Taking inspiration from Ibiza's century-long history made of successive waves of cultural blending, OUR SOUL IS AIR is a 4-day programme spread across two weekends that uses wind as its metaphorical starting point. Aimed at a broad audience, this mostly free public programme proposed to explore Ibiza’s unique relationship to the element of wind as a vector of community-making and an agent of vernacular knowledge, celebrating the island as a crossroads of civilisations that have left their marks here for thousands of years.
OUR SOUL IS AIR was curated by Elise Lammer in collaboration with Andrea Rodriguez Novoa.
Chapter I: Rumor de un paisaje (Rumor of a Landscape). 14 & 15 Abril
The first chapter of the programme, entitled Rumor de un paisaje (Rumor of a Landscape), poetised the idea of wind as a generator, a bundle of energy that simultaneously spreads words and seeds whilst giving life to rituals and diversity. We focused on the island’s natural resources, particularly on its investment within alternative, vernacular agriculture systems while looking at artists whose work is inspired by natural elements. The diverse panels, activities and presentations, as well as the people gathered around Rumor of a Landscape (Rumor de un paisaje) expanded on contemporary ways in which the rural can be a source of conscious and sharp cultural and artistic production.
Programme April 14:
7pm | Vibration distance, artist talk with Lara Fluxà and Guillermo Romero Parra. Conversation in which the creator will explain her artistic practice and her work with blown glass for the Venice Biennale.
9pm | Music performance by Félicia Atkinson.
Programme April 15:
11am - 1pm | Aprendiendo Campo Adentro. Family workshop with Fernando García-Dory (Inland). [Registration: 20€ for 1 adult with 1 or 2 children between 7 and 12 years old]
7pm | Harvesting the Summer (2020), Mathilde Rosier. Film screening followed by a Q&A with the artist. Un trabajo que trata sobre la relación de los humanos con la naturaleza a través de una colección de notas de voz en forma de diario.
8pm | Picturing voices, visual encounter with Jessica Dunlop and Fernando García-Dory.
9pm | Grito de Uc. Vocal performance by Sonia Ferrer.
9:15pm | Theremin performance by Laura De Grinyo.
9:30pm | Apéritif
Chapter II: ¿Una utopía real? (Utopia come true?). 5 & 6 May
The second chapter of the programme, Una Utopía Real? explored the imprint of the island’s legacy in club and rave culture and how it has reverberated around the world. Since the 1950s, Ibiza’s iconic dancefloors have attracted crowds of revolutionary and libertarian minds, and bolstered the idea of Ibiza as a crossroads for emancipation. The latest clubs were sheltered in peri-urban architectures that have physically characterised the island over time, establishing a very distinct anthropological and sociological landscape.
Programme May 5:
7pm | Alternative Landscape. roundtable with Dawn Hindle, Jaime Romano, Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld.
8:30pm | Fiorucci Made me Hardcore (1999), Mark Leckey. Video screening of this film that follows Britain’s underground club scene from the 1970s to the 1990s. Using a compilation of found footage
9pm | Thinking Out Loud, performative playlist with Héctor Cardell, Sonia Fernández Pan, Carolina Jiménez, Rossetta Montenegro, Camilo Miranda. Guests introduced songs and tracks in connection with personal–both rational and emotional–anecdotes about the island’s rich legacy with clubbing, techno music and rave culture. Together they sketched out a social and architectural landscape by means of a festive playlist.
Programme May 6:
11am - 1:30pm | Carrier Wave: Dancing and Laughing with the Wind, family workshop with Rosa Tharrats. In this activity we worked with fabrics and we became mobile sculptures that are activated by playing, dancing and laughing. Registration: 20€ (1 adult with 2 kids from 7 10 12 years old.
All activities took place at La Carpintería. Río Arno 58 (Can Bufí).
Supported by:
Sponsors:
Andrea Rodríguez Novoa (Gijón, ES) is a curator, architect and writer based in Spain and France. She is a member of IKT, International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art and C-E-A, Commissaires d’Exposition Associés (France). She was part of the acquisition committee for FRAC Normandie, France (2017-2021).
She reflects in an expanded way on space and time, image, narration and storytelling. She develops curatorial projects and writes from and about affection to talk about art. She is interested in the forms and formats of production, dissemination and transmission of contemporary art, in the "exhibition architectures" as tools for building discourse in the public, social, and political realm.
Since February 2022 Andrea Rodriguez Novoa is Co-Director and Head of the Professional Program of Barcelona Gallery Weekend (www.barcelonagalleryweekend.com). Together with Veronica Valentini, she directs, curates and teaches at BAR project (www.barproject.net / @hola.barproject), a residency and a training program in visual arts that she co-founded in Barcelona in 2012. In 2020 she co-founded in Barcelona together with the architect Magdalena Ostornol the project MIA (Meta-Industrial Architectures, @mia_architectures), in which they develop architectures that address energetic, environmental, economic and social sustainability. Since 2018 she collaborates with Leopold Banchini Architects (www.leopoldbanchini.com) in Geneva.
She has carried out curatorial projects with numerous collaborators such as : Lyon Biennale, Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Institut Français (Barcelona), Casa Velázquez (Madrid), STROOM (The Hague), SOMA Mexico (CDMX), 18th St. Art Center (Los Angeles), Bienal de Gwangju (South Korea), École de Beaux Arts Quimper (France), CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux (France), Sandberg Instituut (Amsterdam), HEAD Haute École d’art et Design (Geneva), etc. Some of her projects include : ' Slow Gala', Sixty Eight Art Institute, Copenhaguen, 2022; 'Just Because. In the blink of an eye', Bombon Projects gallery for Barcelona Gallery Weekend, 2021 ; 'A guided visit', Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam, 2018; 'Whenever you do(not) feel like, keep going', Plataforma Révolver, Lisboa, 2017 ; 'Unveiling (Reflections on scape)', Primo Piano, Paris, 2017; 'One Night Stand: At- homeness despite it all', MAK Center for Art and Architecture, L. A., 2016; 'Plagiarizing the future', Hangar, Lisbon, 2015 ; 'Promenade architecturale', Centro de Arte Fort du Bruissin, Lyon, 2014, etc.
Elise Lammer is a curator and the artistic director of Halle Nord, Geneva. She is currently a PhD candidate at Institute Art Gender Nature in Basel, and University Linz, Austria, researching the garden of British artist, filmmaker, author and gay rights activist Derek Jarman (UK, 1942-1994). Since 2019, she’s been developing a garden in homage to Jarman's Prospect Cottage at La Becque | Artists Residency, La Tour-de-Peilz, where she assembled an archive of bootleg material aimed at raising awareness around Jarman's legacy.
Guillermo Romero Parra (*Madrid, lives and works in Madrid and Ibiza) is the founder and director of Parra & Romero, a gallery established in Madrid in 2005. Since it opened its doors, the line of the gallery has been based on the investigation of new languages in contemporary art between the boundaries of conceptual and minimal art.
The gallery programme is specialised in the encounter between national and international artists through a conversations programme parallel to the gallery exhibitions, as well as projects curated by invited curators, this programme being a fundamental pillar in the idea of using the gallery as a laboratory to interrogate new dialogues in contemporary art.
In July 2012, Parra & Romero Gallery embarked on a new adventure, opening up a second space in the heart of rural Ibiza. Considering the island as one of the most international meeting points, this massive warehouse champions the idea that the island can evolve through art while reclaiming the legacy of Ibiza as a place for intellectuals.
Following the mission to bolster the art life of the island throughout the year, including during the winter, Romero Parra opened a third gallery in the village of Santa Gertrudis in 2022.
Before starting his own venture, Guillermo Romero Parra worked for Christie’s, White Cube and Victoria Miro. He is currently teaching Contemporary Art Theory and market at Salamanca University (USAL).
Jaime Romano (*Ibiza, lives and works in Ibiza and Barcelona) is an architect who opened an architecture studio in 1991, before graduating.
Based on the idea that interior design isn’t really useful in nightclubs, since their main users—party-goers— cannot really appreciate it when crowded, Romano and his team developed their design thinking about the “flow” of the space; in other words how to give shape to a space, how to encourage the circulation of people, while thinking equally about the normative and accidental use of it, and always having in mind the well-being of the club-goers, while fostering a deeply sensorial experience.
Besides realising a series of iconic Ibizan houses, Jaime Romano and his team signed projects such as the SPACE club in Ibiza, La Fonda Restaurant in Barcelona, as well as residential complexes in Barbados, and projects in Switzerland, Russia, Tunisia and Turkey.
His studio was notably involved in the construction and renovation of a few nightclubs in Barcelona, including Pacha, located in the upper section of Diagonal Avenue, the Fellini, a club located inside Estación de Francia train station, the CDLC, the Razzmatazz, in the Almogavares neighbourhood, as well as the mythical La Paloma in the old town. Jaime Romano studied at ETSAB – Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona and UPC – Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña. He is the founder of Romano Arquitectos, with offices in Barcelona and Ibiza.
Carolina Jiménez (*Madrid, lives and works in Barcelona) is a curator and researcher focusing on listening in relation to the epistemological, ontological, ethical and political. Of particular concern are the ways in which knowledge is given precedence, and systems which determine the agential cuts between enunciation and listening. In Barcelona she combines her work as an independent with institutional practice, whether in her current work taking care of Hangar’s research and knowledge transfer programs, or in previously coordinating the Independent Studies Program (PEI) of MACBA. Until 2017, she lived in Berlin, where she curated exhibitions and coordinated projects at SAVVY Contemporary, Transmediale-CTM Vorspiel, Bethanien, Berlin Art Week, Grimmuseum, GlogauAir and Altes Finanzamt. She has also curated projects at La Casa Encendida, Matadero Madrid, TBA21, Centro Párraga, Twin Gallery and the Sala d’Art Jove. She hosts the music show Rhythm is Rhythm on the community radio Dublab Barcelona. When she can, she writes for several catalogues and publications.
Fernando García Dory’s (*Madrid, lives and works in Madrid) work engages the relationship between culture and nature, as manifested in multiple contexts: from landscape and the rural, to desires and expectations in relation to identity, crisis, utopia and social change. Interested in the harmonic complexity of biological forms and processes, his work addresses connections and cooperation, from microorganisms to social systems, and from traditional art languages drawing to collaborative agro-ecological projects and actions. He studied Fine Arts and Rural Sociology, and is currently preparing a PhD on Art and Agroecology. He was granted the Socially Engaged Award by Creative Time New York, the Chamberlain Award and finalist of the Rolex Prize. He is a fellow of the Council of Forms (Paris) and board member of the World Alliance of Nomadic Pastoralists. He has developed projects and shown his work at Tensta Konsthall, Van Abbe Museum, Reina Sofia Museum, SFMOMA, Centre Pompidou, documenta 12 as well as the Biennales of Gwangju, Istanbul and Athens. Since 2010, he has been developing a project about a para-institution called INLAND.
The work of Lara Fluxà (*Palma, lives and works in Barcelona) generates a setting, a landscape, not through an endeavour to impose order and domination, but rather evincing the fragileness of our surrounding environs, the need for understanding and our attention. Her places call for responsibility and care, they demand a rethinking of the gravity of our bodies and the direction of our actions. Entering into this already inhabited space she generates is to co-exist through difference, a universe peopled by organic forms that await our presence under the horizon of responsibility, vibration and play.
Fluxà has shown her work in the Catalan Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale; Lo Pati-Centre d'Art de les Terres de l'Ebre, Amposta; Fundación Joan Miró, Barcelona; Es Baluard Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Palma de Mallorca; Casal Solleric de Palma; Museo Marítimo de Barcelona and Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona, among others.
Sonia Fernández Pan (*Vitoria, lives and works in Berlin) writes, does (in)dependent curatorial projects and likes to dance in the anonymity of the dancefloor. Conversation, friendship and entropy are part of her research methodology, thanks to the continuous exchange of gestures and ideas with other people. She is co-curator of You Got To Get In To Get Out, a project that stems from a long-term research on techno that she carried out together with Carolina Jiménez for La Casa Encendida in Madrid. The result was an exhibition, a public programme and a catalogue on the subject. She is also the host of several podcasts for Promise no Promises! a research project and think tank tasked to assess, develop, and propose new social languages and methods to understand the role of women and gender in the arts, culture, science and technology at Institute Art Gender Nature, HGK Basel FHNW. She has recently published Edit with Caniche Editorial, a book from the dance floor that produces a continuous remix of texts mirroring each other.