GIUSSEPPE MASIA « Rip the needle : vitrine variation »

GIUSSEPPE MASIA

Belgium-Italy | World Premiere
– FREE –
VITRINE GÉRALD MUSIQUE

This work offers a radical reinterpretation of the vinyl record and the record player. « Rip the Needle » hijacks these familiar objects to reveal a new materiality and a new way of listening to them.

At the heart of the installation, a DIY turntable spins in a loop, animating a fragmented and recomposed vinyl. Laser-cut, the record is made up of pieces from several vinyl records assembled like a material and sound collage. Each rotation produces an unpredictable interplay of snags, repetitions and interferences, creating a singular auditory texture in which sound memory is constantly rearranged.

This installation explores the relationship between the medium and its content, between the mechanical and the random. It questions our perception of the vinyl record, no longer as an object of faithful reproduction, but as a living material in constant mutation. « Rip the Needle » invites us to listen in a new way, where imperfections and misappropriations become an essential part of the sound experience.

About the Artist

Born in Sardinia and raised in Brussels, Giuseppe Masia is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montreal, where he is pursuing a graduate degree in visual and media arts at UQAM. His artistic practice explores the relationship between materiality, sound, and memory, working with materials such as recycled vinyl records and thermoformed glass. Through his work, he seeks to reveal the visible and audible traces left by the passage of time, playing on notions of fragility and resilience.

His personal experience of illness informs his artistic practice in an integral manner, and has led him to reflect deeply on notions of precarity, whether in terms of bodies, materials, or the traces left through time. This engagement reflects an artistic approach where fragility and durability coexist, notably through his glass records, which embody visible and tangible sound imprints.

His lived experience is less a central or autobiographical subject of his work, and more a conceptual prism through which to explore universal themes: transformation, the passage of time, the persistence of memory, and the resonance of narratives of the past. His works question the relationship between presence and absence, materialising sound memory in sculptural objects that show scars of their own history, while at the same time questioning how we retain or forget our traces.

In his installations and performances, Masia works with homemade DIY turntables, using altered vinyl records to produce noisy, vibrant music in which the scars of the material become sonic imprints.

Inspired by thinkers such as Pierre Schaeffer, Jonathan Sterne, and Rosalind Krauss, Masia is developing an experimental, low-tech artistic approach that focuses on the reinvention of obsolete media and abandoned objects. His works question our relationship with time and memory, giving a new acoustic and visual existence to worn-out or forgotten objects. Through his explorations, Giuseppe Masia proposes a space where the traces of the past meet the possibilities of the present, offering the viewer a poetic reflection on the materiality and transmission of memories.