INTERRUPCIONS – (INTERRUPTIONS)
Festival of Marvels, Skills, Reasoning and Circus
October 2026
Interrupcions is an artistic and intellectual programme spearheaded by La Central del Circ, organised and curated in collaboration with Antic Teatre and Artefactum. It is part of the Arxiu de Circ (Circus Archive) framework, one of 14 measures in the Plan for the Promotion of Circus in Catalonia (2023 – 2026), an initiative of the Culture Department of the Catalonian Government and the Association of Circus Professionals of Catalonia (APCC).
Interrupcions acts like a fissure. An invitation to break with the order of things. Because to interrupt is to suspend, even if just for an instant, the normality that is imposed on us. Changing the anticipated course of bodies. Making visible that which has been excluded from our field of vision. Making space for other stories, other presences, other ways of inhabiting the city.
Over the course of two weeks, Interrupcions will roll out a collection of circus events, encounters and interventions in the centre of Barcelona city, in the neighbourhood of Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i La Ribera, turning its streets, squares, balconies and living spaces into new ground for artistic experimentation and shared memories. Inviting us to radically rethink how we see circus, urban life and our relations to others.
The starting point will be the recovery of El veí del balcó (1994), an emblematic piece by the Circ Perillós company that used the city itself as a stage. Thirty years on, its revival is not about reproducing the past; rather it seeks to set the past in motion. To listen once more to something that resonates. To ask ourselves again what poetic interventions in the street mean today.
The various ‘interruptions’ are constructed individually but in constant dialogue with each other, generating a network of connected practices that can be understood as one, expanded work. The programme will use the Antic Teatre as its base of operations and expand outwards into public space, including it as an active factor. In this way we construct a living cultural ecosystem connecting circus with our surroundings and articulating relations between artistic creation, communities, organisations and institutions.
Interrupcions is also a space for reflection and conversation. An invitation to artists, researchers, neighbours and audiences to come together and consider the legacy of live arts in public spaces, to reflect on circus’ power to produce collective forms of resistance and the need to defend the street as an area for coexistence, dissent and political imagination. Interrupcions is an invitation to do exactly that. Remember. Imagine. Overflow. Interrupt.
For the past three years we have worked collectively to recover the legacy of circus and make possible a digital archive that will guarantee access to and dissemination of our circus heritage. Because there is no transformation without memory. Because there is no future without ancestry. The archive we back is collective technology to prevent forgetting. A way to care for custody experiences that have defied norms and broadened the horizons of what is possible.
Far from seeing the archive as a closed space dedicated exclusively to conservation, Interrupcions aims to activate it as a living tool for interrelations and the production of meaning. In this way, the archive becomes a shared practice: a way to link generations and keep alive circus’ capacity to take part in collective life.
PROGRAMME
INTERRUPTION 1
Saturday 3 October, from 5pm to 9pm
Walkabout from Plaça de Lluís Millet, 6 to Plaça del Pou de la Figuera.
- El veí del balcó (1994-1995) – Circ Perillós
Saturday 3 October, 5pm
Plaça de Lluís Millet, 6
An argument between neighbours leads to unexpected situations that push the limits between reality and fiction. A balcony opens onto the street like a tiny elevated stage, while the façade of the building becomes the setting for acrobatics where, for a few moments, risk, humour and tension interrupt the usual rhythm of the city.
Interrupcions opens with the recovery of El veí del balcó by Circ Perillós company, one of the most emblematic pieces of street circus in Barcelona. Premiered in 1994, the piece transformed the city’s façades and balconies into a vertical stage where everyday life became theatrical action. This version doesn’t aim to reproduce the original piece faithfully, but rather to bring it into circulation from a current perspective. To recover its legacy, revisit its languages and ask ourselves what it means today to look at balconies, building façades and streets as settings for play, conflict and encounter.
Circ Perillós – Adelaida Frías and Jordi Borrell – was created in 1981 and toured for 16 years around European festivals with its open air performances, coming up with aerial scenographies that made for good viewing from street level. In its initial stages, the company had fun offering adventures inspired by 80’s comics and using acrobatic techniques to sustain stories that blended risk with humour. As they evolved towards an ever more theatrical language – which they christened acrobatic theatre (1990-1996) – the actors played out urban incidents, initially realistic, that culminated in edgy situations as humorous as they were risky, to provoke an audience reaction to the human conflicts so exposed. Their piece El veí del balcó, an everyday tale, brought theatre onto the streets from the intimacy of someone’s home.
Performers: Silvia Capell, Clara Cortés and Toni Gutiérrez
Director: Adelaida Frías (Circ Perillós)
Assistant director: Piero Steiner
Building technician: Luis Nevado
Sound technician: Pino Steiner
Wardrobe: Rosa Solé
Production: La Central del Circ
- Só un solo (site-specific versiOn ) – Mario G. Cortizo
Saturday 3 October at 6pm
Palau de la Música Catalana, c/Sant Pere Més Alt, 3 -13
Walkabout from Palau de la Música Catalana at c/Sant Pere més Alt, 3-13 to c/Verdaguer i Callís
What happens when everyday objects stop serving the function they were designed for? Balconies become musical scores and automatisms impose an unexpected rhythm that changes the normality of bodies. Between human gestures and automation a space of uncertainty opens up, where it is no longer possible to distinguish who is accompanying whom. Só un solo is a metaphor for our capacity to adapt to the things we cannot always control, and invites us to rethink the relationship between bodies, machines and the spaces we share. When control disappears and all that is left is our attention, the possibility emerges for a different kind of dialogue with our surroundings.
Mario G. Cortizo is a composer, percussionist and creator of sounds. His musical career has taken him through contemporary music, electronica, performance arts and audiovisual creation, in a constant search for new languages and formats. His creations have been programmed and presented in contexts such as the Galicia Symphonic Orchestra, Castell de Peralada Festival, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Mercat de les Flors, MACBA, Festival Grec and Temporada Alta. His piece Só un solo, awarded the 2023 Martín Códax Music Prize, was selected for the Focus Galicia WOMEX 2023 and the Manresa Mediterranean Festival, and performed in Berlin in 2024 at Classical:NEXT, Realtime Bremen in 2025 and Serralves em Festa in Porto in 2026.
Concept, composition and performance (site-specific intervention based on the piece Só un solo): Mario G. Cortizo
Dramaturgy for original piece: Marc Rosich
Direction and scenography for original piece: Ana Inés Jabares
Movement assessment and outside eye for original piece: Andrea Jiménez
Technical coordination and sound: Nacho López
Luthier: B-sharp Percussion
Collaborations: Palau de la Música Catalana, Castellers de la Vila de Gràcia, Antic Teatre Community Arts Project, Local residents of c/Verdaguer i Callís and c/San Pere Mes Alt and La Bonne – Centre de Cultura de Dones Francesca Bonnemaison.
- Interrupciones – programme presentation
Saturday 3 October at 6.45pm
Plaça del Pou de la Figuera
El circ convoca la ciutat: memòria, risc i desbordament – Itziar González
Saturday 3 October at 7pm
Plaça del Pou de la Figuera
For decades, circus arts have turned the streets into the setting for radical experimentation, changing the presumed use of bodies, architectures and collective ways of life. This encounter brings together several generations of circus and street artists with the aim of composing a choral account, a story that allows us to revisit forgotten memories, recognise the gestures that identified an era and, at the same time, imagine new emerging languages for the circus of today. This event calls the circus community to a gathering place where artists and audiences can share ideas, concerns and perspectives on the evolution of the city, defend the body as a political and poetic instrument and keep alive circus’ capacity for operating in collective life.
Itziar González is an arquitect and city planner. Since 2002 she has specialised in mediation and conflict-resolving processes between citizens and the Administration, through the design and coordination of citizen participation processes in the areas of town planning and public works. She was elected councillor for the Ciutat Vella (Old Town) district of Barcelona in June 2007 and remained in that role until May 2010. She has co-authored the books Revoltes (Dau, 2014) and La força per canviar les coses (Angle, 2015). Since October 2012 she has been an active presence in social movements and is a founding member of the original group for the Barcelona Citizens Parlamient of Culture, and director of the Cartographic Institute of la ReVolta. She was joint winner with UTE Km ZERO of the international competition for intervention strategies and a development project for Barcelona’s Rambla.
Concept and moderation: Itziar González
Featuring: Adelaida Frías, Jorge Albuerne, Nilak …….
Collaborations: Espai Jove Palau Alòs and Casal de Barri Pou de la Figuera
INTERRUPTION 2
- Mina – Les maleïdes aventures del Vampirtista – Jaume Clotet
Sunday 4 October at 12.30pm
Centre Sant Pere 1892, c/Sant Pere Més Alt, 25
Walkabout: from Centre Sant Pere 1892 (c/Sant Pere Més Alt, 25) to the Casal de Barri Pou de la Figuera (c/de Sant Pere Més Baix, 70) and ending at Plaça del Pou de la Figuera.
–Family activity–
They say there’s an artist, known as the Vampirtist, who is under a curse and can never stop drawing. Apparently, one day his pencil turned into a snake and bit him, and his front teeth turned into pencils! Since that day he wanders around acquiring drawings, people and hands he can infect. The Vampirtist, hungry for images, has found his next feast in the Circus Archive: figures and gestures he’s ready to sink his teeth into. A slippery show or an elastic workshop that sees drawing as a resistance to what is demanded of us (or what we demand of ourselves) and to the existing logic for the validation of artistic systems. The audience is plunged into a collective ritual where the evils of creative practice are exposed and deactivated through play.
Jaume Clotet is an artist and performer. He has shown his work at venues such as La Capella, etHALL and Habitación 34. His exhibition 20vingut (etHALL 2020) received the GAC Award for best exhibition by an emerging artist. He has presented several actions and performances at the Joan Miró Foundation, Santa Mònica Arts Centre, CCCC of Valencia, the Brossa Foundation, Tecla Sala and Mataró’s M|A|C. His first performance piece, Alusinasons, premiered at the 2024 Grec Festival. He has had residencies at Nau Estruch, Espais C, En Residència, Fabra i Coats, Konvent de Berga, Rad’Art (Italy) and BilbaoArte. Since 2019 he is codirector, with Alicia Garrido, of Cabaret Internet, a performative comedy show on its 20th edition.
Concept, direction and performance: Jaume Clotet
Performance: Valeria Pisati
Collaborations: Centre Sant Pere 1862, Espai Jove Palau Alòs, Casal de Barri Pou de la Figuera, EnCircam, Agrupació Cultural Folklorica Barcelona/ Som Sardana and Cuina Solidària
COMPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES:
- Rogelio Rivel Exhibition
Espai Jove Palau Alòs, c/Sant Pere Més Baix, 55
To coincide with the 25th anniversary of the death of Rogelio Rivel, the Espai Jove Palau Alòs will host an exhibition dedicated to one of the most important representatives of Catalan circus of the 20th century. Based on photographs, documents, objects and audiovisual materials, the exhibition covers his trajectory as artist, teacher and transmitter of the art of circus, highlighting his legacy and the profound influence he has had on several generations of circus professionals. The exhibition will run from 3-17 October 2026.
Organised by: Espai Jove Palau Alòs, Zirkólika and Papallona Circus.
- Sardanes workshop: by Agrupació Cultural Folklòrica Barcelona / Som Sardana
Sunday 4 October from 1.30pm to 2.30pm
Plaça del Pou de la Figuera
- Street Paella: by Cuina Solidària
Sunday 4 October at 2pm
Plaça del Pou de la Figuera
Collaborations: Centre Sant Pere 1892, Espai Jove Palau Alòs, Casal de Barri Pou de la Figuera, Papallona Circus Arts Shop, EnCIRCant el Barri, Agrupació Cultural Folkloria Barcelona / Som Sardana, Cuina Solidària
INTERRUPTION 3
- (d)EBIL is ON mi. Hibridacions de carrer itinerants d’un circ bastard i antifeixista – Jorge Albuerne
Tuesday October at 6pm
Antic Teatre, c/Verdaguer i Callís, 12
Perambulatory interruption on wheels – in order to take part in this itinerary you will require a bicycle.
Walkabout from Antic Teatre at c/Verdaguer i Callís, 12, through Plaça Sant Pere, Plaça Joan Capri, Plaça Jaume Sabartés, c/Allada Vermell, Plaça Santa Maria del Mar, Passeig del Born to Parc de la Ciutadella
City squares stop being settings for the past to become spaces where works reappear, transformed by time, context and today’s viewer. (d)EBIL is ON mi retrieves scenes, objects and actions from prior shows and redistributes them along the route of a bike ride, recreating an artistic retrospective engraved on the geography of the Born neighbourhood, “places that were once ideal for passing the hat around, back when people used to perform in Barcelona streets”. The shows are taken back to the places where they first emerged, to face up to the city as it is today.
Jorge Albuerne Juanco (aka ZIRKUS FRAK) was born in Oviedo (Asturias) a year before the death of the dictator. He holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Uniberstitatea (UPV/EHU) specialising in Sculpture and Ceramics. He has spent the last 25 years training, creating, accompanying and directing projects in the field of performance arts, using resources from dance, circus, fine arts and writing. He currently lives in Barcelona from where he divides his time between Mexico and Argentina as a teacher, creator, performer and performance director.
Concept, direction, performance: Jorge Albuerne
Collaboration: Massa Crítica Barcelona
INTERRUPTION 4
- Rituals –Ingrid Esperanza
Friday 9 October, from 3pm to 7pm
Cloisters of the Convent de Sant Agustí Civic Centre at c/Comerç, 36
How many times have you felt you’re walking in circles and not getting anywhere? What happens when the earth under your feet moves and you lose control? Rituals interrupts the accelerated rhythms that course through us. Using spinning tops, turns and suspensions, gestures of rooting and poetic resistance are activated. Rituals offers a different temporality, an ephemeral haven that opens a space for permanence and recovers time as a place for attention, fragility and shared presence. Rituals is an invitation to inhabit the present, to disconnect from the digital stage and to ask ourselves if balance is a fact or just a fleeting truce in the middle of chaos.
Ingrid Esperanza is a performer, creator and artistic mentor specialising in research into hair hanging, movement and ritual poetics in contemporary performance. With a career spanning more than two decades in Mexico and Europe, she has collaborated with large format projects such as Cirque du Soleil, Gran Teatre del Liceu and the company Animal Religion. She is currently the director of HAA Collective, a platform from where she has presented pieces such as PICADERØ (Mercat de les Flors, 2022) or Ressons (Grec Festival, 2024) while simultaneously combining artistic creation with international consulting in choreography and hair hanging. Her research, at the crux between body, risk and transcendence, is supported by the Government of Catalonia and Mexico’s Support System to Creation and Cultural Projects (SACPC).
Creation, direction and performance: Ingrid Esperanza
Set design and construction: Betty Cau
Soundscape: Carla Valenti
Collaborations: Centre Cívic Convent Sant Agustí and Coral Madrigalistes
INTERRUPTION 5
- Plaça de la Sensació Compartida – Antonia Kuzmanić (ROOM 100)
Saturday 10 October, 11am to 7pm
Plaça del Pou de la Figuera
We stage a relational faqirism act where the audience co-author the sensations. To control the mechanism means entering into a relationship of care: not care as convenience, but care as a shared responsibility in light of the vulnerability of the other. Who feels the weight of this trust? Who bears the guilt, the power, the tenderness? As we contort ourselves, we quantify pain not in order to dominate it but to ask ourselves how we can bear it collectively. This is a choreography of mutual exposure: an invitation to practice care as a verb and to discover what a body becomes when we dare to share its limits.
ROOM 100 began as an artistic company founded by Croatian artists Antonia Kuzmanić and Jakov Labrović in 2010, when it won an award from Circusnext for its first creation, C8H11NO2. After touring for five years, Jakov returned to sculpture and completed his doctorate at Belgrade Academy of Arts, while Antonia focused on national and international collaborations, devising and implementing a whole range of projects to strengthen the contemporary circus sector in Croatia and the Balkans area. In 2022 they were named artists for The Sphere and returned to the stage as authors and performers after an eight-year break.
Concept and creation: Antonia Kuzmanić (ROOM 100)
Collaboration: Jakov Labrović
Technician: Jakov Labrović
COMPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES
- Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera local shopkeepers Fair
c/Corders and c/Sant Pere Més Baix
+ info soon
- Circus workshops organised by EnCircam
–Family activity–
11am to 1pm – Plaça de Sant Agustí Vell
4pm to 6pm – Plaça de Sant Pere de les Puel·les
5pm to 7pm – Plaça de Sant Agustí Vell
Collaborations: Fira de Comerciants del Barri de Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i La Ribera, Espai Jove Palau Alòs, Casal de Barri Pou de la Figuera, EnCIRCant el Barri and Papallona Circus Arts Shop.
INTERRUPTION 6
- Max Neuhaus: Listen / American Can (1966) – Arnau Horta
Sunday 11 October 12.30pm
Antic Teatre, c/Verdaguer i Callís, 12
Walkabout: from Antic Teatre, c/Verdaguer i Callís, 12 to Plaça de Sant Agustí Vell
A dialogue with the ethos of circus and its capacity for creating real micro-utopias, Max Neuhaus’ actions Listen and American Can defy classification under any disciplinary label, while renewing the physical dimension of the aesthetic experience and demanding a shared space for free, plural and spontaneous expression above and beyond any elitist understanding of creation. A precursor to the soundwalk, Listen invites us to walk while paying attention to the changing and unexpected sounds of the city as though listening to music. The collective performance American Can, for its part, activates and connects bodies and public space through a playful and subversive sound event. Coinciding with the 60th anniversary of these two historic actions, the Interrupcions programme offers their re-enactment as a way to explore their artistic and political potential.
Arnau Horta holds a doctorate in Philosophy and is active in the fields of curatorship, teaching, cultural criticism and artistic research. He has collaborated with MACBA (Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art), the Queen Sofía National Museum and Arts Centre, the Joan Miró Foundation, Centre for Image La Virreina, Barcelona Centre of Contemporary Culture (CCCB) and the Max Planck Institute (Berlin), among other projects and cultural initiatives. In 2020 he received the GAC Award for best curatorship for the art exhibition Art sonor?. He is a member of the Eufònic Festival curatorial team, directs radio programme Sonic Genealogies on Queen Sofía Museum Radio and is professor of Aesthetics and Theories of Art at BAU, University Centre of Fine Arts and Design in Barcelona.
Concept and adaptation: Arnau Horta
Collaborations: Espai Jove Palau Alòs, Batucada Band Samband, Local residents of the Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i La Ribera neighbourhood.
INTERRUPTION 7
Walkabout: from Plaça de Lluís Millet, 6 to Utopia 46 at c/Sant Pere més Alt, 46
- El veí del balcó (1994-1995) – Circ Perillós
Thursday 15 October, at 5pm
Plaça de Lluís Millet, 6
An argument between neighbours leads to unexpected situations that push the limits between reality and fiction. A balcony opens onto the street like a tiny elevated stage, while the façade of the building becomes the setting for acrobatics where, for a few moments, risk, humour and tension interrupt the usual rhythm of the city.
Interrupcions opens with the recovery of El veí del balcó by Circ Perillós company, one of the most emblematic pieces of street circus in Barcelona. Premiered in 1994, the piece transformed the city’s façades and balconies into a vertical stage where everyday life became theatrical action. This version doesn’t aim to reproduce the original piece faithfully, but rather to bring it into circulation from a current perspective. To recover its legacy, revisit its languages and ask ourselves what it means today to look at balconies, building façades and streets as settings for play, conflict and encounter.
Circ Perillós – Adelaida Frías and Jordi Borrell – was created in 1981 and toured for 16 years around European festivals with its open air performances, coming up with aerial scenographies that made for good viewing from street level. In its initial stages, the company had fun offering adventures inspired by 80’s comics and using acrobatic techniques to sustain stories that blended risk with humour. As they evolved towards an ever more theatrical language – which they christened acrobatic theatre (1990-1996) – the actors played out urban incidents, initially realistic, that culminated in edgy situations as humorous as they were risky, to provoke an audience reaction to the human conflicts so exposed. Their piece El veí del balcó, an everyday tale, brought theatre onto the streets from the intimacy of someone’s home.
Performers: Silvia Capell, Clara Cortés and Toni Gutiérrez
Director: Adelaida Frías (Circ Perillós)
Assistant director: Piero Steiner
Building technician: Luis Nevado
Sound technician: Pino Steiner
Wardrobe: Rosa Solé
Production: La Central del Circ
- De lluny – Verónica Navas
Thursday 15 October, at 7pm
c/Sant Pere més Alt, 10-12
Walkabout: from c/Sant Pere més Alt, 10-12 to Utopia 46 at c/Sant Pere més Alt, 46
De lluny is a film that can be taken for a walk, looked at and touched. A live film that neither enters nor exits a projector but rather unfolds and rolls in physical space and invites us for a stroll. To be watched as we walk along beside it. All the films that De lluny can potentially be will converge in this new context. A spool of paper playing at being celluloid. A roll of film that unrolls at every step, that disappears in our hands, and that we carry from a balcony – from inside someone’s house – all along a street, to an abandoned cinema. De lluny is both expanded cinema and site specific, so evolves according to the context and participation. On this occasion, it enters into a dialogue with the Circus Archive and, specifically, with the revival of the piece El veí del balcó by Circ Perillós company, creating a tandem with it in a double feature. Here, De lluny asks: where are the memories of the piece that premiered in the 90s and what’s the distance between it and this iteration? If an essay were written or a documentary made, what would it be? What would this film be about?
Verònica Navas Ramírez (Barcelona, 1986). As an artist, her interests revolve around images, substance and time: when and how they are generated or revealed, how they transform themselves and us, and what remains. This has materialised in an artistic body of work that recognises genealogies of memory, desire or mourning. She develops her practice from an interdisciplinary perspective, independently of the format used for expression. Since 2015 she has created, directed and written for performance arts, both in her own works and for collaborations. Her work has been shown in Spain, Germany, France, Uruguay and Argentina. At the same time, she has worked as a teacher in secondary and higher education, as a cultural communicator and as editor in various fields. Since 2016 she co-develops scripts for cinema, television and advertising. Her interest in artistic processes, understood from the point of view of connections, continues to expand and expand – and expand.
Creation and performance: Verònica Navas Ramírez
Technical support: tbc
Video De lluny FILM: Tristán Pérez Martín, La Caldera Les Corts
Promotional images: Tristán Pérez Martín, Verònica Navas
Support during process: Antic Teatre, OSIC, La Caldera Les Corts, Àrea Tallers de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Collaborations: Utopia 46 and Local residents of c/Sant Pere més Alt, 10-12
INTERRUPTION 8
- Pla desendreça – Colectivo Ameno
Friday October 16 at 12pm
Antic Teatre, c/Verdaguer i Callís, 12
Walkabout from Antic Teatre at c/Verdaguer i Callís, 12 to Santa Caterina Market
“We’ll form a collective, an us. At least for a while. Clowns in the street. We’ll avoid the straight path. Playing and taking risks, improvising, freeing ourselves.”
Pla desendreça is a collective clown action that defends the right to waste time, to drift from the planned itinerary and interrupt the logical orders that govern public space. More than twenty years ago, the streets of Barcelona provided clowns with a space where it was possible to wander, practice, make mistakes. Without an encircling crowd. Without a show. Opening cracks to make room for other ways of moving, of seeing. What happens in a city when it leaves no room for error, drift or the unexpected?
Colectivo Ameno is the alter ego of Marc Rodrigo. His performance pieces combine philosophy, stage action and humour. He has created theatre pieces: Filosofia Amena and La vida és una força obscura, and street pieces: Santaurer, a walkabout performance based on walking as an act of resistance and Altres mapes, a community project that has the creation of city ‘brands’ as its starting point. Emboscadura is his latest show, in which two desperate trees leave the forest to bring a message to humanity. Presenter and moderator at a wide range of events, he is also a member of the hospital clown team Pallapupas, which allows him to practice proximity, engage in direct contact and regularly experience the transformative power of the clown.
Concept and creation: Colectivo Ameno
Collaborations: Santa Caterina Market
INTERRUPTION 9
- La juerga – P.L.A.S.
Friday October 16, from 7pm to 9pm
Antic Teatre, c/Verdaguer i Callís, 12
Walkabout: from Antic Teatre at c/Verdaguer i Callís, 12 to Plaça Pou de la Figuera
50 years on, we retrieve the image of Tripijoc, Joc Trip by La Tràgica company, to rethink parties as a form of political intervention in public space. Somewhere between play and provocation, this image reveals parties as unpredictable choreographies of movements, positions and manoeuvres that criss-cross and take shape as part of a shared experience.
Why are we having a party? Because we want the street back: streets form part of our way of life. But we live in a city full of rules and regulations that has, slowly but surely, excluded any spontaneous or non-regulated ways of life or community gatherings from the streets. Music, theatre, circus, resistance acts, revelries of various kinds… Revelries are interruptions of this excluding normality. They are about reclaiming the street in a festive way, making room for spontaneity, giving real meaning to words such as party, neighbourliness, solidarity. Revelries are not planned, but suggested. A revelry is supported by a provisional, impure collectivity. That’s why we’re proposing a revelry that will start out as a street party, somewhere in the neighbourhood.
P.L.A.S. is a temporary alliance of artists for the generation of inconveniences and other drifts of thought/action. That’s how this alliance decided to present itself when it began a task of collective learning and research at the Santa Mònica Arts Centre (crear)Situacions, editions V and VII, in March and October 2024. Previously, the members of this alliance had shared experimental pedagogic spaces, teaching and research on resources linked to arts and design. We are signatories to the Manifesto of impure collectives. At present we are plotting words and practices from and for inconvenience, as well as from and for happy alliances and complicities.
Concept and creation: P.L.A.S.
Soundscape: Robert Martínez
Collaborations: Antic Teatre Community Arts Group, BOTTLE, Gaites Colombianes Group, Barcelona Vegan Fair, Old Town District Renters Union, Espai Jove Palau Alòs, Casal de Barri Pou de la Figuera, EnCircam
COMPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES
- Mid-revelry Interruption
8pm Plaça Sant Pere
BOTTLE: Banda Organitzada amb Tremenda Tonteria Liant-la als Exteriors
A collective that generates spaces for participation. Its actions transform public space into the setting for collective experimentation, celebration and play where anyone who wants to join in is invited.
INTERRUPTION 10
- Pas a Pas. Señor StetS Lonely Orkestar i Amics – Karl StetS
Saturday 17 October at 6pm
c/Sant Pere més Alt 10
Walkabout: from c/Sant Pere més Alt, 10 to Plaça Pou de la Figuera
Mr StetS invites us to see through different eyes, to listen to the sound of the streets as if it were a musical score. To discover that a pavement, a terrace or a street corner can become, all of a sudden, an impromptu stage. When music enters our daily life, nothing stays exactly as it was. Sounds, bodies, accidents, the little scenes that sustain our lives are revealed, for a few instants, as an unexpected spectacle. The walkabout links Plaça Lluís Millet with Plaça Pou de la Figuera along an itinerary where music erupts into the everyday and transforms the journey into a succession of interruptions.
Karl StetS is a multidisciplinary artist who has developed his career as a circus artist, director, musician, composer and builder of instruments and artifacts for the stage. He has been involved in performance arts and street circus for over thirty years. For the past 15 years he has developed his project One Man Orchestra with which he has collaborated with companies and creators from all kinds of backgrounds, adapting to all manner of contexts and performance formats. In the course of his career he has worked, among others, with Circus Cirkör, Kitt Johnson X-Act, Leandre Ribera, Manolo Alcántara, Amer and Àfrica, Circ Pistolet, Companyia Capicua, Circ Cric, Dragone and Indi Gest. He is also responsible for the musical direction and composition for shows such as Disparate and FAM (Ateneu Popular 9 Barris Winter Circus) as well as projects for his own companies, False Majeur and LicedeLuxe.
Creation, direction and performance: Karl StetS
Performance: Dúo Rossoneve and Lu Lucario
Collaborations: Espai Jove Palau Alòs, Casal de Barri Pou de la Figuera, Riborquestra, Batucada Banda Mandanga, Local residents of c/Verdaguer i Callís and c/Sant Pere més Alt
- Es pot crear sense memòria? – Arxiu de Circ
Saturday 17 October at 7pm
Plaça del Pou de la Figuera
Presentation of the Circus Archive: presentation of the Circus Archive’s digital platform.
Es pot crear sense memòria? (Is it possible to create without memory?) is a round table event that seeks to explore ways of doing, thinking and acting on circus arts today. It has been conceived as a space for public reflection that encourages the circus community to recover memories as an act of resistance through which to share perceptions, experiences and images and so create a shared experience. To remember is to remake the present, to relive; to remember is to imagine.
Compiling, preserving, promoting and revitalising memories is a democratic challenge as urgent as it is fundamental. These memories are also an artistic challenge: they allow us to document and enrich the research of artists, to provide support for the artistic quality of their productions and to provide a more dynamic and sustainable ecosystem.
What are our stories? What happens to stories when they are no longer told or when they are removed from sight or suppressed? Into which system/world do the tales enclose us or, contrariwise, what worlds do they open to us?
