mal;content : mal seward

Mal is an experience and experimental sound artist. His journey moves between mountains, resilience, and creative practice. A mountain leader, he guided expeditions, was a graphic designer, founded a mountainboarding company, and twice became Masters Downhill Mountainboard World Champion. Following a 2011 car crash and subsequent complex PTSD, dissociative disorder, and degenerative spinal decline, he co-founded the Psychiatric Assistance Dogs Foundation  charity.

His hybrid practice of analogue and digital explores the paradox of connection and isolation, creating immersive installations through film, sound, environmental data, and collaborating musicians.

Mal’s durational project, [al limite della tranquillità], is a live hybrid audiovisual installation shaped by an autobiographical reflection on PTSD and dissociative disorder. Through film, sound, environmental data, and performance, the work responds to the mountainous landscape of Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Italian Dolomites, tracing the fragile relation between sublimity, disorientation, and unease.

Two projections generate fragmented and interconnected imagery, echoing unstable states of perception and memory. Live musicians, recorded mountain sounds, and analogue and digital processing are spatialised across eight speakers, creating an immersive sonic environment that shifts between elevation and depth.