Marcello Maloberti's Metal Panic Performance at Raum Bologna

On October 1, 2016, Marcello Maloberti (born 1966 in Codogno, lives in Milan) inaugurated the program of Raum in Bologna with his performance Metal Panic. The artist directed a group of performers who suspended and then dropped a 24-meter iron tube, creating a sonic horizon and a tense, erotic exchange between artist, performers, and audience. The fall produced a brief, deafening metallic sound intended to provoke 'spavento' (fright), a recurring element in Maloberti's work, as seen in his 2012 performance Blitz at MACRO Rome, where ceramic black panthers were dropped. The title Metal Panic plays on the friction between malleable metal and uncontrollable panic, yet the drop was composed and disciplined. Following the action, musician and composer Daniela Cattivelli, who has collaborated with Xing, Kinkaleri, Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, Teatro Valdoca, Laminarie, William Forsythe, Raquel Silva, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Charles Hayward, John Oswald, and Salvatore Sciarrino, performed with metallic sounds over Maloberti's blog 'Marmellate' (marcellomaloberti.tumblr.com), a visual diary of drawings, collages, and notes combining heterogeneous iconographic sources such as Egyptian statuary, war photographs, and archaeological sites, altered with primitive strokes and linguistic paradoxes.