Flowers and journeys

12/04/2024. Tàpies’s chairs. Performance. Fundació Tàpies. Barcelona.

07/06/2024–13/10/2024. 22 holes to make a requiem. Installation. Bòlit, Centre d’Art Contemporani. Girona.

10/06/2024–12/01/2025. Politones, Suite for desk phones. Installation. Fundación Telefónica. Madrid.

30/10/2024–17/11/2024. The crying beaver. Expanded theatre. Teatro de la Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico. Madrid.

06/11/2024–10/11/2024. Demons. Expanded theatre. Shaubude. Berlin.

22/11/2024–24/11/2024. The crying beaver. Expanded theatre. Festival Temporada Alta. Girona.

Cabosanroque are Laia Torrents Carulla and Roger Aixut Sampietro. Their work revolves around sound and its performative capacities. Their interventions question the exhibition space and formats; they also question the spectator when it comes to inhabiting this physical, temporal and conceptual space; sound and visual. They are interested in artifice and its relation to humans.

They look for tensions between disciplines such as music, theatre, visual arts and sound to open up margins, spaces in conflict. Their academic background (music, industrial engineering and architecture) leads them to use technology in all their works, always understood as a tool, as a medium and not as an aesthetic, in a continuous process of research. They often collaborate with other artists, thinkers and writers.

Since 2012 their works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. In recent years they have been in: CaixaFòrum + (2023); Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (Barcelona 2023); Cité de l’Architecture, (París 2021); Centre Georges Pompidou, (París 2020-2021); Center for Contemporary Arts of Glasgow, (Glasgow 2019); Casa Encendida, (Madrid 2018); Shaubude, (Berlin 2018); Fonoteca Nacional de México, (Ciudad de México 2012); Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, (Barcelona 2023, 2016, 2008); Sonar Festival, (Barcelona: 2018, 2015, 2014, 2010, 2008, Frankfurt: 2008, Santiago de Chile: 2015); Grec Festival (Barcelona 2023, 2021, 2006); Festival Temporada Alta (Girona 2022, 2019, 2016, 2012, 2009); La Filature Scène Nationale de Mulhouse (Mulhouse 2019); Théatre Garonne, Scène européenne de Toulouse (Toulouse 2024, 2020, 2019), Unidram Festival (Berlin 2009). Festival (Berlin, 2009).

Since 2015 they have been resident artists at the Fundació Lluís Coromina.

Photo: Inga Knölke

2023. Site Un-specific, for CaixaFòrum +, a free online platform of the Fundació “la Caixa”. Currently in production process. Collaborating artists: Graciela Iturbide, Perejaume, el Niño de Elche, El conde de Torrefiel, Alberto Conejero i Isa Campo.

2015-2022. Trilogy. Expanded theatre.

2022. III Flowers and Journeys. Temporada Alta (Girona, 2022), Naves del Español en Matadero (Madrid, 2023), Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (Barcelona, 2023), Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (Barcelona, 2023), Théâtre Garonne Scnène Européenne de Toulouse (Toulouse, 2024).

2019. II Demons. Temporada Alta (Girona, 2019), Festival Vagamonde (La Filature-Mulhouse, 2020); Festival In-Extremis (Théâtre Garonne –Scène Nationale de Toulouse, 2020), Festival Grec (Barcelona, 2020), Festival de Otoño (Madrid, 2020), Mèdol: Centre d’Arts Contemporànies de Tarragona (Tarragona, 2023), Museu d’Art Contemporani de Mataró (Mataró, 2023), el Centre Arts Santa Monica (Barcelona, 2021), CCCB (Barcelona, 2023).

2016. Brossa didn’t make me. Festival Temporada Alta (Girona, 2016); Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (Barcelona, 2017-2018), Teatros del Canal (Madrid, 2017); Arts Santa Monica, (Barcelona, 2018); Schaubude (Berlin, 2018), Mima Festival (Mirepoix, 2018), El Tinglado Centre D’art, Tarragona (Tarragona, 2018); Centre Cultural El Casino (Manresa, 2018); Centre Cultural El Casino (Manresa, 2019), Can Manyé espai d’art i creació (Alella, 2019), Museu de Granollers, (Granollers, 2019), Teatre Principal de Palma (Palma de Mallorca, 2019); Centre d’Art contemporani La Sala (Vilanova i la Geltrú, 2019), Fundació Palau i Fabra (Caldes d’Estrach, 2019), Sala dels Trinitaris (Vilafranca del Penedès, 2019), Center for Contemporary Arts, (Glasgow, 2019), Museu Abelló (Mollet, 2019-2020); Centre Cultural El Born (Barcelona, 2020), Festival BAD Bilbao (Bilbao, 2020), Festival 10 Sentidos (Valencia, 2021), Festival Internacional de Artes de Calle (Valladolid, 2021), Iglesia de San Andrés (Cuenca, 2021), CCCB (Barcelona, 2023).

2022. Petrotuning. Bòlit Centre d’Art Contemporani de Girona. Sculptural ensemble. acquired by la Col·lecció Nacional D’art de Catalunya. Adquirida per la col·lecció Nacional d’Art de Catalunya..

2021. Yanvalou. Art installation. Exhibition Aerodream. Cité de l’Architecture de Paris.

2020. Mise en scène d’un lieu. Installation. For RCR Arquitectes Centre Pompidou Paris (sala 22).

2019. Un nom. Art installation. Amb Perejaume. Palau de la música catalana. Barcelona.

2018. Sónar calling GJ273b. 8-bit sound piece. Sónar celebrates 25 years with a message to extraterrestrial intelligence. Cabosanroque is one of the 38 international artists selected.

2018. RRR. Sound space for a dance piece. Amb Frederic Amat i La Veronal. L’Auditori Barcelona. (TA Girona, Teatre Lliure Barcelona).

2018. Ursonate Karaoke. Art installation. Casa Encendida. Madrid.

2017. Sound Mural. Staged concert. CaixaFòrum. Barcelona.

2016. the garden of Hesperides. Art installation. CaixaFòrum, Barcelona.

2016. Equilibris precaris. Solo exhibition, Fundació Lluís Coromina, Banyoles.

2015. La cobla patafísica 2015-2001. Solo exhibition. ASM, Barcelona.

2012. Los árboles aullaron. Art installation. Fonoteca Nacional de México. Artistic residency.

2011. Maquinofòbiapianolera. Staged concert. With Carles Santos. Mercat de les Flors, (Barcelona, 2011); Festival Noves Tendències (Terrassa, 2011); Teatro de la Abadía (Madrid, 2011); Paranimf de la Universitat Jaume I, (Castelló, 2012); L’Auditori (Barcelona, 2012); Teatre Bartrina (Reus, 2012); Teatro Central (Sevilla, 2012); Auditori (Lleida, 2012); Teatro Zorrila, (Valladolid, 2012); Auditori (València, 2012); Festival d’Alacant (Alacant, 2012);; Teatre Àtrium, (Viladecans, 2012); Auditorio Municipal (Vigo, 2012); Festival de Música Contemporània ENSEMS (València, 2012); Teatro Cánovas (Málaga, 2012); Teatro Lara (Valladolid, 2012); Festival Pirineos Sur (Sallent de Gállego, 2012); Salisbury International Arts Festival (Salisbury, 2013); Centro Cultural de España en México (CDMX, 2013); Teatro Esperanza Iris (CDMX, 2013); Teatro Principal de Pachuca (Pachuca, 2013); Octubre Centre de Cultura Contemporània (València, 2013).

Perejaume (2023 Site Un-specific, 2019 Un nom, 2017 No em va fer Joan Brossa), Graciela Iturbide (2022 Site Un-specific), Rocío Molina (2022 Flors i Viatges, 2019 Dimonis, 2015 Impulso), Niño de Elche (2022 Site Un-Specific, 2019 Dimonis, El conde de torrefiel (2023 Site Un-Specific), RCR Architecs (2020 Mise en scène d’un lieu) Marcos Morau (2018 RRR), Frederic Amat (2018 RRR) , Carles Santos (2014-2012 Maquinofòbiapianolera), Pascal Comelade (2010-2014 Bel Canto Orquestra), Enric Casasses (2019 Dimonis) among others.

2022. Aerodream. Architecture, design et structures gonflables, 1950-2020. Exhibition catalogue. Fréderic Migayrou i Valentina Moimas, Edited by Centre Pompidou-Metz.

2020. RCR Arquitectes au Centre Pompidou. Article Mise en scène d’un lieu. Edited by Institut Ramon Llull i el Centre Pompidou.

2018. Arxius de poesia experimental. Perspectives de futur. Article. Edited by Universitat de Barcelona Edicions.

2015. La cobla patafísica 2015-2001. Solo Exhibition catalogue of cabosanroque. Edited by Arts Santa Mònica i Fabulatorio.

2015. Figures del desdoblament. Titelles, Màquines i Fils. Exhibition Catalogue. Jaume Reus, Anna Valls, Toni Rumbau. Ed. Comanegra.

2015. 12 Rounds. LP. Released by Chesapik. Premio Altaveu.

2013. Maquinofòbiapianolera. Carles Santos i cabosanroque. Corre la Voz Editorial.

2012. Maquinofòbiapianolera. LP. Released by K-Industria.

2010. Ball de pistons. LP. Self-released.

2007. Música a màquina. LP. Self-released..

2005. L’aparador. Exhibition catalogue of L’Aparador. Edited by la Fundació Museu Abelló.

2005. França Xica. LP. Released by G3G Records.

2003. CaboSanRoque. LP. Released by G3G Records.

Professors of facilities in the Master of Sound Art at UAB; Undergraduate professors at EINA (University Center for Design and Art of Barcelona); Guest professors at the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona and at the ENOA Community.

2022. Grant for research and innovation in the field of Visual Arts. For the project “Journeys: From Reality to Fantasy.” Granted by the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

2019. Grant for research and innovation in the field of Visual Arts. For the project “Demons.” Granted by the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

2016. Grant for research and innovation in the field of Visual Arts. For the project “Brossa Didn’t Make Me.” Granted by the Office of Support for Cultural Initiatives, from the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

2016. Bronze Laus Award. Catalog of the exhibition “The Patafísica Cobla 2015-2001.” (With Desescribir).

2015. Altaveu Award. 12Rounds. Best Urban Music Album.

2011. Innovation in Popular Culture Grant. Research grant awarded by the Jaume Casademont Foundation.

If you want to be aware of cabosanroque’s activity, subscribe to the newsletter:

Third part of the trilogy Three ways to enter.

“It is women who tell the story of war. They cry. They sing as if they were crying.”

Svetlana Alexievich, War Does Not Have the Face of a Woman, 2013.

As we delve into the sinister atmosphere of cabosanroque’s latest work, we embark on a journey filled with beauty amid the flowers of a world ravaged by war. We enter a forest, perhaps a garden… or was it a village? A work that combines literature, anthropology, sculpture, music, and artifact, all orchestrated under the baton of sound.

It speaks of war, and it is women and creatures who speak, and not only them but also the earth, the birds, and the trees. Everything that lives on the earth with us.

We will listen to fragments from the book of stories Journeys and Flowers, with the voice of women forced to flee from a current war. Transplanted into Ukrainian, Mercè Rodoreda’s words become incomprehensible sounds to us, yet they reveal an internal rhythmic logic, a musicality of the text that will survive beyond any translation.

Cabosanroque finds in War Does Not Have the Face of a Woman and Last Witnesses by Svetlana Alexievich a perfect alliance with Mercè Rodoreda for this journey, which helps us understand the transition from reality and memory to fiction, and to what extent we need fantasy to prevent a reality, which cannot be digested or explained, from utterly devastating us.

Creation, dramaturgy and direction: cabosanroque

Original text: Mercè Rodoreda, Svetlana Aliéxievitx..

Adaptation: cabosanroque

Featuring: Rocío Molina, Mónica López, Núria Martínez Vernis i refugiades ucraïneses a Catalunya (Mariia Kashpurenko, Nadiia Rusanova, Olena Radko, Hanna Hrechana, Alexandra Hrechana, Maria Hrechana, Hanna Rei, Barbara Sokilovska i Mariia Sokolovska).

Translation from russian to catalan: Miquel Cabal

translation from catalan to ucranian: Olena Velykodna

Original music: Cabosanroque, adaptation from Strange fruits by Billie Holiday sung by Núria Graham, adaptation of Lux Aeterna by György Ligeti sung by Cor de Teatre (Mariona Callís, Sara Gómez, Nuri Hernández, Ànnia Pons) and directed by David Costa.

Light design: cabosanroque, Cube.bz

Video: Frau recerques visuals

Tech assesment: Julià Carboneras

Ceramics: Toni Cumella i cabosanroque

Thanks: Enric Masgrau, David Costa, Alba Codina, Xevi Gibert, Panxi Badi, Maria Bohigas i Alejandro Dardik, Glòria Bordons, Martí Sales, Oriol Sauleda, Pere Sarquella, Ricard i Rosa Carnissers, Can Pericus, Centre d’acollida de refugiats ucraïnesos del barri de Sant Narcís, Cesc Feixas i Carme Torrents, Lluís Coromina, Ceràmiques Cumella.

Una coproducció de cabosanroque , Grec 2023 Festival de Barcelona, , Temporada Alta 2022, Naves del Español en Matadero 2023, Teatre Nacional de Catalunya 2023, Théâtre Garonne – Scène européenne 2024 i Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB)

Amb el suport de la Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya, la Fundació Lluís Coromina, Alumilux, Teatre Municipal de Girona, Cultura Banyoles i la Fundació Mercè Rodoreda,

A few names for the miracle or for a writing that shoots the flower with the violence of a shot. Blanca Llum Vidal

Perhaps I had to come across Cabosanroque and an experiment as enigmatic as it is sincere and generous—the graves move and the shadows advance when music becomes witness and art knows how to serve the women who explain that war, above all, is the slaughter, and that war, afterwards, is the life that remains, the one that falls in love and loves—, perhaps I had to come across Cabosanroque to be able to name such a convulsive hallucination—and so bizarre, luminous and even a bit happy to suffer—that I would say it could justly go down in history.

The names, which perhaps delimit and squeeze as much as they designate, but are also holes through which the reality of things slips and gets lost (or are also cracks where beats and figures obsess over living and, above all, surviving), the names, perhaps, could be these: a political magic; a resplendent devastation; an anthropological ritual where people and flowers blur until we see how petals cry and how feet take root or until we understand the desperation of the stem and the pollination that also occurs in bodies that dare to take the risk of coming together, questioning each other, penetrating each other; a subversion of imposed motherhood that produces creatures sometimes enslaved by the heart and sometimes emancipated from abject purities and suffocating customs; a necessary cruelty with a meaning opposite of evil; a concern to restore value to the small, the tiny, the microscopic thing, the one that one day is not seen and the next day becomes a cloud and a drumroll announcing the decomposition of human bodies and their mixing with the earth; a journey of journeys that seems a mise en abîme or the consequence of an existential baggage that leads you to create monsters that vomit monsters that drag monsters that console monsters and so on to the last monster—the one you never imagine and the one that one day is not a monster; a compulsion of the spirit that probably needed a few centuries to be able to exist, to have the appearance of a book and to summon a sound stage and a landscape of rhythms; an ungagged and unbridled desire to set a trap for ghosts and, if they want to stay, to invite them to clean and air out castles and houses with exotic scents and very close perfumes (horsetail, thyme, hare’s ear, white nettle or fennel and perhaps some other remedy that no one has yet found); a sensitivity with edges that breaks into a thousand fragments every day; a question first bifurcated like the tongue of a snake that crawls in the dust and then so extremely multiplied that it has an effect similar to what would happen if all the animals in the world agreed to give birth at the same time (a global concert of moans and spasms!); a desire for mystery, labyrinth, hieroglyph, different alphabet, and yet, a decisive inclination towards severe language and perfect syntax; a prayer, yes, also a prayer (please end the murder of birds and perpetual war, please end the drought and plundering, the absurd tendency to ridicule nobility, the theft of plants and organs, and please, the unforgivable failure of those who forget that truth comes from the mouths of children); an exaggerated ambition to become the queen of the seas and the secret of boats; a disguise of the world to be able to show it a bit as it is (so precious and terrible that there is no god who rests or messiah who arrives); a deeply realistic painting and a painting of a dizziness-inducing objectivity and a precision that shatters souls (“seven wells and seven of the longest nights came together for it to be born”, “while the woman gives birth to the first ten children, the man dances”); a wool blanket woven in the bitterness of exile and in the liberation that, against the law, sometimes entails; a kind of smuggling of wisdom and a sort of exquisite and wild orgasm.

Tell me, if not, where a woman leads us who has been hot on the heels by the wars of 36-39 and 39-45, and who in 1980—when from Argentina to Bologna, from the United States to Kabul, from Congo to Peru, armed conflicts do not cease and nuclear weapons are sophisticated—publishes Journeys and Flowers with which, with the fantasy of a tale, she explains that people “cried for the murders, for all the injustices, for the helpless […], for so many and so many birds caught with traps, for all the deer pursued, for the rivers that overflowed […], for the crops slashed and because the stone mountains that surrounded the village did not let them see the sun neither at the moment of birth nor at the moment of death”. Rodoreda, who leads us to a universe of passion and wonder, also leaves us very orphaned in the face of the ruins and flowers that climb over the skulls of mountains and rivers of corpses.

I say that perhaps I had to come across Cabosanroque because love is difficult to say. And because writing about Mercè Rodoreda’s Journeys and Flowers seemed impossible to me. Like when intensity falls on you and crushes you, or a tenderness so great unfolds before you that it disarms you. For me, Rodoreda and Journeys and Flowers could be said like this, with the revolutionary simplicity of the indefinite article: if saying tenderness is so common that it hardly draws attention, saying a tenderness, on the other hand, is something so strange and precious that it breaks.

Diary

Biography

Featured work

Collaborations

Publications

Theaching

Grants and awards

Contact

Credits

Crits