Invernomuto
Black Med, POMPEII, 2021
visual and audio excerpts from blackmed.invernomuto.info
Courtesy the Artists and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii

Black Med, POMPEII is a project supported by the Italian Council (7th Edition, 2019), programme to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. Collectio Archaeological Park of Pompeii (Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters).

Black Med, POMPEII is the culmination of Invernomuto’s research around theoretical reflections on the Black Mediterranean, with reference to the research of Alessandra Di Maio (University of Palermo) who has used this definition in the context of postcolonial, migratory, transnational and diaspora studies in the field of contemporary African studies. The work is part of a larger and ongoing research process called “Black Med”, whose centre is the online platform blackmed.invernomuto.info. Designed to be accessible both online and offline, in the form of sound installation, the platform has collected, at the current stage of research, over thirty hours of content and musical contributions selected by Invernomuto and a series of participants including Paul Gilroy, Rabih Beaini, Donato Epiro, Kareem Lotfy, Ma’an Abu Taleb and other musicians and researchers who were asked by the artists to propose a musical selection that would resonate with the research of Black Med. Black Med, POMPEII has an immaterial character, and it consists of a hard disk containing the programming code and the archive of the platform “Black Med” until May 2022. The sound installation linked to the platform is a site specific work, involving the use of an algorithm especially created to “play” extracts from the project’s musical archive and combine them in an autonomous, continuously changing manner. Black Med, POMPEII was among the winners of the Italian Council (7th Edition, 2019), a programme to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Invernomuto is the name of the artistic personality created in 2003 by Simone Bertuzzi (Piacenza, 1983) and Simone Trabucchi (Piacenza 1982. They live and work in Milan).

Text from the introduction of Invernomuto’s POMPEII COMMITMENT 30, by Andrea Viliani.