Creation and Museums

Art factories and some of the city's museums are the central players in a series of joint experiences bringing artists from a broad range of disciplines into contact with the collections held at these institutions.

The Barcelona Grec Festival has been working together with the Barcelona Institute of Culture's Heritage Department since the 2019 edition,  to promote an annual creation experience which puts the city's big museums in contact with art creation factories and spaces. Such experiences offer some of the artists working in these creation spaces and factories the chance to create productions where collections held in museums or institutions can be used as a starting point or even re-read, or new readings suggested for the spaces that the productions are to be performed in.

They are samples of creation processes for dance, circus, theatre or other live-arts disciplines thought up specifically for the places they are to be seen in by spectators and which offer a different and alternative view of the collections held in the city's various museums or the buildings they are performed in.

Some of the creation processes that you can see here will go on to become complete shows, such as Corpus, the production from Irene Vicente showing this year at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

This year's shows are:

Extinction Rave [Diagnóstico de Situación], by Fundación Mis Bragas
July 1 and 2, at 8:00 p.m. and 9:45 p.m.
Venue: Museum of Natural Sciences
Booking required.
[Hybrid scene]

A reflection on climate change and the – not-so-remote– possibility of witnessing our own extinction. A tour with headphones that invites us to stop and look at the state of things.
Voices of thinkers from several fields of research invite us to reflect on the contemporary challenges of everyday life. The activities asks whether we can construct, from a feminist perspective, a world that puts care and life's sustenance at the centre.

A creation by the Mis Bragas Foundation. Co-produced by Nau Ivanow and the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona.
Playwright and director: Gaia Bautista. Assistant director: Andrea Marinel·lo. Performed by: Gaia Bautista, Andrea Marinel·lo, Joaquin Dolyenko. Sound design: Joaquin Dolyenko. Stage design and costumes: Aleix García. Production: Cintia de Luis. 

Projecte K amb K de Kol·lectivitat, by Sputniks Cia.
July 2nd. 11 am, 12 noon and 1 pm
Venue: Montjuïc Castle
​Booking required.
[Circus and theater]

The artistic creation process came about from questioning ourselves about the space. How is it formed? What history will we find there? How does it affect our identity and the way we relate to ourselves? What power roles do we find there? And, above all, how can we give it a new meaning, through art?

An original creation from the Sputniks Company. Co-produced by the Ateneu Popular 9 Barris Creation Factory and Montjuïc Castle.
Artists: Marc Bosch, Sergi Estebanell, Griselda Juncà, Lara Renard, Pol Para and Alba Tortras. Creators: Marc Bosch, Júlia Clarà, Lara Renard, Pol Para and Alba Tortras. Artistic accompaniment: Griselda Juncà and Sergi Estebanell. Historical memory research and stage design: Júlia Marbà.

AUTOODI, by L'Esbord (Pere Seda and Sonia Àrias)
July 2.12 noon and 6 pm.
Venue: Museum of Ethnology and World Cultures (Montjuïc)
​Booking required.
[Dance, music, traditional and performative practices]

Pere and Sònia are two friends who met as children at the Sant Andreu giant figures group. After training in the world of music and dance, they are now consolidating their professional careers. Nevertheless, the associations movement continues to play a central role in their everyday lives and traditional practices are the cornerstone of their artistic interests. What made them decide to be and define themselves, respectively, as a professional graller [Catalan chanter player] and a professional dancer? Looking at the traditional roots and working with this language lead them to constant contradictions in their everyday lives and social milieu, where blame, shame and even hatred are mixed together. However, such self-hatred gives rise to a liberating dialogue, complex-free ode to our traditional wealth and a demand to be able to live life to the full. It also results in a conscious critique of how popular culture is manipulated according to political interests.

A L’Esbord show. Co-produced by the Fabra i Coats Factory and the Museu Etnològic i de les Cultures del Món de Barcelona.
Performance, choreographic and music creation: Pere Seda and Sònia Arias. Director and original idea from: Pere Seda. Music production: Josep Cordobés. Drag Queen and better person: Jessica Pulla / Joan Gabàs. Costume design and outside take: Marc Udina. Sound design: Víctor Bassedas. Graphic imagery: Marc Viamonte (@viamonte_lab). Production: L’Embarral. 

Dido, by Paula García-Masedo
22 June and July 2. Tuesday to Sunday, 10 amb to 8 pm.
Venue: Design Museum of Barcelona
​Booking not required.
[Installation]

Dido is based on a tapestry from the Museu del Disseny collection, Queen Dido, woven in Brussels around 1500 and which represents the myth of Dido, the founding queen of Carthage, who killed herself after her betrayal by Aeneas. Almost architectural in its dimensions, Dido reprises the role of an outstanding element of western material culture, namely, a tapestry, portable architecture. The installation offers a physical meeting with some of the materials making up the tapestry. Constructed with old linen-cloth paper, it establishes a connection with the territories where the material comes from and the cultural and productive assemblies that have intervened in its history.
Guided tour with the artist, 1 July, at 1 pm (booking required).

Co-produced by Hangar and the Museu del Disseny. In collaboration with the Museu Molí Paperer de Capellades. Special thanks to: Pense, Victòria Rabal

Escoltes Divergents: studies on denaturing the movement of sound, by Georgia Vardarou
June 30th. 6.30 and 8.30 pm.
Venue: Museum of Music of Barcelona
​Booking required.
[Dance]

Research based on three pieces of music derived from the exhibition Listening with your hands. Obsolete media, ephemeral messages from the Museu de la Música. Georgia Vardarou invites the public to share a “performance” that they experience and are part of, a proposal that shows us kinetic attempts that resonate and end up disintegrating until an autonomous dance material appears. A way of ironing out possible irregularities between our various perceptions. 
The performance starts off with the music pieces I am sitting in a room, by Alvin Lucier, Vinyl Coda I, by Philip Jeck and The Disintegration Loops, by William Basinski, through which a denaturation process has been carried out between movement and sound based on the various artistic languages of the whole team involved.

Co-produced by Graner and the Museu de la Música de Barcelona
Conception, research, performing: Georgia Vardarou. Research, creation, performing: Júlia Rúbies Subirós. Research, creation, sound: Martí Ruiz Carulla. Costumes design: Eleni Chaidemenaki. Dramaturgy: Quim Bigas: Photography, video: Tristàn Pérez-Martín. Aknowledgements: Peter Lenearts, Ferran Fages.

More info:
barcelona.cat/creacioimuseus

Booking:
https://inscripcions-ajuntament.barcelona.cat/index.php/137927