Final exhibition of the Situated Research Projects 23-24 of Medialab Matadero

Every year Medialab launches an international call open to all to select projects that develop research within the framework of the thematic lines of the program and in dialogue with the activities of the annual program and the communities linked to it.

In the 2023-2024 edition three projects were selected and have been part of the Matadero ecosystem: Anna Engelhardt with “Artificial sky”, Gemma Bahhr with “Urbanismo fósil” and Amaia Sánchez Velasco and Jorge Valiente Oriol from Grandeza Studio with “Revisitando a Titono: Geografías tentaculares de la eterna juventud”. During this year the researchers deepened and modified their proposals, have submitted them to review and critique, have programmed related activities, have collaborated with other like-minded creators and thinkers and, now, have reached the end of their residency.

With the final presentation of their projects, they reach a moment of hatching, they reach the necessary concreteness and maturity to open up to other contexts, to take other forms, to follow, in short, their natural and necessary evolution. Therefore, this final exhibition is not a presentation of results or conclusions, but an opportunity to see what the projects and the researchers themselves have become after a year with us.  

PROGRAM:

18:30 h. IMMORTAL MINDFULNESS SESSION by Amaia Sánchez Velasco and Jorge Valiente Oriol (participative performance conference).

In this session of initiation to immortality, Amaia Sánchez Velasco and Jorge Valiente Oriol (from Grandeza Studio) will invite the attendees to embark their minds and bodies on a transescalar and transtemporal journey by the hand of the goddess Eos in her attempt to recover the youth of her beloved Titono.

Through a critical re-appropriation of mindfulness techniques, visitors will be invited to reach a deep state of consciousness and focus their attention on a journey through the landscapes, infrastructures and architectures that articulate the tentacular geographies of eternal youth and immorality.

19:30 h. PHANTOM by Anna Engelhardt (talk + multimedia installation).

Phantom is a multimedia installation that traces the mythology of the Russian ghost fleet: elusive ships that transport Russian oil across Europe to evade sanctions. By following the fingerprints of these ships, the project unveils a largely unknown megastructure currently funding Russia's large-scale invasion. The project combines research and CGI animation to create an immersive environment full of suspense. It continues Engelhardt's long exploration of “infrastructural horror,” the genre he developed to investigate and expose the structures of expansionism in their inherent monstrosity.

The installation Phantom will be on view during the week of September 24-27 from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. at Matadero Madrid' s Taller space. This two-channel video projection will create an elusive image that will move between projection surfaces, one black and the other treated with a smart film programmed to switch between states of opacity and transparency. The change of states in the projection will be synchronized to a soundtrack, created by celebrated electronic horror musician Yikii.

20:00 h. ENTER FOSSILTOPIA and get rid of the concrete in the bowels of Gemma Bahhr + Lys Morke + Judit K. + Futur Miratge (musical performance with VJ and performance).

This presentation seeks to involve the audience in some of the ideas developed and gestated through a creative dialogue that has taken place in parallel to Gemma Bahhr's research with the artists Lys Morke, Judit K. and Futur Miratge. There is a contemporary music that awaits a dialogue with the moment of inflection of the ecologies of modernity and affections that we live in. The presentation will transit between the development of the fossil modernity during the Franquismo until the body horror by means of the scenic arts. Fossil affect cannot be separated from a perceptual experience that questions how we somatize the past and how to free ourselves from the presence of the fossil and the automaton in our bodies. To sublimate, to build in one place an experience of perceptual abundance and to free ourselves from the concrete in our guts.

Gemma has developed the research around the case of the Torres Blancas building (Madrid, 1961-1972), where she has recomposed part of the invisible and fragmented body that gestated the building. This colossal fossil body is composed of a complex chain of processes, laws, institutions and other bodies, which, if no longer materially alive, remain in the form of a specter or virtual presence. The process of industrialization, urbanization and the fossil energy regime that made this concrete architecture possible (or that of the urban space in which it is situated) have not ceased to have a strong influence on us, to organize our forms of perception and subjective construction, our aspiration, our sense of the possible and our desire.

BIOS

Amaia Sánchez-Velasco and Jorge Valiente Oriol are members of Grandeza Studio, an art and architecture collective co-directed since 2011 together with Gonzalo Valiente Oriol. Their work intertwines research and critical spatial practice through writing, performance, design, film and teaching. Their work has been exhibited in Germany, Argentina, Australia, Chile, Denmark, USA, Spain, Holland, Italy, Portugal and Sweden. In 2019, they curated the Australian pavilion at the XXII Triennale di Milano, awarded the Golden Bee Award. Their last two works were exhibited at the Biennale Architettura 2023 in Venice and, in 2024, they curated the exhibition “Espejito Espejito” at the Museum of America, within the framework of the Mayrit Biennale.

Anna Engelhardt is the alias of this video artist and writer. Her research practice follows the traces of material violence, focusing on what could be considered the “ghost” of information. She has exhibited her work at transmediale, Ars Electronica, TEA Tenerife Biennial, Kyiv Biennial, The Henie Onstad Triennial for Photography and New Media, BFI London Film Festival, National Gallery of Art (Lithuania), Foto Colectania Foundation, ICA, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Engelhardt is one of the main lecturers of the Master in Information Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven and co-editor of “Chimeras: Inventory of Synthetic Cognition” (2022, Onassis Foundation).

Gemma Bahhr (pseudonym of Gemma Barricarte) is an architect, artist and researcher who explores, among other issues, the relationships between culture, politics and ecology in contemporary cultural and socio-ecosystemic transformation processes. Her research takes place through historical research, artistic creation, narrative and image (in a broad sense) problematizing contemporary political nihilism and understanding radical imagination as a powerful lever for social change.

Lys Morke (Irene Talló) is a singer-songwriter, producer and visual artist from Terrassa (Barcelona). Through electronic music she blurs the boundaries between genres such as artpop, darkpop, or darkwave and invites to explore the inner emotional world with a nostalgic look towards the 90's, evoking artists like PJ Harvey, Massive Attack or Tori Amos, and the influence of contemporary electronic music by Arca, Sega Bodega or Grimes. In 2024 he releases his debut EP “Knife Therapy” under the label Artoffact Records. Whether in dreamy ballads approaching ambient or with techno, autotune and deep bass, his songs tell stories of desire, cruel love and loss. An exercise of introspection and vulnerability that reflects the therapeutic process: feeling and materializing emotions to heal and rebuild.

Judit K. is a multi-instrumentalist and “restless ass” in constant transformation. She has participated as a composer and instrumentalist in numerous projects over the last 15 years. She is currently presenting her latest work: SAFO.EXE, Sappho's poetry from the end of the world.

Futur Miratge (Jaime Díaz Otero) is an emerging project that transits between the analog textures of drone, jazz, pop and grime looking for a space between nostalgia and the future.

VENUE AND DATES:

Presentations | September 26 from 18:30 to 21:00: Nave Una.

Installation Phantom | 24-27 September from 17:00 to 21:00 h.: Taller.

NOTICE: The presentation on the 26th includes the occasional use of strobe lights that may affect photosensitive people.