ARTAUD chez NITSCH
with Gérard Pape
Friday 28th November 2025
Museo Hermann Nitsch, Vico Lungo Pontecorvo 29/d, 80135 Napoli
at 7:00pm
“Action Music Theater Today: Artaud chez Nitsch“
Gérard Pape in conversation with Leopoldo Siano
at 8:00pm
ARTAUD LE MÔMO (2020-2025)
world premier
text by Antonin Artaud
performance by Gérard Pape (voice, sounds, actions)
Ritual acts of speech and sound for electro-fried voice, lightly tortured double bass, and freshly frozen eight channel sounds
free entrance with limited capacity
Gerard Pape (born in New York in 1955 into an Italian-American family from Sala Consilina) is a
composer and Lacanian psychoanalyst. He has lived in Paris since 1991. He was director of the Ateliers UPIC/ CCMIX (Centre de Création Musical Iannis Xenakis) from 1991 to 2007, a computer music center founded by the composer-architect Iannis Xenakis. In 2008 he founded and is the director of CLSI (Circle for the Liberation of Sound and Image) in Paris, which is an ensemble of computers and acoustical instruments that also produces concerts and festivals. Desire, excess, the body and jouissance have long been central to his research on new forms of opera/music theater.
He is author of books as MusiPoeSci. Writings about music, edited by Leopoldo Siano (Éditions Michel De Maule 2015) and Iannis Xenakis and the Ethics of Absolute Originality (Uteurp 2023). Since 2000, Gérard Pape has composed several works inspired by Antonin Artaud’s concept of total theater or ‘theater of cruelty‘, including the opera Les Cenci (2000-2005), Artaud Variations (2022-2025) and Artaud le Mômo (2020-2025). The conversation and concert on November 28th at the Museo Hermann Nitsch in Naples will be dedicated to an imaginary encounter between Artaud and Nitsch. (Hermann Nitsch considered Artaud a sort of ‘spiritual brother‘.) The program includes the world premiere of the new version of Artaud le Mômo, a music theater piece based on Antonin Artaud‘s text of the same name, which features “ritual acts of speech and sound for electro-fried voice, lightly tortured double bass, and freshly frozen eight channel sounds“.