Carmen Oria
Communication is a sine qua non of human beings. There are different ways and means of doing it. We met Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi, an unusual composer who writes on human bodies and focuses on interactivity.
“It is important to know that none of the music I have written from 2007 to today was written on a computer. Everything was written on human bodies,” the Italian composer tells Ecce Musica. Born in Milan on 4 April 1971, he has made Paris his home for many years.
His website states: “My choice is drastic, emphatic and powerful, since it literally represents a return to the body, a carnal return […] In my studio, transformed into a calligraphy laboratory and photographic studio, I work with male and female models, living canvases for my compositions.”
Baboni-Schilingi’s works are performed in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, South Korea, Dubai, France, Finland, Germany, Japan, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the United States, Switzerland, Sweden and Ukraine.
How did the idea of writing on bodies with a brush arise?
From 2000 to 2007 I wrote on a computer for various reasons connected with publishers, who no longer wanted manuscripts but so-called PDFs. Then in 2007, on 7 March exactly—I still have the photograph—I wrote my first score on a body, that of my girlfriend at the time. I have never stopped since, and I remain the only one.
Could you describe your creative process?
For hours I compose directly on bodies, rediscovering the power of the present moment. I fully experience the duration of composition, previously swept away by digitisation, time and computer-assisted music far from the body. The models are naked. Their skin, becoming the canvas, has a natural roughness that influences the score during composition, an unexpected element to integrate into the result. The implications can be far-reaching. In Asia—in Japan, China or Korea—they would say I write on Qi or Chi. In Europe I say I write on people’s souls, on their spirit.
Tell us about presenting your work as a composer onstage.
Of course I write emails and theoretical texts on the computer, but not music. When my music is performed onstage or in concert halls, it is never purely instrumental: electronics are always present. Everything I have written for several years is mixed music. There may be an orchestra onstage, but also loudspeakers and me at the computer. With a soloist or string quartet, I am always beside them, playing the computer. This is called mixed or interactive music.
When do you use the computer?
When I make sounds or mixes, I use the computer. When I need complex calculations to study complex harmonies, I use it. It is a calculating instrument, necessary for making sounds or videos. But I write my music on human bodies. I have travelled to around thirty countries. I am the only composer who does this.
What do you mean when you say your compositions are not anonymous?
My writing is not anonymous. It responds to a particular musician or artist to elevate their abilities. Right now I am writing for Franco-Belgian cellist Camille Thomas. The cello is the same instrument for everyone, male or female, but writing for her means making it sound as she knows how to play it. I wrote the Sonata for Simon Ghraichy, the French pianist of Lebanese-Mexican origin living in Paris, and am writing two more pieces for him. He is a tremendous virtuoso, so writing for him means tailoring the music, amplifying his specific gifts.
Many musicians play my music, and some may play it better than those for whom I wrote or dedicated it. But writing for those particular people is a source of inspiration.
What does writing mean to you?
Writing on a computer is not writing; it is clicking. I favour writing as the technique I believe most effective for accessing transcendence. Some reach transcendence through prayer, meditation, extreme sport, starting a family or having children. In my case I did not reach its highest level when my two children were born, through marriage or prayer. I would venture that writing is how I access transcendence most deeply. That cannot happen through the computer.
In 2007, after six or seven years writing on a computer, I stopped. Before 2000, in adolescence, I wrote on paper. When publishers asked us to use computers I complied. For seven years I had somewhat lost that passion for writing itself. In 2007 I returned to writing, but on bodies, and stopped writing music on a computer altogether.
How would you define your current music?
I can call it body-centred—corporeocentric, or corporocentrisme in French. It is an awkward term. It means the idea of the body, not merely drawing inspiration from others. Others express themselves through words, actions, deeds and even objects: artworks, writings, poetry, films. This undoubtedly inspires me, and working with artists inspires me most.
Specifically, I draw inspiration from artists, singers, dancers, men and women without distinction, actors, painters, photographers and filmmakers: something of all of them is present in my work. They have lives and souls, and above all are people of art. They know how to vibrate sympathetically, almost in a physical sense.
And the stages of your music?
I have called my music different things at different periods. At sixteen I called it Musical Gravitation, inspired by Newton’s universal gravitation. After studying artificial intelligence, I called it Composition by Interactive Models, then Hyper-systemic Music. Each was an evolution: not going further forward but moving into different dimensions of spirit and practice. Today I could call it body-centred. I also wrote a book on six models of hermeneutic analysis, explaining how music is received generally. Art is perceived through the body before the spirit or mind.
Your vision of the artist?
All artists should be versatile, polymorphic. I am not sure someone whose worldview has hardened can call themselves an artist. They may be scholars or specialists, but artists reverberate with society, which changes continually. I declare myself polymorphic and versatile.
Which composers inspire you?
Two past artists inspire me greatly. One is Mozart, who died so young that his music had few cycles: he did not have time to change as he surely would have. The other is Stravinsky, who lived a long life and is the classic example of a polymorphic artist.
Other living contemporary artists you admire?
Among visual artists, Bill Viola. He is not a musician; he mainly makes videos. In music, Björk is certainly the woman artist who inspires me most. Our music differs greatly, but I watch, study and listen to her because she fascinates me and I admire her. Another is French composer Pierre Jodlowski, closest to my approach within written, so-called contemporary music. We are the same age, born in 1971. He works particularly on intermediation, music computing, staging, images and interactive art.
How did you develop the Chanel project presented at the beginning of 2020?
In 2018 I had a Chanel residency during which I composed Quartet No. 5. On 15 and 16 February 2020 in Tokyo I gave the performance Bodyscore—The Soul Signature—Chanel—2020—Japan, presenting the Fifth Quartet, written on the naked bodies of more than twenty Japanese women and men I met there. In fact, I would have written it on about fifty people because it was long and I wanted to rewrite it several times to make corrections. Sometimes I write the same composition on four or five different people.
We met in Rome when you presented Identigraphies at Contact Contemporary Art Gallery. What artistic journeys have you made since 2018?
The world premiere of Identigraphies resulted from a decade of experimentation. Rather than an arrival, it was the starting point for a broader programme of activities reaching its height this year in Tokyo. Throughout the exhibition visitors could hear some of my musical works represented by photographs of the human scores on display.
You also presented an interactive composition at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Indeed, between April and July 2018, within Artists & Robots, I presented Argo at the Grand Palais. It is based on an interactive composition responding to my breath in real time through a sensor I wore twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. For about three years I have lived with this sensor, continuously capturing my breathing and turning it into music. Obviously I can do that only with a computer. So I use the computer where necessary.
What do you think of artists who follow trends?
I deeply distrust trends. I have seen composers write in a particular way because that was what attracted audiences at the time, and musicians adopt fashionable ways of appearing onstage. I have never believed in fashions because they are not really defined by artists but by their agents, those who sell. Naturally an artist is happy to sell because they become better known and earn more, allowing larger productions. Everyone enjoys recognition and applause. Following trends means attracting a larger audience.
But that is not my choice. I never chose this music to please others, seek applause or pursue money alone. If so, I would have made different music, following fashion and identifying with an established genre or aesthetic. Why then rack one’s brains to find something personal, authentic and individual that allows access to transcendence?
In what way?
Through music I permanently seek transcendence, which is not subject to fashion and cannot be. How do I rid myself of fashion? I have never followed one. Strangely, particularly in the 1990s, what I was doing—a kind of music based on certain calculations—also became fashionable. My life is a permanent investigation of transcendence: the relationship between existence and what lies beyond it, or between existence and the explanation of existence itself.
Photographs and works reproduced in the article: Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi and a model; Bérénice Ouédraogo Kambou—Sphinx (Phoenix), Panther (N.5); François Joël—Titan (M); Blaise Rebena—Peeping (HUGE); Ricardo Barrett—Atlas (Phoenix); Simon Brunier—Marble (Silenzio); Mariya Alto—Cello (N.5); Manni [Maarjan Pärn]—Whale (N.5).