PASSAGE. piece for 4 soloists, collective, audiovisual material and street

ULYSSES In Situ/City features young artists working in different European social contexts and creating closer relationships with European citizens. With this approach, the project aims to highlight matters of central concern for Europe today.

Composer and multidisciplinary artist Alberto Bernal, Frames Percussion ensemble and about 40 students from music schools in Barcelona will participate in a collaborative artistic project that involves an intervention in public space.

Alberto Bernal’s recent work focuses on two lines: works in conventional spaces with audiovisual content of post-pandemic society (virtualisation, entertainment platform, functional music or accelerated information flows) and participatory projects in public space, which present a more utopian vision of the social, highlighting the recovery of public space, reflection on the human role in nature and sensitivity beyond the screen (OccupyYourself, 2021; mobile, 2016-2022; si ambulem, 2023).

In this project, the transit and friction between both realms is explored: the virtualized interior space and the shared exterior that contains it. A transit between the containment of the enclosed experience and the overflow produced by its exit into the open space. It is a work with a discourse whose content implies its own abandonment, giving way to the emergence of the multiplicity of discourses that are produced in the unpredictability of the streets of Sant Andreu (Barcelona) and its site-specificity.

FRAMES Percussion represents the talent and dedication to contemporary music. Comprising a new generation of percussionists from Spain, the group emerged with the purpose of presenting the most unique and innovative proposals, encompassing the most challenging pieces in the current repertoire. Their approach involves meticulous preparation and utmost respect for new compositional languages.

After receiving support from national institutions such as ICEC, INAEM, ICUB and IRLL, in 2024, they have been awarded the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Ensemble Prize ’24.

Alberto Bernal: Composer and sound artist of classical formation and several influences, with works framed near the turning point between traditional concert situations and other disciplines like installation, performance of video art. His work is, above all, a search and deconstruction of borders: between the aesthetic and sociopolitical realms, or between the different conventional perceptual fields (sound, image, word, quotidian perception). Since 2023 he is professor at the Royal Conservatory of Madrid.

DATE AND PLACE: 10 October 2024, Fabra i Coats – Fàbrica de Creació de Barcelona

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