Loop Festival 2021: Diary of a body

The LOOP Barcelona 2021 Festival presents under the title Diari d'un cos a program with a range of exhibitions, screenings and performances, all around the body as a tool for communication and self-representation, and as a catalyst for collective change

The 19th edition of the video art festival will take place from November 9 to 21 in different areas of Barcelona and will celebrate the great vitality of the city's artistic scene.

The inaugural event of the Festival will take place on November 9 in the Rubiò and Lluch Gardens, where the project Cossos Itinerants - performative actions in public space will be presented, co-produced with Hangar and with the collaboration of La Escocesa and EINA - University Center for Design and Art. At the same time, the exhibition Carne de mi carne: Entraña, by María Alcaide, which consists of a video narrative that explores feminism, the rural world and gender inequality from an autobiographical perspective, will be presented at La Capella.

The program features the participation of more than 200 artists, 40 curators and 62 artistic and cultural spaces.

It will highlight a large number of new productions, made thanks to the complicity of different collaborating entities: among them, the Video Creation Award of the Territorial Centers of the Public System of Visual Arts Equipment of Catalonia, Art Santa Mònica and LOOP; the A-Place calls, funded through the European Union's "Creative Europe" program.

The LOOP Fair will take place at La Pedrera - Gaudí's Casa Milà from 16 to 18 November. Once again, the Fair offers a physical experience and an exceptional meeting point for the professional moving image community.

The program of the 19th edition of the LOOP Barcelona Festival has been presented at the Biblioteca de Catalunya. Miquel Curanta, director of the ICEC and Daniel Granados, delegate of Culture of the City Council of Barcelona- ICUB, have participated in the presentation, together with the co-founders of LOOP, Carlos Duran and Emilio Álvarez, and the artistic director of the festival, Carolina Ciuti.

The inaugural exhibition of the 19th edition of the festival is Carne de mi carne: Entraña, by María Alcaide and will be located in La Capella. The artist poses through a video narration, a story through which he cuts and assembles his closest links to talk about the flesh, his own flesh, in a broader research on feminism, the rural world and gender inequality.

The festival, which will feature the participation of more than 200 artists, 40 curators and 62 artistic and cultural spaces in the city of Barcelona, opens tomorrow, Tuesday, November 9, at 6:30 pm with performative actions by Julia Calvo, Pedro Torres and Comité Queer, in the framework of the proposal Cossos Itinerants, and which will take place in the Jardins de Rubió i Lluch (c / Hospital).

From 9 to 21 November you can see exhibitions, screenings and performances in different areas of the city.

Diary of a body

In the eponymous novel Journal d'un corps (Diary of a Body), published by Gallimard in 2012, French writer Daniel Pennac narrates a man's life through physical (and therefore emotional) states. ) who cross it from 12 to 87 years. Claiming the literary genre of the diary, the author portrays the protagonist through his sentient body and celebrates him as a mirror of his being in the world.

But: "What is it like to be a body?", Maurice Merleau-Ponty would ask. The philosopher raises this question from the substantial relationship between the human being, everyday life and the experience of being-in-the-world. According to Merleau-Ponty, the body is the place where existence and experiences that bind us to the world are concentrated; and, in turn, the world is that which is manifested through the body. Thus, from this perspective the body cannot be thought of as an individuality, but as a porous whole open to other individualities.

These reflections turn out to be especially interesting after having experienced ‘confined sociability’. Without being a completely new phenomenon - as the Catalan philosopher Marina Garcés rightly points out - during the pandemic it has manifested itself in a global and widespread way. This unusual experience of the corporeal — that is, the impossibility of “being a body between bodies” —has revealed its necessary condition of openness and multidimensionality.

Talking about the body, then, means talking about the most essential thing: our existence and the requirement to relate. It means observing in the mirror one's own transformations and, at the same time, those of an entire society. Accordingly, the 2021 edition of the LOOP Festival proposes to explore the body in its double aspect of "set of organic systems that constitute a living or inanimate being" and "of cultural, political, economic [and affective] association. between people ”.

In the format of relocated exhibitions, screenings and performances, the Festival will explore the potential of the body as a tool for communication, self-representation and as a catalyst for collective change. Fleeing from disciplinary exclusives, the program presents a wide panorama of illustrated corporealities through a set of works ranging from the beginnings of video art to the present day.

Carolina Ciuti

Artistic Director of the LOOP Festival

The programming

Claiming the presence and vitality of the city's artistic fabric, through exhibition proposals and actions in public space

On the occasion of its 19th edition, the LOOP festival returns to a mostly face-to-face program, conceived thanks to the tireless enthusiasm of the professional staff and the entities involved.

In Cossos itinerants - inaugural proposal curated by Carolina Ciuti (Artistic Director, LOOP Barcelona) - the public space is configured as a renewed meeting space and hosts a series of actions around the symbolic and political potential of the body. An ephemeral artifact designed by a group of students from the workshop "Mobile artifacts. Traveling bodies" (in collaboration with EINA - University Center of Design and Art of Barcelona), co-produced with Hangar.org and adapted by Pense (Head of construction Hangar.org ), becomes the stage to present the new performative proposals of Laura Arensburg, Valentina Alvarado Matos and Carlos Vásquez Méndez, Julia Calvo, Natalia Carminati and Daniel Moreno Roldán, Citlali Hernández and Núria Nia, the Queer Committee and Pedro Torres, bringing together resident artists from the Hangar.org and La Escocesa creative factories, this project was born with the aim of promoting moments of exchange and generating a common working methodology.

Following this same line, for the second consecutive year the 1 + 1 + 1 ... program once again celebrates the importance of networking, presenting an audiovisual tour of different cultural and artistic centers in the Old City, in collaboration with curatorships and artists linked to the territory. In this way, the Center Excursionista de Catalunya, La Capella, the Frederic Marès Museum, the Museu Picasso, and the Real Cercle Artístic host 1 video of 1 artist presented by a curator residing in Barcelona, in a chain operation destined to highlight the closest cultural fabric. Curators Marta Pol Rigau, Alterdúo (Arianna Esposito and Marco Tondello), Jordi Garrido, Laura Olea López and Margot Cuevas Orteu present, respectively, the works of Anna Dot, María Alcaide, Marta Polo Ysalgué, Laura Ramírez Ashbaugh and Laia Ventayol.

On the other hand, La Pedrera-Casa Milà (also home to the LOOP 2021 Fair) will host a new film performance by the artist Adriana Vila Guevara, made in collaboration with the filmmaker Isaki Lacuesta, the “dancer” Rocío Molina and the composer and musician El Niño from Elche. Entitled Crisiálida, the proposal draws on Flemish culture and is the prologue to extensive research conducted by Vila Guevara on the representation and manifestation of the female body in a patriarchal setting. In its second collaboration with the festival, CASA SEAT will host the performative conference Hay una mujer que vive en mi habitación by the white artist arias, which explores some of the infinite landscapes of intimacy that are generated between the offline body and the 'online.

At the same time, other collaborating institutions dedicate exhibitions to artists such as: Francesca Llopis in collaboration with Barbara Held (Inside, National Art Museum of Catalonia); Helena Vinent (Devices for a crippled stage, Palau Güell); Perejaume (Donar cabuda, an exhibition curated by Jaume Coscollar, Perejaume and Marina Vinyes Albes at the Filmoteca de Catalunya); the duo Beka & Lemoine and the students of the Laboratory of Sensitive Observers (Homo Urbanos, Enric Miralles Foundation); Stephanie Rizaj at the Royal Catalan Academy of Fine Arts. In its first collaboration with the festival, the Teatre Eòliatambé will present the premiere of the play Khaled: Camí de refugi by the cultural director and manager Martí Sancliment.

Collaborations with foundations and specialized collections

The program also includes a series of proposals made in collaboration with specialized institutions and collections that enrich the network of local and international collaborations of LOOP.

Consolidating its multi-year relationship with the Festival, the Fondazione In Between Art Film by Beatrice Bulgari will present the Spanish premiere of the Mascarilla 19 - Codes of program at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and the Fundació Antoni Tàpies. Domestic Violence. Exploring the issue of gender violence in the domestic space (aggravated during the various phases of forced confinement due to Covid-19), the program brings together 8 new video creations by artists Iván Argote, Silvia Giambrone, Eva Giolo , Basir Mahmood, MASBEDO (Iacopo Bedogni and Nicolò Massazza), Elena Mazzi, Adrian Paci and Janis Rafa.

On the other hand, the National Art Museum of Catalonia-MNAC will host the Barbès video by the artist Randa Maroufi, from the FRAC Bretagne collection. Part of the series Les Intruses, a work that questions the decentralization of the archetypal representations we produce around culture.

Instead, Casa Vicens will once again present a group exhibition with works from the olorVISUAL collection of the Ernesto Ventos Foundation. With the title Thousands of olfactory images! and curated by Cristina Agàpito, the proposal will feature pieces by Willi Bucher, Maggie Cardelus, Francesca Llopis, Albert Merino, Antoni Muntadas and Fleur Noguera.

In addition, the Can Framis Museum of the Vila Casas Foundation will host an iconic piece by the artist Esther Ferrer, donated by LaFabrique, a Marseille collection by Josée and Marc Gensollen. Made in 2013, the video Strangeness, contempt, pain and a long etc. closely portrays the artist’s facial expressions and explores the body as a communication tool.

An extensive program of screenings at the Zumzeig, a cooperative cinema

After many years of collaboration, the Zumzeig cine cooperative is consolidating itself as the headquarters where many of the screenings that make up the Festival's programming will be presented. The screening of the latest feature film by Catalan artist living in Brazil Daniel Steegmann Mangrané will open the cycle. Fog Dog takes as its starting point the curious interaction between the human and non-human inhabitants that populate the Dhaka Institute of Fine Arts (Bangladesh); the artist simultaneously documents a normal day at school and the parallel life of the stray dogs that inhabit it.

Afterwards, the cinema will host a monographic session dedicated to the film work of the Belgian artist Manon de Boer, with films from the funds of the National Center for Visual Arts in Paris, the Le Fresnoy school (Tourcoing) and of the distributor August Orts (Brussels).

The sessions will continue with the Catabasis screening of Berlin-based Spanish artist Regina de Miguel, a subtle and powerful exploration around industrial and extractivist capitalism. The screening is part of the activities parallel to the exhibition of the artist Arbustos de nervios como bosques de coral in The Green Parrot.

Finally, the video-performance session "Into the River" will show the works made in the framework of Estéticas Transversales, a platform that experiments with art, mediation and social space, activated by Idensitat in collaboration with artistic centers in Valencia, Alicante and Castellón, where you can see the pieces by Alfonso Borragán, Jorge Núñez de la Visitación, Roc Domingo and Joana Capella.

A series of awards to promote video creation

The crisis related to Covid-19 has exposed the precariousness of the arts sector. In this context, production awards are of great importance as they support the creation of emerging or long-standing artists. In this sense, LOOP continues to carry out a series of initiatives aimed at valuing and accompanying the creative work of local and international artists.

For the seventh consecutive year, the Video Creation Award of the Territorial Centers of the Public System of Visual Arts Equipment of Catalonia *, Art Santa Mònica, the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya and LOOP, celebrates the Catalan artistic fabric. As a result of a double ex aequo award given in 2020, the Filmoteca de Catalunya will host the premiere of the feature film Historia potential by Francesc Tosquelles, Catalunya y el miedo by Mireia Sallarès, and the Center d'Art Tecla Sala installation Coderch Moon Wind Palace. Also worth mentioning is the winner of the 2021 edition of the award - Alex Reynolds - who will have a year to work on her new video creation.

(* Territorial Centers of the Public System of Visual Arts Equipment of Catalonia: ACVIC. Center d'Arts Contemporànies, Vic; Fabra i Coats. Center d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona i Fàbrica de Creació; Center d'Art Tecla Sala, L 'Hospitalet de Llobregat; La Panera Art Center, Lleida; M | A | C Mataro Contemporary Art; Bòlit. Contemporary Art Center, Girona; Lo Pati. Terres de l'Ebre Art Center, Amposta, and Tarragona Art Center.)

The Festival will also present three unpublished proposals that are part of the A-Place program (2019-2023) promoted by Creative Europe, the European Union's program for the cultural and creative sector. On the one hand, the winning projects ex aequo of the call A-Place Video Production Open Call: I Can Only Dance to One Song by Arash Fayez to angels barcelona-Espai 2 and Cordova; Beans Rinsed Twice by Inês Neto and Bella Riza at the Museum of the History of Catalonia. On the other hand, the film La Carpa, the result of a commission directed by the artist David Bestué and the filmmaker Roser Corella.

Finally, an international jury will meet to decide who will win the third edition of the Han Nefkens - LOOP Barcelona Video Art Production award. Instead, the winner of the third edition will be announced at the LOOP fair.

The City Screen: a vital panorama of current video creation

As every year, the City Screen will enrich the Festival program. Coordinated by Victoria Sacco, the selection will present a series of independent proposals that will offer an extensive panorama of current video creation. Among them, a series of online programs. The participating spaces are: ADN Galeria, Alalimón Galería, ángels barcelona, ángels barcelona - espac2, Bombon Projects, Cera 13, Chez Xefo Art Gallery, Chiquita Room, Cordova, Dilalica, Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo, Espai 10: Laboratorio de las artes contemporáneas , Espai Souvenir, ESPRONCEDA - Institute of Art & Culture, etHall, Fundación Ideograma, Galería Miguel Marcos, Galería SENDA, Juan Naranjo Galería de Arte & Documentos, Galeria Zielinsky, Lab 36, Librería KBr de Juan Naranjo, Metàfora Studio Arts, Pas une Orange, Projekteria [Art Gallery], Suburbia Contemporary, Tangent Projects, The Green Parrot, TPK ART AND CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT, Urban Gallery & Fundació Marguerida de Montferrato, and Uxval Gochez Gallery.

VIDEOCLOOP: extension of online programming

Following a trend started last year, some of the festival's proposals can be enjoyed online.

The VIDEOCLOOP channel will also host curated programs designed specifically for the virtual environment. Among them: a monograph dedicated to the Moroccan Hicham Berrada curated by Pascale Cassagnau; some of the videos awarded during the different editions of the StudioCollector award promoted by the couple of collectors Jean-Conrad and Isabelle Lemaître; a selection of pieces by the Mallorcan Gabriel Lacomba presented by Jaume Reus.

The programs will be hosted on the online platform VIDEOCLOOP (https://loop-barcelona.com/videocloop/) and will be available for viewing from November 9 to November 21, 2020. The proposals come from 'a reflection on the ways of distributing and receiving the moving image online, after the experience of confinement. VIDEOCLOOP functions as a platform to give access to works by rarely seen artists and also performs an important online mediation task.

In the image, Vénen del Luny, by Anna Dot.