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 cultural agenda gradually recovers after the health-crisis halt and art lovers are eager to enjoy the rich cultural offer that the different spaces and museums throughout our geography have to offer. In addition, one must remember that these centres have made an enormous effort to adapt to the demands that the new situation imposes and have created abundant online-accessible content to overcome confinement. We bring you a selection of content that can be visited both in person and through the web. There is no excuse for not enjoying contemporary art again.

Olafur Eliasson, “En la vida real (In real life)”, 2019

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao continues with its exhibition dedicated to Olafur Eliasson and offers numerous resources to understand not only the exhibition but also the work of the centre in the assembly and installation process. The website allows us to expand content with interviews with the artist, the download of the audio guide and the vision of the curator Lucía Aguirre, who offers us different video-pills on the pieces in the exhibition.

"Olafur Eliasson: in real life" brings together a part of this artist's work since 1990 through sculptures, photographs, paintings and installations that play with reflections and colours. Likewise, the integration of elements such as moss, water, ice, fog... put the visitor in a situation that confuses the senses and tries to challenge the way we perceive our environment and move in it.

Regina de Miguel, “Isla Decepción”, 2017

The Botín Centre in Santander hosts the exhibition "Collecting processes: 25 years of Itineraries" which brings together the work of 25 of the 210 scholarship recipients who, to date, have enjoyed the Botín Foundation Plastic Arts Scholarship, started in 1993. With the works Lara Almárcegui, Basma Alsharif, Leonor Antunes, Javier Arce, Erick Beltrán, David Bestué, Bleda and Rosa, Nuno Cera, Patricia Dauder, Patricia Esquivias, Karlos Gil, Carlos Irijalba, Adrià Julià, Juan López, Rogelio López Cuenca, Renata Lucas, Mateo Maté, Jorge Méndez Blake, Regina de Miguel, Leticia Ramos, Fernando Sánchez Castillo, Teresa Solar Abboud, Leonor Serrano Rivas, Jorge Yeregui, David Zink-Yi, the exhibition is a good example of up-to-date and young contemporary art contributed by artists with very diverse profiles.

Clemente Bernad. Series “Ante el umbral”, Madrid, 2020

The Reina Sofía Museum wanted to create a visual chronicle of what the confinement and the tragic numbers of infected and deceased have meant for the lives of many of us: a tale of pain, nostalgia and uncertainty made by the photographer Clemente Bernad. This exhibition, curated by Jorge Moreno Andrés, is entitled “Before the threshold”, a title that expresses the strange sensation that occurs when faced with something new and unknown, something that we cannot control or avoid, and that we all must go through. The alteration imposed on our lives unexpectedly is reflected in the streets, transformed into places of solitude and abandonment where life has been paralysed.

Mario Merz / No title, Triplo Igloo, 1984 MAXXI Collection

At the IVAM, the exhibition "What is our home?" brings together works from the IVAM collection and the MAXXI centre in Rome to propose a reflection on the space we inhabit seen from a personal and social perspective. It is about investigating the value that these spaces have as a home or refuge, as well as part of a city or community.

The exhibition, curated by José Miguel G. Cortés, also wants to delve into the feeling of those who feel like foreigners anywhere, because they do not identify with the habits or customs of the society, they do not fit into these social patterns, and home becomes the only shelter space that can adapt to their identity needs.

Martha Rosler, frame from “Backyard Economy I-II”, 1974 © Courtesy of Martha Rosler, 2020

Es Baluard Museu is committed to video creation and performance and hosts the monographic exhibition “Martha Rosler. How do we get there from here?” dedicated to this New York artist who pioneered the use of video as a mechanism for social and political analysis. This exhibition includes various works, from video to photography and several publications, which synthesise her main lines of discourse. Her concern for public policies and the social equality of women has led her to actively participate in numerous social movements in La Havana, New York, Mexico DC or Barcelona, and these experiences are present in one way or another in her work.

With the curatorship of Inma Prieto, a selection has been made within the abundant production of this artist, which presents one of the most coherent careers in towards-the-new-Millenium contemporary art.

Image from file, via meiac.es/turbulence/archive/acceso.html

The MEIAC - Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo, host the works of the prestigious international digital art archive "Turbulence", a platform dedicated to network and hybrid art. In view of the inevitable closure of this institution, the MEIAC has offered to host all this valuable content collected since 1996. The uploading of the file also served as an opportunity to restore numerous pieces and convert formats so that files that had become obsolete remain readable by new systems. A huge job of conservation and updating that can be enjoyed online today. The archive is made up of hundreds of digital works from around the world that can now be visited remotely.