The MPDS (Mario Pieroni and Dora Stiefelmeier) audio archive has the ambition of being limitless and never finished. If the need for an archive stems from having to systematize a collection of data and save it from oblivion, concentrating the information in order to preserve its memory, the MPDS aims to go beyond all of this and build a systematically operative memory. All previous and current experiences, from the Pieroni Gallery to Zerynthia, then RAM, SAM (Sound Art Museum) and much more, flow into this enormous deposit, which is not to be considered concluded but tied to a desire to integrate it and make it grow continuously.
Creating an archive is a complex and laborious operation, a challenge that aims to entrust an immense heritage to the generations of today and the future. An operation with a dual ambition in progress: on one hand to contain all that can be catalogued under the listing of sound art, on the other to conserve every audio file, sound, word, noise, debate, live radio broadcast that the world of art produces in its daily development, and this is what makes the MPDS unique. Conveying the uninterrupted flux of stories, words, poems that launch art. A process made up of encounters, clashes, moments of life lived along side artists. Because above all else it is the relationship with the artists that defines the identity of the experiences that today have flowed into the archive, from the Pieroni Gallery to Zerynthia.
Entering the moment of the audio recording, having the voices of the artists, poets and writers is a privilege to be preserved with care.
An atypical operation, to comprehend the seasons of art through listening and to convey its history without the images of what happened and continues to happen.
A true archive is not indexed with predefined algorithms. Its quality is founded upon a pact of trust and truth.
A potentially infinite deposit of sounds that lends itself to listening, to reuse, to application in new projects.
The modalities of use are immediate and simple: a name, a date, a time line of suggestions.The homepage is built like an invitation to use the archive, to go inside, to feel and ultimately to discover how much listening to voices and sounds is crucial in understanding the processes that make up art.
Sound is a different way of seeing: it proposes unexpected options, it creates images that take shape through listening, it redesigns a space, manipulating it, making it claustrophobic, it knocks down walls and directs elsewhere. The condition is trust when predisposing oneself to listening, believing what sound, word and audio can construct in order to receive in return an image, a different hypothesis.
This is what the MPDS audio archive does, with the declared aim of containing everything. Because there is an urgency for a utopia and the need to make it come true.