An artist's book in which musician and sound artist Claudio Rocchetti questions the act of looking.
Disquiet. Loss. Choice. The courage to venture onto a road. Choosing another one. And disquiet again, having ascertained that neither leads to new lands: the images which make up An Imitation of Life convey all this to the observer, that is, the very act of seeing. The gaze of a 9 year old, roughly eight hours of footage, the grain of a VHS-C: archeological finding of the first childhood brainwaves, the 78 video stills contained in these pages and organized according to a random logic by the verses of the adult Rocchetti, outline a sort of Bildungsroman, except there is no Bildung here, but only a focus opening up on objects, Looking is to Rocchetti the same as listening, eye and ear are the extension of one same perceiving.
Claudio Rocchetti (born 1976 in Bolzano, lives and works in Berlin) is one of the most active european avant musicians. Apart from his main solo project he is also part of 3/4HadBeenEliminated with Valerio Tricoli and Stefano Pilia, half the duo Olyvetty with visual artist Riccardo Benassi an he melts togheter with noise-funk duo G.I.Joe and Stefano Pilia into In Zaire power quartet. He also played in projects with Jooklo Duo (as Hypnoflash), double bassist Klaus Janek and with Mattin, Bowindo, Fabio Orsi and MB among others. His work is mainly focused around concrete pastiches as the result of hardware live manipulation, turntable feedbacks and various recorded sources and objects. He released records on Hundebiss, Hapna, Die Schachtel, Presto?!, Soleilmoon and Holidays Records. He is also the founder (with Kam Hassah) of Musica Moderna, a label focussed on field recordings, sound poetry and sound art.
