NOW 27/06 Visual Arts Performance
NOW is a unique event showcasing artistic presentations by the visual and performance art residents of L’Estruch.
Itinerary
18:00 – Alba Rihe: Atzara, from the Comical to the Divine. Teatre de l’Estruch
18:40 – Gemma Polo: Feeling that fantasy as if it was the fucking reality. Sala 10
19:15 – Michela Depetris: Wow Wide Web. Sala 10
20:00 – Isa Fontbona: The Voices of Labor. Spinning with the Echoes of Memory. Exhibition Hall
20:30 – Julie Pichavant: Mimesis. Exhibition Hall and Courtyard
Alba Rihe: Atzara, from the Comical to the Divine
Teatre de l’Estruch, 18:00 h
A stage exploration centered around the concept of the DIVA. This work delves into the origins of this archetype and examines how the music industry, symbolic capital, visual hegemony, and its sociocultural context have shaped the DIVA over time. The DIVA is not just a character; she is a deeply embedded cultural construct in our collective imagination. A solo performance with costumes by Sofia Archer.
Alba Rihe holds a degree in Fine Arts and a diploma from the Independent Studies Program (PEI) at MACBA. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Cultural Management. Her practice is grounded in performance and the fusion of artistic tools that use voice, absurdity, and body expression to convey messages.
Duration: 36 minutes
Gemma Polo: Feeling that fantasy as if it was the fucking reality
Sala 10, 18:40 h
A performative lecture that arises from a research-creation project exploring intersections between performativity, digital technology, and speculative fiction from a queer-feminist perspective. Through artistic practice, it critiques the boundaries between virtual and non-virtual as interconnected, transformative, and sensitive surfaces. The Internet is presented as a space where bodies become hyper-related and affective interfaces. Combining digital archives, poetic writing, and academic thought, the lecture proposes a glitch, flow, and repetition aesthetic as forms of algorithmic resistance. The theoretical framework includes authors such as Legacy Russell, Judith Butler, Marie Bardet, and Donna Haraway, discussing concepts like relational surfaces, digital trans*formism, and obfuscation as critical strategies.
Duration: 20 minutes
Gemma Polo Bosch (Tarragona, 1995) is a transdisciplinary artist and creator whose practice spans performance, digital cultures, drag, and dissident writing. She holds a degree in Physical and Visual Theatre from the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona, is part of the collective José y sus Hermanas, and develops independent projects that explore critical views on gender, folklore, and queer memory.
Michela Depetris: Wow Wide Web
Sala 10, 19:15 h
Wow Wide Web speaks of transformation—and seeks to stimulate it beneath the skin. It takes the form of a welcoming installation, an immersive environment for words, glances, and sounds to flow through. It manifests as an atmospheric experience, a self-organizing soft ecosystem, a shifting soundscape. The research draws from physics, biology, esotericism, science fiction, transfeminist literature, and neuroscience. It reflects on the connections between the realities (human, animal, vegetal, mineral, extraterrestrial, bacterial, etc.) that compose the vibrant matter we are immersed in and part of. It references the “wood wide web,” the subterranean network of care among plants and mycelium, to imagine a hidden, wondrous, WOW-inducing network (WOW being a linguistic act of awe). The project reimagines transformation and relationality as revolutionary and dissident conditions.
Duration: 45 minutes
Michela Depetris (she/her) was born in Italy and trained in both Italy and Spain in visual arts and contemporary dance. She lives in Turin and holds a Master’s in Performing Arts and Visual Culture from the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. She has performed with Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia Caleo, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Daniele Ninarello, Cynhtia Marcelle, Maria Folguera, among others. As an author, she works in hybrid languages across performance, video, sound, and participatory installations, placing her research within an open, mixed field that always returns to bodily practices and expanded choreography.
Isa Fontbona: The Voices of Labor. Spinning with the Echoes of Memory
Exhibition Hall, 20:00 h
This piece gives voice to the memories of women who worked in Sabadell’s textile industry, through bodily gestures and the sounds that accompanied them during their long workdays. Carefully and collectively woven, the piece honors their historical significance while offering a contemporary reading through students from Vallès High School. It invites critical reflection on today’s frantic societal rhythms. This collaborative, female-centered project by Isa Fontbona includes former textile workers from Sabadell and high school students.
Duration: 35 minutes
Embodied and sonic memory: Isabel Sánchez, Teresa Arrebola, Mayte Simón, Paquita Sanz, Carmen Sequera, and Dolores Moya
Performative memory: Students from IES Vallès de Sabadell
Concept, documentation, curation: Isa Fontbona in collaboration with Frank Trobok
Artistic support: Laura Llaneli and Gemma Cascón
Choreographic composition: Àfrica Manils – La Nau de Sabadell
Video and editing: Helena Torrent
Educational program: Mònica López
In collaboration with: IES Vallès de Sabadell and La Nau Dance School of Sabadell
Julie Pichavant: Mimesis
Exhibition Hall and Courtyard, 20:30 h
Mimesis proposes an approach to landscape, an embodied reflection on territory that allows us to understand the course of civilizing power, which ultimately has done little more than exploit and destroy. In this process, what becomes flesh is the expectation of an end—a gaze toward the possibility of collapse.
—from Luis Montes Rojas (Chile), curatorial text: A View of the End of the World: On “Mimesis” by Julie Pichavant
Mimesis offers a poetics of survival at the edge, blending elements from performing and visual arts. The audience is drawn into an archaeological and bodily investigation that immerses them in the perception of the visible and invisible.
Credits:
Performance: Julie Pichavant
Photography: José Luis Rissetti (in collaboration with the artist)
Sound design: Fabrice Camboulive
Curatorial text: Luis Montes Rojas
Special thanks: Roberto Chucao Cabrera Fortet, Modesta Suárez
Duration: 25 minutes
Julie Pichavant, born in France, is a playwright, performer, and director with a degree in Modern Literature and Performing Arts. She directs artistic projects within the ZART company. Each creation begins with research—an exploratory lab. Her work engages immersion, experimentation, and co-creation strategies. Extractivism and the exploitation of bodies and land are central themes in her work. She is active in France, across Europe (Spain, Belgium, Greece, Germany), and in Latin America (Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Chile). She teaches theatrical and performative practices at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès. She trained in documentary film at Ateliers Varan.
