© Nicola Domaneschi & Marco Verdi (Mount Fog) from the series 'Flood, Medication Blues'

Mountfog (Nicola Domaneschi & Marco Verdi) is one the finalist of Urbanautica Institute Awards 2019. Their series 'Flood, Medication Blues' was featured in the catalog of our annual awards. We feature here the full version of the conversation we had at the time with them. Hello Nicola, hello Marco, could you tell us how your collaboration started?

ND + MV: We met initially to form a musical band. At the end of this experience, we found ourselves again in two, we were in a phase of exploration directed towards languages ​​and forms different from music. We had some photographic equipment and so we started going around taking pictures together ... more or less with the band concept applied to the image, in a very naive way! In those years through Flickr, we talked about “social” photography and this certainly was an input to understand how to use the photographic medium and how to organize and show some images. It was all very immature, but surely that period laid the foundations of our approach to photography and working together.

What do you think of photography in the digital age and of "social networks". How is photographic language changing and how is it impacting the lives of people and communities?  How does fast interactivity and communication influence the role of visual makers and your own practice?

ND + MV: It is undeniable that the speed and interactive dynamics of social networks have influenced most people and even professionals in the sector. We do not believe that we are completely immune to all the contradictions that this way of acting and interacting entails. We try to use it consciously, not compulsively, paying the right attention without being influenced too much. The risk of being dominated by this type of dynamics is around the corner and - at least for us - this is not a good thing.

Interactivity often prefers speed to the “quality” of content - speed consumes and cannibalizes the image, all of which contrasts with the reading and understanding of the image. A certain type of reportage is certainly at ease in being quick, the brutality of speed is advantageous, the fact of “being there immediately” speeds up the exchange between content maker and user. The documentary, on the other hand, is something else: by posting fragments of the work within an unedited context, there is the risk that the image will not be understood, de-contextualized by the complexity of the whole project. We feel quite distant from instantaneousness, our work needs the right time to evolve and mature - first and foremost in our heads.

Am I using the content or is content using me?" (Raime). There is a lot of talk about this issue, but we don't feel so prepared to be able to give comprehensive or more interesting answers than people who have examined the issue in-depth, or who incorporate these new processes into their artistic planning. It is certainly a huge and controversial subject, which goes beyond photography itself. We have often talked about an unpleasant feeling given by overexposure to images and content. The image in many cases is replacing the word in such a radical and massive way that we do not believe it has precedent, it seems a real unstoppable river. We are facing an infinite supermarket of the image, everything is exposed and consumed in a very fast time. This, for those who still believe in an approach different from current dynamics - which does not however exclude comparison with these means - can be frustrating or even scary.

What about your visual practice, I would you introduce it?

ND + MV: Our research is directed to the landscape, to the interaction between man and nature and to the symbolic representation of architecture and artifacts. We feel close to documentary photography, even though our work usually comes from personal feelings, as emotional and visceral as the expressive combination of sound, the use of its perceptual dimension. We think that our approach can be divided into impulse and understanding: when you move with a camera in your hand, it is beautiful and also easy to be guided by instinct, but this then must be regulated by observation, by trying to understand what we are watching and by deciding what to photograph. Within our works there is the documentation of a fact or a place, or the attempt to tell a story through images, but also the attempt to express our point of view on what surrounds us - be it a landscape, a face, a color or an abstract form.

© Nicola Domaneschi & Marco Verdi (Mount Fog) from the series 'Flood, Medication Blues'

© Nicola Domaneschi & Marco Verdi (Mount Fog) from the series 'Flood, Medication Blues'

© Nicola Domaneschi & Marco Verdi (Mount Fog) from the series 'Flood, Medication Blues'

'Flood, Medication Blues': tell us about this work shortlisted and published in the catalog of Urbanautica Institute Awards 2019. What are the main motivations, assumptions, and expectations of the project?

ND + MV: The project Flood, Medication Blues was born with the intention of documenting the last great flood of the river Po, which took place in November 2013. As a consequence of a great flood, the perception of the landscape changes drastically, appearing under an unprecedented aspect in which the colors, the natural or artificial geometries are altered, deformed. On a purely visual level, we were immediately fascinated by these extreme circumstances, capable of suddenly and significantly transforming a land usually given and “unchangeable”. Our survey focused on a relatively small geographical area, between the cities of Cremona and Parma, where we soon realized the existence of a “small world” that populates the banks of the river, inhabited by people who deliberately choose to live isolated from urban society. In the people we met, and with whom we have conversed, we perceived an attitude of excitement towards something “sublime”, able to frighten but also to ignite a kind of passion.

© Nicola Domaneschi & Marco Verdi (Mount Fog) from the series 'Flood, Medication Blues'

© Nicola Domaneschi & Marco Verdi (Mount Fog) from the series 'Flood, Medication Blues'

© Nicola Domaneschi & Marco Verdi (Mount Fog) from the series 'Flood, Medication Blues'

It’s in that precarious and in some ways extreme context that one can intuit to what extent the relationship between man and the environment in which he lives is pushed. The river, so experienced, can leave wounds that are nevertheless part of a life cycle, and these people seem to know its meaning well. In our journey, we, therefore, wanted to reflect on the symbolic and emotional relationship between man and the natural landscape, and on the particular spirituality of rural communities that continue to populate the “little world” along the great river.

Your journey crosses the lives of people, fishermen, modern hermits, hunters. They choose an existence in communion with the river despite the dangers and loneliness. How did you approach these people?

ND + MV: Not without some hesitation, we began to spend time with them, coming into contact with a reality that until then we had perceived or known only through stories of people more or less close to us. The approach has always been to make them understand what we were doing - documentation work - and try to make them feel part of the project. In a most advanced phase of the project we showed them some pictures or portraits made previously, doing this to gain their trust and above all to establish a more intimate connection through an “exchange” - it was we who were giving something of ours to them, and we were not just “pretending” to invade their spaces and their experiences. In establishing this contact it was certainly important to invest a lot of time. Of course, you need to listen and show your openness while not being sneaky. We have never behaved like tourist people, but we tried to manifest our fascination for their landscape.

© Nicola Domaneschi & Marco Verdi (Mount Fog) from the series 'Flood, Medication Blues'

© Nicola Domaneschi & Marco Verdi (Mount Fog) from the series 'Flood, Medication Blues' 

© Nicola Domaneschi & Marco Verdi (Mount Fog) from the series 'Flood, Medication Blues'

Mount Fog appears as a platform capable of hosting different initiatives and skills, and giving life to multilateral projects that combine images, sounds and texts in a perspective that opens up to space and the senses. How do you manage these contaminations? How much of all this goes into 'Flood, Medication Blues'?

ND + MV: We founded Mount Fog together with Erich Grunewald, Swede now transplanted to Berlin; formed as an interaction design engineer, he has a great sensitivity for sound and composition, for poetry and literature, as well as for the image. In addition, the platform was immediately open to contamination to the outside, other people, such as the producer and sound designer Piezo, with whom we collaborate on specific projects.

Multidisciplinary has always been part of our research field. We try to give a lot of space to the use of the senses in the fruition of our works: the goal is to try to add a “third dimension”. Something that allows you to go deep and grasp the essence of the work; sometimes this depth can be suggested by the image, sometimes by sound or text. Each project does not necessarily have to be a container for all disciplines. Sometimes the choice of which means to use grows in progress as a sort of evolution. In any case, we always carry with us the more or less unconscious or explicit influences that unite the image and the sound. Sometimes it can be just a sound, a piece of music that gives birth to the inspiration that then leads us to work on the image. Flood, Medication Blues, in this sense, is no exception.

The landscape, or rather the territory, appears as a common pretext in various works you have carried out. A strong relationship with the environment and with the signs of anthropization, never banal and predictable. Where does all this come from?

ND + MV: Understanding the landscape is essential for us. In the case of our exclusively musical works, one of the starting points is the practice of field recording. The signs of the anthropization are clearly reflected in the chosen sound material, in which objects, artifacts and architectures penetrate the natural space. Field recording is no longer just a sound recorded in the field, a document of reality, but becomes an acoustic stimulus open to imagination, an abstraction.

© Nicola Domaneschi & Marco Verdi (Mountfog) from the series 'Flood, Medication Blues'

We prefer to work on the landscape and on the territory and this is certainly a design pretext; but in addition to the documentary purpose, we want to use photography or sound to try to have access to a deeper understanding of what surrounds us and to seek a synthesis to understand even more ourselves. We are people who tend to accumulate thoughts, what we do is also aimed at reflecting on ourselves, on our limits and understanding how to evolve as people.

Any books you would mention?

ND + MV: Broken Manual byAlec Soth; Infra by. Richard Mosse; Found Photos In Detroit by Arianna Arcara & Luca Santese

Have you seen any interesting exhibition recently?

We were very impressed by Clément Cogitore's installation "Braguino ou la communauté impossible" for Fotografia Europea 2018 in Reggio Emilia: a way of conceiving a documentary that is truly interesting and engaging, very immersive. Another photographic exhibition that we will remember for a long time is Darcy Padilla's "Family Love" at the Cortona On The Move festival in 2016, a truly raw and deeply felt story.

ND + MV: We want to point out Saturnalia, a "radical" music festival held in the spaces of the independent Macao center in Milan, able to cross sounds and ways of enjoying music and art that are also very different from each other within a long uninterrupted flow (30 hours for the latest edition), an “authentic” and pulsating experience. And then Villa Panza in Varese, with its collection of contemporary art, between minimalism and environmental art: the rooms with the site-specific installations by Dan Flavin make it perhaps a unique place, where it is always exciting to return.

What's next guys?

ND + MV: To the sound part of "Flood, Medication Blues", with the intention of definitively concluding the project, which we hope will become an installation and a publication. Also in this case we will start from field recordings (of various kinds and with different techniques) to bring to the surface a sound dimension that is not normally audible or perceptible, which is not part of the usual listening experiences. We will try to "amplify" hidden or less evident aspects of the landscape, with the aim of making the breath of that landscape metaphorically audible that we have personally experienced and investigated. We are also working on new audio material such as Mount Fog, as well as trying to figure out what our next photographic project will be.

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LINKS

Mountfog (website)
Urbanautica Italy