Pacífico #1 is the first in a new series of misbegotten, dramatic, audiovisual pieces through which I am trying to trace the map of my current obsessions. It’s a map to help me try and understand why I do what I do, why I write what I write, and why I follow what I follow to exhaustion with the camera from my mobile phone.

America is a sea by another name is an audiovisual and autobiographical piece that invites us to think about ourselves in third person, as if for a moment there was no ‘us’, as if we could see ourselves projected on a screen. It’s just another excuse to wonder whether, having arrived at this point in our trajectory, there really is an ‘us’.

BIO
Txalo Toloza-Fernández. (Antofagasta, 1975)
Trained as an audiovisual creator in Santiago de Chile and in Barcelona, where he has lived and worked since 1997.
Video artist, performer and curator of exhibitions, over the past few years he has specialised in audio visual design directed at live arts and in video creation pieces using mobile phones.
His work has been shown at various festivals, meetings and galleries in Spain, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, China, Italy, Brazil and Argentina among others.
His latest premieres include stage performance Trópico #9 – Tierra Quemada together with choreographer Laida Azkona and Desplazamiento del Palacio de la Moneda created with Juan Navarro and Roger Bernat.

Sekvantaro is a piece that experiments with and researches into the fine line that separates what is natural from impostures; reality from fiction; what theatre, or the attempt to create theatre, is or isn’t. It is a live itinerary during which the audience accompany (woo) the actresses, who in turn woo (accompany) the audience. The show, which consists of several parts, some taking place on stage and some in less conventional spaces, revolves around this concept. And it’s all done without actually creating theatre.

BIO
El Pollo Campero company, takeaway food
Emerged as a company in March 2012 and showed a first draft of their work a few months later at the La Poderosa In-formals in Barcelona. The company continued researching and creating a variety of performance essays until the premiere of their first complete piece Sekvantaro: piezas codependientes de duración relativa en las que las que las actrices intentarán no hacer teatro (co-dependent pieces of relative length in which the actresses will attempt not to act) within the framework of the International Festival for New Performance Researchers V CENIT (Seville, TNT- ATALAYA) where it received award for Best Show.
So far in their career the company have received the award for Best Director (ACT Festival) and for Best New Show at the 2nd annual Andalusian Theatre Awards. At the moment they are touring this first show at different venues and festivals (FRINGE 2014, Madrid; Festival Fronterizo, Santander; Festival In-Tacto, Vitoria-Gasteiz; Festival Escena Abierta 2015) and are preparing their second piece with the working title A día de hoy eso no existe (Right now that doesn’t exist).

Some of our neighbours have been dancing regularly in our auditorium for two years now. They are Carmen, Teresa, Pepi, Pili, Aurora, Rosario, Alsi, Pilar, Núria, Maria Carme, Emilia, Pepa l'Enrique, Carme, Jonhattan, Maria Isabel and Lluïsa; all women aged between 65 and 91, who live in Barcelona´s Casc Antic neighbourhood. Someone said, after seeing them perform, that they could well be the ‘grannies’ some of us have at home, or even the ‘grannies’ we ourselves will become some day. And the fact is that they deserve more than anyone to have, in their own neighbourhood, the visibility and the access to space and resources necessary for the artistic expression of all they have to tell us.

This will be their seventh performance in front of an Antic Teatre audience. They have even been part of the GREC Festival twice. At each presentation they face new challenges and take their artistic capabilities ever further, freeing up the creativity that was hidden to them for so long.

The Antic Teatre's community project with his neighbourhood consists of dance and movement workshops for older people and a series of public performances over the year. This provides access to the language and artistic expression of dance with the accompanying benefits that this has in terms of social inclusion and cohesion. At the same time, we create awareness of the needs and methods of expression of the least visible members of our community – the elderly.

Also included in the project are various activities designed to encourage relations across the generational divide, between the eldest and youngest residents of our neighbourhood.

La cultura (Culture) uses three statements: “No-one lacks culture”; “If your head is cut off there’s no culture”; and “Culture is the pastime of death” to define the word culture in today’s society and the vision of and relationship with culture held by Los Torreznos, humans from the Western world. The idea is to try and construct a kind of conference on culture, with culture itself reflecting some of the main opinions about the subject.
Ever since they were small they’ve been interested in culture, they’ve worked in the world of performance, they love other species of live beings, they know people who seriously lack culture, and that’s why they’re doing this.

BIO
Los Torreznos (J. Vallaure & R.Lamata)
Are one of the most important groups dedicated to independent artistic creation in Spain (Venice Biennale, 2007). Their art is a conceptual exploration of deep-rooted habits and our social and political environments.
They have worked together since 1992 on a variety of projects to do with ‘experimental art’; they research ways of recounting things so that not just a few can understand but so that anybody in their own way can access something different to what they’re used to. Their works have been shown around the world, including Finland, Russia, Norway, Palestine, Germany, France, China, Jordan, Belgium, the USA, Egypt, the UK, Switzerland and Spain.

I began All Things with one premise: “Tme is not innocent”; and I will do all I can to convince you of this.

In this piece time is not perceived as linear. Time is a construction, a complex of temporalities, a human object. This is why we say “Time is not innocent; space is an object”. Because we believe in the abstract and unified form of time and space.

In All Things, time is subjected to the dictates of objects: we kill time, we put things off, we provoke temporal crises, we devalue and revalue time, we make it disappear, we sell it…

It could be worth as much as an empty plastic bottle, which is most likely less than the 25 cents it costs, but which continues to be independent of its material value.

BIO
Norberto Llopis Segarra
Was born in Valencia and is currently based in Holland. He graduated in dance and choreography at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona. In 2005-2007, he took a Masters’ in performing arts at DasArts in Amsterdam. At present he is studying philosophy at Spanish university UNED.
He has carried out work in several different forms in Barcelona, Brussels and Holland. He has performed in different creative processes with artists including Carolien Hermans, Paz Roja, Diego Gil and Jefta Van Dinther, among others.

The silence of a body in movement. The silent stage. The silent stalls. The silence of a conversation. The silence of the street. The silence of the neighbours. The silence of the media. The silence of politics. One minute’s silence. TACET.

John Cage wanted to defy the very nature of music with his work 4’33’’. The only instruction in the score for this piece is the word tacet, indicating that the performer must remain silent and not play their instrument for four minutes and thirtythree seconds.

BIO
G.R.U.A (Research Group for Artistic Universes)
Invites three artists to create a piece based on the idea of silence, to be presented in various corners of the Antic Teatre and so generate an itinerary for contemplation and experimentation on the concept of silence, both from an artistic and from a socio-political perspective

e'd like to give you a taste of a new drama project that will hit the stage in October. It's a creation process that will travel the N-340 highway from Cadiz to Plaza de España in Barcelona, using the journey itself as a place and a time for research into movement, thought and actions. The team set out on July 4th and will arrive in time to close Antic Teatre's summer season.

We are hosting a drinks party on the Antic Teatre terrace to celebrate their arrival and find out more about the project; this will be an opportunity to share experiences and see off the season, ready to return in September with new projects and new illusions.

Have a great summer!

PS You can follow and take part in the daily development of the Ship's Compass Notebook for this project here →