ANNA RAIMONDO

BIO Born in Naples in 1981, she lives in Brussels and works internationally. Anna Raimondo completed the MA Sound Arts at the London College of Communication (University of the Arts London). She has participated in several international exhibitions and festivals including the solo show: “Mi porti al mare?” curated by Nancy Casielles and Nancy Suárez at the MAAC (Brussels, BE); “Verso Sud” curated by David Ruffel and Ismael at Thinkart (Casablanca, MA); the festival Artefact “You must change your life” curated by Hicham Khalidi, at STUK (Leuven, BE); the group show “Everyone has a sense of rhythm” curated by Christine Eyene at DRAF (London, UK); the solo show “Beyond voice. Me , you and everyone who is listening” at Arte Contemporanea Bruxelles (BE); the 5th Marrakech Biennale (MA); “Espace (Im)Media” in Sporobole Art Center (Sherbrooke, CA); the collective sound exhibition “Dirty Ear” curated by Brandon LaBelle at Errant Bodies (Berlin, DE); as well the public sound art festival “Paraphrasing Babel“ in Maastricht (NL); the public art festival “Nouzah Fenia – Festival de Casablanca” (MA); etc. Her radiophonic works have been broadcast internationally (Kunst Radio, AT; Deutschlandradio Kultur, DE; Resonance fm, UK; Arte Radio, FR; Mobile Radio Bsp, BR; Rai, IT...). Her curatorial projects are mainly focused on sound and radio art and have been presented in different venues, including the “V&A Museum” (London, UK) and “Le Cube- Independent Art Room” (Rabat, MA). With the artist Younes Baba-Ali she co-founded the radio and sound art’s platform Saout Radio, based in Morocco. She also initiated Echoes with Amélie Agut, an itinerant pedagogic and artistic project about radio art and sonic memories. She writes for the French radio art magazine Syntone. She has won the Palma Ars Acustica 2016 with her radio work “Me, my English and all the languages of my life” and the price of best soundscape with “La vie en bleu” in the frame of the sound art competition PIARS.   MI PORTI AL MARE?, 2016 HD video 16/9, Length : 14’18’’ The sea is evoked as the symbol of a body of water that potentially links the continents in a domain of the possible, although it cannot be evoked without concealing the human distress it carries along on a social, political, ecological and economic level. The video Mi porti al mare? fully reflects Anna Raimondo’s approach. She roams the city (not without difficulty) with a mermaid’s tail and asks passers-by to take her to the sea. A character from fantasy, in the public space the mermaid becomes an incongruous figure who is incapable of moving without being carried. The appeal for help then becomes a crucial issue for the artist, who depends on the assistance of those she encounters. Seduction and surprise form an integral part of the interactions with the people she meets in order to address with them the matter of what makes them think of the sea. The artist combines three maxims for this performance: Focus on the sea until it becomes part of you; Find your G spot in your vocal chords; Live in the in-between The first is a matter of human destiny: “To disappear in deep water or to disappear in a distant horizon, to join the depths or with infinity, such is the human destiny that takes its image from the destiny of the water.»1 The second is part of a relationship with femininity and sexuality. The stereotypes associated with the mermaid figure in mainstream culture are turned on their head by the action of the artist in the streets of Brussels. She is strewn across the ground, awkward because she lacks the normal range of movement, and carted around the public space without control. Here the costume makes it difficult to evoke the fantasy of the mermaid. Its principal purpose is to maximise the possibility of exchanges. The third maxim evokes the inextricable condition of the man constantly obliged to come to terms with a multiple identity. Excerpt of the critic text “Mi porti al mare?” written by the curators Nancy Casielles & Nancy Suárez, in Gaston BACHELARD, L’Eau et les Rêves. Essai sur l’imagination de la matière, Paris, Le Livre de Poche (Coll. Biblio essais, n°4160),p. 20-21, 2015.     LINKS   www.annaraimondo.com info@annaraimondo.com