Statement

Davide Ghelli Santuliana is an artistic researcher working with sound, moving images, and improvised live performances. He currently carries out his practice under the moniker KTONIOS.

In his current research, Davide Ghelli Santuliana uses coding to create its own Max/MSP patches to algorithmically generate sounds and images. This system is integrated with the use of hardware synthesizers to manipulate samples in real-time and generate improvised and ever changing audiovisual live sets. The aesthetic and conceptual quality of repetition as a trance-inducing practice is central to KTONIOS performances, which often build up on small, progress changes that occur over repeating loops of traditional music and quasi-industrial, noise soundscapes.

The artist researches the musical traditional of Southern Italy and the ritualistic-magic context in which the performances takes place. He is interested in the potential subversive quality of those ritualistic performances (such as "tammurriata" from Campania or "tarantismo" from Puglia) and in the conceptual and aesthetic qualities they have in common with early Detroit techno music.

In both cases, music performances are used not only to achieve states of trance and emotional ecstasy, but also have a deeper cultural or political meaning, that has been progressively lost in either the mainstream turn of techno-music or the exoticization of folk music in Southern Italy.