City Screen 2024

The Poem is a video-essay which analyses the role of the “criminal” and the penitentiary system in the governmental devices of the nation-state. This video-essay was made with the testimony of 7 former inmates who have served sentences in different correctional facilities in Spain.

A set of memories, a series of readings. After two hundred years as a nation, Peru has revealed many forgotten struggles in different territories, at different times. On our bicentennial, this super 8mm film presents a compilation of speeches from the most intimate and forgotten side of history.

The Homeland festival is at the forefront of a thriving group of artists/filmmakers in the Irish Midlands and is dedicated exclusively to video art. This year marks 10 years of exchange with Loop Barcelona.
Homeland is curated by Therry Rudin in Ireland and by Àngels Garcia and Natalia Foguet in Barcelona. At the opening we will have Chiara Curti, architect, curator and Director of the Eugenia Balcells Foundation.
This year’s invited artists are Jesse Jones and Jaki Irvine. Selected Irish artists are David Bickley/Penny Hallas, Alisha Doody, Aine Ryan, David Quin. Selected Loop artist Xavi Bou.

DESERTS by Carlos Casas is an evolving audiovisual project inspired by Edgar Varèse (Paris 1922 – New York 1966) considered by many the godfather of electronic music. Casas reimagines Varèse’s composition “deserts” and his concept of the “desert” not only as physical place but also as a metaphor for inner isolation and existential solitude. The project explores both spaces of environmental degradation, such as desertification, and psychological landscapes of solitude and mystery.
Carlos Casas pushes his vision of the visual sound realm, to experiment with new ways of presenting image and sound but also on new ways of working with his own archive materials.

If today the number of visitors to an exhibition far exceeds the number of visitors to a gallery or museum, we might deduce that the work of the art photographer often has a larger audience than the artists whose work he portrays. This project focuses, through the gesture of turning the camera, on the figure of the contemporary art documentary photographer as a fundamental mediator between the work of art and the spectator in the Digital Age, exploring the relationship established between the artist, his work and the photographer.

The work draws inspiration from Euro-Westerns filmed in Spain, like Navajo Joe (1966) in Cáceres. These films transformed the Spanish landscape into a “virtual American West,” creating a stage for actors from the U.S. and Europe to perform exaggerated versions of themselves. As an Australian who has watched hundreds of these films, I’ve experienced Spain through this cinematic lens. In my performance of “A Hand,” I reflect on how this sense of absurdity and dislocation remains in my body, intersecting with the actual Spanish terrain, and explore the lingering effects of this dual experience.

In Models of Seeing, the collective Estampa interrogates the tools of computer vision and their way of looking at the world. What do they see and how do they speak? Which are their limits? How can they be used against the wind? Three pieces exploring the still image, a video-essay and a publication construct a discussion of these models of vision, devising critical, poetic and humorous strategies. With these pieces, they take these tools to terrains that contradict their logic of surveillance and control.

ENCAIXAR is a collective exhibition by Gemma Ferreón, Cinthya Fung and Mercedes Saya Rosés as part of the Catàrsia collective. It consists of three interactive pieces/devices/boxes that address, from different perspectives, the processes of migration, mourning, uprooting but also of gift giving, care and home.
The Catàrsia collective is a group of Asian-descendant artists and activists and this is the first time their work is presented as an art exhibition. The installation is a continuation of an activation/workshop produced while in residence at CCCB which had mentoring by independent journalist, researcher and curator Nancy Garín.

Pilbara Interregnum: Seven Political Allegories questions extractivist and colonial mythologies, addressing territorial disputes and proposing a political reimagining of the territory. The Pilbara, a vast and arid region in the north of Western Australia, has been transformed by the exploitation of its rich mineral deposits since the first colonial incursions 160 years ago. Today, in addition to iron, gas, and oil, new reserves of lithium and rare earth minerals are being explored, placing the Pilbara at the center of the global energy transition.

In the exhibition (in-)sight, (in-)place, Robert Bergmann and Maximilian Seegert delve into the pervasive impact of images—be it from Google images, films, social media, or books—on our perception of landscapes. Their work examines how these countless representations create a feeling of both immersion and detachment, prompting us to question the nature of our connection to the environment. The exhibition suggests that our interaction with images forms a labyrinthine network where each element mirrors another, creating a recursive tapestry in which every stone, every tree or every building is a template for another. A version of a version of a version.

Cuerpos errantes is the translation of the Greek ‘plankton’, describing a collection of organisms floating adrift. Their role in aquatic ecosystems, especially marine ecosystems, is essential, as among other things they contribute to oxygen production, carbon absorption and cloud formation. This experimental project, the result of a collaboration between the Instituto de Ciencias del Mar (ICM) – CSIC, Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture and Compañía Inervo, aims to make the invisible visible and explore through different performative audiovisual expressions the interconnection between the human and non-human worlds. The project highlights the need for dialogue between science and art for the creation of new narratives.

A film about a wide range of possibilities of being simultaneously dead and alive, in medicine, history, literature and religious beliefs. It reflects upon the principles on which those possibilities are based.

The questioning of matter is common in many processes and debates about current art, often from a thematic viewpoint. However, it is also possible to approach materiality as a method. This exhibition brings together the work of the finalists of the Miquel Casablancas Award 2024 and the three projects developed during 2023 as part of the SAC-FiC residencies. Even though a variety of concerns are considered, methodological affinities can be found among them. Through sculpture, installations and audiovisual pieces, these artworks invite us to explore their construction processes and carry out an archaeology of the substrate they share.

Case 3181 is an experimental photo essay, a visual document with factual and fictional fragments that reconstruct a femicide in which a mannequin represents the victim. Combining found imagery with documentary photography and using an unconventional narrative, this project explores the problem of violence against women without sensationalising the subject or re-victimising victims.

We present two videos by Bernardí Roig (Palma de Mallorca, 1965): Otras manchas en el silencio (2011), which explicitly communicates the content and formal technique of the citation with Resnais’ original work, but proposes a way out. In addition to the denunciation of alienation, there is the idea that this manifests itself through a kind of anesthesia of the passions (sewing one’s mouth shut), and Ejercicios de Invisibilidad (2012), which is a compound of two substances that maintain a very intimate relationship: the stimulus of desire and the trace of memory.

Robert Wilson’s Video Portraits project, initiated in 2004, fuses theatrical elements such as lighting, costumes and set design to create video portraits of iconic figures, from celebrities to artists to animals. Although the portraits look like photographs, the use of video reveals subtle movements, blurring the line between film and photography. With over 100 works exhibited globally, each portrait is a meticulous production that reflects Wilson’s theatrical aesthetic, achieving a unique visual depth and narrative. Exhibitions in Times Square, the Louvre and multiple museums stand out, consolidating its impact on contemporary art.

Finnish-Mexican artist Amulio Espinosa addresses the paradox of progress in relation to nature through his multidisciplinary exhibition Mapa Ferroviario, which is considered poetic activism. Using audiovisual elements, it showcases spaces that are being irreversibly transformed by the controversial Mayan Train, a political mega-project being developed in a biosphere reserve that many regard as an ecocide. Through sensations, movements, and human interventions in the surroundings, the exhibition invites reflection on the responsibility of our actions within an ecosystem that precedes us and will ultimately survive us.

Endevinalla is a rotoscoping that starts from the sampling process within hip-hop culture to expand it to the audiovisual field. The images are subtracted from a series of 4 television fragments to transfer them to an animation. The 4 fragments correspond to: the movie À bout de souffle by Godart, the video of a fall from a comedy show, the recording of a police chase from a helicopter and an Easter procession.

In Cuddly circuits in motion, Mónica Rikić invites the public to explore the sensitive potential of technology. Psychoflage is an interactive, multisensory installation that transforms the space into a fantasy landscape with inflatable modules that emulate the organic breathing of the mechanism. Species I, II and III proposes a reflection on the essence of machines, with robots that develop ‘existences’ of their own, based on alternative philosophies of evolution and sensation. Finally, Hyperbole is an experimental cognitive machine that challenges the norms of AI, focusing on operational autonomy and the perception of the machine as an entity.

Untitled/16:33 explores the aesthetic and political significance of a collapsing house, reflecting on the philosophical meaning of home. It tells the story of a house in Tirana, Albania, built over 30 years and demolished in 16:33 minutes, symbolizing the tension between permanence and impermanence. Set in Albania’s post-dictatorship era, the house represents informal constructions as acts of security and resistance. Inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, the video highlights the psychological significance of home, where its collapse symbolizes the unraveling of memories and a rupture in belonging, emphasizing the fragility of our connections to space.

Galeria Mayoral is celebrating 35 years. The brilliant artists from the most iconic avant-garde share a space with those of the postwar period and those from younger generations. The world of art, as it takes shape in the gallery’s space, shows great heterogeneity. The works of artists often associated with the canon of the avant-garde resist playing the role of ghosts of the present. Furthermore, the work of younger authors seems to be an endless screw suggesting continuity and difference at the same time. Seen together, they are radically unique, radically different.

To think about time is also to think about our relationship with spectral presences. In this sense, temporal linearity itself can be a ghost that still haunts us: it preserves hierarchical and violent structures, it limits our perception and our modes of action. It is from this premise that, in Delirar o racial, Davi Pontes and Wallace Ferreira propose a choreography outside the arrow of time, merging theoretical thought and movement in a practice of self-defence. Rejecting the image of a single, self-sufficient figure, they produce symbolic deviations from the bodily dynamics of power assertion and state repression.

Meddle is a video installation by Fabrizio Contarino, accompanied by ambient textures from Les Biologistes Marins. The title, inspired by the cover of Pink Floyd’s album Meddle, suggests visual interferences and undulations intertwined with ambient sounds. Through images of singularity and strangeness, the creative process generates a porous work, open to new connections with the audience. The installation explores underwater landscapes in a state of fluidity and reduced gravity, questioning the stability of traditional perspectives on the horizon and opening an environment where time and space dissolve.

In 1991 I bought a dry stone shelter in the countryside of La Mancha (what in Tomelloso is known as bombo). I was living in NY at the time. The bombo environment was a wonderland full of life: vineyards, melon trees, grain fields, almond and oak trees, partridges, crickets and ladybugs. Decades later, this fauna is on the verge of extinction. In this environment, I have been collecting empty chemical sacks to create collages. Intervening in crops in an artificial, chemical way is having disastrous effects on the fauna, the flora, our health and that of the farmers themselves.

The performance Aveugle Voix by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1975) and her texts Dictée (1982) and Exilée/Temps Morts (2009) explore the struggles of the migrant experience, capturing the silencing of marginalized voices and the challenges of self-expression in the face of historical trauma. Inspired by these themes, Suwon Lee creates Dictée/Exilée, a video in which she reflects on her own journey as a Venezuelan woman in self-exile. The piece weaves together images, music, and words, immersing the audience in a narrative that explores memory and expands concepts of homeland and identity toward a fluid, ever-evolving sense of self.

From, Maybe To is a research project culminating in the creation of various sculptures, aimed at investigating the natural algorithm through which self-similar processes of construction and dissolution manifest themselves in our memory via modules and their evolution, starting from personal remembrances.

In First Course, Tanya draws inspiration from the soup borscht and delves into profound themes of identity, behavior cultural coding, and expression. A captivating blend of humour and resigned acceptance, she has produced a video montage that mixes found footage with purposely filmed segments. Here, Tanya shares snapshots of life colliding with coded languages, of a time of becoming aware and coming to terms with the signals that demand attention to changes that are coming.

From the photographic archive of the Pre-Textos publishing house, music, silence, and some current snapshots, we enter the personal universe of Silvia, Manolo and Manuel. The mutual respect and love that has governed their shared life for more than fifty years, has also been transferred to their facet as editors, merging their vital and professional project.
This is not a portrait of the publishing house, it is a thank you from the friends who have known them, with whom they have wanted to share their story and their way of looking at and inhabiting the world.

Locus amoenus Between the strange and the creepy. Immersive audiovisual installation  Anomalous visual situations compose a path of reverberations that question the erotics of form and the critical tension of desire. A project created by Lucila Prestach and Federico Sancho, artists in residence at the TPK art and contemporary thought, they are part of the Fricció 248 collective.

Claudio Goulart (Brazil, 1954 – Netherlands, 2005) developed his artistic practice between the first half of the 1970s and the early 2000s in Amsterdam, where he found the possibility to experiment in the fields of performance, video and photography. Gladiators of the Future addresses the main themes of Goulart’s work: the body (of the artist, his friends, and the cities); the political (identities and violence) and time (after facing health complications related to HIV/AIDS, the artist decided to go through euthanasia in 2005).