Wanda's Heart, 2017
Video installation for the 1931 futurist radio opera Il Cuore di Wandaby Pino Masnata (Co-author of La Radia: Futurist Manifesto of October, 1933. By F.T. Marinetti & Pino Masnata)
Collaboration with musicologist Danielle Simon, Rome Prize Fellow.
7.5 minutes
February 14th through April 4th, 2017
part of VISION(S), Cinque Mostre 2017
American Academy In Rome, Italy
Notes On Production
The video Wanda’s Heart was commissioned to be the projected back-drop for the first live staging of Il Cuore di Wanda (1931), a futurist opera, performed in the cryptoporticus of The American Academy in Rome for the opening of Cinque Mostre: Visions, 2.14.17.
The video’s narrative is inspired by the libretto for Il Cuore di Wanda, written by poet and surgeon Pino Masnata. Prior to Cinque Mostre at the AAR, Il Cuore di Wandawas performed just once, in 1933, via radio broadcast to listeners in Rome. The Italian Futurist movement favored electromagnetic waves as a conduit for information and music transfer; futurists considered music performed live before an audience in a concert hall to be primitive.
Wanda’s Heart combines found footage and visuals filmed by iphone. The soundtrack was recorded in a studio by Danielle Simon, with soprano Gaia Mattiuzzi and tenor Ryan Matos.