Industrial Blues

Industrial Blues | ^{Osvaldo Schwartz}

Osvaldo Schwartz :: Industrial Blues // Teaser

Industrial Blues by Osvaldo Schwartz

Industrial Blues ::
Two years of preparation, between Bergamo, Turin and Amsterdam. Nearly two hours of sound and images of great depth. The span of work examined in Osvaldo Schwartz’s work is over ten years (2010-2022). A monumental work, of a radical extraneousness to the permanent state of crisis of our civilisation, a different look at a deeper present… In short, Industrial Blues is the imaginary fusion of two antithetical ways of being and two antithetical sound worlds, the blues and ‘industrial’ audiovisual culture, with an unexpected master of ceremonies: Ennio Morricone. This monumental work speaks not only to Italy, but to Europe and the entire West. Now it is time for Industrial Blues.

Elettromeccanica // Teaser

A transmedia hackathon for the 40th anniversary of Officine Schwartz – Hackhaton with OSVALDO SCHWARTZ’s Officine Schwartz and Publishing House Rizosfera, Turin May 17, 2023 – Transmedia narratives: these are the forms that the students of the Transmedia course at the Politecnico used to tell the 40-year history of Officine Schwartz, a prominent reality on the Italian industrial music scene.

Hackathon Transmediale, Politecnico di Torino, con Domenico Morreale, Osvaldo Schwartz, Rizosfera.

On the occasion of the celebrations, the polymedia publisher Rizosfera opened its archive to the course students, making available videos, excerpts, texts and images tracing the career and works of Officine Schwartz. Materials, these, which during the educational workshop were analyzed, collected and processed with the support of Klynt software. Participants were stimulated to reflect on the path of the group founded by Osvaldo Arioldi Schwartz and to propose original perspectives capable of understanding the extraordinary research on sound and the aesthetics of “industrial civilization” carried out from 1983 to the present.

Making the experience possible was the use of the hackathon format, an intensive event in which interdisciplinary working groups work to develop a project, a proposal that is then presented to the organizers at the end of the meeting, with the final announcement of the day’s winner. In the case of the hackathon implemented by the Transmedia course and publisher Rizosfera, the event took place over four hours, involving about eighty students divided into ten working groups.

The theme of the workshop, the combination of industrial music and working-class culture, of which, in the Italian context, the most representative group is Officine Schwartz, both for the originality of the subjects and colors proposed and for the first multimedia experiments that see music, video, dance and theater brought together in a single performance.

“A well-attended event,” commented Domenico Morreale, professor at the Politecnico and organizer of the hackathon, “significant was the commitment of the event’s guest speakers, Osvaldo Arioldi of Officine Schwartz, and Paolo Davoli and Andrea Corsini of Rizosfera, who provided students with their expertise on the topic. The transmedia projects created by the participants, and presented at the conclusion of the event, garnered the general interest of the audience, offering from video interviews to thematic insights on self-made tools. Especially interesting was the explanation of the history of the tubicord, a self-made instrument from an old stove pipe, which was shown and played in the classroom. I would like to thank the students who took up our invitation, the teachers who made the event possible, Elisa Roscelli and Nicola Falomi, and the speakers who brought to the participants’ attention the musical journey of this important Italian artistic reality.”