, such as Austria, Korea, Japan, Peru and Hungary. Aside from its use in traditional and folk music, the ocarina appears in some famous soundtracks by Ennio Morricone, in compositions by György Ligeti, in Capitan Harlock (a 1970s Japanese anime series), in music by Duran Duran, and in the videogameThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. VERNASCACADABRA, whose title combines a magical formula with the name of the ancient village from which the two artists come, intertwines vernacular and pop culture starting from the extremely simple sounds of the ocarinas recomposed in a catalog of raw dance pieces. VERNASCACADABRA opens up a heterodox vocabulary that draws from presumed and imagined medieval repertoires, blurred memories of ritual flutes and – more openly – declines the UK drill as a sharp existential metaphor.

Invernomuto is the name of the artistic personality created in 2003 by Simone Bertuzzi (Piacenza, 1983) and Simone Trabucchi (Piacenza 1982. They work and live in Milan). Invernomuto is the author of a series of research projects structured in time and space, from which cycles of interconnected works derive. On a common theoretical basis, Invernomuto tends to think in an open and rhizomatic manner, developing different outputs that take the form of moving images, sounds, performative actions and publishing projects, within the framework of a practice defined by the use – as diffuse as it is precise – of different media. Reality is observed according to documentaristic principles and interests, but for the purpose of creating an imaginative and almost abstract representation, which offers wide margins for reflection and critical interrogation. In particular, Invernomuto investigates subcultural universes, moving through different practices, in which the vernacular language is one way of approaching and appreciating oral cultures and contemporary mythologies, observed with a gaze that aspires to be cross-fertilised and regenerated by it. The declared inauthenticity of some of the materials used plays a fundamental role in this process, which underlines not only the real but also the fictitious and distorted nature of the realities that Invernomuto explores. Founders of the record label and music organization Hundebiss, both artists also develop individual lines of research, with the musical projects Palm Wine and STILL.

Click to listen to excerpts