To Become a Sea. 2022
A sound journey between Sardina and Lebanon, conceived by Ibrahim Nehme, curated by Cherimus and created by Derek MF Di Fabio and Carlo Spiga, with the participation of Nour Sokhon. Voice Zeyn Joukhadar.

Listen to all the work here:

https://ocean-archive.org/collection/272

parachute in cloudless. 2022

Abolitionism as a feminist and decolonial practice is explored through the voice, word of mouth and poetry.
(Title from a line by Cathy Park Hong “Dance Dance Revolution” 2006)

Tracklist:
https://refugeworldwide.com/radio/derek-mf-di-fabio-20th-apr-2022

CUSCINO. 2021
Audioguide. 17 Songs, 60″ circa. 2021

Cuscino is a project by Derek MF Di Fabio, an audioguide for Rosa in Mano, a show curated by Eva Fabbris at Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milano.
10 September – 17 December 2021
Since Febraury 2020 Derek had run a series of workshop at Casa di Reclusione (prison) in Vigevano with a group of 11 inmates, conducted both face-to-face and in the form of letters.
Original texts : Angelo, Antonio, Alfred, Artur, Daniele, Francesco, Xhimi, Hassan, Michael, Mohamed, Patrizio.
Co-author and editing: m.
Music: Charlotte Simon
Translation: Zeyn Joukhadar
Voices: Andrea Barettoni, Dalia Maini, Isamit Morale, Lou Lou Sainsbury, Marie Tučková, MINQ, Roberto Frusciante, Rada Koželj, m, ercolealice.

Erratic Orbits. 2019
Itinerant reading with m.

The glacial erratics are rocks that tell us a lot about the territory in which they are located. They are manifestations of the memory of a territory, geological monuments, visible signs of the ancient presence of a glacier. Some of them host engravings from the Neolithic age, others have become objects of worship and pagan rituals, whose traces still remain in popular folklore.
Then there is the orbit: the route described by a moving body in relation to another body.

Erratic Orbits is a project aimed at modulating and building memory through movement in the environment: the Turin stage is the starting point of an itinerant reading that will end in Berlin.

Derek MF Di Fabio’s helmet-sculptures (already presented during the exhibition GALLA at L’Ascensore, in Palermo) become tools to support the performative reading of m*’ poems. Produced in collaboration with Giuseppe Varia, the helmets derive from the observation of the Palermo phenomenon of bike tuning,which is a contemporary form of local craftsmanship.
A simple mechanics carried out by a non-uniform group of teenagers to expand and amplify them- selves. It is perhaps their motion at , taking back the streets, to make themselves heard and seen. The origin of the phenomenon is unknown, as it is also for many of the repertoires of folk music traditions: everyone knows the music’ rhythms and melodies but the author(s) often remains unknown. With these helmets, the artist also alludes to the possibility of experiencing the bicycle as a sort of prosthesis of the body and to the “emotional speeds” with which they cross through and live in cities.

m’ texts propose inner dialogues, sharp observations on human nature, crude annotations of reality. Within m’s artistic practice there is a strict rule about not bringing new objects into the world, so she orients herself towards the written word, performance, video and sound. In these poems, m resorts to the stream of consciousness, thus avoiding those daily processes of self-censorship and leveling of petty or elegiac, bucolic thoughts in an alternation of low impulses, sublime visions, trivial reviews of reality. It is no coincidence, in this sense, that the readings are held near places whose function is dismantling and transforming waste into energy (such as waste-to-energy-plants): the desire is not to flatten the aesthetic experience of the real environment, which includes waste, scraps and excesses of production, as much as the uncontaminated spaces.

The process of transforming waste into energy, brings us back to the ideas of movement and of becoming internal and external to the body, a body that not only moves in the environment, but is moved by the environment, highlighting a process of “queering” between the individual and the surrounding environment.

Text by Giulia Mengozzi

Translate by DMFDF and Holly Ruth Fletcher

* m is the nickname for Martina De Rosa.

Yslands. 2014
Audioguide. 10 Songs, 60″ circa.

Project and production by Derek MF Di Fabio
For Almanac Projects
https://almanacprojects.com/exhibitions/derek-di-fabio-yslands

“Intertwining ongoing research around islands with the possibilities and limitations of being ‘in residence’, Derek worked with the local community through a series of participative events, workshops, performances and screenings. Yslands focuses on exploring the boundaries that join a community to a space; the surfaces that constitute the sensitive and emotional connection between an entity and its surroundings. It investigates how identities are constructed through the relation with the Other.”

Texts by:
Lia Cecchin, Davide La Montagna, Matteo Mottin, Isamit Morales, Giacinta Gandolfo, Martina Allegra De Rosa, Valentina Roselli, Matteo Visentin, Vecchiomerda DanzBand, Sandrine Nicoletta: www.drifters.land.

Interpreted by:
GEE, ercolealice, Giovanni Copelli, Alexander Collins, Francesca Mussi, Ting Cheng, Sophie Vitelli.

Music by:
Enrico Bozzato: Ekar Records, Circular, Iside Elena, Isa Griese: DW2♡♡8, Luca Garino, Hyena, Timo Koch, New Noveta, Vecchiomerda DanzBand.