PICNIC SESSIONS 2022. VITAL SUPPORT

Time: 18:00 – 23:00

Note: Hotpark will begin at 18:00 and last around 4 hours during which the public can come and go. The roof terrace will be open.

VICTÓRIA BEMFICA, EMILY DA SILVA Y GABRIELA CLAVERÍA - Hotpark

Hotpark. Image: Gabriela Claveria.

“We stage the dystopia in which we live: an endless summer on beaches in South America, an exotic party to celebrate chaos while we hold our breath. In Hotpark we share our petrochemical sweat, we glorify the banal and give our bodies up to ecstasy.”

Hotpark is a performance conceived with a 60-minute narrative structure repeated throughout the duration of a working day. Through dance, the performers drive their exhausted bodies to a shared ecstasy with the public.

Like América Imaginaria by Rojas-Mix, Hotpark is a fantasy portrait of an exotic land populated with species in danger of extinction. A performance that evokes the extravagance and decadence of Latin American spa resorts inhabited by characters who while away their time in leisure, euphoria and boredom, a setting between reality and fiction to the rhythm of Brazilian funk and Latin-American reggaeton. An invitation to dance, to question our surroundings, to celebrate intimacy and sharing, a social encounter where the popular forges a creative space, a defence of marginalised culture.

The Brazilian dancers and performers Victória Bemfica and Emily da Silva and the interdisciplinary Chilean artist Gabriela Clavería, currently living in Lisbon, use dance, visual arts and music to take us on a journey to the necrosubamerican beaches they have recently left behind only to enter a new reality that signals them as migrant women in a post-pandemic context.

 

IKRAM BOULOUM

Ikram Bouloum. Image: Ana Larruy.

“With my sessions I want to convey the capacity of an open body to dance new realities, new voices, to feel and perceive differently through listening. To defend the act of enjoyment as a form of politics. Working cooperatively is the only way of getting nearer to utopia.”

The sessions by Ikram Bouloum, which she defines as experimental electronica and global bass, can be conceived as a polyphonic space where many voices are represented at once in constant change. Like Virginia Woolf in The Waves, she tries to tell something through many points of view in order to achieve a more representative reality.

Her sound explores bass music, reggaeton, dembow and gqom, using the party space to materialize all her insights into music and defend its ethical and political dimension.

Ikram Bouloum is a lynchpin of Barcelona’s culture scene: a programmer, DJ, producer, promoter, sound experimentalist in countless projects, she is a centrifugal force in the Catalan scene, either individually or in projects like iii (aiaiai) together with Isamit Morales, the Zen 55 collective or l’Affluent.

In 2021 she released her first EP, Ha-bb5, produced by Mans: a dialogue between contemporary western electronica and a personal reinterpretation of Maghreb music and dance aesthetic. With a feminist, emancipated and innovative thrust, the music in Ha-bb5 draws a unique, empowered and safe space through her cultural legacy.

 

PICNIC SESSIONS 2022

VITAL SUPPORT

Interdependence is at the very groundbase of our most everyday reality. Marina Garcés contends that “you cannot say I without an echo of us”, but it is a singular us—not ‘all of us’ but rather ‘each one of us’. We are increasingly bombarded by the fantasy that it is possible to live in isolation, but, not only that, that this life in isolation is livable. Political discourses, economic dynamics, ways of life, routines, slogans and individualist aspirations hold sway. And even though the lesson that we need each other can be gleaned from the extreme circumstances we have lived through and from everyday reality, the dominant narratives are different.

Coexistence has been smothered by survival.

Interdependence, and its manifold expressions, is the common thread running through these picnic sessions: ranging from our relationship with nature to work relations. The role of the public is crucial to reach the level of euphoria needed to generate the sensation of community, the sense of belonging that I, you and we all look for in a family, a rave or a union.

Interdependence comes about from the undeniable vulnerability that we all share in common. To bring this reality to light, the hierarchical relationship between audience and artists will disappear in the sessions when creators openly reveal their precariousness, endemic to the cultural industry, exposing the hidden underbelly of their life stories, a kind of in bio veritas that speaks of hand-to-mouth jobs and the difficulty if not directly the impossibility of making a living from art. In addition, the bureaucratic, administrative and fiscal demands required to take part in certain cultural spaces are major obstacles for creative practice. To circumvent and shatter them, mutual support is, as always, the most effective instrument at hand.

More than just participating, the audience becomes one with the music and performances, it is invited to reach out and touch each other blindly, to make exchanges on the sidelines of the economy or to take stock of their privilege with regards those who society categorizes as dependents, as if the rest of us were not.

These Picnic Sessions are an invitation to make the most of these bonds, and to create new ones. With euphoria.

Curated by: Nerea Pérez de las Heras and Mar Rojo.

// At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Picnic Society was founded in London and met regularly in the open air. On its outings, which had no specific host as such, the individual members were expected to provide the refreshments and the entertainment. Starting out from the same concept, and forming its own particular Picnic Society, every year CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo invites various curators to design a programme for the art centre’s roof terrace.

Every Thursday from the end of May until mid-July the CA2M roof terrace will be transformed into a space where we will carry out a programme of activities mixing the body and sound with education and participation. //

PROGRAMME

Thurs 26/05 I IF YOU MOVE, I MOVE Miss Beige, Dembooty

Thurs 02/06 I OUTSIDE THE NORM Costa Badía, LVL1

Thurs 09/06 I INTERDEPENDENTS Ana Matey, Maricas: Jovendelaperla & Berenice

Thurs 16/06 I A SINGLE BODY Ernesto Artillo, Ece Canli

Thurs 23/06 I NEW PIECES, NEW GAMES Andrea Jiménez, Caliza

Thurs 30/06 I MELT, MIX, STIR Victória Bemfica, Emily da Silva, Gabriela Clavería

TIME: 21:00 - 23:00 (EXCEPT 30/06, WHICH STARTS AT 18:00).

DOWNLOAD PROGRAMME HERE

PICNIC SESSIONS 26/05- IF YOU MOVE, I MOVE

Time: 21:00 – 23:00

MISS BEIGE- Intermission

“Our prismatic world, which cannot even be neutralized by deepest black, sees the rise of beige, an impartial tone that conveys peace and calm. But beige, generally an unpopular and insipid tonality, goes much further because its mere presence manages to soften other stronger tonalities.”

Miss Beige is a radically atypical contemporary heroine: neutral, dignified, silent and armed with a hammer. In her piece Intermission, Miss Beige enacts this identification with the public, surprises it, receives it, blends in with it and even shares an intimate moment. She becomes the stranger with whom we are forced to share a cramped space. How do we change our behaviour when we are with someone else? Are we ourselves or do we hide and protect ourselves? In Intermission Miss Beige looks back at you like a social mirror in which we ask ourselves such eternally human questions about others, like: Who are they? How do I see them? Who am I? How do they see me?

Ana Esmith (Madrid, 1976) graduated with a BA in Journalism from UCM and a diploma in Dramatic Art from the International Drama School Philippe Gaulier in London. Her background in journalism and theatre come together in the field of performance with Miss Beige, her first exploration of non-verbal work. Since her inception in 2016, Miss Beige has been invited to major fairs and festivals in Spain and internationally such as ARCO, JustMad, Fundación Mapfre, Casa Velázquez, Teatro Valle Inclán de Madrid and Teatros del Canal, among others. She will be making her debut on the big screen shortly, in Rainbow the upcoming film directed by Paco León.

DEMBOOTY

“The space we create is like a big family that grows and changes, that supports one another and generates dynamics of freedom in a safe setting. For us dance is liberating, necessary and healing.”

When twerking was almost taboo on the electronic scene, it ruled the roost in Dembooty parties, rubbing shoulders with Bass, Kuduro and UK Funky. Now that it has swept all before it and there’s a twerking party in every corner, there is a move back to the basics (remixes, edits, reworkings that turn those sounds on their head) and forward towards other more UK, experimental and rootsy rhythms. This session will be looking for a gut connection with the public in a continuous circular flow of energy.

Dembooty is CRKS290, Brava and Umami, who’ve been working together since 2019 to make the dancefloor sweat to global sounds focused on Funk, Dembow and Dancehall. Staunch defenders of dance, they bring the party with them wherever they go. Dembooty is rooted in non-conformism and experimentation, ignoring the rigid rules of conventional clubbing without reneging on quality in music. Their philosophy is based on absolute pleasure, with dance at the centre. They are so radically inclusive that their only merchandising is a butt plug with their logo. The perfect accessory for all bodies.

PICNIC SESSIONS 02/06- OUTSIDE THE NORM

Time: 21:00 – 23:00

COSTA BADÍA - Excluded

“I like working with fragileness and humour. I feel that current collective and participative approaches don’t take functional diversity into consideration. I am drawn to the idea of ‘playing with life’ with the rules that suit me”.

Costa Badía (Madrid, 1981) has always worked from her subjectivity and her experience as a person with functional diversity. Her practice centres on the validation of the error. She is interested in the dissidence of bodies and aligns herself with Crip Theory and intersectional feminism. Photography was her main focus for many years but recently she has been experimenting with performance. She wants to turn the odd, ugly, strange and exceptional into a stereotype, given that they are very often excluded in supposedly inclusive spaces. Her project Excluded will make the public “play with life” but doing so following her rules which include blindness, deafness and difficulties in standing for a long period of time. The discomfort of the majority can give rise to rethinking and even enjoyment.

Costa Badía has a diploma in Image Studies, and has graduated from Universidad Complutense de Madrid with a BA in Fine Arts and an MA in Artistic Education in Social and Cultural Institutions. Her work Polaroid from the project “Deleción” was acquired by and exhibited at CA2M. She has staged her performance Cenicienta in various spaces, including MNCARS in Madrid. She has lectured in various MA programmes in Spain and abroad and has taken part in the 8th Encontro de artistas Novos, as well as in the Vision and Presence conferences curated by Semiramis González with a performance called La bordadora.

LVL1

“Call, shout if you need me, cause I’ve got a mission for you that’s pure dynamite.”

LVL1 live is a call to action, to movement, to fun, as long as you are yourself. You can’t ignore their take on grime, deconstructed house, experimental hip hop and references to Shygirl, Azealia Banks and Zebra Katz. LVL1 takes its inspirations from voguing balls and is able to make people feel part of something bigger and more important while pumping out hedonism at 130 bpm.

LVL1 is Luthien Barea, a Gen-Z Andalusian rapper and queer singer. They define themself somewhere between queen and king, at home on the margins, where collusion and collectiveness is almost automatic in opposition to the norm that by definition rejects them. They were part of the recently defunct trap band Queer Mafia, an attempt to show a dissident perspective of a music genre mostly dominated by cis hetero men. Overnight they took over the scene and events in Granada, and started to attract national media attention. Now on their own, they are finding success ever since FVN! went viral on TikTok and other social media, clocking up millions of plays on YouTube and Spotify.

PICNIC SESSIONS 09/06- INTERDEPENDENTS

Time: 21:00 – 23:00

ANA MATEY – On Interdependence

“When I verbalize a performance, I feel that language limits it and, on the contrary, action expands it. So, this new piece wishes to expand the idea of interdependence”.

On Interdependence is performance number fourteen within the series “Conversations” which Ana Matey, the artist from Madrid, has been working on since 2015. A shared trait of all these performances is an exploration of soundscapes through bodily movement and the elements the artist brings into play. Each one has its own individual theme, and on this occasion the conversation is about the idea of interdependence: that wonderful state of mutually needing one another. A performance where the concealed is revealed, the concealed is unfolded, the concealed is elevated, covering us and uniting us and who knows what else...

With a baggage of over twenty years, Ana Matey’s body of work crosses over between the fields of visual arts, performance, butoh dance and in recent years she has been exploring the world of sound in her pieces, seeking to generate a dialogue or conversation through bodily movement and the object. Her work examines the relationship between humans and nature, the search for balance between the natural and the artificial, advancing diversity and difference as values in a standardized society. Diversity and decentralization are two crucial values for the proper construction of a society or a garden.

MARICAS - JOVENDELAPERLA & BERENICE

“The techno rave scene took off in the 1980s with the help of the LGBTQ+ community. The two communities have very similar values, like freedom, youth and underground culture. Our home is Barcelona, but our goal is to take Maricas all over the world”.

MARICAS is a party, MARICAS is freedom. Its founders are three women and non-binary people, two from Latin America: Eloisa Blitzer, Georgina Guasch and ISAbella. But it is also other people who believe in this music happening. JOVENDELAPERLA (Perla Zúñiga) and BERENICE (Vera Amores), the driving force behind this session, are, in the words of the collective, like an explosive mix between Darth Vader and Björk, or as if Berghain were opening a branch in Benidorm.

MARICAS came together in January 2018 to fill a perceived gap for a party that would combine electronic music and the queer scene in Barcelona. It evolved to become a record label, a platform and a community. It has travelled to over ten cities in Europe: Stockholm, Valencia, Ibiza, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Tisno, Offenbach/Frankfurt, London and more, and this year it will be touring to Munich, Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, Antwerp, Brussels and a number of different festivals like Body Movements, Dimensions Festival and Celebration of Live.

 PICNIC SESSIONS 16/06-  A SINGLE BODY

Time: 21:00 – 23:00

ERNESTO ARTILLO - Corpus

“We are going through a period of overdose of activism, of different overlapping and mutually contradicting activisms, and also of visual overdose. A context of saturation in which the causes and visual stimuli are received as noise that stops us from capturing what’s going on behind and in which the image is one of the strongest instruments of exclusion there is”.

Corpus Christi, literally meaning ‘the body of Christ’, is a Christian feast day held this year on 16 June. It celebrates the Eucharist which is the act of eating the body of Christ, of swallowing his example and, by means of this act, making God appear on Earth. Ernesto Artillo’s piece is a communion and, by definition, communion is a collective act.

The public is invited to make contact with each other through the sense of touch. By holding out your hands, without seeing, you will find another person, and, as a whole, create a divine body. Corpus will be people meeting without judging, offering their hands as safe places for others. People will be asked to make their sense of touch a safe place, thus constructing a network of welcoming and unconditional encounters that will bring about a common union, the shared body.

Ernesto Artillo (Malaga, 1987) addresses the issue of the deconstruction of identity as an approximation to spirituality, always inflected by religious imagery, political symbols and with the body as support. Among his most noteworthy projects are: Lo incondicional, a performance at Teatros del Canal (Madrid, 2021); La condición humana, a performance at Centro de Cultura Contemporánea La Térmica (Malaga 2021); Acto de Penitencia, a performance at Centro de Arte Contemporáneo CAC (Malaga, 2021); Comunión, a theatrical ritual with Marc Sempere, Niño de Elche and Erik Jiménez at the Fira Mediterránea Festival (Manresa, 2021). Since 2015 he has given chats and workshops at universities, art and design schools.

ECE CANLI - Vox Flora, Vox Fauna

“I am interested in the lives of women who are considered mad, their special relationship with nature, with the forest, with flora, which is why it is impossible for me not to look towards tantrism, Turkish cosmology and animism”.

Ece Canli’s debut as a soloist, Vox Flora, Vox Fauna is a series of soundscapes linked by extended vocal techniques, extralinguistic poetry and a rigorous instrumental part. Ece evokes and crystalizes the union of the human, animal and natural as a mediation between the earthly and heavenly. In her songs the plasticity of the human voice, enriched by the artificialness of registers, pulsations, resonances and dissonances, is a celebration of bestial and vegetable origins and an invitation to metamorphosis.

Ece Canli is a Turkish researcher, artist and musician based in Portugal who has always been interested in demonized bodies and mental disconnection through extralinguistic expressions. She holds a PhD in Design from the University of Porto, and is co-founder of the Decolonising Design collective, a regular collaborator with other artists, creating soundtracks for performances, exhibitions and video artworks. She is currently part of NOOITO (duo with the Spanish harpist Angélica Salvi), LIVE LOW (music collective led by Pedro Augusto) and COBRA'CORAL (vocal trio with Catarina Miranda and Clélia Colonna).

PICNIC SESSIONS 23/06- NEW PIECES, NEW GAMES

Time: 21:00 – 23:00

ANDREA JIMÉNEZ - Time Bank

“Do you have a need that someone could satisfy but are afraid to ask them? Do you need someone to help you with a breakdown, moving house, a lift? Do you need someone to look after your sick mother while you go on your next Tinder date? Do you need someone to organise a surprise birthday party, to go with you to an endoscopy or to teach you how to dance bachata? Don’t be shy, just ask. Here at live Time Bank you can make your wishes come true (in exchange for a bit of commitment, co-responsibility and community spirit)”.

Time Bank consists in a community that exchanges needs for skills, without any profit motive or money exchanging hands. The idea lies in stretching the concept and turning it into a live event in which it is the spectators who mutually satisfy each other’s requests, in a collaborative game somewhere between an auction, a raffle and speed-dating.

A director, author, actor and producer, Andrea is deputy artistic director of the Teatro En Vilo company which she co-founded in London in 2012 with Noemí Rodríguez. With a degree in Law and a postgraduate diploma in Performing Arts from the London International School of Performing Arts, she has worked as an actor and director with renowned companies in France, Spain and the UK.

Under the umbrella of Teatro en vilo, Andrea has created and directed many shows including the multi award-winning piece Interrupted, Generación Why, premiered in 2018 at Centro Dramático Nacional, Miss Mara: Quien se reserva no es artista, premiered at Circo Price; Man Up and La distancia, both for Centro Dramático Nacional.

Note: Andrea Jiménez will lead a 3-day workshop before the session. More info on workshop and enrolment shortly.

CALIZA – The Decline

“If there is someone who the pandemic did not catch by surprise, it is those of us who have interiorized the way the world is going.”

The Decline builds from an electro-pop foundation with additions of copla, instrumental ambience and club music. The influences underpinning Caliza’s latest offering range from Franco Battiato to Yves Tumor passed through the filter of Laurie Anderson, Jenny Hval or Kelly Lee Owens.

After engaging with the civil social disobedience climate movement Extinction Rebellion, Caliza underscores the magnitude of the problem and its inextricable relationship with the economic and productive system we tend to believe is untouchable. This and much more gave rise to an album revolving around survival and the will to prevail in a world brought to the point of collapse by climate change. There are reflections on posterity, calls to embrace eco-anxiety, dystopian narratives, songs dedicated to those who accompany us on the journey, a gaze back on the past and forward to the future with uncertainty but with certain fortitude.

Elisa Pérez has been operating under the alias of Caliza since 2015, the year when she released “Medianoche/Mediodía” with Discos Walden. Previously she had played drums for various bands in Madrid. Her second album, “Mar de cristal”, coproduced with David Harrow, was released in 2018, after a stint at the artist’s residency centre at Matadero Madrid. Her third release came in 2021 with an input from Raúl Pérez. Caliza has shared a stage with Crash Course in Science, Molly Nilsson or Cate Le Bon in festivals, museums and self-run centres.

PICNIC SESSIONS 30/06- MELT, MIX, STIR

Time: 18:00 – 23:00

Note: Hotpark will begin at 18:00 and last around 4 hours during which the public can come and go. The roof terrace will be open.

VICTÓRIA BEMFICA, EMILY DA SILVA and GABRIELA CLAVERÍA - Hotpark

“We stage the dystopia in which we live: an endless summer on beaches in South America, an exotic party to celebrate chaos while we hold our breath. In Hotpark we share our petrochemical sweat, we glorify the banal and give our bodies up to ecstasy.”

Hotpark is a performance conceived with a 60-minute narrative structure repeated throughout the duration of a working day. Through dance, the performers drive their exhausted bodies to a shared ecstasy with the public.

Like América Imaginaria by Rojas-Mix, Hotpark is a fantasy portrait of an exotic land populated with species in danger of extinction. A performance that evokes the extravagance and decadence of Latin American spa resorts inhabited by characters who while away their time in leisure, euphoria and boredom, a setting between reality and fiction to the rhythm of Brazilian funk and Latin-American reggaeton. An invitation to dance, to question our surroundings, to celebrate intimacy and sharing, a social encounter where the popular forges a creative space, a defence of marginalised culture.

The Brazilian dancers and performers Victória Bemfica and Emily da Silva and the interdisciplinary Chilean artist Gabriela Clavería, currently living in Lisbon, use dance, visual arts and music to take us on a journey to the necrosubamerican beaches they have recently left behind only to enter a new reality that signals them as migrant women in a post-pandemic context.

IKRAM BOULOUM

“With my sessions I want to convey the capacity of an open body to dance new realities, new voices, to feel and perceive differently through listening. To defend the act of enjoyment as a form of politics. Working cooperatively is the only way of getting nearer to utopia.”

The sessions by Ikram Bouloum, which she defines as experimental electronica and global bass, can be conceived as a polyphonic space where many voices are represented at once in constant change. Like Virginia Woolf in The Waves, she tries to tell something through many points of view in order to achieve a more representative reality.

Her sound explores bass music, reggaeton, dembow and gqom, using the party space to materialize all her insights into music and defend its ethical and political dimension.

Ikram Bouloum is a lynchpin of Barcelona’s culture scene: a programmer, DJ, producer, promoter, sound experimentalist in countless projects, she is a centrifugal force in the Catalan scene, either individually or in projects like iii (aiaiai) together with Isamit Morales, the Zen 55 collective or l’Affluent.

In 2021 she released her first EP, Ha-bb5, produced by Mans: a dialogue between contemporary western electronica and a personal reinterpretation of Maghreb music and dance aesthetic. With a feminist, emancipated and innovative thrust, the music in Ha-bb5 draws a unique, empowered and safe space through her cultural legacy.

ON THE CURATORS

Nerea Pérez de las Heras is a journalist with a degree in Art History. In her career as a communicator, she has mainly written on culture and feminism in newspapers and journals like El País, El País Semanal, Vogue, Esquire, Marie Claire, SModa, Harper’s Bazaar and Glamour. She also collaborates in radio and TV programs like A vivir for Cadena Ser or Las que faltaban for Movistar +. She is currently at the helm of the Saldremos mejores podcast, along with Inés Hernand, and Lo Normal, together with Antonio Nuño. She has co-authored and performed in the stage pieces Feminismo para torpes and Cómo hemos llegado hasta aquí, both focused on dissecting economic and gender inequalities through comedy.

She likes scuba diving, cats, planning a placid old age living with her friends and redistributing wealth.

Mar Rojo is a music programmer with a PhD in Communication from La Sapienza in Rome. She has done just about everything in live performance. She directed the art programme for venues like Moby Dick and El Sol, has toured with bands, founded and closed a promotion company, taken care of production for festivals in Madrid like Tomavistas, Festival Brillante, Sound Isidro and Veranos de la Villa, and now continues her journey as a booker for Primavera Sound. And all without ignoring her academic facet as she pulls her weight on the board of MIM (association of women in the music industry).

She loves cooking with leftovers, the dolce vita, dancing, planting with root cuttings and learning new things every day from her friends, all of who are incredible