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Davide Ghelli Santuliana

performance , Geluid , film , Audiovisueel , Artistiek onderzoek

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. In his research he investigates the medium of sound as a tool of resistance, researching sonic fictions in the field of electronic dance music and the ritual music tradition of Southern Italy. He produces improvised sound and music performances, merging them with other media.

A house perpetually on fire
A house perpetually on fire - 2026 | music album | A house perpetually on fire is a meditation on the aesthetic of repetition, inspired by the study of Southern Italian folk dances, which are used in ritual settings and based on the repetition of melodic and rhythmical patterns. Evading a merely revivalist approach to folk music, Davide Ghelli Santuliana crafts evolving patterns through the usage of his musical instrument of choice, the modular synthesizer. In this setup, he weaves together binary and tertiary rhythms and different melodic modes, inspired by a similar approach in Southern Italian folk dances. In this work, he also experimented for the first time with alternative tunings, other than equal temperament, echoing the usage of microtonal, melismatic singing in Southern Italian folk. The result is a whole performance recorded in one take, that summarizes the practice of Ghelli Santuliana as an improviser on a singular instrument, the modular synthesizer. The performance is divided here in different movements, highlighting the different moments of this performance. A house perpetually on fire is a reference to Charlie Kaufman's film Synecdoche, New York, where one of the main characters in a scene decides to buy a house that keeps burning and that signifies a prescribed destiny and the circularity of life and death. In capitalism, death is reduced to an empty, trivialized signifier, devoid of symbolic meaning, experienced as an individualized loss rather than a collective moment to grieve, but also celebrate the continuation of life. Death, as a symbolically charged signifier, is present in Southern Italian ritualism, for instance in the practice of funeral lamentations, as a collective ritual. In that instance, a lamentation is a singing performance meant for grieving, to pass through the collective trauma of loss in a community. The aesthetic of repetition and the circularity in the musical approach is mirrored in the circularity of life and death which, in this case, is contrasted with the “end of the end” of capitalism, as a delusion of infinite growth without a purpose. The album can be listened to here: https://davideghellisantuliana.bandcamp.com/album/a-house-perpetually-on-fire
Acid Sun
Acid Sun - 2025 - 2026 | radio show | Acid Sun is a radio show in 6 episodes, hosted by Radio Worm between July 2025 and February 2026. It is my first experiment with radio as a medium, where I started developing my idea of ​​a "sonic diary", where I combine personal essay, speculation on (art) theory, listening sessions, DJ sets and a collage of different sound sources, including for instance films and video games. Here is a link to one episode that is particularly relevant in the series, reflecting on the concept of hauntology as theorized by cultural theorist Mark Fisher: https://www.mixcloud.com/radiowormrotterdam/acid-sun-w-ktonios-19122025/
Acid Tarantism
Acid Tarantism - 2024 - ongoing | Live electronic music performance, multichannel quadraphonic sound installation | Acid Tarantism is an improvised electronic music live set, presented with a quadraphonic setup surrounding the audience. The project is inspired by the ritual of tarantism - a music and dance possession ritual where a person "bitten" by a tarantula needs to expunge the venom - which is in fact a community ritual to support a person affected by mental strain. Tarantism stands in stark opposition to contemporary capitalism's idea that mental illnesses are an individual guilt. This prevents us from seeing the systemic elements at play in, for instance, depression or anxiety. In line with Mark Fisher's ideas expressed in "Acid Communism", this work reflects on the potential of electronic dance music as a communal space where to heal collectively and practice mutual care. The idea is to achieve a state of trance through music and foster the movement of bodies in space through the choreography of sound in a quadraphonic setup.
The queue is the room, is the city
The queue is the room, is the city - 2024 | Electronic live set, spoken word performance, 16mm analog projection | This work is a collaboration with visual artist and filmmaker Malaz Usta and explores feelings of endless waiting, displacement, fleeing from one's own country and being stuck in the gears of bureaucracy, among others. For this work I have used a field recording from a train station in The Netherlands: the sound of a be-bop song played by a passerby at the station's piano, announcements and other practical sounds are processed through a tape looper, dissected and recombined into a new composition. The idea was to render a sense of repetition without progress, an endless waiting from which only brief moments of relief are possible.
Solarization
Solarization - 2024 - ongoing | Live electronic music and audiovisual performance | Solarization: a process of inversion in analog film/photography, where colors are not only inverted, but the overexposure of film (an extreme brightness) is exaggerated, even resulting in turning the brightest spots (such as a sun ) into black areas. It's a process where the unseen is made visible, where the documentary certainty of photography is questioned and overturned. Ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax during the 1950s set on a journey in Italy to record local folk music and in doing so, he encountered the ancient music rituals of Southern Italy. The lo-fi quality of his recordings, rather than resulting in a faithful and objective document, brought out an unheard reality: guttural sounds, funeral lamentations, wildly hectic frame drums, atonal and microtonal timbers or the weird, unsettling sounds of self-fabricated percussive instruments. Involuntary, Lomax rendered a solarized version of Southern Italian traditional folk, far from the contemporary "exoticized" rendition of this musical tradition. Technology - in this case, recording on a magnetic tape - proved a means to reveal the unheard and a magical, spectral quality of sound, similar to what photography does with solarization. My project Solarization takes inspiration from this research, translating it into sound art, performance and installation. For the last two years, I gathered archival materials taken mostly from ethnomusicological recordings of Southern Italian folk music (in particular from the area around the mount Vesuvius) and used them as the foundation of my improvised sound performance. Similar to what I pointed out with Lomax, I used technological devices to bring out unheard, otherworldly qualities of this music: using DIY software tools, modular synthesisers and other electronic instruments, I explore a different dimension of music - microscopic in the time domain ( very short grains of pre-recorded sounds), microtonal (with very small tonal oscillations) and so forth. My work translates into an immersive audiovisual performance, where sound is paired with transfigured documentary images of folk music performances from Southern Italy, performed by audiovisual artist Cem Altinoz. The work has been presented during GRAW 2024 (Rotterdam), 4bid gallery/OT301 (Amsterdam) and GROND (Amsterdam), in 2024.
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 produce 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". The work has been presented at Galerie Franzis Engels in Amsterdam, in 2023.
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. The work has been presented at New Current, during Rotterdam Art Week 2022.
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 also included a collaboration with artist Mel Chan, who gave a lecture on Tang-ping movement in China as a form of resistance against exhausting working hours. The work has been presented at Cas-co (Leuven, Belgium) and Billytown (The Hague) in 2022.
Google Anthems
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 reinforcing 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
A Tired Prometheus - 2017 - 2018 | Movie | 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 individuals are called to constantly increase their performance.

Final Festival

Datum:
Locatie: Time Window

Presentation of my project Acid Tarantism, a quadraphonic sound and music performance.

https://timewindow.nl/events/the-end-has-no-end-festival/

25 Hour Relay Radio Worm

Datum:
Locatie: Ubik Theather WORM

25 Hour Relay of Radio Worm, for which I performed an improvised electronic music live set

https://www.mixcloud.com/radiowormrotterdam/25-hour-radio-relay-pt-36-ktonios-live-from-ubik-260125/

Filmwerkplaats SPECTRAL residency WORM

Datum:
Locatie: Ubik Theather WORM
In samenwerking met: Malaz Usta

Performance in collaboration with Malaz Usta

https://worm.org/production/filmwerkplaats-presents-spectral/

Solarization

Datum:
Locatie: GROND Bajesdorp

Presentation of my project Solarization from 2024.

https://grond.community/event/658/

Solarization

Datum:
Locatie: OT301 Amsterdam, 4Bid Gallery

Performance of my work Solarization from 2024.

GRAW 2024

Datum:
Locatie: Time Window
In samenwerking met: Cem Altinoz
https://timewindow.nl/events/graw-2024/

If the Exits are Blocked v0.1

Datum:
Locatie: The Grey Space in The Middle
In samenwerking met: Jeyong Jung, antiselector

If the Exits are Blocked invites artists who explore unconventional sonic approaches to electronic music, with a particular focus on improvisation, generative music and DIY strategies.

The first instalment of the program features KTONIOS (IT/NL) and Jeyong Jung (KR/NL) as main acts. Both artists work with self-made software instruments using Max/MSP and approach improvised music from an unconventional perspective. The event is wrapped up with a DJ-set by Den Haag based antiselector.

https://thegreyspace.net/program/14-12-2023-if-the-exits-are-blocked/

Sediments

Datum:
Locatie: Paviljoen aan het Water

I was invited to perform in the context of the residency project "Sediments" on the closing 24h event. Here I performed a "technotammurriata", where Southern Italian traditional music that echoes influences from North Africa and the Middle East, among others, is mixed with minimal techno in an intimate ritualistic performance.

https://sediments.hotglue.me

The Last Cigarette Before The End of The World

Datum:
Locatie: Galerie Franzis Engels
In samenwerking met: Mel Chan

Sensory Threshold Lab 2022: Holy Grid!

Datum:
Locatie: Billytown

ST LAB 2022 : HOLY GRID! takes place from August 12th to September 23rd at Billytown The Gallery in The Hague and simultaneously at Sala de Espera in Tijuana Baja California, Mexico. This is not a curated show but an experiment. In total 18 artists and cultural professionals are working at the two artist run initiatives about 9000 km apart. I have been invited to show and re-invent my project MERZ for the Sensory Threshold Lab 2022.

https://artviewer.org/sensory-threshold-lab-2022-holy-grid-at-billytown-and-sala-de-espera/

New Current, Rotterdam Art Week 2022

Datum:
Locatie: The New Current
In samenwerking met: Daphnis Monastirioti

A performance and collaboration with the artist Daphnis Monastirioti; in the context of their sculptural work, I presented an electronic music composition based on samples of hard drive sounds.

https://www.thenewcurrent.org/rotterdam-art-week-2022

My goals are bigger than yours

Datum:
Locatie: Cas-co
In samenwerking met: Valentino Russo, Cathleen Owens, Carmen Dusmet Carrasco & Arthur Cordier

The exhibition project ​“My Goals Are Bigger Than Yours” wants to analyze the consequences of neoliberal policies on the individuals, and especially on the so-called ​“creatives”, meaning the broad range of (mostly) freelance workers operating in the fields or art and design. For this exhibition, I presented my artistic research project "MERZ".

https://cas-co.be/kunstenaars/davide-ghelli-santuliana-valentino-russo-cathleen-owens-arthur-cordier-carmen-dusmet-carrasco

Art Au Centre #4

Datum:
Locatie: Liege

I was selected to be part of the 4th edition of Art Au Center in Liege (BE) with my series "Nude Interiors". The work was shown in the showcase of a former café in the city center.

https://artaucentre.be/en/vitrine/nude-interiors/

Contamination and maybe even more

Datum:
Locatie: Fonderia 20.9

“Contamination and maybe even more” is a research-based project between the gallery Fonderia 20.9 in Verona and the artist-initiative The Balcony in The Hague. The project includes a residency and an exhibition. The residency—initiated and organized by artist Davide Ghelli Santuliana, with the help of Arthur Cordier and Valentino Russo from The Balcony, is intended as a collaboration with Flaviu Cacoveanu & Cathleen Owens.

https://thebalconythehague.com/Contamination-Exhibition

KABK Graduation Show

Locatie: KABK

For my graduation work "Wunderkammer", produced in the context of the Master in Artistic Research, I presented my work as a fictional alter-ego called Andrea Pascal. The fiction extended well into the website of the graduation show, where instead of me, it is possible to find Andrea Pascal, whose picture is a reference to Luther Blissett, a fictional character used by a collective of artists and writers in the 90s.

https://graduation.kabk.nl/2020/andrea-pascal
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