Filippo Deorsola

Filippo (they/them) is an Italian queer artist and researcher who graduated 'Cum Laude' in Jazz Performance  from CODARTS, the Rotterdam Conservatory, in 2021. They are finishing a Master's degree in Philosophy from  the Université Libre de Bruxelles (2021-2024) to inform their research on textual and conceptual approaches  that can enable the problematisation, queering and redirection of improvisational practices . They currently  reside in Bruxelles (BE) and are active in several inter-European projects.

They have worked in various contexts

As a leader, in particular with his trio Anaphora, with which they released a first album, Lexicon I for the Italian label Auand in April 2022 with the support of the Dutch cultural institution SENA . It explicitly addresses the relationship between Body, Form and Improvisation. They continue to conduct sound research with the project through various artistic residencies made possible by the support of cultural institutions such as Italy Music Export (supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the Belgian cultural commission Vlaamsegemeenschaap, and Culture Moves Europe (Goethe). With Anaphora, they also took part in the international competition 'Young Krokus Jazz 2022' (2nd laureate) and won the prestigious  Keep an Eye the Records 2024

As a sideman, They recorded a duo album with drummer and percussionist Domen Cizej, released in 2023 by Clean Feed records.

As co-leader with Jonathan Ho Chin Kiat, Filippo founded Kinestatic, an electro-acoustic research group that often works with guests from other disciplines (dance, theatre, spoken word). The group explores the possibilities of organising different levels of artistic creation (visual, musical, textual, corporeal) through the concept of gesture, energy retention, [dis]tension and subversion.

As a composer, they collaborated with Mexican composer Josué Amador in a project of compositions of soundscapes designed specifically for the spaces of the city of Rotterdam (website: aporee.org. - 'A Different Soundscape'). Their piece 'XYZ : An Algorithmic narration of several different objects of discussion"  was premiered in Rotterdam on July 2021. They also received a composition commission from the French Orchestre National du Jazz (Youth Talent Orchestra), the result of which " [Da lontano c'era un'isola]" was presented in Paris in February 2022under the direction of Stéphane Payen and Frédéric Maurin. The composition was then recorded in May 2022 with a different line-up.

As a researcher, their interests focus on linguistic, visual and sensory experiences and how they inform notions of event and becoming within artistic production and how they can address, through pure aesthetic expression, issues of our contemporaneity such as queer bodily autonomy and the relationship between new technologies and the 'information-society'. Their musical expression is not intended to be overtly political: rather, improvisation allows for the creation of artistic spaces in which these issues can take hold within a strictly sonic research. Their dissertation focuses on informing artistic action through extra-musical concepts in order to create a topography of artistic action that allows new ways of thinking about creative production and its possible engagement with contemporary issues related to information technology. This research was presented at the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa ( UCP Porto- PT), in December 2021, on the occasion of "[e]motion - 1st Graduate Conference on the Arts and Technology". Filippo's peer reviewed article "Bodily Performativity and the Score-as-Text", taken from the presentation at UCP, should be published by the Portuguese University in the summer of 2024

With non-binary italian artist Marco Luparia, Filippo has set up the EMBAT project in collaboration with the Indonesian Gamelan ensemble Sandikala and with the support of the Indonesian Cultural House in Brussels, La Maison de la Musique Contemporaine in Paris and the Italian Embassy in Jakarta. The project sees the collaboration of IRCAM for AI electro-acoustic processing using Somax2 software.