Play It Again Sam

Marco Fusinato's work largely hinges on minor manipulations of complex ideas. Or vice versa, depending on your point of view. He'll take a single concept (often political), tweak it slightly and then use it to challenge his audiences' assumptions and perspectives. His current exhibition at Brisbane's Institute of Modern Art, for example, features an elaborate lighting rig designed to spontaneously blast curious onlookers with noise and light.

“See, that's actually quite a complex work. The lighting rig is set up like a barricade and it's hard for people to know what is the front or the back of the work – and then, when you walk around in front of the lights and they hit you with that noise, you all of a sudden become a spectacle for everyone else in the gallery,” Fusinato laughs. “I saw a bunch of high school kids go through the process recently in Melbourne and it was just amazing.”

His musical approaches follow a similar philosophy. Predominantly (some would say exclusively) a noise musician, Fusinato's output is at its best when within a contextual framework. For example, his series of spontaneous improv-noise concerts at guitar stores (wherein he asks to test a piece of gear and promptly goes beserk with it, in true noise-musician style). It works because of where he's placed the noise.

“I'm really obsessed with contradiction – paradox. In everything. I'm continually headscratching. About everything,” Fusinato reflects. “My sound is about maximum impact – but it's about doing that in a very minimal way. I mean, in a lot of my live shows, I'm sitting down and there's no real body movement. I'm using the guitar more as a signal generator or an antenna that triggers off all this uncontrollable electronics and mayhem.”

His upcoming performance at the Institute of Modern Art seems particularly emblematic of his approaches as an audiovisual artist. A five-hour improvised durational performance, Fusinato will be less concerned with providing a typical concert experience as using his noise to enhance his entire The Colour Of The Sky Has Melted exhibit. Through simple manipulation of time and location, he subverts both concert and gallery formats.

“I play guitar-slash-electronics and usually perform in club contexts. For this exhibition, I just thought it would be interesting to play in the gallery among my works from recent years,” Fusinato says of the idea. “I recently did a durational performance in a club in Glasgow during the day – when a club typically isn't used – and I really enjoyed it because there was never any risk of it becoming about entertainment.

“The thing about a gig is that you do a set and, no matter what you're playing, there's this expectation that the audience is entertained in some way. Even if it's just anti-entertainment. Where I've found by playing this abject noise for longer periods, the audience comes in and out. They can leave after five seconds, they can stay for five hours. The sound changes and ebbs and flows.

“You know, depending on when you arrive and when you leave, you can get an entirely different experience of the set,” he laughs. “It's really fun playing with those ideas of what an audience expects of a musician. I mean, even just the acoustics of a gallery versus the acoustics of a club. I'm really looking forward to exploit that and play with that. It's all improvised so I really won't know how it will all unfold until the actual moment.”