A*LIVE_L’Inesperat_A Space Opera is a project by A*DESK with the collaboration of Fito Conesa & Mery Cuesta and the complicity and support of the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB).

This is the seventh edition of A*LIVE, the public program of A*DESK that consists of a debate, with a streaming television format. On this occasion, it is an expanded and performative digital format with Fito Conesa and Mery Cuesta as masters of ceremony and catalysts for a series of collaborations (audiovisual and textual) that revolve around the notion of the unexpected.

Thus, for this occasion we have invited people that we consider to be references to react through a video or audio piece, a text or some instructions to what the idea of “unexpected” suggests to them. This list of reference collaborators includes Pilar Cruz, Paco Chanivet, Anna Dot, El Palomar, Pere Faura, Carolina Jiménez, Momu & No Es, Carlos Saez, Lorenzo Sandoval and Ian Waelder.

Inserting itself into the tradition of space operas – narratives that tell of journeys in space and in which the emotional and the technological play an important role – the tandem Conesa-Cuesta intertwines the contributions of collaborating artists on a subtext that connects television broadcasting as it was conceived in the 90s with the digital dissemination of content today.

A*LIVE_L’Inesperat_A Space Opera is inspired by the pioneering broadcasting work of Nam June Paik (taking its name from the Korean artist’s 1969 experimental broadcast on Boston Public Television entitled “Electronic Opera”), and by MTV’s grandiloquent attempts in the 1980s and 1990s to achieve global and simultaneous communications across the planet. On stage, Cuesta and Conesa inoculate these ideas into a communication paradigm such as the current one, in which real-time interaction with the viewer on the other side of the screen and post-production effects implemented live are fundamental to building a contemporary aesthetic of live audiovisuals.

A*LIVE_L’inesperat_A Space Opera took place at the Sala Teatre of the CCCB on December 11th at 6pm and could be followed by streaming. The complete video can be watched below:

Infinitely thanks to the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) for making this possible; to Fito Conesa and Mery Cuesta for their talent and generosity, and to Pilar Cruz, Paco Chanivet, Anna Dot, El Palomar, Pere Faura, Carolina Jiménez, Momu & No Es, Carlos Saez, Lorenzo Sandoval and Ian Waelder for joining us in this adventure. And, last but not least, thanks a lot to Siddaharth Gantam Singh for the wonderful program header.

Saló Diana (1977-78). The ghost of Barcelona’s paradise is a research project that recovers the memory of a paradigmatic case of theatrical self-management, the Saló Diana. The experience coincides with the end of Franco’s regime and the period of transition, a time when everything was yet to be done.

The Saló Diana is the result of the demands for the professionalization of the theatrical sector at the time and arises as an assembly experience initiated by Mario Gas, Carlos Lucena (Bujalance, 1925- Madrid, 1995) and Albert Dueso (Barcelona, ​​1952-2007). Located in the old Diana Cinema, on Sant Pau street in Barcelona, ​​the Diana was born out of a need for praxis, to have an assembly environment linked to a production center in which diversity and plurality (of its members and its program) were the dominant notes.

The history of the Saló Diana, as brief as it is intense, is collected in the book Saló Diana (1977-1978). El fantasma del paraíso barcelonés (co-edited by Montse Badia and Mario Gas) through extensive documentary research, as well as interviews with a good number of people who were beginning their professional careers at that time, such as Mario Gas himself, Vicky Peña, Sílvia Munt, Ricard Borrás, Juanjo Puigcorbé, Pau Riba or Carme Elías, among others. The publication is accompanied by a public programme that will bring them together in a round table moderated by Rosa Badia.

[Interview with Mario Gas, at the program Tot és comèdia by Rosa Badia. Cadena ser (5-9-2020)->
https://play.cadenaser.com/audio/370RD010000001641799/?ssm=whatsapp]
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Interview with Marc Giró at the program Vosté Primer. RAC1 (23-9-2020)

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Oil and artists

Screens and Pills Catálogo / Catàleg / Catalogue

Frederic Montornés escribe sobre el catálogo de Pantallas y Pastillas

Vanishing Points

Vanishing Points is a publication initiated by Cal Cego. Contemporary Art Collection and focused on 7 notions, related to the discursive lines of the collection. These 7 notions are also essential issues in the discussion of contemporary art nowadays. These are: Nomadism, knowledge, collaborate, process, intergenerational, beyond Hierarchies, Art-Life.

Vanishing Points is edited by Montse Badia and includes texts by David Armengol, Pilar Bonet, Raimundas Malašauskas, Martí Manen, Frederic Montornés, Laurence Rassel and David G. Torres.

Catalogation: Marisa Pérez Vázquez. Graphic: Alex Gifreu. Translations: Graham Thomson, Marina Vives, Hector Acuña.

Size: 240 x 320 mm
92 pages
Three editions: English, Spanish, Catalan
ISBN Vanishing Points: 978-84-697-8391-7

Pep Vidal is a scientist as well as an artist, and he develops his artistic work in the space of intersection, of encounter and disagreement between both ways of seeing the world. Infinitesimal changes and measurements are his main starting points when defining his projects. One of the things that the scientific and artistic fields have in common is curiosity, that of starting from concrete questions. Oli d’una olivera (Oil from an olive tree) starts from a question that may seem naive and for that very reason is capable of triggering a fascinating process of investigation: How much oil comes out of an olive tree? The process that has led to the final formalization of the project has been very similar to that of the production of oil. If the production of oil involves filtering waste, the production of Oli d’una olivera (Oil from an olive tree) has involved filtering ideas and variables.

At the beginning of the process, Vidal started from the importance of controlling production, taking this maxim to the extreme: why not maximise oil production and minimise the size of the tree that produces the olives? Starting from the question: how much oil does a bonsai olive tree produce? And how much oil does a traditional olive tree produce? he put in relation a specific olive tree, planted in the Baix Penedès area, and a bonsai olive tree that the artist himself bought. The relation of the patterns of different objects or systems that present similarities and differences had already occupied previous projects by the artist. We remember f(t) = f(t-tº) (curated by Marina Vives at the Capella de Sant Roc, Valls, 2015) in which she placed an eight-year-old bonsai on the soil it would need if it had not been modified into a bonsai or A Humble Sock (Fundació Tàpies, 2014), a replica of Tàpies’ sock at a size of 20 microns, among others.

Ultimately, the most significant aspect of the comparison, or in other words, the link that unites olive and bonsai is artificiality. The artificiality to which man subjects the bonsai to control its size and the artificiality to which man subjects the olive tree, planted in a specific environment so that it produces the olives that will give rise to the oil, an oil that has a close relationship with its origin.

Measuring was and is the essence of the project, but measuring also implies the impossibility of being precise. And discarding the option of a traditional pressing of the production of a single olive tree, the alternative was a do-it-yourself, homemade and manual pressing, and from which, as in every experiment, discoveries appear: the waste, the solids and the liquids. What is most valuable, the oil, is calibrated and weighed with the maximum precision and professionalism possible and with a certificate included. But, unlike traditional production, in Pep Vidal’s process, the waste is not eliminated, but rather forms part of the final result, because the waste is also part of what comes out of an olive tree, which is not a generic olive tree, but rather a very specific olive tree, an Olea Europaea planted in Baix Penedés.

Fotografías: Naty Creci

Oil from an olive tree is a production by Cal Cego Contemporary Art Collection