A shared philosophy of listening, space, and minimalism across two platforms curated by Fabio Perletta.
Discussion with Fabio after his residence in Japan.
I had a short conversation with composer Fabio Perletta about a recent release on his label, and the new collaborative work developed with musician Giuseppe Ielasi and visual artist Giulia Bruno.
At a time when music is often consumed in fragments, certain labels resist immediacy in favour of depth and duration. Around the world, many operate within this space. In this article, the focus is on 901 Editions and fold/interval, both guided by a distinct sense of purpose: to create conditions where sound can be experienced rather than simply heard.
Though differing in format and approach, both platforms share an underlying philosophy, one rooted in reduction, spatial awareness, and a careful consideration of time and space. This becomes evident in releases like Luigi Turra’s work for 901 Editions, as well as the dialogue between Iealasi and Fabio Perletta on fold/interval. Rather than making statements, these works propose situations for listening, subtle, deliberate, and often at the edge of perception.
Diastima by Luigi Turra, built from scores by Sylvain Chauveau.
Turra works within a narrow, almost imperceptible range, where sound is reduced to its most fragile state. Released on 901 Editions, the album unfolds with a quiet precision, favouring texture and spatial tension over structure or progression. At the core of the project is a collection of essential, open, and often enigmatic graphic scores by Sylvain Chauveau—compositions that do not prescribe sound in a fixed way, but instead suggest gestures, spaces, and relationships. Rather than traditional notation, these scores function as quiet instructions: invitations to interpret, to listen closely, and to navigate ambiguity. Diastima does not seek resolution. It exists in the interval itself, the space between events, where sound lingers, thins out, and reappears.
Another platform that shares this underlying philosophy, rooted in reduction, spatial awareness, and a careful consideration of time and space, is fold/interval, an audiovisual project and publishing platform founded by Giuseppe Ielasi, Fabio Perletta, and Giulia Bruno.
Ielasi works at the intersection of composition, improvisation, and electroacoustic practice. His work is often defined by reduction and precision, where small sonic details carry the weight of the entire piece. Alongside his solo output, he has been deeply involved in curatorial and collaborative projects that explore listening as a shared, investigative act.
Perletta is a composer and sound artist working with minimal structures, sustained tones, and spatial listening. His work is closely tied to ideas of duration and attentiveness, often creating environments where sound unfolds slowly and invites deep focus.
Bruno is an artist and researcher whose practice spans visual art, sound, and editorial work. Her approach often focuses on perception, documentation, and how sound and image can coexist as forms of quiet observation rather than representation.
fold/interval is not presented as a conventional album, but as a listening environment—an audiovisual and editorial space shaped by restraint, attention, and process. Rather than foregrounding individual works, it functions as a continuous field in which sound, image, and silence coexist without hierarchy. What emerges is a subtle attention to duration: sounds are not developed in a linear sense, but allowed to settle, fade, and reappear. In this way, listening becomes less about following progression and more about inhabiting a shifting interval, where presence is always partial, and meaning remains open.
Interview with Fabio Perletta:
Hi Fabio Perletta, how are you these days?
Ciao Raffaele, I’m doing well, thank you!
As I mentioned recently, I’ve really been enjoying your artistic output—your tour in Japan, the performance at the Venice Biennale, and the recent activities around 901 Editions. Could you tell us what you’ve been working on lately, and what’s been shaping your practice in this period?
Over the past few months, I have been working on several projects that I hope to complete by the end of the year. First and foremost — although not in order of importance, but rather in terms of the amount of material involved — is a documentary in collaboration with my friend and filmmaker Marcello Orlando about my residency at Termites Studio on Shōdo Island, Japan, which took place in September 2025 with the support of the Italian Council. This research project began 5 years ago in Latronico, southern Italy, as part of the A Cielo Aperto program series and later continued through workshops at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale with students from IUAV and NABA and, more recently, with children from Seikenji school in Shōdo Island. “The Superorganism: a model for a new performative language” explores the possible relationship between the eusocial behaviour of superorganisms (termites, ants, bees) and the performing arts. I am interested in how performance can function less as a presentation and more as a temporary ecosystem of relationships between performer, audience, environment, and technology. Architecture and spatial thinking (I am less interested in traditional approaches to multichannel diffusion) have always been important in my work, as I like to explore how sound can reveal the hidden qualities of a space. I am very attached to the Seto Inland Sea, in particular to Naoshima, because of its architectural works by Tadao Ando, namely the Chichu Art Museum and the Lee Ufan Museum, and Teshima, for the Art Museum by Ryue Nishizawa and Rei Naito. They are places immersed in nature, with amazing acoustic qualities, where you can enjoy silence and contemplate the environment.
In parallel, I am working with Giuseppe Ielasi and Giulia Bruno on the fold/interval project, on the third Cygni album with Pierluigi Scarpantonio (the second one will be released in 2027), and on a series of site-specific performances entitled “We Stand Still Here, […]”.
Gesto released September 8, 2017
This series interrogates and reconfigures the conventions of the performative setting, trying to destabilise the habitual roles of audience, performer, and site. I embraced ways of thinking that move beyond the idea of sound as a self-contained object. I am increasingly interested in listening as a relational practice as a way of entering into dialogue with places, materials, other species, and forms of collective intelligence. Recent experiences in Australia and Japan have deeply shaped this direction. Encounters with Indigenous perspectives on land, knowledge, and oral transmission, as well as my research around insects and interspecies collaboration, have encouraged me to reconsider the role of the human within larger ecological systems. I am interested in forms of organisation that do not rely on hierarchy, but emerge through interdependence, such as those found in fungal networks and termite colonies. I have been exploring how we can use these as models to foster forms of listening that challenge human-centred perspectives. I have also been collecting various thoughts, self-imposed rules, and text scores that I have been using as part of my performances, which I would like to bring together in a book in the future. As you may have noticed, I always have several projects unfolding simultaneously. That is the way I like to work, as each project tends to inform and enrich the others in one way or another.
Across 901 Editions, I’ve been particularly drawn to the latest releases by Richard Chartier and Luigi Turra. Could you tell us more about the direction of the label today? What defines a release for 901 Editions?
I deeply admire Richard and Luigi’s works, they are among the most refined and authentic voices in the field of experimental music. Richard and his label LINE have had a profound influence on both my work and 901 Editions. I have learned a lot from him, from the way works are presented to the aesthetics of coherent graphic design. Luigi is a dear friend, and I have always been fascinated to the way he sculpts sound. I cannot really say what direction the label will take in the future. To answer your question, what truly defines a release is both simple and complex at the same time: when I genuinely like something, I become enthusiastic about it, and there is very little else to explain; on the other hand, what shapes one’s taste has a lot to do with the irrational, and it is hard to explain. I have never wanted to focus on a specific trend or genre. From the beginning, 901’s catalogue has embraced a wide range of practices, moving across electroacoustic music, ambient, sound art, improvisation, and minimalist electronics. I have always been attracted to contrasts, different approaches, sensibilities, and ways of understanding sound. This is also what motivates my desire to support authentic and sincere artists, not only by presenting their finished works, but by engaging with the processes, ideas, and contexts that shape their practices. For me, publishing is a way of building meaningful relationships and creating a space where each release can reflect a shared dialogue, while preserving the human dimension behind the work as an essential part of the artistic process.
Focusing on Diastima, how did your collaboration with Luigi Turra develop? What drew you to this project, especially considering its use of graphic scores by Sylvain Chauveau?
As I mentioned, Luigi and I are in constant dialogue thanks to our friendship and mutual artistic respect. We often discuss the possible directions of our respective practices and spend a great deal of time talking about music and other things. Luigi shares almost everything he creates with me, so every publication develops very naturally. I am particularly drawn to the way he explores a dry, distilled, and calligraphic sound, where every gesture is reduced to its essential form and silence becomes an active compositional element. As for Diastima, I liked the way he translated Chauveau’s stylised drawings into sound. The scores themselves are open forms and are intended more to suggest than to prescribe. I find this indeterminate space compelling — a space in which the acts of listening and looking coexist, seeking a possible point of encounter between different elements.
Could you tell us more about fold/interval and how the collaboration with Giuseppe Ielasi and Giulia Bruno began? How did the project take shape over time?
fold/interval emerged from a desire to channel shared visions into a project that brings together a specific approach to sound, photography, video, and research into physical publishing formats. The recognition of affinities in each other’s practices laid the groundwork for a more deliberate desire to explore unfamiliar territories together, supported by a reciprocal trust in processes of seeing and listening. Before initiating the project, I was (and still am) in constant conversation with Giuseppe about the possibilities of sound, the music we like, and the presentation of sound works. We are critical of digital publishing, and we believe that paying greater attention to the physical presence of objects is particularly important at a time of such intense saturation and distraction. The choice of fine paper, letterpress printing, and Giulia’s photography and video work all enter into dialogue with one another. Musically speaking, the first release grew out of an exchange between electronic material I had initially developed for a solo project and fragments of guitar recordings by Giuseppe. Quite naturally, we realised that the materials shared a very interesting intersection, so we combined them and then reworked and refined them, seeking both a high degree of compositional precision and a certain organic quality. Giulia’s photography and film are an integral part of her broader artistic research and archive, which investigates the intersection of scientific laboratories, social issues, environmental infrastructures, and technology, and how these elements all condition our lives. We are all aimed at removing spectacularisation from the things we do, working instead to create a context in which possible connections between seemingly distinct elements can emerge, encouraging a deeper reflection on what it means to listen and to observe, and opening up new forms of knowledge and attention.
fold/interval seems to move beyond the idea of a traditional label, bringing together sound, image, and publishing. How do you define it today?
We wanted to create an open framework in which publishing and production would not exist as clearly separated activities, but rather as a context where different practices could engage with one another on equal terms. fold/interval is our audiovisual artistic project, but it is also a publishing platform. Giuseppe and I also curate the sound program at 7022 Gallery in Milan as fold/interval. We are interested in developing forms of seeing, listening and attention that move across different disciplines. fold/interval is conceived as part of a broader line of inquiry, in which all elements contribute to the construction of a coherent experience. We don’t want to limit the possibilities of collaboration, commissions, or research, while maintaining a careful attention to an authentic investigation and exploration between sound and vision. We have just started; I believe this is a project with solid ground and the capacity to last for a long time.
