Doropaedia

Silence is a polysemy concept that can be used to describe different situations in different contexts. The idea of silence encompasses both literal and symbolical lack of sound in which poetic images, theories and historical analysis on social phenomena, spiritual processes or personal pacts can take part.

Besides, noise is the necessary counterpart of silence noise, sort of an inseparable marriage passing the baton from one to another throughout our perception. Music contemplates silence as a seal between passages, as a dilatation of the space in blank, or as a previous clear call to harmonic change.  In fact, silence can be a communicative resource or a musical measure, but what does it happens when silence comes from a society in conflict?

CD CONTENTS
 
Audio
Tres
 
Video
María Ruído
 
Images
Fran Meana
 
Text 
Traficantes de sueños -Dream dealers-

PROGRAMMING
13 NOV

18:30 H. Round table: The Politics of science. Perspective from the intellectual and artistic practice.
Presented and moderated by Daniel Granados (Producciones Doradas/ Doropaedia)
Lecturer: María Ruido, Traficantes de sueños (Julia Millán Bermejo), Tres.
This round table aims to deal with the idea of the already suffered silence from politics, understanding politics as all that which make references to the capacity to decide about the subjects of the life in society and found and alter, not only the law which governs human society but the its perception. Lecturer will approach the concept explaining the way they understand and board the idea of silence from their intelectual and creative practice (documentary, artistic or editorial).

19:30 H. Concierto para apagar by Tres -Concert to turn off-
Tres will perform one of its last "concerts to turn off". The audio from DOROPAEDIA will be the result of this performance, which will be live and recorded placing mics around the venue to register the progressive silence which will take over. The “Conciertos para Apagar -Concerts to turn off” are based on the careful listening of the continuous sound set within the venue during the process of gradually turning off and depending on its function and intensity up to maximum possible level of silence. We will then assist the surgical dissection of the background of our auditory life, the shapeless mass of blows and hums that floods the public, working and domestic spaces where there are running machines. Through a gradual turning off process of all sounds, we will witness the discovery of sound landscape increasingly crisp and sharp in line with increasingly presence of the silence. The final destiny of this sonoric journey is the new milieu  resulting from repositionating silence within its natural threshold.  Now, the quality of listening is perfect.

20:30 H. Projection of El Plan Rosebud 2, 2008 by María Ruido
Within her practical investigation on the collective memory, started with “La memoria interior” -"The inner memory"(2002), María Ruido presents a critical maping on the politics of memory finding testimonies, observing them, dialoguing with them and structuring them, in four parts and three intermidiates, so they question  embedded ideas in the public sphere. This second act of Plan Rosebud addresses the last years of Francoism (and the companies which were born with), transition (as elite agreement) and post (with the explosion of the punk and movida movement) viewed from the knowledge of private individuals and of members of the social movements which emerged   parallel to political parties. The study case in centered in  Galicia, although easily extrapolated to the rest of States, which can be also compared to what was happening in the Great Britain of Thatcher.

LECTURERS

Tres
Multidisciplinary artist focused on the investigation and experimentation with silence. Silence cocktails,  Blackouts or complete turning off of buildings, clandestine actions, videos, exhibitions, installations and all kind of ceremonies are some of the multiple ways that Tres has translated silence in the last 15 years. Today, Tres is focused on the search of a more conceptual mean and less experiential to approach silence. This change of direction mainly follows the interest in considering some negative aspect of this phenomenon which remained unexplored,  mostly those from the political and comunication fields. She is curating  her second and consecutive cycle of exhibitions for Espai del Fundación Joan Miró in Barcelona.
http://elsilencio.com

María Ruído
Videomaker, cultural investigator and producer, developing from 1996 interdisciplinary projects about the social elaboration of the body and its placement within the imaginary of works, as well as the mechanisms of memory construction and its relation with the narrative manner of history. Nowadays,  living in Barcelona where she is professor at the Design and Image Department from Universidad de Barcelona, where she also is part of study groups on representation and its contextual relations.

Fran Meana
is artist and has displayed in exhibition such as: Basado en hechos reales, Artium, Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz. Antes que todo, CA2M, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Móstoles, Madrid. Everything is out there, La Casa Encendida, Madrid. 89Km., MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo/ CGAC, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela. When asking him about his contribution to Doropaedia, Fran addresses the experience of John Cage in Harvard in the early '50: “In 1951, John Cage visited the anechoic chamber of Harvard University. Cage entered into the chamber expecting to listen to silence, but, instead, he listened two sounds, a high and a low one. When explaining to the sound engineer, he said:
-'The high sound comes from your running nerve system. The low sound comes from your blood circulation.'“

Traficantes de sueños -Dream dealers-
Traficantes de sueños is a polifacetic project constituted in the nineties with the intention to be a space for training, reflection and meetings for alternative and social movements. Seeking to go beyond  that scope, it is intended to play its part to enrich debates, sensibilities and practices which aim at transforming that stage of things. Nowadays, it is composed by a library, a self-manage distributor ‬and an editorial. The essays have Creative Commons license and are available for pdf downloading  at: http://www.traficantes.net/ 

This installment will focus on the legal-philosophical concept of the commons, which refers to all assets that are not privately owned. The commons legislates and defines all assets that may be freely used by all the members of a given community. The commons can be used to describe tangible (forests, squares, etc.) and intangible assets (musical compositions, designs, etc.), as well as social (democracy), natural (ocean floors) and cultural elements (languages), as long as they are publicly and collectively managed.

CD CONTENTS

Music
Antonna
Los Caveles
Prisma en llamas
Wild Honey

Video
Zemos98

Text
Jordi Claramonte

Images
Miguel Brieva

PARTICIPATING BANDS

ANTONNA. Today, technology is advancing at a terrifying pace, and one of the consequences is that nobodies like this guy can record whole albums in their own homes and brazenly offer them to respectable, law-abiding citizens on the web. Accompanied by a raucous drum machine, an acoustic guitar and a moustachioed bassist, Anntona has released En la cama con Anntona, with a style which some have likened to Magnetic Fields and Mojinos Escozíos. Somewhere halfway between these two bands is this incredibly fresh pop pieced together with second-rate rhymes and more than first-rate melodies. Anntona is a good guy and he’s willing to prove it, regardless of who he has to trample on in the process.

LOS CLAVELES. Marcos played the saxophone with Au, but what he really wanted to do was play his own songs, which had a sound somewhere between Golpes Bajos and Josef K, so he started playing with Santos and Jordi, and it turned out that their sound was something more between Monochrome Set and Ciudad Jardín. Later they brought in Papeles and Miguel, and then Papeles and Miguel left and they brought in Sergio, and meanwhile they released two CD-Rs and gave a handful of concerts that won them a lot of fans, because they sound fresh and fun and have a lot of hit songs. 

PRISMA EN LLAMAS. Hugo, formerly of the band Margarita, and Pablo, formerly of Ensaladilla Rusa, are the two halves of Prisma en Llamas. They will soon be releasing an EP with songs that are a perfect genetic cross between Jesus and Mary Chain and El Último de la Fila. They offer us six songs of tension, like a rubber band that is about to break but refuses to snap with the restraint of the satiated glutton. Melodies that slide smoothly into your ears and down to your trachea and stay there, where the acoustics are better. Prisma en Llamas is one of the most agreeable surprises of 2010.

WILD HONEY. The official history of pop tends to tiptoe over a lot of albums which the most obsessive music buffs consider true touchstones. Wild Honey, the title of Guillermo Farré’s project, takes its name from the grossly underrated Beach Boys record – an album of marvellous songs where everything falls discreetly into its proper place. But marvels are never really discreet, and even the slightest effort to listen a bit more closely will soon reveal how great this album truly is. Wild Honey is that kind of band. Epic Handshakes and Bear Hug, Wild Honey’s debut album, features music that practically oozes love. You can hear echoes of Brill Building, The Zombies, early Scott Walker, the Sherman Brothers’ Disney soundtracks, Michel Legrand, Curt Boettcher, bubblegum pop, everything along the line from the upbeat sentimental tunes of American music from the first half of the 20th century to a pocket-size Sufian Stevens and Jens Lekman with an innocent voice and gaze. Dressed-up pop that strives to be beautiful and is: solid tunes, impeccable arrangements and tributes.

CD CONTENTS. www.doropaedia.net

VIDEO SCREENINGS
Produced by Basurama

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION
Emmanuel Rodríguez, publisher and researcher for the Metropolitan Observatory.
Carlos Fernandez Liria, Full Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Complutense University of Madrid in the Department of Metaphysics and Knowledge Theory.
Jaime Palomera, anthropologist specialising in the conflict situations which emerged in the Parisian outskirts.

CONCERTS
Margarita
Cohete

CD CONTENTS. www.doropaedia.net

MUSIC

New releases by:

ASTRUD

Intelligence and approachability come together in this duo, capable of combining electronic music with the most acoustic pop and of delivering everything from poignant ballads to dance-floor hits. Immune to fashions and trends, they spearheaded the revival of Spanish electro-pop from the 1980s, but this has never lessened their enthusiasm for the great pop idols or kept them from playing with every conceivable style. Now elevated to historic status, this duo is one of Spain’s best indie music bands.

JOE CREPÚSCULO

Joe Crepúsculo (born Joël Iriarte) is a Spanish singer-songwriter. Though he records as a solo artist, he is also the singer and keyboardist for a band called Tarántula. His work is characterised by unpretentious vocals, profound and surreal lyrics, and homemade instrumental accompaniment, all with a low-fi sound. Another remarkable thing about this artist is that he releases his albums under a Creative Commons licence and posts them on his website for all to enjoy.

Now, after his album SuperCrepus (Producciones Doradas 2008) was hailed by music critics as one of the best Spanish albums of 2008, this October he brings us his third album entitled Chill Out.

LA BIEN QUERIDA

In April 2009, this artist released her debut album Romancero, produced by David Rodríguez (LA ESTRELLA DE DAVID). With seven familiar songs from the rough cut and five new ones, Romancero is one of the most eagerly awaited albums of recent years, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that it will be one of the most important in the years to come. Ana asked David Rodríguez (BEEF) to produce her work with the idea of blending the superb creativity of LA ESTRELLA DE DAVID (David’s solo project) with clean sounds adapted to the friendly context of her melodies. The result is that Ana’s songs acquire a unique artistic dimension with David’s sonic inventiveness, and his skill shines brighter than ever when tamed by the naturalistic beauty of Ana’s songs.

This work by LA BIEN QUERIDA is one of the most eagerly awaited releases of Spanish indie-pop of recent years, and this is because everyone fell in love with her demo (chosen as the best of 2007 by Mondo Sonoro, featured in Rockdelux and played hundreds of thousands of times on MySpace, where her page is one of the most visited new artist sites). This album is undoubtedly one of the most talked-about debuts in the history of Spanish indie music.

MANOS DE TOPO

Manos de Topo is a pop band that intones (sur)real Spanish lyrics, a fact which has led some to describe their style as bizarre pop. They recently released their second LP, El primero era mejor [The First One Was Better], and their website offers the following explanation: “The first one was better – or perhaps not, but at least it was less painful.” While the first one raised some blisters, this second album twists the knife in the wound and leaves us convalescing. And while earlier comments highlighted a surrealist intention behind their lyrics, now we have no choice but hyperrealism. A lot of people wondered what Manos de Topo would do next after their acclaimed Ortopedias Bonitas. Well, the answer is here, and we can already hear the ghoulish fascination and a few sharpened pens lurking behind the door. Will they do it again? Even better: they take it one step further.

ESTRAPERLO

In progression. Permeable to any variety of pop music. Like history, Extraperlo doesn’t crawl: it advances by leaps and bounds. This is obvious if we consider how they have managed to mutate an uncomplicated, homegrown indie-pop to achieve the global sound of Desayuno continental. This Barcelona-based quartet has assimilated the variability of their restless pop with the ease of individuals who never tire of learning, of moving forward. Now they confidently stride ahead, absorbing the good and rejecting the bad, and embracing a stylistic crossover that knows no bounds.

VIDEO

VENGA MONJAS

Venga Monjas is the nom de guerre of Xavier Daura and Esteban Navarro, two students dedicated to the quest for intentions. They are both avid fans of the television programme “La Hora Chanante” produced by Paramount Comedy in Spain. Seduced by the absurd humour, bizarre aesthetics and made-up vocabulary of the “chanantes”, they decided to create their own show at home. Just over a year ago, this odd couple began to make home videos for which they did not use predetermined scripts, preferring instead to draw on their own stores of remarkably polished humour. With no particular aim in mind, they began to record, edit and upload the video clips they made to YouTube. Using rather vague yet suggestive titles like “Infancia prohibida” [Forbidden Childhood] or “Los postres de Tia Edwish” (Aunt Edwish’s Desserts), Venga Monjas continued to post a new chapter each month, building up a community of fans who wait with baited breath for a chance to watch the next ripia (what they call any video that can be seen online). There’s not much we can say about the contents of the videos: situations that jump back and forth from the commonplace to the absurd, grotesque skits, skirmishes, and incomprehensible references.

TEXT

DIEGO A. MANRIQUE

Manrique is considered one of the leading authorities on contemporary music in Spain and owns one of the most important music collections in the country.

He started out as a journalist with the weekly Triunfo. Manrique initially contacted the magazine to criticise the poor quality of the articles it published on rock music, and the editors suggested that he send them something better. Manrique accepted the challenge. Soon afterwards, he joined the staff of Radio Castilla in Burgos. In the 1970s and 80s he wrote for magazines such as Vibraciones, Rock Especial, Todas las Novedades and all kinds of other publications, provided they had a page dedicated to rock music.

In 1979-80, he worked with Carlos Tena on Popgrama, a show about the musical avant-garde broadcast by Televisión Española. In the following years they would meet again on the sets of Caja de ritmos (1983), for which Manrique was the screenwriter, and Pop Qué (1984). He also worked as a screenwriter for the television programmes ¡Qué noche la de aquel año! (1987) and FM 2 (1988).

Since 1992, he has hosted the show El Ambigú on Radio 3, a station operated by Radio Nacional de España. He combines this work with writing music reviews for the Spanish daily El País and its Sunday supplement El País Semanal.
Manrique still writes occasionally for the magazine Efe Eme, which he founded, as well as for Rolling Stone.

In May 2008 he was appointed deputy director of Radio 3.

He won the National Ondas Prize for radio in 2001.

In February 2009, he received the Backstage Award from the APM (Association of Spanish Music Producers).

IMAGES

ATLAS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM

spectrumatlas.org

The Atlas of Electromagnetic Space is an interactive visualisation of the radio spectrum and a database of artistic and social interventions that have been developed in recent decades which rely on radio technologies. Projects are classified according to the frequency they occupy. The aim of the project is to create a clear and comprehensible visual tool that will allow users to understand how the frequency allocation system is structured and regulated and how it relates to everyday technologies such as radio, television, mobile phones, Wi-Fi networks and many more. But the most important goal of the Atlas is to create an archive of the most important and significant interventions in Hertzian space conceived and implemented by artists, designers, activists, hackers, social movements and other agents of civil society.

We believe that visualising this activity is necessary because it shows how alternative perspectives and interpretations of these technologies, and of the policies that regulate them, enrich their social and cultural potential beyond their designated uses. All of this cultural production is a prime example of how different social forces are demanding a participatory role in the political processes that govern the spectrum, in an arena where the telecommunications industries and the authorities have traditionally called all the shots.

CD CONTENTS. www.doropaedia.net

CONCERTS

Lidia Damunt

En el cementerio peligroso
(Subterfuge Records)

Lidia Damunt is one of the great names in music. And when I say great, I don’t just mean one of the great names in Spain – I mean one of the great names, full stop.

We Spaniards may find it hard to believe that a composer from the beach town of La Manga del Mar Menor has earned the right to rub artistic shoulders with some of the supposedly unapproachable giants of the international scene, but the vertigo we experience when we listen to her songs leaves no room for doubt. Is it really possible that someone like this grew up in our own backyard? With her remarkable debut album En la isla de las Bufandas, Lidia found a unique niche halfway between Nashville (the cradle of country music) and Olympia (the pop capital of DIY culture). Now, with En el cementerio peligroso, she has taken another giant leap forward and made things a bit more difficult for us.

Lidia Damunt writes the songs others wish they could compose, presents the albums others wish they could record, and gives the concerts others wish they could give. So small that she can barely see us. So great because, for a moment, we can barely see anything but her. Roberto Herreros

www.lidiadamunt.com
www.myspace.com/lidiadamunt

GRABBA GRABBA TAPE
(Gssh! Gssh! Records)

GRABBA GRABBA TAPE are the electronic duo from Madrid, comprising Lol-oh-vot on vocals and percussion and Gros-oh-vot on keyboards and vocals.
They have been called the Iberian equivalent of Daft Punk (with a Moranco twist) and their music is simply fantastic: they come on stage dressed like pink snowmen and make music with robotic voices. They have already toured all of Europe several times and their albums have been released in the USA.

The duo were the torchbearers of the new batch of fresh, irreverent bands in Madrid that revolutionised the underground scene.

www.myspace.com/grabbatize
www.gsshgssh.com/GGTweb/

MONTAÑAS MONTAÑAS (7'')
Tres Pies

Montañas is a new Asturian group that has us worked up to a fever pitch of excitement. Their first live performances have already elicited comparisons to Beat Happening, The Feelies and Bananas. In their press release, they say that “in Montañas, we express what we like and what we don’t like about Asturias”. Quite a statement of intent.

On a carefully designed MySpace page, the list of highlighted friends can also furnish important clues about the band’s identity. On the Montañas page, these include Thelemáticos, Anticonceptivas, Chiquita y Chatarra, Grande-Marlaska and Le Mot, to name a few. It is curious to note that many of these bands have at least one member who lives outside Asturias; this may be a reflection of an Asturian generation forced into a diaspora which, in some cases, has served to strengthen ties of friendship and collaboration within bands despite the distance. In the case of Montañas, it has inspired the private jokes used in the song titles. Just explaining the titles would require a whole other entry. For example, the title of the song appearing in the first video, “Yo conduzco, ella me guía” [I Drive, She Guides Me], is taken from a bumper sticker that can be seen on thousands of cars in Asturias and refers to Our Lady of Covadonga (!). Montañas has not yet recorded any tracks other than the 30-second song posted on their MySpace page, but they should – the sooner the better. Iván Conte (La increíble verdad)

www.myspace.com/accidentesgeograficos