Unarchiving Nono, (Unarchivings/ Resiting Nono) operates as a form of comment or intervention on archiving musical material hidden away from an acoustic everyday life.

Human memory is examined and activated as a carrier of musical material, and musical material is moved out of the archive and unfolded into a local reality. Through an iterative process of listening, remembering and performing each unfolding is a musical performance influenced by a new layer of spatial acoustics and everyday sounds, stored with recordings of the performance, gradually building up to transform the musical material by spatial and temporal layering of ambient sounds.

ReSiting Nono: Guidecca, Zattere, Surnadal, Plankan, Reimersholme, Lierstranda, Drammen.

A musical practice involves a form of bodily memory characterized by local, informal and intuitive knowledge rooted in movement, gesture, hearing, other forms of sensation and presence. Sound and video art are also considered in the project as distinctive art forms with their own ability to investigate reality through the fact that they are both media-based and performative (body, movement, temporality) and can form active relationships between the surroundings, the camera/microphone, the collected the data/image and the user of the devices.

Image as Site 

Artists Ellen J Røed and Bjørnar Habbestad explored specific places through the lens of music composed by Luigi Nono (1924 - 1990). Utilizing site-specific strategies and instruments such as flute, microphones, and camera, the duo transferred musical fragments from Nono's archive in Guidecca, Venice, to other sites in Venice as well as sites in Norway and Stockholm. The project unfolded over a series of fieldwork sessions.

The project aimed to accomplish a dual purpose. Firstly, it sought to revive and relocate archival fragments of Luigi Nono's music, integrating them into an investigative method for understanding place. Secondly, it aimed to use the experiences and imprints garnered from these places to reshape and transform the material from Guidecca. This interplay between locations, materials, and methodologies provided a fertile ground for artistic exploration, blurring the boundaries between past and present, archive and reality. Additionally, the project delved into the performative and place-making aspects of sound and video media.

Due to restrictions, physical materials from the Nono archive can't be copied or removed. Thus, human memory became the sole carrier of musical material. Initially, Habbestad listened to and memorized archived recordings of Nono's music and the performances of flutist Roberto Fabbriciani. Subsequently, he reproduced this material in the vicinity of the archive, with Røed documenting the process using a camera and microphone setup. This recording then informed a subsequent performance, where Habbestad first listenend to the recording and then performed the music, integrating his own interpretation of his memory of the recording as well as local resonances occurring in the new site during the moment of musical articulation, or performance. This was then recorded and the new recording informed, in the same manner, the next articulation in the next site. This iterative process continued across various locations. Sound and video recordings served as proxies, facilitating dynamic interactions between place, sound, video, and people. 

The project developed an expanded method that activated the distinctive characteristics of each site through memory, movement, sight, and hearing. Various layers and relationships were explored and anchored in the instruments used. Memory, audio, and video recordings served as conduits for information transfer between layers, forming complex networks. The intention was to create an artistic expression that operated in real-time, bridging the gaps between experience, mediation, and representation. By fostering active and dynamic relationships between space, sound, image, and people, the project aimed to integrate archival material and visited locations into the present moment, redefining them as part of ongoing reality rather than mere representations of the past.

The project has evolved through the research contexts Re:Site (The Norwegian Artistic Research Programme/Research Pavillion, Venice Biennale), Resiting Nono (Norwegian Arts Council), E-x-p-a-n-d-e-d (Surnadal Billag), Image as Site (Stockholm University of the Arts), Chasing the Collaborative. Critical studies of performer agency in modern flute music (Phd thesis NMH Habbestad 2021) https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3024509

Supported by The Norwegian Artistic Research Programme, Norwegian Arts Council, Swedish Research Council, Stockholm University of the Arts.