CAM Art Co.
International, multi-media company directed by Antonio Lai da Teulada, was created in 1966 by Charles Matz in the USA at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, where he taught creative writing, with the intent of bringing oral poetry into the electronic age.
Using large machine-computers and recording studio equipment, the CAM Art Co. created shout poetry that dominated in rock-music concerts with its emotional impact. In 1968, during the protests against the Vietnam War, the CAM Art Co. went to Italy, where it remained for twenty years.
In Italy, Matz taught at various levels in Italian schools, including universities. The Company trained many actors and worked with international painters, composers, musicians, and poets.
Since the return of Matz to the USA in 1984, the CAM Art Co. has continued to perform and exhibit its multi-media theatrical works there and around the world, including at the Valladolid International Theater festival in Spain, for the opening of the Bialystock Theatre Drama Festival in Poland, and at Padua, in Italy at the Biennale of Psychiatry and Theater.
The CAM Art Co. was one of the first theatrical companies to use video-opera as an art form in itself, winning at Ferrara, Italy, in 1982, an award in a project that dealt with the linguistic force that represents alternative solar energy, nuclear leaks, black-outs, and the explosion of the whole vocal textural form in an operatic way. The music was composed by Joe Jones, a Fluxus composer and a pupil of John Cage, who employed solar instruments that were played by the sun itself. In October, 2006, the Company presented a multi-media ballet at Asolo, Italy, in homage to Joe Jones.
The CAM Art Co. has always responded to controversial figures, like Antonin Artaud and Tommaso Campanella, creating roles for acting and singing in several languages and in operatic as well as non-operatic modes, also employing contemporary dance, dynamic lighting, and video film inter-actions created by Clare Ann Matz, former dancer-choreographer, and now video-maker and technical director for the company. The first of these developed oral forms was the highly successful Columbus, the Moor, with music composed and recorded by David Ryder, an English composer.
Columbus, the Moor, premiered at the historical Calderón de la Barca Theater for the Thirteenth Valladolid International Theatre Festival in Spain, in 1992, and was repeated again the same year at the Las Vegas Historical Society Theater in Nevada, USA.
The City of the Sun, in its ninety minutes, includes a twenty minute sequence of operatic-recitative composed by David Ryder. Fabrizio da Prato, a visual artist from the Garfagnana area of Tuscany, Italy, created the computer-graphic work used as a background in the opera-video projection.
The Black Sun of Ciguri, based on the life of Antonin Artaud, was presented as a video-opera-in-progress at the Biennale di Teatro e Psichiatria: Festival Internazionale del Teatro Attivo del Disagio Psichico in Padua, Italy.
The CAM Art Co. is continuing its tradition of collaboration with musicians and composers from all around the world, and is now expanding its own musical horizons with new projects .
In Italy, Matz taught at various levels in Italian schools, including universities. The Company trained many actors and worked with international painters, composers, musicians, and poets.
Since the return of Matz to the USA in 1984, the CAM Art Co. has continued to perform and exhibit its multi-media theatrical works there and around the world, including at the Valladolid International Theater festival in Spain, for the opening of the Bialystock Theatre Drama Festival in Poland, and at Padua, in Italy at the Biennale of Psychiatry and Theater.
The CAM Art Co. was one of the first theatrical companies to use video-opera as an art form in itself, winning at Ferrara, Italy, in 1982, an award in a project that dealt with the linguistic force that represents alternative solar energy, nuclear leaks, black-outs, and the explosion of the whole vocal textural form in an operatic way. The music was composed by Joe Jones, a Fluxus composer and a pupil of John Cage, who employed solar instruments that were played by the sun itself. In October, 2006, the Company presented a multi-media ballet at Asolo, Italy, in homage to Joe Jones.
The CAM Art Co. has always responded to controversial figures, like Antonin Artaud and Tommaso Campanella, creating roles for acting and singing in several languages and in operatic as well as non-operatic modes, also employing contemporary dance, dynamic lighting, and video film inter-actions created by Clare Ann Matz, former dancer-choreographer, and now video-maker and technical director for the company. The first of these developed oral forms was the highly successful Columbus, the Moor, with music composed and recorded by David Ryder, an English composer.
Columbus, the Moor, premiered at the historical Calderón de la Barca Theater for the Thirteenth Valladolid International Theatre Festival in Spain, in 1992, and was repeated again the same year at the Las Vegas Historical Society Theater in Nevada, USA.
The City of the Sun, in its ninety minutes, includes a twenty minute sequence of operatic-recitative composed by David Ryder. Fabrizio da Prato, a visual artist from the Garfagnana area of Tuscany, Italy, created the computer-graphic work used as a background in the opera-video projection.
The Black Sun of Ciguri, based on the life of Antonin Artaud, was presented as a video-opera-in-progress at the Biennale di Teatro e Psichiatria: Festival Internazionale del Teatro Attivo del Disagio Psichico in Padua, Italy.
The CAM Art Co. is continuing its tradition of collaboration with musicians and composers from all around the world, and is now expanding its own musical horizons with new projects .
Company News:
Celebrating 60 year anniversary of the CAM ART CO- B Cell City
Celebrating 60 year anniversary of the CAM ART CO- B Cell City
2026 Upcoming event in Berlin
This year marks the 60th anniversary of CAM Art Co., the international multimedia company.
In the States, it is the second oldest independent company.
Several international events will be held in Mitte Berlin this coming late October.
Organized in 3 evenings with the multimedia video art installation B-Cell City, based on Cancer with a shout poems/sound ambient and live performances.
There will be performers from New York, Berlin, Barcelona, a Venezuelan rock star from one of the most influential band in Latin America (according to Billboard magazine) and a female Vj from Venice/Parma in Italy.
CAM Art Co was founded in 1966 by American author and performing artist Charles Matz at the university of Notre Dame in South Bend in Indiana/USA where he taught creative writing. He performed in the university big football stadium his early shout poems with a rock band protesting the Vietnam war in front of 100 thousand people.
He and his wife were active in the Civil Rights movement.
As result, they and their 4 children received death threats by the KKK.
They moved to Venice’s Dorsoduro and stayed for 23 years.
In Italy he was friend with Andrea Zanzotto and Umberto Eco.
In Europa he wrote for BBC Radio 4 in London where his producer was the legendary British producer Piers Plowright.
In 2011 in Manhattan Charles Matz received La Legion d’Honneur medal from the then French Ambassador to the USA François Delattre for his contribution of liberating France. At 19 he landed as an American soldier on D-Day in Normandy and from Paris via Central Germany he arrived in Mitte Berlin in the summer of 1945.
In 1947 he went back to Paris to study at La Sorbonne French medieval theater and French culture.
He was able to finish his 600 pages Memoirs on January 6, 2021.
Besides his 600 pages Memoirs he has left several unpublished manuscript and several screenplays.
He wrote in several Indo-European European languages [English-German-French-Italian and Spanish] and occasionally in Tarahumara the oral language of the indigenous people of North Mexico and in Taino/Arawak.
He passed away on Feb 11, 2021 at the age of 96 and seven months.
He is now buried at the crypt of the Washington National Cathedral with his sister Irene Matz LeCompte.
He was the iconographer for more than 40 stained glass windows including the spectacular west end rose window called the Creation. The Creation was presented to the public in 1976 at the presence of Queen Elizabeth II and the USA President Jim Carter.
Charles Matz was descendent of the great German poet Josef Benedikt von Eichendorff. He was very proud of his German heritage. He liked very much to work. He considered working a human rights.
In the States, it is the second oldest independent company.
Several international events will be held in Mitte Berlin this coming late October.
Organized in 3 evenings with the multimedia video art installation B-Cell City, based on Cancer with a shout poems/sound ambient and live performances.
There will be performers from New York, Berlin, Barcelona, a Venezuelan rock star from one of the most influential band in Latin America (according to Billboard magazine) and a female Vj from Venice/Parma in Italy.
CAM Art Co was founded in 1966 by American author and performing artist Charles Matz at the university of Notre Dame in South Bend in Indiana/USA where he taught creative writing. He performed in the university big football stadium his early shout poems with a rock band protesting the Vietnam war in front of 100 thousand people.
He and his wife were active in the Civil Rights movement.
As result, they and their 4 children received death threats by the KKK.
They moved to Venice’s Dorsoduro and stayed for 23 years.
In Italy he was friend with Andrea Zanzotto and Umberto Eco.
In Europa he wrote for BBC Radio 4 in London where his producer was the legendary British producer Piers Plowright.
In 2011 in Manhattan Charles Matz received La Legion d’Honneur medal from the then French Ambassador to the USA François Delattre for his contribution of liberating France. At 19 he landed as an American soldier on D-Day in Normandy and from Paris via Central Germany he arrived in Mitte Berlin in the summer of 1945.
In 1947 he went back to Paris to study at La Sorbonne French medieval theater and French culture.
He was able to finish his 600 pages Memoirs on January 6, 2021.
Besides his 600 pages Memoirs he has left several unpublished manuscript and several screenplays.
He wrote in several Indo-European European languages [English-German-French-Italian and Spanish] and occasionally in Tarahumara the oral language of the indigenous people of North Mexico and in Taino/Arawak.
He passed away on Feb 11, 2021 at the age of 96 and seven months.
He is now buried at the crypt of the Washington National Cathedral with his sister Irene Matz LeCompte.
He was the iconographer for more than 40 stained glass windows including the spectacular west end rose window called the Creation. The Creation was presented to the public in 1976 at the presence of Queen Elizabeth II and the USA President Jim Carter.
Charles Matz was descendent of the great German poet Josef Benedikt von Eichendorff. He was very proud of his German heritage. He liked very much to work. He considered working a human rights.
