Interval #1 where the turn tightens, a cowbell with Noela Covelo Velasco, is a series of performances and an exhibition installation by Rubén Grilo and Robert M. Ochshorn.

Programme
Tuesday, 16 September

19.00 Progress Barks (2022) by Rubén Grilo and Robert M. Ochshorn
Listening session and exhibition installation, from 16 September to 5 October.

20.00 mebrat / መብራት (2025) by Misiker Agulló, Adrasha
B4MBA (Ismaël N’Diaye Pont), music producer; Circular platform by Victor Ruiz Colomer in collaboration with Nicolas Regis Beliot (Mooki6) and Opo 
30 minutes

Tuesday, 23 September
19.00 feed ♾️ back (2025) by Maguette Dieng
Collaboration with Azadi Sound System
40 minutes

20.00 endless summer (2025) by Adam Christensen
45 minutes

where the turn tightens, a cowbell
The asphalt traces the reading path of the place in one direction. Suddenly, it is diverted by something that sounds like a cowbell. A flash that appears in the sharp and directed attention of the drive. One could imagine the animal lost, but the cowbell and the animal go at the rhythm of grazing along the road.

where the turn tightens, a cowbell is a programme dedicated to practices related to sound. It traverses everything that happens between speaker, place and body: it involves every part and questions for whom these structures we call sound systems serve and where they are going.

In the room on the ground floor of the centre, a technical configuration has been installed. The abrupt sounds that can be heard come from the piece by Rubén Grilo and Robert M. Ochshorn, Progress Barks, a system of speakers that questions what a machine does when it is taught to bark.

It can be visited during an extended period from 16 September to 5 October. Playing the part of basso continuo in this exhibition, it will step aside and then return, so that other sounds can enter through the same loudspeakers and despite them.

On 16 September, Adrasha will present her piece mebrat / መብራት, in which she explores the figure of the lighthouse as a guide and frontier. On 23 September, Maguette Dieng will share feed ♾️ back, a conversation between voices and speakers, and Adam Christensen will accompany us with voice and accordion in endless summer.

Noela Covelo Velasco

An interval is a pause between two moments, a suspended time when one thing stops so that another can begin. In music, an interval is the distance between two notes; in cinema, the break between two images; and in an art centre, it can be the space between exhibitions: a moment when the exhibition space is emptied but where processes, remains and memories still resonate. Interval takes this idea as a starting point and as an opportunity to unlearn and deprogramme the usual rhythms of the institution, exploring new ways of doing, thinking and inhabiting the exhibition space.

Interval #1 focuses on the practice of Noela Covelo Velasco, who explores the voice as material, medium and space for sound, in a journey that is increasingly closer to choral composition. The project traces a network of echoes and reverberations between artworks and artists, who tune in with their practice. For two nights and two weeks, these connections can be experienced at La Fabra Centre d’Art Contemporani.


Noela Covelo Velasco (Pontevedra, 1994) is an artist who links her practice to the voice, which is the material and the space, shaping it through sound composition, performances and collective processes. Recently, she exhibited at Generaciones 2025 at La Casa Encendida and at MARCO in Vigo and she has presented her performances at Jauna Muzika (Vilnius, 2025), La Capella (Barcelona, 2024) and CA2M (Madrid, 2023). Noela graduated in design, specialising in fashion, from ESDI and has a master’s degree in sound art from the University of Barcelona. She is co-founder of the space for pedagogical experimentation c h o r o, which is based at Foc and is part of the Ràdio Web MACBA work group.

Rubén Grilo (Lugo, 1981) is an artist who currently lives in Berlin. His work examines in depth the potential of art for exploring our relationship with technology. Grilo has shown his work at Lo Pati - Centre d’Art Terres de l’Ebre, Amposta (2022); at CentroCentro, Madrid (2019); at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (with Metaphysics, 2018); at Union Pacific, London (2016); at the 13th Berlin Biennale (2016); at Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2015) and at CSS Bard, New York (2011), among other places. He received the Fundación Botín grant (2013) and was a resident at Gasworks in London (2015) and at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2011-2012). His first monograph, Worn Not, was published by Puente Editores in 2024.

Robert M. Ochshorn (California, 1987) is a software engineer, cultural theorist and media researcher based in Brussels and New York. He develops unusual digital interfaces for observing and activating sound, video, touch and language. He is interested in how new communication tools enable new social practices and vice versa. Ochshorn is co-founder and CEO of Reduct.Video.

Misiker Agulló, Adrasha (Addis Ababa, 1996), graduated in international relations and is an Ethiopian multidisciplinary artist based in Barcelona. Her journey began in dance in Addis Ababa and evolved into sound research that connects contemporary African club music with hybrid genres like Gqom, Afropunk, Future Dancehall and experimental electronic music. Her project mebrat / መብራት explores the figure of the lighthouse as a symbol of guidance and frontier, translating its pulses of light into rhythms. Through field recordings, visual poetry and personal archives, she articulates soundscapes that address displacement, communication and belonging from a political and sensory perspective.

Maguette Dieng (Barcelona, 1988) is a DJ, producer and music programmer, dedicated to the research and dissemination of music and sound. The motivation behind her work is to reflect on sound representation and acoustic justice and how we can create community and possibility through sound. As a music and sound creator, she has composed for performance projects and installations. She is interested in the different ways in which acoustics shape the cultural identity of society and how we can learn about society and transform it through the audible and its activation.

Adam Christensen (Denmark-UK, 1979) is a multidisciplinary artist. His work is primarily developed through textiles, music and installation, blurring the boundaries between everyday life and fiction. Based on his immediate experiences, coloured by the theatricality of everyday, the spectacle of domesticity, chance encounters and emotional and physical dramas, Christensen conveys these experiences through his performances. A primary concern of his practice is the construction and representation of space and what “activates” that space: the unfolding narrative of heartbreak, desire, memory and identity. He forms a “stage” from which he interacts with the audience and can edit the narrative, often by singing with the accordion and reading short stories, adding layers to a story in a process of continuous development.