“Searching for silence within NOISE and noise within
Silence”
Silence”
Both in my profession as a communicator and in my work as a radio artist, I find a shared connection between the use of language, discourse, and sound expression.
My work involves collecting, preserving and supporting sounds so that they do not fall into oblivion and can be reused as raw material to create and design experimental radio pieces.
Manipulating and re-signifying sounds that are often attempted to be silenced is a signature of my work. This is why noise and silence are disruptive concepts of vital importance to me: they both trigger debate, reflection and questioning, giving way to processes of individual and collective progress.
Radio art disposes the body as a whole towards experiencing sensations through the sound field. It is not enough to propose a radio with certain artistic aspirations, but it rather entails sustaining an ephemeral sensory universe where countless physical, psychological and social aspects play a role. The same experience does not occur twice. Each raw material triggers a new epic, a new dialogue, a new story.
Curiosity drives me to constantly look for new ways of dealing with sounds, mixing analogue and digital working methods in my processes. I keep looking for silence within noise and noise within Silence.
Franco Falistoco is a sound artist who was born in 1976, in Marcos Juárez, Argentina.
A curator specializing in radio art and sound art, since 2011 he has hosted the experimental radio programme El RUIDO es el Mensaje.
Gender and body related topics form the central axis of his works. Both in his radio programmes and his experimental pieces, the main protagonists are the voices of women artists narrating their experiences with sound, noise, and silence.
A radio listener since he was a child, Franco started working in the media at the age of 15 as a radio music programmer and technical operator. He later pursued studies in journalism and communication, and discovered radio art and sound design, a field he has been exploring since 2010. His works reflect the mixture of elements from a variety of disciplines including literature, cinema, and graphic design.
In 2011 he started his radio art and experimental radio programme called El RUIDO es el Mensaje, which has been broadcast by Radio Universidad Rosario (Argentina) since its very creation, and later on began to be rebroadcast by several radios around the world, among them, Radio Tsonami (Chile), RadioLibre (Colombia), and TeslaFM (Spain). In this programme, Franco interviews a wide range of sound and experimental artists, revealing artistic approaches narrated through a simultaneous interweaving of voices and sounds.
In 2012, he coordinated the radio art workshop Radioarte (((Imagen · Sonora))) for Laboratorio Sonoro (Labso) at the National University of Rosario, Argentina.
In 2013 he participated in the multimedia exhibition of experimental art Paisajes Sonoros y Visuales in the 9th edition of Semana del Arte en Rosario (Rosario Art Week), curated by Pablo Romano and produced by arts centre Centro Cultural Roberto Fontanarrosa, of Rosario.
In 2015 he participated in the sound compilation La Liberación del sonido, by artist Jorge Gómez A. with the commissioned work Susi y el Viudo, a joint piece created with Ghostrider Genovesio.
In 2016 he presented the work xXx for the compilation Territorios (Experimentación sonora en Argentina) for both the digital and CDr edition.
In 2017, he composed BDC: La Casa Viva, commissioned for the Festival Tsonami de Arte Sonoro, which was broadcast in Tsonami Radio and Radio Valentín Letelier (of Universidad de Valparaíso) for its premiere and released in 2018 by the label W.O.S in Mexico.
In 2018, the label Adaptador Records released Sentados en una Habitación, Revisión de I’m Sitting in a Room de Alvin Lucier, a joint work created with Lorenzo Gómez Oviedo in a special edition prepared for tape featuring Andrea Ocampo in voices. The same year, Franco participated in the first edition of Congreso de Arte Sonoro Parlante – Ars Sonorus in Bogotá, Colombia.
In 2019, he was invited by university professors Raúl Minsburg and María Vanesa Ruffa to lecture on radio art for the subject Creación Sonora (Sound creation) as part of the Specialization in Sound Art at Universidad Tres de Febrero. He also participated in Microferia de Arte Rosario with the exhibition of radio pieces as part of the Project RADIO DIY for the Centro de Expresiones Contemporáneas. During this year, he became the manager of artist Sol Rezza.
In 2020 he created the piece HEFE/YEAST: EL ADN DE LA LEVADURA in collaboration with sound artist Sol Rezza. In parallel, he was part of the communication and institutional press team for the Tsonami Festival of Sound Art in Chile. In the same year, he was commissioned by the Swiss Norient Festival to create the work Nothing Is Complete.
In 2021, he completed the project FREQUENCIES with the support of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes of Argentina (Argentine National Endowment for The Arts) and released the piece NOISCAPES through the Argentine label Bolinga Everest Records in a limited edition of recycled cassettes. Later that year, he participated in the artistic residency Binaural Nodar in collaboration with artist Sol Rezza, where he developed the work AS VOZES DAS SUAS HISTÓRIAS (Las Voces de sus Historias), featuring the voices of women of from the rural village of Alva, Castro Daire, Portugal. Afterwards, he presented the piece RUIDO 3,14, composed for 26 channels, commissioned by festival Cold Diffusion (England), organized by the art collective Slumgothic.
At present, Franco is engaged in the development of the experimental record label CALATHEA Experimenta.