Bakin Zub

Marko Ciciliani founded Bakin Zub in 2005 and wrote four programme-length works for it. All of them use visual media, and most bring in other collaborators: an object maker, a video artist, a laser designer. Over the years the ensemble became the place where his work grew most interdisciplinary, usually held together by a strong conceptual frame.

My Ultradeep I (2007)

The first programme, about 70 minutes long, was premiered and toured in April 2007 and was well received by the press. For it Ciciliani wrote for electric guitar, electric bass, violin and viola, sopranino saxophone, didjeridu, percussion, live electronics and light. In February 2009 Bakin Zub brought it to Smart Project Space in Amsterdam and the ZKM Kubus in Karlsruhe.

Jeanne of the Dark (2008)

Jeanne of the Dark is an exploration of the image of the vamp: the seductive, dangerous woman of the films. Ciciliani set the frame. Terre Thaemlitz collaborated on some of the sections and made the interludes for electronics and video that bridge the four parts. Rather than tell a story, the piece takes its imagery and its sound from points of reference across styles and cultures, from vampire films to eroticism, from heavy metal to cannibalism. The rhythms show up in the light design, and scenes from Les Vampires, the silent serial about a gang led by a woman, were projected during the performance.

Bakin Zub played it in Eindhoven on 25 November 2008 and two days later at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, which the ensemble's own notes give as the premiere. It went on to Utrecht and Den Bosch in 2009 and, in February 2010, to Tilburg, Amsterdam and Münster.

The Hamburg label Ahornfelder released it on CD on 2 January 2011, in four parts of 49 minutes in all:

1. Vampire
2. Eroticism
3. Cannibalism
4. Vamp

What the critics wrote is on the press page.

Heterotopolis (2011/12)

For Heterotopolis Ciciliani worked closely with the visual artist Marcel Bühler, who made elaborate laser designs and a special three-layered circular screen. The ZKM and November Music co-produced the piece, and the two artists spent a two-week residency at the ZKM in August 2011. Ciciliani wrote the music and the light design and played the electronics.

It was first performed at the ZKM in Karlsruhe on 10 November 2012, as part of the ARD Hörspieltage, using the centre's 48-speaker ambisonic sound system, and four days later at the MUMUTH in Graz. The work list gives 56 minutes. A trailer went online on New Year's Day 2013.

Suicidal Self Portraits (2007–2014)

The fourth programme is not one long work but five shorter compositions connected by video interludes, written between 2007 and 2014:

1. Crash (2007), for a singing percussionist
2. Going to Hell (2009)
3. All of Yesterday's Parties (2010)
4. Screaming my Simian Line (2010)
5. LipsEarsAssNoseBoobs (Gloomy Sunday) (2013/14), a commission from Deutschlandfunk

A version without the last part was played at the Alte Schmiede in Vienna in December 2012. The complete cycle was first performed on 6 April 2014 in the broadcasting hall of Deutschlandfunk in Cologne, in the Forum neuer Musik.