Performance

Ostro is the name of a southerly wind, a hot and humid wind that in most cases doesn't blow for very long.

This live arts series kicks off in March like a warm breeze, bringing the meaning of the body to the museum’s galleries.

Once a month, different performing artists will be invited to develop a proposal in the museum space of their choice to involve the building’s architecture in the flow of movement, body and audiences.

Throughout the year, a series of performative proposals will be held in different parts of the museum. We want to forge bonds between dance, performance and the museum space, connect the creative processes of performativity, and enjoy diverse formulas that explore the body and its possibilities in the museum to generate a permanent space where movement is the protagonist.

The Museo CA2M is collaborating in the fifth and latest edition of Domingo, the performing arts festival hosted by La Casa Encendida and curated by Fernando Gandasegui that over the last five years has brought together national and international artists to encourage experimental languages.

As in previous editions, Domingo 2025 revolves around listening to what is happening on the current scene, delving deeper into the main themes that the programme has explored over the years: the convergence and opening of different disciplines, generations and geographical regions; the protagonism of the voice and the performativity of sound; the power of the political and sensitive agency of images and imagination; the exercise of joyful criticism in art practice; the proposal of alternatives for encounter and transmission between audiences and artists; somato-political practices in southern Europe; and, above all, the promotion and dissemination of radically experimental languages to counteract the flattening effect of neoliberal trends.

Thursday 13 March SUI. Free admission on a first come, first served basis.

• 19:00 ORELLES VOLADORES Nilo Gallego
• 20:15 CLARALINDA, CLARALINDA, CLARALINDA Luísa Saraiva

ORELLES VOLADORES. Nilo Gallego 19:00h Approximate duration: 1 hour

In Orelles voladores, Nilo Gallego surrenders to his experience as a percussionist and sound recordist while inviting the audience to search for a new music theory and a new sense of tuning through simplicity and honesty. Because every sound that reaches our ears, bounced back and filtered through all the materials it encounters along the way, has a story to tell; a story which, over the years, we learn to ignore over and which this piece invites us to rediscover.

Orelles voladores is a percussion concert in which the artist encourages us to form a percussion orchestra with our eardrums, and use the act of listening as our drumsticks. The concert changes every time it is performed, adapting to each space and situation. For this occasion, the performance will also feature the percussionist Frankuu Carrascosa and An Amateur Choir, the open project based at the Museo CA2M that has been operating for eight years and of which Nilo himself is a member.

Nilo Gallego (Ponferrada, León) is a musician and artist who gives performances in which experimentation with sound is the starting point. His pieces always have a playful element and seek interaction with the immediate environment and the ordinary. He is a member of the experimental action collective Orquestina de pigmeos (with Chus Domínguez) and regularly works with creators like Silvia Zayas, Alex Reynolds and the company Societat Doctor Alonso. He plays drums, percussion and electronic devices, and in addition to musical creation he designs soundscapes for contemporary theatre and dance companies. He has presented his work at national and international live arts festivals. He also designs tools and runs educational workshops based on listening and sound creation.

Credits Creation and performance: Nilo Gallego. Collaborations: Frankuu Carrascosa and An Amateur Choir. Audiovisual coordination and accompaniment: Chus Domínguez. Writing support: Álex Reynolds.. Co-production: TNT (Terrassa Noves Tendencies) Festival; Residencies with the support of : Espai nyamnyam, El Consulado Fonteta, Espacio Los Barros, La Poderosa and L’Estruch.

CLARALINDA, CLARALINDA, CLARALINDA Luísa Saraiva 20:15h Approximate duration: 40 minutes

Claralinda, Claralinda, Claralinda is a choreographic songbook in which Luísa Saraiva shares her practice and extensive research on the physicality of singing, the limits of the female voice and the haptic nature of sound. Analysing different types of songs and instruments and travelling through excerpts from her works, she explores the sonic possibilities between breathing, sound and singing through a movement practice that visually presents the physical effort involved in controlling the breath. The songs are added, transformed and improvised according to the research and process in which Luísa is engaged at a given time. Her musical universe is inspired by traditional folk songs from central and northern Portugal.

Luisa Saravia is a choreographer who lives between Porto and Berlin. Her artistic practice investigates the language of the body and voice, situated at the intersection between movement and musical composition. Her work is deeply influenced by research on the physicality of the voice and a contemporary, non-essentialist perspective of folklore and tradition.  Luísa studied psychology at the University of Porto and dance at the Folkwang Arts University in Essen, Germany. She has worked with artists from different disciplines, such as Lea Letzel, Carlos Azeredo Mesquita and Senem Gökce Ogultekin. She has received grants for several art research programmes and in 2019 she was selected for the danceWEB programme and was a choreographer-in-residence at K3 | Tanzplan Hamburg. In 2022/2023 she received the Tanzpraxis grant from the city of Berlin. Since 2020 she has been an activist in the field of mental health in performing arts, promoting workshops and lectures.

Credits Choreography and performance: Luísa Saraiva. Instrument: Inês Tartaruga Água. Acknowledgements: João dos Santos Martins and Associação Parasita.

In association with: 

María Us is a Guatemalan activist who was a guerilla member during Guatemala’s armed internal conflict between 1960 and 1996.

As the outcome of the partnership between her and the artist Ana Gallardo, we are presenting a play in the form of a biographical act which tells the story of a forest that is both the memory of land struggles and the community’s means of sustenance, in an attempt to disinhibit and publicise the resistance of several generations of female bodies violated by their family members and fellow political activists, too.

MARÍA US

I am a woman with K'iche' roots. I speak my native language. Ever since I remember, I’ve worked the land a lot. I went to primary school in my community. What I remember from primary school: most of the teachers were Latino and they would hit and punish us over anything. And they forced us to study or speak Spanish. I liked to play and run, and I imagined that when I was a bit older, I would go far from my family to study and teach the children of my village. Everything changed when the government of Guatemala began to damage and murder. That was my dream no more. I think that schools should not be enclosed; children should not be inside four walls; they should study in a place where they coexist with nature. Someday I’ll teach children.

A Mouthful of Tongues is a performance by the artist Stina Fors that will be performed at the CA2M Museum as part of the Un coro Amateur voice-creation workshop.

It is a performance that explores experimental vocal techniques and the power of communication via the mouth. Turning the mouth into a theatre, she uses techniques such as grunting, ventriloquism, tongue exercises and dinosaur calls, among others.

These techniques create a journey where multiple bodies and sounds meet in dissociated relationships. The body’s connection to its voice and sound is disrupted, leading to confusion and overlapping forms of communication. This work celebrates the mouth as a powerful channel for shaping, expressing, distorting, destroying and resurrecting communication. Audiences will experience fragmented stories, thoughts and emotions from other places to create surreal landscapes that sound familiar but are, at their core, alien.

Stina Fors, born 1989 in Gothenburg, is a choreographer, performer, drummer and vocalist. She studied choreography and performance at SNDO (School for New Dance Development) in Amsterdam. Stina’s passion for sound and voice led her to create a repertoire of solo performances, including her one-woman-punk-band: Stina Force. Her live performances often incorporate experimentation and improvisation as creative strategies. Stina is currently based in Vienna.

With support from Fabra i Coats: Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona.

After being invited in 2017 to a reviewing and writing workshop aimed at people who, owing to their occupation, were obliged to write, Euba prepared a series of questions, arranged into sections, that would allow them to reflect on the different situations involved in the act of writing. Each section initially only contained one question. However, after receiving an invitation to publish them, he inevitably expanded on them, resuming and varying the point of view in each question in an endeavour to cover the different aspects of the subject. 

Once he did this, he found that the material could easily be developed in even greater detail. But although it was to be answered in questionnaire form, the result could not. It was an exercise in self-awareness through a calm reading where any question that resonated with the reader became an invitation to delve further into the question for themselves, rather than to answer it for the benefit of someone else.

29 CONDITIONS FOR AN IMPOSITION. THURSDAY 20 APRIL 7PM

For the disposition of a body that is getting ready to write.

An action, a listening exercise, proposed as a self-portrait in negative; a double proprioceptive exercise with a configuration consisting, first, of delimiting, question by question, a specific body – mine – and then removing it from the place it occupied, thus allowing the incorporation of any other body. All this in the hope that this movement of characterisation would provide the listener with a representation of his or her own body in the act of writing.

This action is an exercise in contrast that allows for greater precision according to the different levels of the individuals attending the session. During the course of one hour, Euba reads the Conditions for an Imposition while members of the audience listen as they lie on, between or inside the different items that comprise the installation currently on display at the CA2M Museum, which will allow them to situate themselves at different floor levels.

An action that makes visible the often unconscious variables of the invisible choreography of the self-imposed algorithm that generates all textual production. The action is proposed as a mediation that serves as a meditation to prove that reflection does not stop action.