Opening MMMAD 2023
Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga --> 4 May, 2023The fourth edition of MMMAD Festival Urbano de Arte Digital de Madrid opens on 4 May at 19h in the courtyard of the Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga, bringing together the entire creative community around the festival and presenting two live performances: Umbráfono by Enrique del Castillo and Transcending Species by Manel De Aguas. We will also inaugurate the collective exhibition kasdfñasd in the nave Ceniceros of Serrería Belga, with works by Enrique Agudo, Teresa Fernández-Pello, Andrea Muniaín, Yosi Negrín and Lola Zoido.
Due to capacity issues, access will be restricted with prior registration. More details coming soon.
Umbráfono
is a project by Enrique del Castillo (Jaén,
1982) that consists of a performance with an optical reader capable of
transforming luminous stimuli projected onto a photosensitive cell into sound.
These stimuli are generated by a beam of light passing through celluloid film.
This project is based on the optical-analogue reading system used in the cinema
since 1919 to interpret the soundtracks that form part of films. The pieces
that make up the soundtracks have been designed and manufactured by the author,
as well as the films used, which are original compositions without copies.
Manel De Aguas (Barcelona, 1996)
is a trans-species and cyborg artist, activist,
producer and performer based in Berlin, best known for having developed and
installed deep L sensory fins on his head. The fins, formally known as
"Weather Fins", allow him to hear atmospheric pressure, temperature
and humidity through implants on each side of his head. His artistic practice
includes music production and performance, where he explores weather through
sound by offering audiences a sonic experience of the atmosphere. Transcending
Species is the title of De Aguas' forthcoming self-produced album and also
the name of the show in which the artist performs the songs on the album, which
explore different chapters of De Aguas' cyborg transition under a veil of
hyperpop, trance and ambient sounds.
Video © CENIZA. Sound © Andrea Muniáin
kasdfñasd, group exhibition
Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga --> 4 May – 4 Jun, 2023Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga will become the main venue of the fourth edition of the MMMAD Festival Urbano de Arte Digital de Madrid. During the month of May, the space will host the exhibition kasdfñasd, which brings together the work of five artists linked to the city of Madrid whose work explores the relationship between the physical and digital worlds.
kasdfñasd, an apparent typo that we all recognise, "an expression used when you are so excited that you can not find the words to describe your feelings" (Urban Dictionary), an internet word that is impossible to replicate or memorise and illustrates a new way of thinking articulated by the devices that surround us and give us access to the digital world.
Until relatively recently, our experience of the world was purely physical. With the technological and digital innovations developed in the late 20th century, we have begun to communicate and emerge in the digital space. Our online and offline behaviour and interaction differ significantly. Both are essential, as an inseparable combination through which we mediate our worlds.
In this post-pandemic universe we have learned to relate to our devices in strange and hybrid ways. Black screens surround us in all directions. They open windows to other presents, fictions and utopias. The echo of our existence in the digital world forces us to ask ourselves what is more real, what happens in the physical world or in the digital world.
This exhibition presents five installations by artists born or based in Madrid whose practice is situated on the limits between the physical and the digital, posing diverse dialogues between these increasingly intertwined worlds: Enrique Agudo, Teresa Fernández-Pello, Andrea Muniaín, Yosi Negrín and Lola Zoido.
Enrique Agudo (Madrid, 1989) explores the limits of digital media. Contemporary culture is permeated by digital images, and Agudo's work focuses on recognising patterns in these digital indices and shedding light on how they affect the way we behave. We see the world through digital interfaces and, by extension, this is how we inevitably understand ourselves. His work has been presented at Victoria & Albert Museum (2022), IE Tower (2022), Tribeca Film Festival (2020), San Francisco Frozen Film Festival (2020), FIVARS (2020), Cannes XR (2020), Geneva International Film Festival (2020), VR Awards (2020), among others.
Teresa Fernández-Pello (Madrid, 1992) is a multidisciplinary designer and artist from Madrid based in the Netherlands. Her work encompasses diverse sculptural practices, with a special interest in electronic technologies, video art and spatial installations. Her recent research focuses on the interconnection between technological and spiritual development in fast-paced contemporary societies. Her work has been exhibited in Kant Garagen (DE, 2022), Microtuin @ DDW 22 (NL, 2022), Habitación Número 34 (ES, 2022), Mayrit Bienal 22 (ES, 2022), CentroCentro (ES, 2022), 3537 Space (FR, 2022), among others.
Andrea Muniáin (Tudela, 1994) is trained as an architect and researcher. Her practice focuses on the current relations between digitality, corporeality and physicality. Currently, Andrea's work explores, beyond the digital representation of bodies, the political component of these same representations. Her research is materialised in different practicable scenographies, through which she creates scenic narratives that intertwine the spaces of the physical and the virtual. Her installations reveal the implications of the applications of new digital technologies on subjectivities, bodies, spaces and identities.
Yosi Negrín Ruiz (Tenerife, 1994) is an architect, artist and curator based in Madrid. His work investigates the existing and obscure link between the virtual and the real, focusing on how the construction of landscape and material reality are formed in relation to our knowledge of technology and the digital. He has had solo exhibitions at Espacio Cultural El Tanque (2021) and Habitación Número 34 (2021) and participated in group exhibitions at MIRA Festival (2022), Pasa Festival Korea (2022), Clemente Center NY (2022), Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb (2022), Galeria Ocupa Porto (2022), Las Cigarreras Alicante (2022), Centro Cultural Conde Duque (2021), among others.
Lola Zoido (Badajoz, 1994) is an artist based in Madrid who explores the way we construct our reality through digital processes. Zoido's practice focuses on both the virtual outcome and the material of image production. Her production combines an analytical and poetic look at the relationships that emerge at the intersection between the digital and the physical. Her work has been exhibited internationally and nationally, at Tuesday to Friday (2022), MMMAD (2020), Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía (2019), TATE Exchange (2019) or La Tabacalera (2017), among others.
Fullscreen, exposición colectiva
Clear Channel --> 4–31 May, 2023Clear Channel's 422 urban screens, located at strategic points in the city of Madrid and its metropolitan area, will be transformed into an open-air museum hosting for the second consecutive year the festival's largest digital art exhibition: Fullscreen.
Fullscreen is a group show organised in collaboration with the digital collecting platform Sedition, which will show a selection of 10 works by international artists throughout the month: Pandelis Diamantides, Jaap Drupsteen, Sarah Elawad, Andreas Nicolas Fischer, Krista Kim, Rafaël Rozendaal, Guli Silberstein, Kirsten Swensen, Florence To and Ryoichi Kurokawa.
New Ideas For Increased Mobility, by Cypriot artist Pandelis Diamantides, part of the series Go Back to Hiding in the Shadows, is a digital granary of processed instrumental and electronic sounds, field recordings, rock formations, plants, animals and swarms unfolds a narrative of becoming. The prime source material of the work consists of deconstructed human voices, physical instruments and field recordings dissolved in an imagery of photographs, videos and processed visual material collected around the Troodos mountain range on the island of Cyprus.
--> New Ideas For Increased Mobility in Sedition
Silent Sirens 1, by Dutch artist Jaap Drupsteen, is part of the Traces of Life collection that explores the wonderful phenomenon that occurs between death and life. It addresses dead matter which once was formed in the growth processes of living nature and seems somehow to achieve a resurrection in electronic rebirth. Shifting light and shadow changes the virtual viewing angle and creates a very specific emotional charge when moving in time. These movements, once solidified on screen, deliver a self-evident trace of life. --> Silent Sirens 1 in Sedition
Closer, by Sarah Elawad, born and raised in London with family roots in Sudan. This art piece is made up of shapes taken from close-up medical images of human cells and tissue that have been visually disfigured and translated to create the animation. --> Closer in Sedition
Hyperschwarm 8, by German artist Andreas Nicolas Fischer, is one of nine artworks comprising the Hyperschwarm collection. It is an update of the Schwarm series, which uses the same generative system with the difference that the color composition is being generated from within instead of being pre-defined. The colors are re-generated at specific intervals during the execution of the software, shifted in hue over time and faded over the last set that was drawn onto the canvas. --> Hyperschwarm 8 in Sedition
Continuum Remix v.2i, by Canadian artist Krista Kim in collaboration with Efren Mur and Ligovskoï, was created during the COVID-19 crisis with the purpose of presenting a vision of meditation and digital beauty for collective consciousness. "The world is forever changed, and we must adapt with mindfulness, self care and connection to creative energy that will help us navigate the unknown". --> Continuum Remix v.2i in Sedition
Pomade, by Brazilian-Dutch artist Rafaël Rozendaal, transforms digital space into an endless form. The work illustrates that colour is not the only remarkable element in Rozendaal's work, through his ability to create textural patterns through black and white animation. --> Pomade in Sedition
Somewhere We Live In Little Loops, by British artist Guli Silberstein. A machine-learning based video-prediction technology learns and then re-creates a string of nature scenes and human life images. Woven together in a rhythmic, hypnotic pace, visual snippets and motion patterns appear, reborn and fall apart. The video segments begin "normally" and are then being continued by the computing process to become a "new normal". The result is surprising, eerie and poetic, raising both concerns and wonder regarding human-machine relationships, and future effects. --> Somewhere We Live In Little Loops in Sedition
Hibiscus, by Dutch artist Kirsten Swensen, a work that is part of the Artificial Bloom series, which explores the aesthetics of our nature through artificial intelligence. The collection reveals a series of mesmerizing and ethereal flowers and still-life videos generated by Artificial Intelligence. They are a representation of what a flower can be, but not a real flower. They are idealized representations of flowers. However, these flowers are not meant to last – over time, an algorithm slowly dissolves them so they will eventually lose their form and become something else entirely. --> Hibiscus in Sedition
Vraeoo, by Scottish artist Florence To, presents a breathing landscape using its structure for movement and sounds in space. The audiovisual piece is informed by different elements relating to respiration and its impact on our senses and overall perception. The point of view appears unstable, adjusting to a pressure difference and creating a sense of passive immersion within an environment where air has suddenly become scarce. --> Vraeoo in Sedition
syn_mod.3, by Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa, the third edition of the syn_ series, the “ordered disorder” theme of its predecessors, using ideas of harmony and dissonance to explore abstract patterns and sound. As a hypnotic swell of sand appears to deliver and dissolve these beautifully choreographed animations onto black; syn_mod.3 proves the most technically tender of the works, generating molecule life forms that appear to dissolve to dust, as they twist and turn in space. --> syn_mod.3 in Sedition
Sedition is the world's leading online platform for artists to exhibit and sell their work in digital format on connected screens and devices. Sedition offers an easy, enjoyable and social way to experience art collecting, and a marketplace for collecting and exchanging art in the digital age, with an unrivalled selection of leading contemporary artists..
The artworks in Sedition are presented as limited editions that exist in the digital realm and can be viewed online or offline via their free apps. Artworks can be purchased as a certified single edition, or viewed as part of a changing playlist with a Sedition Art Stream subscription.
MMMAD Minute: “My Friends Come From The Clouds”, Bora
Súper 8 Media --> 4–31 May, 2023MMMAD Minute is an initiative of MMMAD in collaboration with Súper 8 Media that was born in 2021 to claim the role of digital art in the public space. For the third consecutive year, the screens of the iconic Palacio de la Prensa will once again be transformed into huge digital canvases during the month of May.
In 2023 we present "My Friends Come From The Clouds" by French artist Bora. A series of four newly created videos curated by the festival in which the artist addresses themes such as identity and intimacy in the digital age. This work investigates imaginary landscapes as a way of navigating our reality through tenderness. An attempt at deconstruction and acceptance that invites us to show ourselves as we are, to reconstruct, rescue and enjoy our narratives.
BORA is an artist based in France. Her emotional cathedral is multidimensional: it is magical, unafraid of all it can be, all the forms it can embody and all the voices it can take. Her work is wide-ranging and draws on a multitude of references and media: sound, performance, painting, digital, video, sculpture and installation. Always questioning imagination, identity and intimacy. Imagination is her activism. In the flesh there are no longer bones, only the trace persists: that of the skin, its marks, its inscribed scars and its invisible pain. The living even if we sometimes avoid seeing it. A pact between water and fire: from those burning gazes cry rivers: your eyes rivers, rivers in your eyes.
@boramurmure
Bubble Vision, Lauren Moffatt
_2B space to be --> 5–31 May, 2023_2B space to be, exhibition space of the architecture and design studio Moneo Brock in Prosperidad, joins MMMAD Festival for the first time presenting a solo exhibition of the Australian artist Lauren Moffatt. This exhibition has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of The Liminal.
Entitled 'Bubble Vision', this exhibition brings together Moffatt's latest works, exploring the fragility of the realities that we so carefully create and that can crumble at any moment. The show proposes a multifaceted journey through a selection of works ranging from the physical to augmented reality and virtual reality experiences.
Moffatt fabricates complex and detailed universes, often occupied by dissociated, maladjusted or reclusive characters and populated by strange devices and artefacts. These worlds often take the form of speculative fictions and environments, constantly shifting and replete with visual contradictions, as they are conceived in the mix of obsolete and pioneering technologies.
Lauren Moffatt
is an Australian artist
working with immersive environments and experimental narrative practices. Her
works, often presented in hybrid and iterative forms, explore the paradoxical
subjectivity of connected bodies and the fine boundary between virtual and
organic life. Seeking to create unexpected textures and contours in digital
spaces, the artist develops her own experimental techniques, playing with
algorithms and digital tools to "sculpt the digital error". In 2021
she received the DKB VR Art Prize (DE). Lauren's works have most recently been
exhibited at Haus am Lützowplatz (DE), Le Grand Palais Ephémère (FR), La Gaïté
Lyrique (FR), SXSW (US), UNSW Galleries (AU), Daegu Art Museum (KOR), SAVVY
Contemporary (DE), FACT Liverpool (UK) The Sundance Film Festival (USA), ZKM
(DE), ZKM (DE), FACT Liverpool (UK), The Sundance Film Festival (US), ZKM (DE),
ZKM (US), ZKM (DE), ZKM (US), ZKM (DE), ZKM (DE), ZKM (DE), ZKM (DE). ZKM (DE),
Q21 Freiraum (AT) and at Hartware MedienkunstVerein (DE). Lives and works in
Berlin and Valencia.
Mythic Mystic, group exhibition
Nave Sierrra --> 6–31 May, 2023In the neighbourhood of Fuencarral we will have the new independent space Nave Sierrra that opens its doors in May with the group exhibition "Mythic Mystic", with works by Cavecanems, Excómplice, Razorade and Álvaro Chior.
"Mythic Mystic" explores philosophical mysticism and its aesthetic representation, through a selection of works by artists who seek to explore the mysteries of human existence. Roland Barthes, in his work "Mythologies", states that "the mythical is a category superior to that of the sign", since "the sign is always cultural, the myth is always natural".
Through these works, the spiritual dimension of the human being is explored and the importance of mystery in everyday life is emphasised. “Mythic Mystic” is an invitation to enter into a contemplative and reflective experience through a series of works that seek to explore the mysteries of human existence.
The mystic is an experience that is lived in the subject's relationship with the world, and which manifests itself in the perception of the sacred, the divine or the transcendental. The mystical is a profound dimension of reality, which can be apprehended through intuition, emotion and personal experience, and which is often expressed in the form of symbols and metaphors. It is a way of knowing and understanding reality that goes beyond reason and language, and which manifests itself in the subject's relationship with the divine, the transcendental or the mysterious.
This exhibition seeks to offer an aesthetic and spiritual experience that invites reflection on the meaning of human existence and the relationship between the human being and the divine.
MMMAD Talks,
International Meeting on Digital Art Curation
La Casa Encendida --> 13 May, 2023The Patio of La Casa Encendidawill host the international meeting on digital art curation 'MMMAD Talks' on Saturday 14 May with four international guests who are experts in this field: the Ukrainian curator Julia Kaganskiy, the Austrian curator and artist Martina Menegon, the Taiwanese researcher Hsiang-Yun Huang and the Swiss professor and designer Elodie Anglade. The meeting will culminate with a performance by the French visual artist and performer Bora, creator of the visual universe of MMMAD 2023.
A day in which the LCE’s Patio will become a space for thought and debate around digital art, vindicating and making visible the need for more meeting spaces around an artistic practice that apparently does not require a physical space. On this day we will focus on female professionals who are changing the international paradigm through critical perspectives of race and gender.
The day will begin on Saturday 13 May at 12:00 with a welcome from the festival directors, which will give way to the presentations and round tables with the guests and the public. At 18:45 we will close the meetings with the performance, until 19:30. Access will be free until full capacity is reached.
Since 2022 we have the support of AC/E Acción Cultural Española through the PICE Visitors programme, thanks to which we can enhance the international impact of the festival, creating more links between our artists in Madrid and major world professionals in the field of digital art.
Schedule:
12:00 --> Opening
12:15 --> Welcome by Diego Iglesias, co-director MMMAD
12:30 --> Julia Kaganskiy
13:00 --> Martina Menegon
13:30 --> Round table Julia and Martina with public
14:00–16:00 --> Lunch break
16:00 --> Elodie Anglade
16:30 --> Emily Hsiang-Yun Huang
17:00 --> Round table Elodie and Emily with public
17:30–18:00 --> Networking with cerveza Turia
18:00–18:30 --> Performance Bora
Speakers:
Julia Kaganskiy is a Ukrainian curator and cultural strategist based in New York, specialising in contemporary art related to emerging technologies. She is currently general curator of LAS, a Berlin-based foundation dedicated to art, science and technology. She is also working on a forthcoming exhibition at Espacio Fundación Telefónica, scheduled to open in late 2023. Previously, she helped launch several innovative programmes, including The Creators Project, a media platform focused on art and technology from VICE and Intel, and NEW INC, the first museum-led cultural incubator, an initiative of the New Museum.
Emily Hsiang-Yun Huang is a curator and visual artist from Taiwan. She holds a BA in Philosophy from National Taiwan University (TW) and an MA in Media Studies from Leiden University (NL). Her research interests focus on the relationship between body and technology from the perspective of postcolonialism and digital materialism. Projects she has curated include Taipei Digital Art Festival-Fake It Real (2022), Embodied Interface (2020) and Uchronia (2020). As an artist, she often makes performances derived from her poetry on the vulnerability of human existence, with a focus on the female body, in-between identity and the circularity of time. Her works have been exhibited at the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art and the Cinedance Festival at the Eye Museum in Amsterdam, among others.
Martina Menegon is a digital artist, curator and educator based in Vienna. She is a lecturer at the Department of Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she teaches "Digital Design and Virtuality". She is also Vice Director and Curator of the CIVA Festival of New Media Art and Director of Extended Reality and Curator of the "Virtual Art Area" at sound:frame. Her artistic practice focuses on creating intimate and complex assemblages of physical and virtual elements that explore the contemporary self and its hybrid corporeality.
Elodie Anglade is media and interaction designer based in Lausanne, Switzerland. She is passionate about exploring the intersection between physical and digital spaces, avatars, and abstract concepts, and expresses these themes through colorful 3D imagery, videos and creative coding experiments. In addition to her work as a freelancer, Elodie also serves as an assistant at ECAL/Ecole Cantonale d'art de Lausanne. Her portfolio has been showcased at various events, including the DEMO Festival, KIKK Festival, Genena International Film Festival, and Bergamo Brescia Italian Capital of Culture 2023.
BORA is an artist based in France. Her emotional cathedral is multidimensional: it is magical, unafraid of all it can be, all the forms it can embody and all the voices it can take. Her work is wide-ranging and draws on a multitude of references and media: sound, performance, painting, digital, video, sculpture and installation. Always questioning imagination, identity and intimacy. Imagination is her activism. In the flesh there are no longer bones, only the trace persists: that of the skin, its marks, its inscribed scars and its invisible pain. The living even if we sometimes avoid seeing it. A pact between water and fire: from those burning gazes cry rivers: your eyes rivers, rivers in your eyes.
Closing Conference MMMAD 2023
Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga --> 27 May 16-20h, 2023MMMAD closes its 2023 edition with a programme of conferences in the auditorium of Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga on Saturday 27 May, bringing together three national professionals who are pioneers in the introduction of digital art in Spain: the gallerist Alberto de Juan, the cultural manager María Brancós and the journalist Roberta Bosco.
Alberto de Juan is the owner and director of Galería Max Estrella, located in Madrid. This gallery project has been running uninterruptedly since 1994 with the vision of presenting a new generation of emerging and consolidated creators, both Spanish and foreign. A coherent list of artists that reflects the purpose of opening new paths within contemporary art with special attention to electronic or digital art. Max Estrella represents the work of the artists Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Daniel Canogar, Charles Sandison, Eugenio Ampudia and José Val del Omar.
María Brancós is Head of Exhibitions and Collections at Fundación Telefónica, where she develops an exhibition programme of her own production dedicated to exploring the major issues linked to digital transformation and promoting the use of new technologies applied to creation.
Roberta Bosco is a journalist, exhibition curator, researcher and teacher, specialising in contemporary art, electronic art and digital culture. She has been writing for the newspaper El País since 1998 and for 12 years had a weekly section on art and new technologies. She is a correspondent from Spain for Il Giornale dell'Arte, the leading Italian art magazine, and contributes to numerous publications. As an expert in art and technology, she has curated several exhibitions of digital art in various institutions and museums (CCCB, Macba, DHub, Arts Santa Mònica, ARCOmadrid) and has been a member of numerous juries.