On May 13, the Majid Foundation in Ascona will held the world premiere of The New World Order, a new musical composition and experimental feature film by composer, visual artist, and architect Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta (1957). It is about a work—both musically and cinematographically—crafted from information drawn from everyday life, particularly through the media.
Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Emanuel Pimenta has been present in Switzerland since childhood. In 1987, he was invited by philosopher René Berger and legendary contemporary art gallerist Rinaldo Bianda to collaborate as one of the coordinators of the Locarno Video Art and Electronic Art Festivals, as well as the Art and Science Meetings on Monte Verità. Pimenta carried out this work until the mid-1990s, a period during which these events hosted figures such as Nam June Paik, Francis Ford Coppola, and Edgar Morin, among others. As a composer, he was a partner of John Cage in New York, composing for Merce Cunningham and conducting his concerts alongside the choreographer for over thirty years, with approximately eight hundred performances worldwide, including at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, La Fenice in Venice, and Lincoln Center in New York, among many others.
He started working in the field of cinema with the French photographer and filmmaker Jean Manzon (former assistant to Orson Welles) as early as the 1970s. He was one of the leading students of the German composer Hans Joachim Koellreutter, a pupil of Paul Hindemith, Kurt Thomas, and Hermann Scherchen, as well as master to Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono, among others.
In the 1970s, he created a new musical notation inside Virtual Reality and has since then worked in the fields of neurology and Artificial Intelligence. In 1995, he was awarded the Lago Maggiore Prize in Locarno (AICA, Council of Europe), and in 2019, he received the Golden Medal of the French Academy of Arts, Sciences, and Letters—an honor also conferred on Marie Curie and the Lumière brothers.
The world premiere of these works in Ascona happens as a tribute of the composer and filmmaker to Majid Foundation for important work dedicated to youth, art, and freedom.
On the occasion of the presentation, Emanuel Pimenta will give a brief introduction to the work.
More information on The New World Order is available at: http://www.asa-art.com/NWO
Emanuel Pimenta lives in Minusio; his website, created in 1993, is www.emanuelpimenta.net
Emanuel Pimenta.
