Art Madrid'26 – LIGHT, IMAGE AND SOUND IN MIRA SON FESTIVAL

The Mira Son digital art festival will open its 9th edition on November 5th with a larger, broader and more diverse program than in previous years. We enter an unknown and surprising field where disciplines coexist in a space designed for experimentation and innovation of the latest generation.

Robert Lippok & Lucas Gutierrez, “Non-face” (frame) (image via berlinerfestspiele.de)

For this festival, the concepts of 360º video art, immersive full-dome project, accelerated electronic music or light installation take on a holistic meaning that mixes and merges all the techniques to generate a new result, alien to the daily understanding of art and not suitable for classicists. The agenda is full of performances, conferences, screenings and lots of music.

Among the most outstanding contents, it is mandatory to talk about the cycle of screening in the MIRA Dome, a structure installed in the patio of the Fàbrica de Creació designed for 360º videos in which five selected pieces will on show. The staging is designed to offer an immersive experience that collapses the senses. For this reason, image and sound go hand in hand in these projects, many of them created thanks to the collaboration of visual artists with sound artists.

"Elektra" is a work that reflects on the passage of time and the relationship between past and present, with a piece produced by the Metahaven design studio and music by Kara-Lis Coverdale. On the other hand, the visual creator Lucas Gutiérrez has allied himself with the sound artist Robert Lippok for his work “Non-face”, where a sensory game between the credible and the hypothetical in our tangible reality is considered. A similar collaboration is that of "Realness", an artwork that invites to experiment with new ways of life other than human life, the result of the work of the digital artist Sandrine Deumier and the composer Myriam Bleau. Jordi Massó dares with a futuristic proposal, "Smartzombies", where our daily life is almost supplanted by technological gadgets. Finally, “Xpansion” stands out, a piece inspired by the constant expansion of the universe and some of the lastest astronomical concepts such as dark energy, created by the V.P.M. study, one of the winners of the Open Call of MIRA x Hangar.

Gabriela Prochazka, “Galaxy of Stars (Kiss Me)” (image via gabrielaprochazka.com)

We must also highlight the space dedicated to audiovisual installations, where digital art becomes the protagonist. Among the foreign guests is Audint (collective founded in 2008, with European artists) with his multisensory work "Obsidisorium" and Rick Farin (USA) with "Breach Act". In the national production are the students of Elisava with “Alice”, and the installation “Dualismo” of the artist Carlos Sáez, one of the greatest representatives of Spanish digital art who has already exhibited at the MoMA and the Whitney Museum in New York.

The festival promises innovation, lasers, DJs, electronic music, technological art, criticism of the social state, audiovisual symbiosis, and endless experiences where there is also space for reflection and exploration on the future of contemporary creation.

 


The circle as critical device and the marker as contemporary catalyst


POSCA, the Japanese brand of water-based paint markers, has established itself since the 1980s as a central instrument within contemporary artistic practices associated with urban art, illustration, graphic design, and interdisciplinary experimentation. Its opaque, highly pigmented, fast-drying formula—compatible with surfaces as diverse as paper, wood, metal, glass, and textiles—has enabled a technical expansion that extends beyond the traditional studio, engaging public space, objects, and installation practices alike.



In this context, POSCA operates as more than a working tool; it functions as a material infrastructure for contemporary creation. It is a technical device that enables immediacy of gesture without sacrificing chromatic density or formal precision. Its versatility has contributed to the democratization of languages historically associated with painting, fostering a more horizontal circulation between professional and amateur practices.

This expanded dimension of the medium finds a particularly compelling conceptual framework in The Rolling Collection, a traveling exhibition curated by ADDA Gallery. The project proposes a collective investigation of the circular format, understood not merely as a formal container but as a symbolic structure and a field of spatial tension.



Historically, the circle has operated as a figure of totality, continuity, and return. Within the framework of The Rolling Collection, the circular format shifts away from its classical symbolic charge toward an experimental dimension, becoming a support that challenges the hegemonic rectangular frontality of the Western pictorial tradition. The absence of angles demands a reconsideration of composition, balance, and directional flow.

Rather than functioning as a simple formal constraint, this condition generates a specific economy of visual decisions. The curved edge intensifies the relationship between center and periphery, dissolves internal hierarchies, and activates both centrifugal and centripetal dynamics. The resulting body of work interrogates the very processes through which images are constructed.



Following its 2025 tour through Barcelona, Ibiza, Paris, London, and Tokyo, a selection of the exhibition is presented at Art Madrid, reinforcing its international scope and its adaptability to diverse cultural contexts. The proposal for Art Madrid’26 brings together artists whose practices unfold at the intersection of urban art, contemporary illustration, and hybrid methodologies: Honet, Yu Maeda, Nicolas Villamizar, Fafi, Yoshi, and Cachetejack.

While their visual languages vary—ranging from graphic and narrative approaches to chromatic explorations charged with gestural intensity—the curatorial framework establishes a shared axis: a free, experimental, and distinctly color-driven attitude. In this sense, color functions as a conceptual structure that articulates the works while simultaneously connecting them to the specific materiality of POSCA.



The marker’s inherent chromatic vibrancy engages in dialogue with the formal assertiveness of the circle, generating surfaces in which saturation and contrast take center stage. The tool thus becomes embedded within the exhibition discourse, operating as a coherent extension of the participating artists’ aesthetic vocabularies.

One of the project’s most significant dimensions is the active incorporation of the public. Within the exhibition space—activated by POSCA during Art Madrid’26—visitors will be invited to intervene on circular supports installed on the wall using POSCA markers, thereby symbolically integrating themselves into The Rolling Collection during its presentation in Madrid.



This strategy introduces a relational dimension that destabilizes the notion of the closed artwork. Authorship becomes decentralized, and the exhibition space transforms into a dynamic surface for the accumulation of gestures. From a theoretical standpoint, the project may be understood as aligning with participatory practices that, without compromising formal coherence, open the artistic dispositif to contingency and multiplicity.

The selection of POSCA as the instrument for this collective intervention is deliberate. Its ease of use, line control, and compatibility with multiple surfaces ensure an accessible experience without diminishing the visual potency of the outcome. In this way, the marker operates as a mediator between professional practice and spontaneous experimentation, dissolving technical hierarchies.



The title itself, The Rolling Collection, suggests a collection in motion—unfixed to a single space or definitive configuration. Its itinerant nature, combined with the incorporation of local interventions, transforms the project into an organism in continuous evolution. Within this framework, POSCA positions itself as a material catalyst for a transnational creative community. Long associated with urban scenes and emerging practices, the brand reinforces its identity as an ally of open, experimental, and collaborative processes.

POSCA x The Rolling Collection should not be understood merely as a collaboration between a company and a curatorial initiative; rather, it constitutes a strategic convergence of tool, discourse, and community. The project proposes a reflection on format, the global circulation of contemporary art, and the expansion of authorship, while POSCA provides the technical infrastructure that makes both individual works and collective experience possible.