Davide Ghelli Santuliana is an artistic researcher working with sound, moving images, storytelling and performance. He carries out his musical practice under the moniker KTONIOS. He researches the musical tradition of Southern Italy, its magic-ritualistic roots and its revival from the 1970s as a tool of resistance and cultural emancipation. His previous research investigated the cultural hegemony of (late) capitalism, which is the basis of economic, environmental and individual exploitation.
KTONIOS - 2023 - ongoing | Live electronic music performance
Ktonios is the moniker under which Davide Ghelli Santuliana performs as a musician. Ktonios' music is based on the deconstruction and reconstruction of the traditional dance “tammurriata", mixing it with extremely minimal techno. A meeting of two underworlds. Tammurriata originates from the region of Campania in Southern Italy. It is mainly performed with a "tammorra " (a hand-played drum) and a singer improvising using a set of standard lyrics covering different topics, such as love, death, gossip and spirituality. Similarly to other musical traditions of Southern Italy, the origins of tammurriata can be traced back to a ritual-magic background. However, tammurriata evolved over the course of the 20th century and also became a symbol of revolt of the oppressed against the oppressor - for instance the workers in their class struggle (see 'E-zezi Gruppo Operaio as an example Ktonios builds on top of this lineage, paying homage to this musical tradition and its improvised nature. They mix the tammurriata with extremely minimal techno music. Like tammurriata, the origin of techno music, in Detroit, is also connected to a history of revolt, marginalized communities and the underground scene. It used primal rhythms and served as an emancipatory tool for oppressed people. The name "Ktonios" - from the adjective "ctonio" in Italian, meaning “underworldly” - also references the underground world. Ktonios produces their music using a hybrid setup, a combination of modular synthesizers and generative software tools. Using a specific set of samples, Ktonios manipulates them in real time, improvising on a set of predetermined standards in a similar fashion to the original tammurriata. Ktonios' performances have taken places, among others, at Paviljoen aan Het Water (Rotterdam), Open Oscillator (Amsterdam), Koffie en Ambacht (Rotterdam), Butcher's Tears (Amsterdam) and The Gray Space in The Middle (The Hague).
The Last Cigarette Before The End of The World - 2023 | Electronic live music performance, guided meditation | The work is a collaboration with artist and performer Mel Chan. Starting from Chan's performance of the same name, I composed and performed a live soundtrack for her piece. Mel Chan here uses guided meditation to lead the audience through smoking the last cigarette before the world ends. Moreover, tobacco production is connected to colonial exploitation and the development of capitalism.
The soundtrack uses samples from the album "Music for Zen Meditation" by Tony Scott, which is considered a landmark of New Age music. This genre mixes non-Western influences and strives to produced a general sense of "relaxation", mirroring a similar attitude in the cultural development of late capitalism: creating an unspecific "world culture" unified in the name of endless production.
Moreover, other samples and loops come from Marlboro advertisements, entering the flow of the improvised live-set as a recurring detritus from the past. All those materials are manipulated beyond recognition, creating a new, ambiguous form of "relaxation music".
Music for Hard Drives - 2022 | Live music performance/sound installation | This electronic live-set was performed in collaboration with artist Daphnis Monastirioti. I composed and performed a live soundtrack starting from recordings of damaged or malfunctioning hard-drives; at the same time, the sound of those hard drives was sampled and manipulated during the live set. Hard drives are technological devices used to store data, a technological mnemonic device. The deterioration of their circuit represents a slow but certain disappearance of memory, a lack of a property essential to their scope. After losing their memory, hard drives are nothing but useless objects, replaced by newly produced ones. This electronic waste is here infused with new life, their dying memories recorded and offered the possibility to break the destructive loop of consumption that characterizes capitalism.
MERZ - 2022 | Video-installation | Animation, editing and sound design by Davide Ghelli Santuliana
Voice-over by Paul Casselle
This video-installation work presents a fictional company that satirically reflects on freelancing, nomadic working and positivity. MERZ is a parody of the delusional dream of late-capitalism, that is transforming the world into a global sandbox for “flexible” workers. While this might seem appealing at first, it conceals a dystopian future of surveillance, cultural leveling and exploitation.
The work included also a collaboration with artist Mel Chan, who gave a lecture on Tang-ping movement in China as a form of resistance against exhausting work hours.
Open Space - 2018-2021 | Film installation | Camera, editing and sound design by Davide Ghelli Santuliana In the video installation Open Space the landscape of business skyscrapers, filmed from a fixed cameras, is transformed: documents of a tranquil and modern neighborhood become images of an almost dystopian landscape of surveillance and control . This business area, with its modern looking building and perceived tranquility, is actually punctuated by a high amount of surveillance cameras spread all around it. At the same time, the widespread usage of glass and transparent material in the design of the skyscrapers is for me a metaphor for what Byung Chul Han calls a transparent society; with this term the Korean philosopher intends a society where transparency actually signifies the disappearance of privacy, the widespread usage of surveillance in everyday life and an abundance of information which does not mean more "truth", but rather a proliferation of fake news and falsified narratives .
Google Anthems - 2017 - 2018 | Video-installation | In this series, the national anthems of different countries are translated into English using Google Translate and sang by non-professional performers from those countries. The translation renders visible the often nationalistic content of the anthems, while also emphasizing the idea that English is the global lingua franca. At the same time, the greater or lesser degree of precision in certain translations also maps out linguistically the supposed “importance” of a nation according to Google’s meter. The work hints at the hegemonic attempt to transform the world into a leveled landscape, where we all speak the same business language, while at the same time particularism and nationalism represent the other side of the coin.
A Tired Prometheus - 2017 - 2018 | Film | Camera, editing and sound design by Davide Ghelli Santuliana | The film follows a group of professional athletes practicing powerlifting, a sport where three fitness exercises are performed and brought to the extreme: squat, bench-press and deadlift. Through exhausting workout sessions and repetitive routines, the athletes strive to increase the weight lifted with their bodies. The sport here represents a metaphor of self-exploitation in a neoliberal society, where individual are called to constantly increase their performance.
