On Thursday, 10 October, the Ramon Llull Institute and the CCCB will present the seminar "Wild rumours and sound art", which features two debates on the Bestiari project that can currently be seen as part of the participation of Catalan culture in the Venice Art Biennale 2024. The seminar is part of the fourth edition of the Biennial of Thought promoted by Barcelona City Council.
These public programmes, curated by Pol Capdevila, delve deeper into the contents of the Carlos Casas project curated by Filipa Ramos. The project seeks hope in today's world, exploring the commonalities between past and present, examining the role of the unconscious in ecology and proposing ways to connect with other lives and ways of doing things.
The wild sounds of Catalonia. Natural parks and sound ecology (5 pm) provides insight into the current state of fauna in the natural parks of Catalonia, through the expertise of biologists, naturalists and activists Ponç Feliu, Eloïsa Matheu and Taime Smit.
The second Bestiari meeting. Tradition, nature, technology and sound art (7 pm) brings to the table the intersection of art and science. Carlos Casas and Pol Capdevila will discuss the possibilities of sound art to open perception to new languages, with the musician, writer, curator and sound artist David Toop.
Both activities are free, with prior reservation.
PROGRAM IN VENICE
On 17 and 18 October, numerous activities will take place in Venice, culminating the programme of parallel activities around the Bestiari project.
The Sound Studies Hub SSH! program, led by Francesco Bergamo, will hold a seminar at IUAV University in Venice on Thursday, October 17th. Experts from the fields of bioacoustics, sound art, zoomusicology, and philosophy will explore how technology may expand human perception, how recorded soundscapes can reconfigure a more sensible relation to natural environments, the sound as a transversal language in the arts, and the aesthetic experience of natural music.
Francesco Bergamo, Carlos Casas, Filipa Ramos, and Pol Capdevila will give the presentation. In the morning, Nicola di Croce, Giulia di Lenarda, and Giorgio de Vecchi (Futura Research), as well as Craig Ciecura, a researcher in engineering, music, and sound studies, will deliver their talks. The seminar will close at 2 p.m. with a round table with David George Haskell, Niccolò Tramontana and Gaia Martino.
On Thursday at 6.30 pm, the Catalonia in Venice space will feature a screening of the film Cemetery by Carlos Casas, followed by a talk with both Casas and Pol Capdevila. This film forum session and is part of the artist's installation in Venice.
The programme of activities will continue on Friday 18 October at 5 pm with a listening workshop and a soundwalk of the surroundings of Catalonia in Venice by Radio Safari. Afterwards (at 7 pm), artists Armand Lesecq and Florian Hecker, will present two live performances showcasing their groundbreaking compositions that will challenge and expand the possibilities of the Bestiari sound system. Each one utilizing advanced ambisonic and wave field synthesis technologies, while pushing the system to its absolute limits, introducing unprecedented sonic textures and immersive soundscapes to the venue. This performance promises to redefine the spatial sound experience, enveloping the audience in a unique auditory environment that blends technical precision with experimental creativity, making it a truly avant-garde event.
Activities in Venice are free and open to the public; no booking is required. The Università Iuav di Venezia - Sound Studies Hub SSH!, the Pompeu Fabra University - Institute of Culture and the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities all collaborate with Bestiari's public programmes.
BESTIARI
Bestiari is an immersive audiovisual project by Carlos Casas, curated by Filipa Ramos, in which visitors are immersed in a hypnagogic environment of sounds and images inhabited by sounds and images of creatures from natural and imagined Catalan landscapes. Its title refers to the first compendiums of natural history, the bestiaries, which compiled descriptions of animals of all kinds, often accompanied by lessons in life and behaviour.
Taking as a starting point the text of the Disputa de l’ase, written in 1417 by the writer Anselm Turmeda, Bestiari pays tribute to the speaking animals of the text, who demand that there be interspecies justice.
A large film installation, derived from each species’ spectrum of vision, creates hypnotic encounters and places the viewer halfway between wakefulness and sleep. Featuring Ambisonics 3D sound spatialization and infrasound recordings, Bestiari presents frequencies beyond the human sensory realm, and offers poetic, political and sensory experiences that allow us to morph into another being assuming the transformations that this process can generate in our bodies, minds and cognitive, emotional and perceptual systems.
The Catalonia in Venice project has received more than 22,000 visitors since it opened on 20 April and can be seen in Venice until 24 November.
