King Tongue have initiated 'King Me', a series of collaborative projects where visual artists are invited to interact with the band both on and off stage
Since 2004 Michele has been a regular collaborator of
A Constructed World, performing in different venues around Europe, including the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Bordeaux; the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims; Sculpture International Rotterdam; and Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel.
John Armleder/Team 404 invited King Tongue to participate to "Lovely Shanghai Music Project", a traveling show displaying notations, scores and visual interpretations of the music of the over 200 artists and musicians involved. The exhibition opened at the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai in 2006 and went on to the Kunstverein Hannover (2007) and the Embassy of Lower Saxony in Berlin (2008).
Katia Bassanini made a drawing inspired to King Tongue and their music in 2007. It was exhibited world-wide, eventually finding a home in the collection of le Cabinet des Estampes at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva.
Michele was invited to do a performance with the Monolith Guitar Stefano Cagol presented on the occasion of his participation to the Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.
King Tongue with Alex Cecchetti, Milan 2002
Alex Cecchetti rehearsed with King Tongue for about six months, providing a lasting contribution with the lyrics and melody of "Drink". The track was consequently recorded and included in the band first album, "This is the Sound" (whose title was also Cecchetti's idea).
Alexandra David shot a video of the band during a performance in Geneva.
"King Tongue avec Gianni Motti" (2004)
"King Tongue avec Gianni Motti" (2004)
In 2007 Nicola Di Caprio invited Gino to participate to his music project Superteste, with performances at Artandgallery (Milan), Teatro Junghans (Venice) and Villa Capriglio (Turin).
Marie Hendriks sang a full set of revisited Country Western tunes with King Tongue improvising a discordant soundtrack on the occasion of a performance at Show Off in Paris in 2010.
Performed during a show, Christian Jankowski's piece 'The Taste of Music' (2016) built a crescendo from the first to the last song with the band's members making an increasingly erratic use of their tongues.
King Tongue performed in front of a video projection of Abdul Rahman Katanani on the occasion of the artist's exhibition "La Vie" at Analix Forever in Chêne-Bourg.
At the Rovereto Art Festival in 1999, Aviaja Larsen sang half-buried in the ground holding an umbrella, progressively emerging while the band performed an uninterrupted set of two hours.
Michele collaborated with Zilla Leutenegger on her performance "Il Pullover" on the occasion of the group exhibition 'Feldlerche Stube Welt Drinnen Grat (quot. Jimmie Durham)' at Galerie Christine König in Vienna.
On the closing day of his solo exhibition Millionaire at Galerie Analix Forever (Geneva, 2007), Andrea Mastrovito destroyed his installation with the band performing inside the gallery.
Gianni Motti’s video ‘Police in Concert’, featuring the Geneva Municipal Police Corp performing FM radio hits by Santana and Johnny Halliday, was used as opening act for the band during a gig at L'Usine (2004) in Geneva.
Yoshua Okón put together a surrogate version of King Tongue to open a gig at MAGA in Gallarate (Italy). The three King Tongue lookalikes were eventually joined and replaced by the actual band after a couple of numbers.
Adrian Paci contributed to the band live set during a performance at CARS (Cusio Artists Residency Space) in Omegna by playing traditional Albanian songs in between tracks.
Marco Papa had the band members dressed as CIA agents playing next to a life-size sculpture representing a deceased astronaut. The performance took place at La Rada parallel to the 2004 Locarno Film Festival, and was intended as a comment to the conspiratorial theory that Stanley Kubrick was the author of the NASA’s moon landing film in 1969.
Reto Pulfer performed with Michele during the opening night of ...Cast the First Stone at Chert Galerie in Berlin, November 2008.
ph: Alexis Zavialoff
ph: Alexis Zavialoff
To celebrate the life and achievements of groundbreaking composer and musician Luigi Russolo, King Tongue's live performance was augmented by artists Sergio Armaroli, Andrea Contin, Gabriele Marsile and Steve Piccolo playing a set of Russolo's noise-generating device 'Intonarumori'.
Roberta Silva asked Bruno to perform a solo piece with the aid of a pair of glow-in-the-dark drumsticks, which directed by the movements that produce the sounds relate the visual apparition of rhythm and thus become their most literal dancing performance. The video was filmed in front of a live audience at Nike Studio in Milan (2006) and later projected at Francesca Kaufmann Gallery.
Una Szeemann organized a bus tour where actor Denny Exnar would read excerpts from dreams she has collected from fellow artists, curators and writers. Towards the end the bus would end up at the Seemankeller Tavern in the harbour area of Basel, where the band would perform a song using the very same text as lyrics.
ph: Fabrizio Stipari
Bert Theis and the duo Mr and Ms Polaroid put together a slide show of stills from Dennis Hopper’s film ‘Riders of the Storm’ (1986) synchronised with the band’s music during a performance at the Isola Art Center in Milan in 2004.
King Tongue performed live within 'Das Haus des Tauben' (1974), an environmental piece Wolfgang Vostell exhibited on the occasion of Documenta 6 in Kassel (1977) and now permanently installed at Fondazione Mudima in Milan.