Catania TVB

An original production combining music, poetry, and images, created by AME and based on the research work carried out by photographer Daniele Vita on Catania. Composer and producer Vittorio Auteri created the original music in collaboration with composer and multi-instrumentalist Puccio Castrogiovanni; the texts are by poet Biagio Guerrera, and the editing by Stefano Buda.

Production note

Daniele Vita’s work is one of the most vibrant and pulsating projects seen in Catania in recent years. It is moving for its ability to enter into an empathetic and poetic relationship with the most marginal environments, with the last, with those who have no voice. It is a body of work that has stratified over time, built on listening, attention, and that “participant observation” that certainly comes from his early anthropology studies but above all from a natural and very lively curiosity. In the three chapters into which the work is divided, a powerful youth world emerges in its encounter and confrontation with archetypal places of the city: the volcanic cliff, Piazza della Fiera, and the festival of Saint Agatha. Vita’s photographs manage to convey some of the city’s foundational traits in their cyclical nature. The protagonists of his photos, who in Catania TVB are mostly young people, seem to speak to us even through still images, and it is precisely by leaving space for these silent voices that the music of Vittorio Auteri comes to life. The intention was never to compose music that described the subjects of the photographs, but to give sonic life to the worlds in which those subjects live, dream, and struggle. A not-so-new underground Catania, told from below and up close, which visually and musically explores realities that are already strongly tied to the city’s identity but still too underestimated by much of its population. This sensation of closeness—never fully acknowledged—is palpable also through the sounds which, drawing from digital, analogue, and organic sources, thanks also to the valuable contribution of multi-instrumentalist Puccio Castrogiovanni, are at times pure in their references to traditional instruments, and at other times heavily manipulated through modern electronic processing, seeking to express the same ambivalence of a city that is at once sweet and harsh, melancholic and hopeful. Catania TVB is a complete audiovisual work, brought to life through the skillful editing of Stefano Buda and the texts of Biagio Guerrera, which guide viewers through the various chapters of the narrative and allow us to glimpse a Catania as Mother and Woman who, despite all difficulties, we cannot help but love.

Line Up

Daniele Vita photographs
Vittorio Auteri keyboards, electronics
Puccio Castrogiovanni jew’s harp, plucked instruments
Stefano Buda video editing
Biagio Guerrera voice

Vittorio Auteri, active in the Sicilian music scene since 2016, has been composing and producing neoclassical and electronic music for contemporary dance and theatre since 2019, in addition to releasing four albums over the years with various ensembles, including lumi, Regen and l’écume des jours. Although shaping his style over time through the different nature of the projects he has taken part in, his constant goal is to create a convergence between more experimental composition and sound-design techniques and a sonic form capable of drawing the listener into uncomfortable yet familiar grounds. He has collaborated three times with Scenario Pubblico, composing music for two presentations of the MoDem programme and for Kristo, directed by Roberto Zappalà. In 2020 he was selected for the advanced workshop for electronic music producers/performers held by Biennale College in Venice at the CiMM, and in the same year the American band Battles awarded his remix of their album Juice B Crypts as part of the competition launched by Metapop and Warp Records. He actively collaborates with choreographer Maria Combi, for whom he composed, together with Simone Spampinato, the music for Ali di Cenere – if you never see me do I still exist?, which premiered at ZHDK in Zurich on 29 April 2023. Since 2022, his main activity has revolved around the multidisciplinary collective Desperate Housewaifs, which he co-founded two years earlier and with which he debuted on 15 January 2023 with LA MACCHINA AMLETO, a hybrid experimental performance between theatre and concert, presented in various venues and festivals in Catania, Patti, Naples, Rome, and Milan.

Puccio Castrogiovanni, born in Catania in 1962 into a family of artists and musicians, began studying piano and playing the jew’s harp and the guitar from an early age. He effortlessly plays various ethnic instruments: from keyboards to plucked strings, from wind instruments to percussion. He is one of the founders of the musical group I Lautari, with whom he has carried out intense concert and recording activity for over twenty years. I Lautari work within the tradition of popular music and its renewal, with a project that includes research and reworking of Sicilian songs, as well as the composition of new songs that respect traditional forms. In 2007 Castrogiovanni began his collaboration with Roberto Zappalà and the Zappalà Danza company for the creation of Instrument 1 <discovering the invisible>, a show by Roberto Zappalà produced as part of Etnafest Arte, for which Castrogiovanni conducted original research on the jew’s harp. The show, still touring, has been performed all over the world with over one hundred performances. He later wrote the music for A.semu tutti devoti tutti, created by Roberto Zappalà, which won the Danza&Danza Award for Best Italian Show in 2009.

Daniele Vita, born in Vetralla in 1975, developed and consolidated his photographic experience over time mainly through social-reportage travels in various countries (including Ecuador, Bulgaria, Algeria and the Maghreb area, as well as several regions of Southern Italy). His remarkable sensitivity to serious social issues encountered in these places is combined with a special ability to capture spontaneous expressions of humanity in everyday life, fragments of lives marked by hardship, unexpected perspectives of young lives in transition. This great ability to immerse himself in those worlds with simplicity, respect and transparency is enabled by periods of cohabitation, more or less long, within the communities and family units he documents. He has provided photographic documentation for several Italian photography magazines (Foto Cult, Progresso Fotografico and others), which have highlighted his work especially in the field of social reportage. Over the years, Daniele Vita has collaborated (through various photographic projects) with UNHCR, ANCI, ARCI, Fratelli Alinari, De Agostini and the Municipality of Rome. He has also collaborated (and still collaborates) with numerous social cooperatives and associations (including Coop Alice Lazio and Fondazione Exodus), documenting their activities and working on special projects carried out within these organisations. In 2008 he won first prize at the Toscana Foto Festival and in 2009 he won first prize at Sud Est Coop e Solidarietà. Also in 2009 he was a finalist at the Kiwanis Portfolio Italia prize and in 2009 and 2010 he was a finalist at the Occhi di Scena award. In 2011 he was a finalist at the UNICEF POY. In 2012 he won the Giovanni Tedde scholarship thanks to a reportage on Cojimies, a small Ecuadorian village overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In 2014 he won the Castelnuovo Fotografia prize with the project Borders #0, a landscape project on the island of Lampedusa, which was exhibited the following year again at Castelnuovo Fotografia. In 2015 he took part in the collective exhibition Rovine, at Palazzo Altemps, alongside masters of international photography. In 2017 he took part in a group exhibition titled Feeling Home at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, a travelling project later exhibited in Voghera (PV) in the same year and in Corigliano Calabro (CS) in 2019. In 2018 he was invited to the Med Photo Fest, exhibiting the work Suleymaniye Otopark, which depicts the lives of Syrian refugees near the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul. The same work later became a book titled Estremo Umano, published by La Camera Verde. In 2019 he won the award Crediamo ai tuoi occhi with his work on Holy Week in Sicily and published the book of the same title (FIAF edition). In the same year he won the 1801 passaggi del Mavi prize and received an honorable mention at UNICEF Poy 2019. In 2021 he won first prize in the Future Generation category at the World Report Award, Festival della Fotografia Etica. This project was exhibited in Lodi, at the same festival, and at the Head On Photo Festival in Sydney, Australia and Voghera Fotografia. In 2022 he was a finalist at the Romano Cagnoni Award and at the Gomma Grant and he won first prize in the Daily Life Picture Story category at POY Pictures of the Year. Also in 2022 he won the BarTur first prize in the Unity and Diversity section. His personal and group exhibitions include shows at Sala Santa Rita in Rome (2006), San Pier Scheraggio at the Uffizi (Florence) for Fratelli Alinari (2007), the Rome International Photography Festival (2008), the Italian Centre for Author Photography in Bibbiena (2009), Toscana Foto Festival (2010), MIA – Milan Image Art Fair (2011), Citerna Fotografia (2012), Rovine at Palazzo Altemps in Rome in 2015, and Castelnuovo di Porto Fotografia in 2015.

Biagio Guerrera, born in Catania in 1965, studied singing with Michiko Hirayama. He is one of the founders of the artistic collective Famiglia Sfuggita, with which in 1992 he presented Idda at Santarcangelo dei Teatri, later included in his first poetry collection of the same name (Il Girasole, 1997). In 2003 he contributed to the creation of Dalle sponde del mare bianco (Mesogea, 2003), together with the Dounia ensemble and Tunisian poet Moncef Ghachem. In 2009 he published Cori niuru spacca cielu (Mesogea) and in 2011 Quelli che bruciano la frontiera (Folk Studio Ethnosuoni) with Moncef Ghachem and the Pocket Poetry Orchestra. His interest in the Sicilian language led him to collaborate with playwright Carmelo Vassallo and to work on texts by Salvo Basso and Nino De Vita, directing several stage adaptations. He carries out intense curatorial and cultural activities in various associations (Associazione Musicale Etnea, Festival Internazionale di poesia Voci del mondo, Leggerete, SabirFest). His texts have been published in various journals and anthologies in Italy and abroad. Casa Munnu (Mesogea, 2021) is his most recent collection. In 2019 he won the Lerici Pea “Paolo Bartolani” award, nominated by Andrea Camilleri and Manuel Cohen.

Stefano Buda, born in Catania in 1991, earned a First-Level Degree in Graphic Design from the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania in 2014. In 2018 he completed a Master’s programme in Publishing at Villaggio Maori (Catania). Since 2015 he has been working as a freelance graphic designer and videomaker. He mainly collaborates with local organisations that carry out cultural promotion activities such as the Associazione Musicale Etnea and the cultural association Liberarti. He recently produced music videos for Lautari, Eleonora Bordonaro, and Jacarànda. His video A città jè china ri luci, based on a poem by Biagio Guerrera, was selected for the Zebra Poetry Film Festival (Berlin, 2021 and 2022), Doctor Clip (Rome, 2021), and was a finalist for the award La poesia che si vede (Ancona, 2022).