VAD in Bòlit

16 - 25 October 2009

Thursday 15 October at 8.30 pm

Bòlit-LaRambla and Niu

www.vadfestival.net

The 7th VAD Festival is here with the presentation of selected works from its international competition. This year's competition was open to artists with works in response to the slogan IMAGINE AN (IM)POSSIBLE FUTURE. From the large number of works submitted, the selected pieces speculate on, analyse or scrutinise (however often tangentially) today's world, shaken by a financial crisis that reveals a humanitarian crisis within the very system that governs our society.

At a time when images have become an almost obsessive part of our daily life, providing a powerful tool for artistic experimentation and creation, VAD Festival acts as an observatory of recent audiovisual creation, closely linked to technological progress and new forms of communication.

This year's VAD Festival selected works are presented in their original formats (installations, interactive pieces and screen projections) and can be seen in the three festival exhibition spaces in Girona city: Bòlit-LaRambla, Casa de Cultura exhibition hall and La Mercè Cultural Centre.

Bòlit presents the following works and activities:

Bòlit-LaRambla

Giada Ghiringhelli, Body without Organs

Mariella Greil & Synes Elischka & Christian Schröder, PID Machine (Private Investigators Dream Machine)

Beatriz Sánchez, Coro para 50 cabezas [Choir for 50 Heads]
Pablo Useros, El descenso [The Descent]

DADESPAI

Curated exhibition of works from VAD audiovisual fonds on the theme of this year's festival slogan.

NIU

VAD encounter space and meeting place for artists participating in the Girona cultural scene. Small-format presentations with limited capacity (max. 20 persons).

ACTIVITIES

October 15th

19.30h Festival opening in Casa de Cultura

21h Performance: PID Machine (Private Investigators Dream Machine) from Mariella Greil & Synes Elischka & Christian Schröder in Bòlit-LaRambla.

October 17th 12am

Commented visit by VAD on Refugi [Refuge] exhibition by Mal Pelo (Bòlit-SantNicolau)

Special timetables

Friday 16th and Saturday 17th October: 12-14h/16-20h

Organized by: GARBA Research and Creation Association
Set up: Lluïsa Xarnach
With the collaboration of: Girona Casa de Cultura, La Mercè Cultural Centre, Bòlit Contemporary Art Centre of Girona, Temporada Alta - Autumn Festival of Catalonia, Fita Foundation, MAPA Festival, Televisión Española (TVE) - "Metrópolis" programme
With the support of: National Council for Culture and the Arts, Girona Provincial Council, Girona City Council

Photo Gallery

Refugi [Refuge]

MAL PELO María Muñoz -Pep Ramis

17 October 2009 - 10 January 2010

Friday 16 October at 7.30 pm

Bòlit-SantNicolau

www.malpelo.org

REFUGI is an installation project resulting from a new approach to the themes and materials that underpinned Atrás los ojos [Eyes Backwards] (2002), Testimoni de llops [Testimony of Wolves] (2006) and He visto caballos [I Have Seen Horses] (2008) stage works created by María Muñoz and Pep Ramis for Mal Pelo Dance Company, in collaboration with writer John Berger.

REFUGI proposes a space of perception in which visitors are surrounded by sound, image and light, in an expanded time warp that kindles associations between what is seen and what is heard; a space reflecting testimonies which speak of passion, solitude, displacement, birth and death; of men, women, animals and even angels.

A refuge which each may inhabit as they wish, where each may find nooks and crannies, words on the floor, windows that speak, windows to look out from, images and texts that construct a new regard on the materials used on stage.

An invitation for the body to perceive what it sees ... and what it does not see.

"We do not look at the stage as a final destination, but rather as a place of transit, prompting other gazes, generating other materials.
You only have to look at what we have discarded along the way when we get to the premiere of a show. The floor is strewn with odds and ends, ideas, drawings, images ... the residue of a work to which we now give a different form and a different structure.
The stage as a place of thought, a few square meters where horses swim ... and other things."

María Muñoz - Pep Ramis

In REFUGI/Bòlit-SantNicolau is presented the sequence Sota els cavalls [Under the Horses].

Sota els cavalls [Under the Horses] is a computer-programmed sequence conceived as a score for lighting, sound and video.

Sota els cavalls speaks of separation, of resistance, of the place of love, of the absence of the loved body.

A new approach to the materials from Mal Pelo Dance Company's last stage work He visto caballos, based on letters from John Berger's novel From A to X and on poems by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

"In the cell ... where there's little else, words count [...]
The enemy cannot be attacked directly. Approached frontally the enemy is impregnable. Approached frontally the enemy has to be recognized as victor. To continue as victor the enemy needs new frontal enemies. They do not exist; so the enemy invents them. We await this as our opportunity for countless side attacks. This is the strategy of resistance."

John Berger

MAL PELO

Mal Pelo Dance Company was founded in 1989 by María Muñoz and Pep Ramis. From the very beginning, their work has been based on the constant search for different languages, from which they have developed stage performances rooted in a transparent and profound transversal approach. During their early years, the group alternated numerous tours (Europe, USA and Latin America) with periods of creation in several different countries. Their production is based on the exchange of ideas, techniques and work methods with other artists, which in turn provides further impetus for their own research. Since 2001, Mal Pelo Dance Company has been developing a parallel research and creation centre called L'animal a l'esquena - cos creació pensament, currently directed by Toni Cots, María Muñoz and Pep Ramis. Since its foundation in 1989, Mal Pelo has presented: Quarere (1989), Sur-Perros del Sur (1992), Dol (1994), La calle del imaginero (1996), Orache (1998), El alma del bicho (1999), L'animal a l'esquena (2001), Atrás los ojos (2002), AN (el silenci) (2003), BACH (2004), ATLAS (o antes de llegar a Barataria) (2005), Testimoni de llops (2006) and He visto caballos (2008), among others.

MAL PELO is a company funded by Departament de Cultura i Mitjans de Comunicació de la Generalitat de Catalunya, INAEM - Ministerio de Cultura, ICUB-Ajuntament de Barcelona and Diputació de Girona. A company in agreement with Ajuntament de Girona.

Organised by: Bòlit Contemporary Art Centre of Girona.

Produced by: Mal Pelo, Santa Mònica Arts Centre, Mercat de les Flors and Bòlit Contemporary Art Centre of Girona.

With the collaboration of: L'animal a l'esquena - cos creació pensament

Photo Gallery

Fora de joc [Offside]

29 October - 22 November 2009
Wednesday 28 October at 7.30 pm
Bòlit-LaRambla & Dadespai

www.martianson.com
www.democracia.com.es

Exhibition on the theme of football, organised by GIC (Independent Galleries of Catalonia Association).

Football is much more than just a sport. All the ins and outs of this activity have huge repercussions on society and involve many aspects often subjected to the artistic regard. Football was chosen as a popular theme that may attract the general public into art galleries and towards contemporary art in general. This outreach exhibition will be held in art galleries as well as in other public and private institutions. A catalogue of the exhibition will be published in due course.

MARTÍ ANSON

La por del porter davant el penal [The Goalkeeper's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick] (2001)

Photography on wooden wall and projection
Courtesy of Toni Tàpies Gallery, Barcelona

A penalty kick was called ... "The goalkeeper is trying to work out which corner the man taking the kick will aim for" Bloch said. "If he knows the player, he knows which corner he usually goes for. But probably the man taking the penalty is also reckoning that the goalie has worked this out himself. So the goalie has to go on working out that just today the ball might go into the other corner. But what if the man taking the kick follows the goalkeeper's thinking and plans to shoot into the usual corner after all?"

The Goalkeeper's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick,  Peter Handke

La por del porter davant el penal consists of photographs and a video of a football player preparing to take a penalty kick. The video is a never-ending loop lasting just a few seconds, in which the player never actually kicks the ball and the goalkeeper just makes a few short movements as he tries to guess the intention of the other player. The large-format photographs show the same player's attempt facing the penalty spot and the goalkeeper.

La por del porter davant el penal refers both to Peter Handke's novel of the same name and to kicking penalties on a play-station game. In this work, the artist seeks to bring about a suspension of time, a suspension of the moment of decision in the game between player and goalkeeper. In Martí Anson's work, sport (and football in particular) takes on a metaphorical dimension of infinite time lapses, of key moments, of postponed decisions ... and raises a question that offers no solution.

Martí Anson (Barcelona, 1967) has developed an artistic production that plays with time, with time-cuts, loops and instants repeated ad infinitum. The artist puts forward no solutions; he raises a series of expectations, which are then dashed immediately.


DEMOCRACIA

No os dejéis consolar [Don't Let Yourselves Be Consoled] (2009)
Photographs, video and merchandising
Courtesy of AND Gallery, Barcelona

No os dejéis consolar project is structured in two phases: the first phase consists of a field action, with a series of public interventions carried out in a French football stadium and recorded on video; the second phase consists of the presentation of the project and the material carried out during an exhibition at ADN Galeria (Barcelona) in autumn 2009 and in Bòlit.

Democracia proposes to create tifos at Jacques Chaban-Delmas stadium (formerly Parc Lescure), home ground of FC Girondins de Bordeaux.

In the widest sense, tifos are printed graphics with which football supporters cheer and encourage their teams. The "Ultramarine" supporters of FC Girondins de Bordeaux (replacing the former extremist "Devils") occupy the back seats of the stadium and define themselves as apocalyptic and antiracist.

The artists' aim is to appropriate the icons, colours and graphic designs of the FC Girondins de Bordeaux supporters and introduce placards and banners with unusual messages referring to the idiosyncrasy of the contemporary spectacle of football, including the following:

DON'T LET YOURSELVES BE CONSOLED
VICTORY NEVER CHANGES ANYTHING
UP WITH THE DOWNTRODDEN
WE OWN NOTHING BUT OUR TIME
THE MEANING OF AN UNREASONABLE WORLD
WAGE EARNERS OF BOREDOM
LIVE IN HOPE, DIE OF DESIRE
ORDINARY PEOPLE DON'T NEED HEROES
THE ONLY FORM OF NOBLENESS IS PAIN

The tifos and the banners can be exhibited both inside the stadium during the match and in the area outside the stadium. The action is completed with the creation of merchandising (scarves, caps, T-shirts and flags) to be sold in a moveable kiosk. A video documentary of the action on the terraces will be filmed during the match. The handmade sheet tifos are similar to those used for the previous Smash the Ghetto project (Democracia).

Produced by: Independent Galleries of Catalonia Association (GIC) including ADN Galeria, Alejandro Sales, Estrany-DelaMota, Miguel Marcos, Nogueras Blanchard, Palma Dotze, ProjecteSD, Sebastià Petit and Toni Tàpies galleries.
With the collaboration of: Institute of Catalan Cultural Industries
With the participation of: Bòlit Contemporary Art Centre of Girona, Sunyol Foundation, La Panera Art Centre and Barcelona Contemporary Art Museum (MACBA).

Photo Gallery

8 parells de botes [8 Pairs of Boots]

AREAtangent

27 November 2009 - 10 January 2010

Thursday 26 November at 7.30 pm

Bòlit-LaRambla, Dadespai and Niu

www.areatangent.com

Exhibition on new stage formats and current para-theatrical proposals co-produced by Bòlit Contemporary Art Centre of Girona and Temporada Alta Festival.

8 parells de botes is a glance at new artistic creation, especially in Catalonia; an overview of the works of artists who refuse to accept borders between the different contemporary languages that make up present-day scenic arts.

This is a highly interactive exhibition presenting a playful exploration of creative approaches to the scenic arts. Viewers can map out the languages underpinning the different styles of contemporary stage creation through material contributed by artists.

Marcel·lí Antúnez (Moià, 1959), acknowledged creator and pioneer in the use of technology in the field of drama and performance art, presents Metamembrana technological audiovisual installation consisting of a large panoramic projection with eight interactive stories controlled by four interfaces.

AREAtangent (Barcelona, 2003) presents one of the rooms of Abans del món hi havia un món [There Was a World before the World] project in which different scenic and installation languages are combined to create a stage show suitable for all ages.

Xavi Bobés (Barcelona, 1977) works through the language of object drama and visual drama and brings his experience in this field to bear in an approach to the memory of objects and their role in new stage formats.

Jordi Casanovas (Vilafranca del Penedès, 1978) presents an overview of contemporary text-based drama and his own projects with FlyHard Company.

Iker Gómez (Eibar, 1978) shows a video and stage dance production from his most recent creation La danza del cisne [Swan Dance]. As choreographer and video artist, he uses video-dance within contemporary dance pieces, and has also produced other autonomous video works.

Raquel Tomàs (Barcelona, 1979) presents an exhibition of sound drama based on his Apocalipsi Life project, first shown in 2007 at Temporada Alta Festival, in which the tradition of radio drama is taken up again in the language of contemporary drama.

Curator: Cristina Martín

Produced by: AREAtangent

Co-produced by: Bòlit Contemporary Art Centre of Girona and Temporada Alta 2009-Autumn Festival of Catalonia

With the support of: Lola Festival (Esparreguera), Fabra i Coats, Autonomous Government of Catalonia and Barcelona City Council

Photo Gallery