50 artists | 15 nationalities | 13 events | 10 venues
The countdown starts for our 13th edition in Barcelona which will take place from the 7th to the 13th of March - Why? Because we already have the full program!
This will be one of the first occasions in Barcelona in which an event can be enjoyed without capacity restrictions or COVID passport. Hence, it will be a unique opportunity to meet - in a face-to-face format - professionals and creative communities from all over the world, who will visit Barcelona during the festival, together with their spanish homologues.
With this latest wave of creators, the festival confirms a total of 50 artists from 15 different nationalities, which will present their live show, A/V show and installations during 13 events in 10 different locations: Roca Barcelona Gallery, Institut Français, Hangar, UPF/Phonos, LAUT, Nitsa/Astin, Antiga Fàbrica Estrella Damm and Casa Bonay.
LAST CONFIRMATIONS #MUTEKES13:
Acid Thermal (VE/ES), CFCF (CA/QC), D.N.S. (UK/ES), Flat Erik & Merca Bae (ES), France Jobin & Markus Heckmann (CA/QC+DE), Guillaume Coutu Dumont (CA/QC), Ida Toninato & Pierre-Luc Lecours (CA/QC), Kazumi Sakoda (JP), Maoupa Mazzocchetti & Hospice 1er (FR/BE), Myriam Boucher (CA/QC), Nahash (CA/QC), oma totem (ES/CAT), Robyn Moody (CA), Ryoichi Kurokawa (JP), Shackleton (UK), Tim Hecker (CA/QC), Vincent Lemieux (CA/QC)
The programme highlights, once again, the diversity, equality and integration that MUTEKES promotes thanks to its model of cooperation, institutional alliances and synergies with our solid MUTEK International Network.
Celebration of the 25th anniversary of the “Québec -Cataluña” treaty
Coinciding this 2022 with the "25th anniversary of the signing of the Cooperation Agreement between Québec and Catalonia", MUTEKES receives a delegation of Québec artists and professionals, highlighting and strengthening the bonds of friendship and cooperation between the two territories. Since 1983, they have maintained bilateral relations in strategic areas of interest concerning language policies, the protection of language, cultural diversity and education.
In this line, it is an honor for MUTEK Barcelona to host the "cathedral” electronic music by Tim Hecker, an established artist focused on exploring the intersection of noise, dissonance and melody, fostering an approach that is both physical and emotional to the creation of songs. Also notable for its soundtracks, among the most recent ones, for a 5-part series for the BBC entitled "The North Water", directed by Andrew Haigh, and one for the independent film "Lucifer" by Austrian filmmaker Peter Brunner.
It is followed by an important number of debuts by Quebec and Canadian artists presenting their latest works for the first time in Barcelona:
After more than a dozen performances at MUTEK Montreal, Guillaume Coutu Dumont premieres in the city 'Les Empires', a performance inspired by mythology, memories of cartoons from his childhood and movie soundtracks, with which it generates retrofuturistic pieces full of warmth and imperfections, typical of the synthetic ambient sounds of another era, which create a hypnotic and nostalgic atmosphere.
The duo of Québec artists Ida Tonanito and Pierre-Luc Lecours, do so with their project 'Inner Seas' where through the filter of digital tools, they combine in a unique audio stream the baritone saxophone, electric guitar and modular synthesizer; the resulting sound performance is staged on two screens as means to visually represent the speed and energy carried by the music.
France Jobin and Markus Heckmann premiere their performance 'Entanglement', an artistic-scientific project inspired by the concept and properties of entanglement in quantum physics and quantum fields, based on theories such as the interpretation of Copenhagen and the multiverse (quantum decoherence), or the fluidity of time.
For the first time in Barcelona, the show A/V 'Littoral' by the Canadian Myriam Boucher in which through the combination of sculptural objects, sound and light, she explores concepts related to sea level rise incorporating scientific data on coastal erosion, thermal expansion, sediment compaction and climate change.
Nahash, alias of the artist and producer of labels like SVBKVLT (SHangay), has been for years motivated to generate soundtracks around the idea of the end of the world. He will debut with the A/V show of his album “Flowers Of The Revolution” (2020), a work that he feels really current as it evokes a pre-apocalyptic environment which resembles the world we are living in.
The Canadian CFCF, nominated for Best Remixed Recording at the 2015 Grammy Awards, for his remix of the song "Berlin by Overnight" by Max Richter, has shown since 2008 a multifaceted musical identity when it comes to production - hip-hop experiments, Balearic disc, ambient/new age explorations, or the commercial side of the atmospheric drum'n'bass. Evoking various styles of electronic and alternative rock, CFCF will premiere in Barcelona his album “Memoryland”(2021).
As part of the evening program #MUTEKES13 receives the promoter and founder of the label “Musique Risquée” and music curator of MUTEK Montreal Vincent Lemieux, a key member of the vibrant Canadian club scene.
More international confirmations highlighted:
From the UK direct to the closing night of the festival in Astin, Shackleton, one of the most influential and persistent figures of the more restless and innovative bass music culture. A true polymath man. His sound, as singular and loaded as hypnotic, psychedelic and industrial, impregnates a lot of projects - both his own and others - and, more recently, collaborations with live bands, thus adding new and broader records and depth to his great repertoire.
The premiere of the A/V show by Maoupa Mazzocchetti & Hospice 1er is supported by Wallonie-Bruxelles Musiques (WBM), a public service agency specialized in supporting the export of the Belgian music sector. A proposal that at the sound level travels between claustrophobic and noise-induced oscillations, primitive rhythms, electroacoustic and the frenetic work of synthesizer usual brand producer, multi-instrumentalist, sound sculptor DJ Maoupa Mazzocchetti, accompanied on this occasion visually by the Belgian Hospice 1er.
The Japan Foundation is joined by artist Ryoichi Kurokawa and Barcelona-based Japanese artist Kazumi Sakoda. On the one hand, Kurokawa presents for the first time in Barcelona his work “assembly / subassemblies", a project co-produced in 2019 by LOXOSconcept (Matera 2019), MUTEK, Stereolux/Scopitone and TodaysArt, in an investigation on the relationship between nature and the impact of human activity through an architectural scale perspective: ruins, buildings invaded by nature, badly preserved architectures that overlap and are dynamically rebuilt. The aim is not only to broaden the perception of floating between nature and man-made, but also between abstract and concrete phenomena through their transition, destruction and renaturalization. On the other hand, Kazumi generates compositions that blur the genres of experimental music and noise. His sound investigations - transformed into music in cassette format, using loops of handmade tapes - are focused on the differences between the sounds of Barcelona and Tokyo.
As part of the kickoff of the festival, MUTEKES joins the meeting that the network of women in the music industry shesaid.so Spain celebrates in Casa Bonay on the occasion of the International Women’s Day (8 March) with different artistic proposals: the world premiere of Kazumi’s new project, in which he reflects on the impact that religion has for women, as well as two of the projects selected during the recent We Are Equals Music Academy (to be announced in the coming days).
Local and national talents
Representing national talents, the world premiere of the new project of Flat Erik & Merca Bae, 'Qubits', a performance that results from the collaboration between the producer Merca Bae and the artist Erik Urano. As already happened in their first connection "Molecular" (Neovalladolor, Sound Boy 2020), they present a combination of textures and structures realized with one eye on the dance floor and the other in that microcosm that both feed on, alien to any passenger element or predominant label, diving through poorly studied and less experienced sonic territories.
The world premiere of the solo project of the Catalan artist oma totem, whose career began as draft promoter and who is currently manager of the label Hivern Discs, where he has been releasing his own musical productions. Among the most recent, has published rural papers with John Talabot and Meritxell Bonastre. And D.N.S the British digger based in Barcelona, Michelle Hardiman, one of the main musical agitators of the city’s fiery local scene and whose sessions explore the limits of avant-garde bass music and techno sound, always flirting with rave rhythms and vertiginous beats with high doses of bp.
Part of the visual experience of the Nocturne will be devised by the Videographer, Visual Artist and Live VJ venezuelan based in Barcelona, Acid Thermal.
MUTEK would like to thank the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for its financial support.
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