Activity
Fridays and Saturdays, 15 to 23 July 2022

Lorem Ipsum 2022

Empathetic Listening

in progress

Illustration by Txe Roimeser

With the collateral effects of the pandemic still fresh in the collective psyche, the fifth edition of Lorem Ipsum wants to celebrate the fact that we can once again be together and mix with people, in an exercise of pure collective awareness. Partying and listening empathetically occupy centre stage in our invited projects. This cannot be just one more celebration: what happened, happened, and the uncertainty that came with it forces us to rethink what this ‘getting together’ means.

This estrangement from the collective is precisely the subject of the new edition of Lorem Ipsum. Echoic Choir, a collaboration between the Canadian choreographer Ula Sickle and the Norwegian vocalist Stine Janvin, was conceived during the pandemic at the intersection between the performing arts and music, two of the most restricted cultural sectors during lockdown. Performed by five dancers, the piece revisits club culture from the perspective of enforced social distancing. Pleasure, enjoyment and sensuality, the essence of nightlife, are still very much alive in this proposal, but have become molecular in their individuality. When social distancing is used as an artistic parameter, sweat, synaesthesia and spasms get decontextualised and are turned into a show in which the audience loses its role and becomes a voyeur. Despite recognising (and feeling) the mannerisms of a rave or a nightclub, we can experience very closely the excitement and enjoyment, without succumbing to it.

After embodying the obsolescence of social behaviour, we get to a more technological field with Enrique del Castillo. This Andalusian sound artist proposes an attentive way of listening in which the acoustic reading of a celluloid 35mm film without emulsion embarks us on a dream-like journey. By means of various optical readers created by the artist himself, the geometrical patterns printed on the film – also designed by him – become beautiful compositions through the accumulation of layers of repeated rhythms, textures and warm melodies, yet mechanical and strange. Translation, displacement and dysfunction are all part of this reading of the visual leading to a highly delicate and subtle sound experience, meant to be collectively savoured and enjoyed.