What is cav_a ?
This is a cultural exchange programme devised to share, understand and create awareness of contemporary creative performing arts practices in Catalonia, and in return learn about such practices in each host country we visit.
By encouraging international cooperation between independent cultural research centres in the field of multidisciplinary arts, we hope to increase cultural perspectives and propagate new forms of creative expression.

Why?
The programme aims to stimulate creativity by basing artistic development on exchange and knowledge, bringing Catalan contemporary performing arts creativity onto the international arena, and transcending frontiers.
To this end we want to work with other, like-minded centres in direct collaborations on productions, as well as engaging in one-to-one exchanges between artists, cultural organisations, and even cities. Using performances, workshops and training, we will create a channel of information between artists, creators and arts professionals, moving them out of isolation and into the wider community, helping them to meet the changing social, political and professional challenges that face the artist as citizen.

Who is it for?
It will allow artists from Catalonia to show their work and their creative processes to the different communities that welcome them, sharing knowledge and interests with local artists and audiences, while opening the way for artists from our host countries to make the reciprocal journey to Barcelona, nourishing local contemporary performing arts with international programming, meetings and debates.
Ultimately our goal is to facilitate opportunities for artists of all nationalities to show their work to a wider audience, and to help them develop their relationship with the audience, making it a two-way process with a free flow of opinions that can lead to the creation of new languages of expression and the development of new ways of seeing and understanding contemporary stage arts.

Where?
The first cav_a exchange took place at the Glej Theater in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in December 2011. Three Catalan and Balearic companies presented their work there and took part in various additional activities. A few months later in June 2012 three Slovenian companies brought their work to Antic Teatre within the framework of their own project, “Glej, across the border”.

December 2012 saw the second edition of cav_a take place at the HKD Teatar in Rijeka, Croatia. For this year, 2013, the exchange will be made with the city of Paris, in collaboration with Mains d’Œuvres.

Information on the first cav_a exchange:
Catalan &Balearic artistes visite eslovenian artists. Ljubljana, Diciembre 2013. →
Glej across the border. Barcelona, June 2013. →

Information on the second cav_a exchange:
Catalan artists visiting Croatian artists. Rijeka, Diciembre 2013. →

Mains d'Œuvres emerged as the result of one basic desire: to transmit creation to everyone, to impart the ability to think, feel and build our society together. Using exhibitions, concerts, performances, workshops and meetings throughout the creation process, new and innovative artistic forms can be explored.

A space for creation and dissemination, for research and experimentation, that welcomes artists of all disciplines, citizen associations and initiatives, the Mains d'Œuvres association, founded in 1998, is located in the old Sports and Social Centre of the Valeo Factories, a building comprising 4,000 m² next to the Saint-Ouen Flea Market. The centre first opened its doors to the public in January 2001. Well-established in the field and in the constant search for connections between art and society, Mains d' Œuvres is undoubtedly a multifunctional centre, open to all.

Mains d’Œuvres is an independent project that wishes to encourage alternatives in the support for artistic practices. Above all, through its residency programme, Mains d'Œuvres accompanies artists and project creators in their searches.

In addition to providing working space, the core element of this accompaniment lies in supporting projects and creations with human and logistic solutions, offered in a spirit of participation and coexistence.

Mains d' Œuvres is supported by the General Council of Seine-Saint-Denis, the Ministry of Culture for the Ile de France region, the Ministry of Youth and Sport, and the Saint-Ouen and París City Councils.

CARME TORRENT & INARI SALMIVAARA   # A Night in Two Solos #

 Two pieces in which the individual being, from inside a purified space, brings us to a poetic understanding of the collective.
Two pieces; two women; two colours.

More info:
www.mainsdoeuvres.org/article1987.html →
www.facebook.com/events/428320013946682 →

Antic Teatre - Espai de Creació is an independent Cultural and Social Centre based in a cultural heritagebuilding constructed in 1650 in central Barcelona.  It has a multifunctional hall, a terrace and garden bar, and Wi-Fi internet connection. It has a second venue, AdriAntic, on the outskirts of the city, which is used primarily for artistic residencies.

Antic Teatre is one of the reference points for independent, contemporary performance, a resource centre for multidisciplinary arts dedicated to the research and development of new performance languages. Our mission is to support and encourage the experimentation, creation, production, exhibition, promotion and dissemination potential of professional artists. We are committed to the search for new languages of the body and of movement, new dramaturgies and new technologies that avoid established, learned techniques and repeated methodologies.

It supports young, emerging creators as well as independent, experienced artists and also established artists with a well-known career repertoire.

More info:
www.anticteatre.com →

The Barcelona Institute of Culture (ICUB) was created in 1996 to manage all municipal matters to do with culture. Its main activities are: the creation, management and maintenance of the city’s cultural heritage; the dissemination of culture throughout the different neighbourhoods and districts of Barcelona; to encourage the activities of the non-profit cultural sector; to boost cultural facilities and industries in the city; and to promote different cultural and leisure activities and support citizen-based civic initiatives.

Since 2011, ICUB has created, under the aegis of the Barcelona Capital directorship, a programme entitled “International Network”. This programme works together with the main cultural operators in the city to engage in, among others, the following activities:

a) international projection of Barcelona’s cultural facilities and events
b) presentation of Barcelona’s cultural facilities to European and international networks
c) support for European partnerships led from Barcelona
d) cooperation with twinned cities or with cities having special links with Barcelona.

More information:
barcelonacultura.bcn.cat →

The Institut Ramon Llull is a public body founded with the purpose of promoting Catalan language studies at universities abroad, the translation of literature and thought written in Catalan, and Catalan cultural production in other areas like theatre, film, circus, dance, music, the visual arts, design and architecture.

One of their areas of activity is the internationalisation of contemporary performing arts creation, manifest in this collaboration with Antic Teatre in Barcelona, by means of the cav_a programme.

More information:
www.llull.cat →

The piece “100 fuegos horizontales” (100 Horizontal Fires) is part of a larger project, MOVING ON NOTHING, which she has been developing over the past three years and which has consisted of various different experiences, not all of them on stage. The project is concerned with the dynamics involved in the process of subjectifying, dynamics that are in a constant state of flux, and the creation of implements that allow the multiplicity of these processes to be experienced fully.

For the purpose she has enabled a space consisting of encounters and experimentation with movement involving people from a variety of backgrounds. This access to the potential of the body creates the possibility of contagion, of affecting and being affected by different intensities. "...no-one knows what bodies are capable of..." 100 Horizontal Fires is the result of this group experience.

"So the terrain is not something closed, but rather a moving vector which means there are constant movements of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation. Or, even better, the terrain is a vector leading out of the terrain. The terrain is becoming; it allows itself to be invaded, or it invades; it becomes populated; it becomes deserted. Each body seeks to extend its territory through its becomings, through encounters with what nourishes it."

Carme Torrent
She is involved with the learning, research and creation processes surrounding the body in relation to its environment. Much of her experience comes from the realm of architecture. In terms of performance, her work is the result of collaborations with Min Tanaka, Carmelo Salazar, Andres Corchero, Hisako Horikawa, Marina Garcés and Xavier Le Roy. Over the past three years she has been working on the research and creation piece Moving On Nothing, from which she has developed three performances: Monarchic Bodies?, 100 Horizontal Fires and Deferred Construction (this last piece is also part of international project Miniatures, an itinerant show that aims to facilitate dissemination and dialogue between Mediterranean countries).

moversesobrenada.blogspot.com.es →