Soundpiece and temporary hack on the monument, by Simona Da Pozzo and Roberto Fiorentini

image: photo of the Maasgod monument with the qr code

The torse of the Maasgod is one of the few elements that last from the sculpture group that used to be on top of the Delft-Gate realized by the sculptor Josephus Gillis in the 18th century. Destroyed by the bombing of 1940, the remains of the sculpture, since 1995 are part of the Nieuwe Delftse Poort, relized by Cor Kraat. This monument is a cross over of concepts that challenges disciplines and formats: it is a sculpture, a museum, a drawing, a maquette for giants.

Working on the Maasgod, I invited musician Roberto Fiorentini to work on it join this Matryoshka, this flow of artists who work in/on the works of others to create new stratifications and stories.

Now the waters that flow through Rotterdam are called “Nieuwe Maas”, because the river that feeds them is no longer the Maas but the Rhine. Starting form this and other suggestions, we looked for the voice of the Nieuwe Maas working on the water more as a space of listening than a sound. We focused on water as a memory device: as chemical structure taking a specific shape in base of the events it pass trough, as suggested by the photographic research of Massaru Emoto, and as physic dimension where the same sound travels far for years at nearly at 5000 km per hour.

Our dialogues and walks led us to draw not only a sound but first of all a position in the listening, resulting in a sound piece and in an hack on the MaasGod monument, curated by Kamiel Verschuren.

The project has been created in the frame of the Residency … at the Waterfront, in the frame of State of the City project, thanks to nctm e l’arte: Artists-in-Residence grant from Nctm Studio Legale.