_ES
Near-perfect precision. No hesitation, no fatigue, no loss of focus. Industrial robots embody the mastery of automation. A logic born on the assembly lines of Taylorism that today, hand in hand with artificial intelligence, spilled far beyond the factory floor— into our thinking, our judgement and our memory. Philosopher Bernard Stiegler called it La Société Automatique: every area of existence merged into an invisible network of calculations, with technology quietly shaping our lives from the inside.
Félix Luque Sánchez’s exhibition La Sociedad Automática gives form to that unease: a universe of machines that never falter, never tire, never revolt. Mechanical Sisyphuses locked in purposeless loops, mirroring a present where the human is no longer at the centre. A dystopian present that raises an urgent question: can we still reclaim the technology that governs us?
The work of Felix Luque Sánchez in collaboration with Damien Gernay, Vincent Evrard and Iñigo Bilbao, explores how humans conceive their relationship with technology and provide spaces for reflection on current issues such as the development of artificial intelligence and automatism. Using electronic and digital systems of representation, as well as mechatronic sculptures, generative sound scores, live data feeds and algorithmic processes, he creates narratives in which fiction blends with reality, suggesting possible scenarios of a near future and confronting the viewer with her fears and expectations about what machines can do.
LABoral Centro de Arte
Abril 17 – October 17
Opening:
April 17th, 7:00 pm.
Tuesday to Thursday
10:00 am. to 7:30 pm.
Friday, May 1
6:00 pm. to 9:00 pm.
Saturday, May 2
11:00 am. to 8:30pm.
A co-production by LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, iMAL, Art Center for Digital Cultures & Technology, Europalia and the Wallonia-Brussels Federation
_FR
Anne Horel is a French artist, filmmaker and digital collagist whose work explores the intersection of mythology, digital culture and artificial intelligence. Working across film, installation and moving images, she develops speculative narratives that examine how technology reshapes perception, identity and collective imagination.
Rooted in collage, both analog and generative, her practice treats AI as a contemporary extension of surrealist montage: a space where personal memory, popular culture and collective subconscious merge.
In February 2026, her short film La Tisseuse d’Ombres received the Best Use of AI Award at the Artefact AI Film Festival, marking a new phase in her practice toward cinematic storytelling.
LA SEÑAL ESTÁ ABIERTA is a vertical video installation conceived as a visual spell activated within the architecture of the Capilla de San Esteban. Designed specifically for the sacred spatial context, the work transforms the chapel into a catalyst for collective intention.
Combining surreal collage imagery, mythological hybrids, and cosmic symbolism, the piece unfolds as a contemporary incantation, an invitation to awaken perception and reconnect with a shared sense of presence.
Rather than referencing religion, the work draws from universal archetypes, astrology, and hermetic symbolism to propose a poetic space of reflection. Through image, sound, and rhythm, LA SEÑAL ESTÁ ABIERTA sends a message of peace, harmony, love, and interconnected consciousness, imagining the possibility of a radically different world shaped by awareness and collective empathy.
Capilla de San Esteban del Mar
Thursday, April 30
to Sunday, May 3
11:00 – 21:00 h
_ES
Enrique del Castillo will present Umbráfono on the incomparable stage of the Iglesia de la Laboral, which has reopened to the public following six years of restoration works. Europe’s largest elliptical dome will provide the setting for a unique sound experience.
Starting in 2018, the Umbráfono Project investigates the possibilities of generating sound through image and light, using a 35mm film, using machines and optical reading systems designed and built by the artist himself.
This line of research has earned him notable recognition, including the first international PowSOLO Sound art Award in 2020. His work has also been exhibited and performed internationally, from the 25 FPS Festival in Zagreb to Cafe OTO in London, as well as at institutions such as MACBA, Matadero Madrid, and the Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía (C3A).
As a graphic artist and musician with a multidisciplinary background, the work of Enrique del Castillo (Jaén, 1982) lies at the intersection of visual art and experimental music. He holds a Fine Arts degree from the University of Granada, Master’s in Artistic Production and Research from the University of Barcelona, and classical training at the Ramón Garay Professional Conservatory of Music (Jaén). His visual practice has developed alongside sound art, with more recent forays into the fields of performing arts and film.
Umbráfono will be performed in two shows.
_DE
Studio Sven Sauer’s installations focus on a theme that increasingly challenges our times: hope—not as an idealized state, but as a real, verifiable trace. Hope is considered a remnant of a bygone era, an abstract symbol. We are too surrounded by noise, disillusionment, and cynicism, amid all the clamor and images that bombard us every day.
Studio Sven Sauer searches for these hidden traces of hope in our reality. Their works are the result of extensive research, data, statistics, and scientific studies collected over decades.
For hope, as his work suggests, is not a sentimental feeling, but a measurable phenomenon. It flickers in data series, in ecological forecasts, in social fractures, and in the quiet perseverance of people and systems.
Deviation spreads out across the room as a carpet of glass fragments, woven from shards collected from all over the world. In our society, broken glass symbolizes something ominous. Broken windows precede earthquakes. Shards are broken during riots when anger thunders against shop windows. And there is glass that is deliberately broken to stop people. Shards of glass on the tops of walls. Sharp-edged borders.
But are we really as dark as we perceive ourselves to be? Based on texts by historian Rutger Bergman, the installation reveals another truth: in times of great hopelessness, history shows cooperation prevails. From certain angles, the processed shards catch light and divide it a hundredfold, turning fragments of destruction into reflections of hope.
Colegiata del Palacio
de Revillagigedo
Thursday, April 30
to Sunday, May 3
11:00 – 21:00 h
Credits:
Artwork „Deviation“: Studio Sven Sauer
Train modification: @helldorfer_engineering
Electronics: Lukas Esser
Creative coding: @bruno.ammon
Production: @nsevvalg / @martinhussain
Music: @theatre_of_delays
Texts and studies: @RutgerBregman
Clips: @frank_sauer
_CH
Under the name Cod.Act, André and Michel Décosterd bring together their respective practices. André as a musician, Michel as a visual artist. Together they create performances and interactive installations based on the interplay of sound and movement. Since 1999, they have developed lean and functional devices at the intersection of the mechanical and the organic.
These devices are not the artwork itself, but the medium through which encoded musical structures come to life. Activated either by the audience or by the artists themselves, the works generate ever-changing configurations, random, ephemeral and multidimensional, offering a different experience with each activation.
πTon is an intriguing sound installation: a rubber tube, closed in on itself, twists and undulates like an invertebrate organism. Surrounded by silent figures equipped with loudspeakers, it appears to struggle in vain to escape. Its movements fuel a polyphonic ritual, both primitive and sophisticated, composed entirely of artificial voices. Drawing on raw matter and natural physical phenomena, the work merges organic movement and vocal expression into a striking sonic and visual event.
Tickets must be collected in advance from the box office at the Teatro Jovellanos. A maximum of two tickets per person may be collected for any of the same-day performances.
Please arrive 10 minutes before the start of the event. If tickets are sold out but there are still seats available, admission will be on a first-come, first-served basis.
Teatro Jovellanos box office opening hours:
Thursday, April 30: 12:00 – 14:00 | 17:30 – 22:30
Friday, May 1: 12:00 – 14:00 | 16:00 – 20:30
Saturday, May 2: 12:00 – 14:00 | 16:00 – 20:30
_FR
Eric Vernhes’ practice is based on the creation of “temporal objects”, moving devices that harmonize with the viewer’s consciousness, creating a relationship of sympathy and synchronicity. His work aims to expand our awareness of ourselves, our bodies, the world and time, questioning our relationship to reality, fiction and otherness.
Meeting Philip is a musical, video and sculptural work built around the recording of the conference given by Philip K. Dick in 1977 in Metz. During this intervention, Philip K. Dick revealed that one of his favorite themes, the existence of a plurality of parallel universes, was indeed a reality and not a fiction. For him, there was no doubt that our world was the result of a computer program whose designer (God, programmer reprogrammer), episodically changed variables in the past, which disrupted the unfolding of our present time and gave birth to other uchronic and divergent universes. The feelings of “déjà vu” would result directly from this “reprogramming”.
In Meeting Philip the artist does not answer the question of the credibility of K. Dick’s story, but rather considers that this question is irrelevant. Confronted with the many facets of K. Dick’s personality, his wanderings and his flashes of brilliance, he takes the side of the writer against the self-proclaimed prophet. The latter (who has never convinced anyone) is ultimately only the tool of the former (who is recognized as brilliant).
Centro de Cultura
Antiguo Instituto
Thursday, April 30
to Sunday, May 24
12 – 14 h. / 16:30 – 20:30 h.
Schedules from May 4 to May 24
Monday to Friday:
17.30 – 20.30 h.
Saturdays:
12 – 14 h. / 17.30 – 20.30 h.
Sundays:
12 – 14 h.
