Today and tomorrow (12th and 13th of April), six of the nine artists —three writers, three musicians and three visual artists— selected from Vienna, Madrid and Turin will be creating their first performing story in Le Founderie Limone

Since the early morning, Turin has become the first European stage for the first Melting Plot creative challenge. This evening, Abraham Boba (musician), Marta Pastorino (writer) and  Michaela Schwentner (visual artist) as well as tomorrow evening Max Carletti (musician), Sandra Gugic (writer) and Maya Watanabe (visual artist) will perform a story through a reading accompanied by a combination of live music and images in Le Founderie Limone, an old artisanal foundry of bronze, aluminum and cast iron that became, in the early nineties, an «arts factory» for the production of theater performances thanks to its relationship with Teatro Stabile di Torino.

The Melting Plot project is a cultural European initiative proposed and organized by Escuela de Escritores (Madrid), Scuola Holden (Turin) and Schule für dichtung (Vienna) along with the support of the EACWP and the Culture Program of the European Union. As it has been conceived, the project encourages the exchange of different fields of artistic creativity and cultural identities. For this reason, the performances resulting from each event will be created mainly by improvisation, after a moment of discussion and comparison between the artists. Freedom of action will mind the constraints of reciprocal respect  and understanding for the artistic work created by each artist in order to favor the final outcome presented. All the performances will be held in the writers’ mother language  and subtitled in the local language for the audience.

The artists will have together a full city experience by walking around, getting to know each other, enjoying and discovering streets, sights, parks, markets, squares, corners, bars and bridges. Nevertheless, each city not only will host the different groups of artists but will be also the inspiring wellspring of the final artworks. In order words, Turin, Vienna and Madrid will be told in a melting plot key. Each city will be recreated by blending literature, music and images. The project will take place in Vienna on the 23rd of May in the Palais Kabelwerk and on the 27th and 28th of June in Matadero Madrid.

All the participants involved in the development process of the project are young and talented artists, coming from different countries. In fact, Melting Plot as a multidisciplinary initiative has aimed to both discover new talents and create a web of artistic collaborations.

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The six artists in Turin

12th of April

ABRAHAM BOBA. MUSICIAN is the alias of the musician David Cobas from Vigo. He starts as a self-taught player, and later studies piano, harmony and arrangements at the Taller de Mùsics in Barcelona. He then creates Belmonde, a lo-fi and experimental project. Subterfuge publishes two of their pieces between 2000 and 2003. At the time he works with La Fura dels Baus. In 2007 LiboStarr publishes his first solo album as Abraham Boba, to which two piano based albums with a strong lyrical content would follow. He is regular musician for Nacho Vegas and he has taken part in over thirty recordings alltogether. In 2011 he joins the punk-jazz group Forastero and starts his collaboration with the theatre company La tristura. In 2013 he creates León Benavente, which first album will be released this coming spring. He lives and work in Madrid.

MARTA PASTORINO. WRITER born in Genoa in 1978. She lives and works in Turin where she collaborate with the Scuola Holden for workshop of creative writing and storytelling. In February 2013 she published her first novel, “Il Primo gesto”. She published several short stories in different anthologies (“Nuovi Argomenti”, 2012, Sole 24 ore , 2012; “Terre di Mezzo”, 2009; “Meridiano Zero”, 2004; “Effetti collaterali”, Meridiano zero, 2006). She also worked for theatre with the company “blucin Que”, writing for them the play APEREGINA (Festival delle Colline Torinesi, Torino 2010). She worked for the contemporary art museum “Fondazione Merz”.

MICHAELA SCHWENTNER. VISUAL ARTIST born 1970 in Linz, lives in Vienna. Conceptual video artist, mainly working with time-based media (film, video, sound). Studied philosophy, history, art history, drama and film theory in Vienna. Lecturer at the Institute for Experimental Design at the University of Arts and Design in Linz and at the Institute for Arts and Design at the TU in Vienna. Director of mosz records. In her work she focuses on various forms of perception, projection, illusion and imagination and examinations of the experience of space. Under the moniker jade she cooperates with Peter Rehberg on audio-visual performances. Screenings within the context of numerous international festivals, including the Sundance Independent Film Festival, Sonar Barcelona, the Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, and the Parvin Etesami Women’s Film Festival in Teheran. Installations and exhibitions worldwide. In 2004 she was awarded the Local Artists Award and in 2007 the Austrian Award for Film Art at the Crossing Europe Film Festival in Linz.

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13th of April

MAX CARLETTI. MUSICIAN Six years playing the piano, and at 12 he began to study guitar. First plays rock, then approaches to jazz and began attending seminars and workshops by artists such as Barney Kessel, Joe Pass, Joe Diorio, Mike Stern, Franco D’Andrea, David Liebman, Philip Catherine and Enrico Rava. In 1989 gets a mention for a scholarship at the prestigious Berklee American school. He was teacher of jazz guitar at the “Institute of Music City Rivoli” from 1994 to 2004. For several years he toured with Eugenio Finardi and recently played for Radio Guitar Fest, live radio concert, organized by Radio Television Slovenia (Koper) with his band “Max Carletti Trio” (2010). Two Lakes Jazz Festival Avigliana with Max Carletti Trio (2011), Turin Jazz Festival with Multikulti Orchestra Plays Led Zeppelin with Perico Sambeat, and Dark Magus featuring George Robert (2012). International Festival “Europe Cantat” with Joakim Arenius & Urban Gospel (2012). He has played with Billy Hart, John Riley, Flavio Boltro, Francesco Bearzatti, Paolo Fresu, Roberto Rossi, Gianluca Petrella, Furio Di Castri, John De Leo (Quintorigo), Carlo Actis Dato, Alberto Mandarini, Alfredo Ponissi, Roberto Cipelli, Antonio Farao’, Mike Rosen, Giovanni Renzo, Alessandro Maiorino, Tommy Campbell, Matt Renzi, Enrico Granafei, Felice Reggio, Alberto Barattini, Roberto Manzin, Fulvio Albano, Fabrizio Bosso, Luca Biggio, Paolo Porta, Mattia Barbieri, Davide Liberti, Marco Tamburini, Claudio Bonadè, Claudio Filippini, Maxx Furian, Eugenio Finardi. Several times in a jam session with Andy Mcghee, Larry Baione, Tal Farlow, tenor saxophonist Paul Jeffrey.

SANDRA GUGIC. WRITER born 1976 in Vienna, has Serbian roots but grew up in Austria. Playwright, screenwriter, prose writer, poet and graphic designer. Studied creative writing at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, at the German Literature Institute’s Creative Writing Program in Leipzig (Germany) and at the Vienna Poetry School. Awards include the Literature Award for Writing Between Cultures of the Edition EXIL (Vienna) in 2008 and a scholarship at the Festival of German Literature/Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2009. Winner of the Open Mike Berlin 2012 (literary competition for young German-speaking writers). Numerous publications in literary magazines (including Volltext, kolik and Lichtungen) and anthologies. As a playwright, she was invited to work at Austrian and German theaters such as the Vienna Volkstheater, Garage X, Schauspielhaus Essen, Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, and the Centraltheater Leipzig. In 2012, her latest play Die Totalvernutzung der Welt (“The Total Exploitation of the World“) was shown at the Authors Competition at Schauspielhaus Essen (Germany).

MAYA WATANABE. VISUAL ARTIST Lima, 1983. Lives and works in Madrid. Since 2005, she works primarily with video. Her work have been shown recently in the Lima Art Museum, the SESC Belezinho and the FIESP in Sao Paulo, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the Cervantes Institute in Berlin, the Cultural Center of Spain in Miami, Lima, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Montevideo, among other institutions and museums in Latin America, Europe and Asia. She has participated in the 798 Beijing Biennale 2009, Amsterdam Mediamatic Biennale 2009, and in festivals such as Videobrasil 2011-2013, LOOP 2011-2012, FILE 2010-2011, TransitioMX 2009 and Madrid Abierto 2008. She has been part of the residence program at Instituto Sacatar, El Ranchito-Matadero, and the Cité Internationale des Arts of Paris. Among other projects, she has collaborated with video projections for theater plays shown in the Teatro Real de Madrid, Teatro Gayarre de Pamplona and Teatro Pincipal de Zaragoza, all of them in Spain.

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