Pietro Riparbelli
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Pietro Riparbelli/K11 interview - 2009 -
PIETRO RIPARBELLI INTERVIEW
Contributed by: Drengskap
Pietro Riparbelli is an Italian sound artist and musician, who works and records under his own name and as PT-R and K 11, with the project name K 11 reserved for work made using ‘only sounds from the atmosphere and from invisible, unknown sources.’ His most recent recording as K 11, Voices From Thelema, is an album composed from recordings of shortwave radio signals captured within the ruins of occultist Aleister Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, Sicily. Voices From Thelema was released by cult English label Aurora Borealis, in deluxe packaging featuring a booklet of colour photos of the abbey with fragments of murals painted by Crowley.
Heathen Harvest: Buon giorno, Pietro! How’s it going – are you enjoying the Equinox Festival?
Pietro Riparbelli: Buon giorno! Yes, I think it’s a very interesting festival. I’ve never been to a festival like this before.
HH: In what way?
PR: It’s good to find a festival which talks about spiritual energy, and which mixes musical performances with new culture, ritual, films and talks, and I’ve never found anything like this before, either in Italy or other countries. I think it’s unique, and I’m very happy and very honoured to be here.
HH: Were there any performances you saw yesterday that really interested you, or are there any things you are really looking forward to today or tomorrow?
PR: Yes, John Zorn’s performance last night was very strong, and also Z’EV. I like Z’EV, and I played with him once before, at a festival in Italy. Tonight, we have Comus playing, which should be very interesting. And Aethanor as well – I’m a fan of Stephen O’Malley, I think he’s a very interesting person in the esoteric cultural scene. And he’s really the only artist who’s able to expose the esoteric scene to a wider audience in Europe and the United States.
HH: Are you visiting any places in London outside of the festival?
PR: The British Museum is fantastic. I visited the Egyptian and Oriental collections, and I also found the magical stuff of John Dee, which was very exciting, because I didn’t know it was there. But I found these things, and received a sensation of good energy from them. I’ve been to London several times before, but I’d never seen the British Museum, and it’s really good. Even though in Turin Italy, there’s a museum with ancient Egyptian items, it’s nothing like as good as the British Museum.
HH: Are you planning on going anywhere else?
PR: I don’t know, I’m just thinking about the festival now. And tomorrow, I’m meeting a lot of Italian friends who are living in London
HH: I think Sandro from Radical Matters was talking about going to visit the United Grand Lodge in Great Queen Street.
PR: Ah, yes of course! Tomorrow, we’re going to see the Masonic temple!
HH: Yes, it’s in Covent Garden – not far away.
PR: I think that will be the last place we go to visit before returning to Italy.
HH: OK, let’s talk about your music now. I looked at your resumé, and it seems as if a lot of your works have been sound installations and performances in gallery spaces, rather than traditional album releases. Do you consider yourself a sound artist rather than a musician?
PR: I work halfway between art and music. I think I create all of my work with the energy of a musician. And I started off as a musician – I studied percussion a lot when I was young. But at the same time, I painted, and I also studied at university. I wrote a thesis on the phenomenology of perception. I can’t really divide my work into art or music or study. I consider all of my work as my life. I use different methods when I work on a sound installation, though, and I’ve worked a lot within the contemporary art scene. I’ve collaborated with an important contemporary artist, Massimo Bartololini, and I’ve set up sound installations, for example in Barcelona at the Fundacìo Antoni Tàpies, and in New York, Bologna and Siena. At the some time, I’ve recorded a few musical releases. But in my life, there’s no real difference between music and art. It all comes together.
HH: Who have been your major musical, artistic and philosophical influences?
PR: When I was young, I listened to bands like Venom and Bathory, all the early black metal bands. Then I modified my listening, and I started enjoying bands like Joy Division. Psychedelic music also – for example, the early Pink Floyd albums were very important in the formation of my own music.
As far as art goes, the most important artist for me is Bill Viola, the American video artist. I think he has a similar outlook to me – he portrays spiritual themes in his installations. I’ve read a lot of his books – even if I don’t speak English very well, I prefer reading him in English! He’s a big inspiration for me.
In philosophy, I studied writers like Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Heidegger at university, the existentialist scene. And my thesis concentrated on Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Perception, and the phenomenology of perception, are really the most important issues in my work. I think we fail to perceive the world around us in many different ways.
HH: I saw a Bill Viola installation called the Nantes triptych, which had a film of a woman giving birth on one side, and film of Bill Viola’s mother on her deathbed on the other side. It was very moving.
PR: Yes, he’s very interesting. He worked in Italy for a time, in Florence, studying Renaissance churches. I saw his last installation at the Venice Biennale two years ago. He mounted three monitors in a church, and the work evoked very strong sensations. It’s really unusual to find an artist with genuine spiritual depth in the contemporary scene. I don’t really like the art scene so much, the openings, the galleries... I prefer the music scene. I think it’s more real, more free and authentic.
HH: So how does your interest in the occult fit in with your artistic projects? You were talking just now about perception and our failure to perceive the world around us, and ‘the occult’ literally means the hidden, the unseen.
PR: Yes, yes, the seen and the unseen form the focus of my work. The seen and the unseen are very related to perception on the one hand, and on the other they are related to the occult and the esoteric. I’ve studied mysticism alongside mainstream western philosophy, things like ancient Egyptian and oriental religious mysticism, and these themes are always present in my work. I would like to achieve a dimension where I can show unseen perceptions. This is what I was striving towards with my recording in the Abbey of Thelema.
HH: Can you explain the difference between your two projects, PT-R and K 11?
PR: In PT-R, I work only with field recordings, and I arrange all the field recordings within a rhythmic framework, so PT-R is a more rhythmic project. K 11 is a more esoteric project, also using field recordings, but taken from very specific locations, and especially working with signals from shortwave radio receivers. The K 11 releases are more ambient than PT-R.
HH: I was wondering where the name K 11 came from.
PR: K 11, because the letter K is the K of ‘magick’, and 11 because 11 is a very particular number, the number of the magician. After 10, 11 is the number where magic begins, the unknown territory. And the letter and the number are very related.
HH: K is the eleventh letter in the alphabet.
PR: Sure.
HH: Can you tell us something about your working methods? I reviewed your Voices From Thelema release, and it wasn’t obvious to me how the sounds it contained had been produced. Do you do a lot of radical work on the mixing desk after recording?
PR: I work mainly with shortwave radio receivers, but I understand your question, because we’re accustomed to listening to the radio, and the hum of the radio, but I use very old, professional quality shortwave receivers, and if you listen to this kind of device, you can see that it’s very similar to a synthesiser. When you turn the tuning knob, the sound is modified, and it sounds very different from an ordinary radio. So I record a lot of signals in a specific place, but I prefer not to do so much work on the mixing desk. Instead, I use multiple effects on the signals at the time of recording, and I loop them at the same time, which allows me to record samples and mix them in real time. And sometimes when I turn the tuning knob, I find radio stations which are broadcasting music, which allows me to loop short melodic phrases.
HH: So it’s all mixed in real time, not in post-production?
PR: It depends on the project. For many projects, I mix in post-production. But for Voices From Thelema, I recorded and mixed it inside the abbey. I’m currently working on a project that I recorded inside a church in Assisi, where I recorded the signals there and I’m now arranging them in post-production. For Voices From Thelema, though, I wanted to do all of the work inside this unique place. I wanted to record it as a kind of ritual inside the abbey.
HH: Are you interested in electronic technology in itself, or more as a conduit for human presence and communication?
PR: For me, electronics are only a conduit. I use computers only for recording and assembling music, not for composing. I never use electronic sounds or plug-ins. I don’t really like computers. I prefer analogue electronics, because analogue allows you to modify the sound to reflect your inner state. And shortwave radio is good because in one place you hear one signal, in another place, you get a different signal, and the signals are different at different times as well. I’m using a computer as a recording tool here in London, because I couldn’t bring all of my equipment with me, but a computer is only a device that helps you reproduce signals. For tonight’s performance, I have lot of signals that I recorded in the Abbey of Thelema, and I also have a very small radio receiver, because I couldn’t bring my large radios.
HH: When you talk about your radios, it sounds like you have a nostalgic attachment to that technology.
PR: Yes, I am nostalgic for old devices. I don’t like digital radio. The old radio receivers allow you to modulate and modify the sound.
HH: Do you work mostly by yourself, or do you enjoy collaborating with other people?
PR: I prefer collaborating with other people, even if I’ve realised a lot of projects alone. For instance, I’ve done a lot of work with Sandro Gronchi from Radical Matters – we work together on Radical Matters productions, and we’re collaborating on my performance here tonight. Even when I work on sound installations, I try to collaborate with visual artists. I think it’s very good to exchange ideas and points of view. You can grow through collaborating with other people.
HH: Do you consider yourself part of a movement or scene, or are you very isolated in the way that you work? Like last night at the pub, we were talking about how the industrial scene in Italy is very small.
PR: Yes, in Italy we are completely isolated, because this kind of stuff is not so easy to get to play in festivals or concerts. I had to find a label in the UK to release my last work. I don’t know – I have a scene that I like, for instance I really like the black metal scene, but I don’t know if I’m part of that. With Radical Matters, we’re producing very radical stuff in Italy, but it mostly sells to the United States and the UK.
HH: How was it recording at Aleister Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema?
PR: It was a very exciting experience. I decided to realise this project, but I didn’t know what kind of material would result from it. I decided to look for the abbey, and it was very difficult, because in Sicily, a lot of people don’t want to talk about Aleister Crowley, because he was a magician. As you can imagine, Sicily is a very moralistic country, and very Catholic. After two days of searching, I managed to find the abbey, and I got inside, along with my girlfriend. It wasn’t easy to get inside, because it’s private property. But I took a lot of photos, and the video footage that I will transmit tonight during my performance, and then I came back alone the next day, with my radios and recording devices, and I recorded a lot of very particular signals. For me, it was like a ritual, my personal ritual. I am not a Crowleyan, I don’t adhere to any particular tradition.
HH: Did you find the atmosphere disturbing? You said your girlfriend was scared.
PR: Yes, she was very scared! She’s not so familiar with the occult scene, but she wanted to come along, and she found it very scary. That’s why I came back alone for the recording session. But I thought the atmosphere was good. The abbey is on top of a hill, without a lot of traffic. It’s very close to the stadium. If you went there on a Sunday, you’d get a lot of noise from the football.
HH: In my review, I wondered why you recorded on the 14th October instead of on the 12th, which is the anniversary of Crowley’s birth.
PR: Yes, that was an accident. I missed the flight! With this kind of project, you have to be prepared to cope with a lot of accidents and interference with your intentions.
HH: Did any strange or supernatural events happen during your recording sessions there? Was this project intended to capture EVP (electronic voice phenomena)? If so, was it successful?
PR: I recorded a lot of strange signals, but I would be reluctant to call them EVP. I’m not a medium. I think the most important thing is that, if you listen to my album, you are in contact with the genius loci of the abbey, the spirit of the place. I wasn’t trying to record the voices of the dead. I was there without any kind of intention. I just wanted to record what the place wanted to give me.
HH: What are you working on now, with both K 11 and PT-R?
PR: As I mentioned before, I’m working on a project with signals from the Basilica di San Francesco at Assisi. It’s a Catholic cathedral of course, but if you go down into the crypt, deep underground, it’s very strange and scary. And then I’m producing a CD with AFE Records in Italy, which is a project I recorded as an instrumental trans-communication action inside a very particular forest, capturing the signals and sounds of the forest at night. The CD will contain a video I made in the forest, using only a torch. And I’m also working on a sound installation in Paris, towards the end of the year. Those are the most important projects I have on the go at the moment.
HH: Those are all of the questions I have for you. Anything else you want to add?
PR: I want to thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to express my point of view, and helping me when my English isn’t so good!
This interview with Pietro Riparbelli took place face to face at the Equinox Festival, London, in June 2009.
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