Artistic Manifesto

Don¢ello explores the tension between the analog and the digital, the traditional and the technological – worlds the artist has simultaneously inhabited. Growing up, being born among canvases, music and verses. One is reborn in each life transition –also through its "shocks"– when finding oneself within a reality that is a lie, arriving at key moments of disjunction: inertia or rupture.

What we assume permanent—the everyday—is in fact transient: writing letters by hand, dialing rotary phones, listening to music on 8-tracks, vinyl, and cassettes, playing outdoors in the street. Then came the technological era: Atari consoles, and the iconic Commodore 64, his first personal computer.

With the advent of digital music platforms, quality was sacrificed for quantity. Lost was the thrill of uncertainty—the excitement of wondering whether a roll of 35mm film would turn out well or vanish forever. Gone too was the rigorous preparation for studio recording sessions when every take mattered due to the high cost of each reel. Today’s era of endless "undos" and cloud backups, obsessed with perfection, distances us from truly experiencing fleeting moments.

Using a No Input Mixing Board (NIMB), Don¢ello creates soundscapes existing in a space between intention and accident, between signal and noise. Feedback—traditionally regarded as a "mistake"—becomes central to his composition. The fascination with this medium lies in its ephemeral nature: the sound created during a session is impossible to replicate exactly. If not recorded, it is lost forever.

By playing the NIMB, you become the instrument of the instrument itself.

This ephemeral quality challenges today’s digital reproducibility and the mainstream expectation of consistency. Don¢ello consciously rejects traditional song structures—verse, chorus, bridge—and endless rehearsals to achieve a standardized performance.

Instead, each recording is merely an audio snapshot of a unique moment, and each live performance a new, unrepeatable experience inviting audiences to actively listen rather than passively consume the familiar.

Performances are always conducted at ground level, rejecting both literal and figurative elevation of the artist above the audience, embracing a horizontality that defies established hierarchies. The act of "playing" music—jouer in French, play in English—is consciously preferred over the word "performing," highlighting the playful, experimental, and open-ended nature of sonic creation.

Through symbolism, Don¢ello critiques the valuation of art within a cannibalistic capitalist system, visually representing two realities (traditional/digital) that never fully merge. He challenges the opulence and narcissism prevalent in mainstream musical culture, particularly genres where artists frequently boast material wealth from elevated positions.

In contrast, Don¢ello deliberately subverts these narratives of success built upon accumulation and ostentation, favoring minimalism over excess, horizontality over hierarchy.

In philosophical playfulness, he expresses: “I cleanse myself while dirtying things with noise.” It’s also a question: What is music if not the reinterpretation of sound, noise, and emotions? Why not listen to sound simply as it is?

Don¢ello does not seek to resolve the dichotomy between these worlds but rather inhabits the liminal space where both dialogue, interrupt, and occasionally illuminate each other.