With the support of Gijón’s Town Council and the Principality of Asturias, the festival will host a five-day line-up in different spaces of the town, including local, national and international artists, featuring live shows and audiovisual performances.
Some of the headliners of this 18th year, which will play at Teatro de la Laboral, Nave de LABoral Centro de Arte and Muséu del Pueblu d’Asturies, are Aïsha Devi, Martin Messier, Evian Christ or Myriam Bleau collaborating with Nien Tzu Weng, plus Rrucculla, Sin Maldita & Lei, Cachito Turulo, Riccardo Giovinetto, Jacques, Puce Mary, LCY, and Bromo in this first line-up advance.
Among this year’s highlights we find the world premiere of many audiovisual projects, plus the performative video installation at Caja Escénica del Teatro de la Laboral of the project The Third Reich by Romeo Castellucci, a global reference in experimental scenic arts.
First tickets available at www.levfestival.com
L.E.V. Festival (Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual) celebrates its 18th year in Gijón from May 1 to 5. With the support of Gijón’s Town Council and the Principality of Asturias, the festival has come of age, turning the Asturian town into a point of reference to discover the most unorthodox side of electronic sound experimentation and contemporary audiovisual, scenic and digital creation.
With five days of line-up, a day more than in previous years, this year’s festival will take place in several spaces around the town, making a special emphasis on audiovisual performances and music live shows, and the festival is announcing its first names. Besides the audiovisual installations and the activities around extended realities, which will be announced soon, the festival keeps on consolidating itself as one of the most essential event concerning audiovisual creativity and new national and international electronica.
Teatro de la Laboral: Aïsha Devi, Myriam Bleau+Nien Tzu Weng, Martin Messier, Riccardo Giovinetto, Bromo
Once again, Teatro de la Laboral will be one of the most essential spaces of the festival, with live shows on Friday 3 and Saturday 4 May. In this space you will be able to discover new projects by artists L.E.V. has been following since the beginning of their careers, such as Martin Messier or Myriam Bleau.
Aïsha Devi headlines the L.E.V. Festival program at Teatro de la Laboral with a live performance around her latest and long-awaited album Death is Home (Houndstooth, 2023), her most personal and revealing to date. Result of her evolution as an artist and inspired by her own battles, this work of the Swiss-Nepalese producer and vocalist develops her characteristic Aetherave sound to transport listeners to a dizzying and kinetic environment, in which she resignifies anachronistic cultural prejudices with her contemporary, ornamental language and eerie architecture. A powerful and transformative manifesto with influences from shamanism, physics, Vedic scriptures and ancestral wisdom, where she unravels the dogma of life in the face of death.
Another highlight in the Teatro’s line-up will be the premiere of project Second Self by Quebec digital artist Myriam Bleau in a collaboration with Taiwanese-Canadian choreographer Nien Tzu Weng. The performers explore the symbols of the mirror and the mask, as well as social dynamics, carrying LED touch pads over their bodies as if they were small prosthesis, interacting with the visual and sonic elements of the performance. The final stage of this project will be developed in an artistic residency during the days prior to the festival, in collaboration with the Québec Bureau in Barcelona, Teatro de la Laboral and El Palacio. Residencias Artísticas y Acción Cultural, the new municipal space dedicated to artistic creation and managed by Fundación Municipal de Cultura, Educación y Universidad Popular de Gijón.
Canadian Martin Messier, a recurring act in L.E.V. throughout all these years, will showcase his new project 1 drop 1000 years, based on a vital process for balance in life: homeostasis, a phenomenon which allows an organism to keep the right temperature, applied to ocean currents. An artistic translation of these intimate and global currents which shape the world and regulate the climate and ecosystems in our planet, which have been slowed down during the last 200 years due to human activity.
After his memorable performance at the last edition of L.E.V. Matadero in Madrid, Italian visual and multimedia artist, physicist and university professor Riccardo Giovinetto arrives at L.E.V. Festival in Gijón with an extended version of his audiovisual performance F E M I N A, which explores the idea of virtue and the gaze that defines it during the Renaissance through the imaginary journey of an AI. In it, echoes of polyphonic madrigals are layered over the composition of the original electronic music, while samples of Renaissance paintings are transformed into a flow of images that constantly mutates, interacting with sound.
Teatro will also host the premiere of Bromo‘s latest work, CRISPR the pattern of life, an approach and reflection about one of the most exciting breakthroughs in the history of biotechnology: CRISPR DNA-editing systems. This musical and visual journey of the duo formed by Paloma Peñarrubia and Azael Ferre, full of meanings and messages, impossible landscapes, generative images and reinterpreted environments, will dive and guide the spectator into the universe of synthetic biology and the philosophy of evolution.
Nave de LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial: Evian Christ, Puce Mary, Jacques, Sin Maldita + Lei, LCY
The nighttime line-up at Nave de LABoral Centro de Arte, which will take place on Saturday 4 May, will be headlined by Evian Christ, an English musician, producer and music programmer, founder of the Tranceparty events. Credited for his initial contributions in productions of successful albums by musicians such as Kanye West and Travis Scott, during the last years he has directed a series of idiosyncratic projects exploring the legacy of trance in contemporary cultural life. His album Revanchist (Warp2023) explores the latent potential of the genre to evoke a full-fledge feeling of sublime, beyond euphoria.
On Saturday 4 May, another main space at L.E.V. Festival, Nave de LABoral will host several daytime shows by artists such as Puce Mary, artistic alias of Danish Frederikke Hoffmeier. With a long track record in experimental electronic music, she is known for her intense live shows, which ranges from passionate deliveries of cinematic compositions to the fury of industrial noise.
Singular French artist Jacques, known for his ability to reinvent himself, his unfiltered frankness, and his carefully messy sound experiments, will play live his new show, Videochose. An amalgam of fragments of films documentaries, YouTube videos and even footage from his daily life, cut, looped and set to music to turn them into musical instruments, accompanied by his usual artifacts. Once more, Jacques pushes his own limits to bring us a show as noisy as danceable, where sound and image interact live.
The audiovisual project Aelcrush, a collaboration between Berlin-based artist and music producer Sin Maldita and French multimedia artist Lei, deals with topics such as escapism and emotional exhaustion, halfway between the turmoil of an audiovisual club and ravishing beauty. A devastating and emotionally evocative work, which musically intertwines hybrid club music with experimental pop, generating an experiential whirlpool of worlds of sound in their live shows.
Also at la Nave, LCY (London-based visual artist and DJ born in Bristol, debuts at L.E.V. Festival with the premier of their audiovisual live show. Well known for their deconstructed, dark sets, paying a sincere tribute to UK’s club music, LCY founded the SZNS7N label in 2019, and their fantasy, science-fiction narratives have visited such prestigious stages as London’s Royal Opera House or Primavera Sound.
Caja escénica del Teatro de la Laboral: Romeo Castellucci y Scott Gibbons
As a first this year, on Wednesday 1 and Thursday 2 May, Caja Escénica del Teatro de la Laboral will host one of the most relevant names in the world of contemporary scenic arts: Romeo Castellucci, famous worldwide for creating theatre plays based on the entirety of arts, and oriented towards an integral perception. At L.E.V. Festival, he will showcase The Third Reich, a frantic, performative video installation based on the spectral representation of all the substantives included in the Italian dictionary, projected on a gigantic screen at a very fast pace, one by one, to force the audience into losing their perception. With sound composed by experimental electro-acoustic musician Scott Gibbons, this project is the image of an imposed, mandatory communication; of the explicit violence of a single, mass-produced language. The furious bundle of words used here does not allow any choice or judgment. The core of language transformed into white noise, leading to chaos.
Muséu del Pueblu d’Asturies: Rrucculla, Cachito Turulo
Composer, percussionist and multidisciplinary artist RRUCCULLA, one of the most eclectic projects to emerge from Spain lately, will be at Muséu del Pueblu d’Asturies showcasing an exclusive set for L.E.V. around the songs in her latest album, Zeru Freq, plus unreleased musical and visual material she has been working on during the last months. An exploration of artistic domains, expanding the universe created around her new work, materializing in a contemporary, experimental electronics audiovisual show composed by hyper realistic textures and abstract forms.
Among other artists, Muséu will also showcase the live show of one of the edgiest Spanish artists, Cachito Turulo, the new alias by Ernesto Avelino, 50% of Fasenuova. This musician from Mieres played many European places with his electronic two-piece, turning into an international reference in the fields of industrial music and EBM. His new artistic incarnation opts for a futuristic, sordid sound, in debt to footwork and drill, related to the most avant-garde electronic sounds. Festive, wild energy, stories about the night and the streets, over frantic rhythms and abrasive synths.
L.E.V. Festival 2024
1 – 5 May | Gijón
www.levfestival.com
@levfestival #LEVFestival
An iniciative by L.E.V. (Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual)
Supported by Ayuntamiento de Gijón y Principado de Asturias
Project funded by INAEM, Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte and the European Union-NextGeneration EU
Partners: Divertia, Laboral Ciudad de la Cultura, Concejalía de Cultura, Juventud y Museos, LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Oficina de Québec en Barcelona, RIT (Realities In Transition), EFFEA (European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists), Arenas Movedizas, Conseyu de Mocedá de Xixón, Radio 3, OCIMAG, CLOT Magazine.
Venues: Teatro Jovellanos, Teatro de la Laboral, Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto, Muséu del Pueblu d’Asturies, Escuela de Comercio y Jardín Botánico Atlántico.
Graphic: Pasajero37 / Motion design: Lateralideas
FIRST NAMES ANNOUNCED
Aïsha Devi _Ch/Np Houndstooth
Bromo CRISPR the pattern of life _Es Qigovisiones (World Premiere)
Cachito Turulo _Es Humo Internacional
Evian Christ Revanchist Live _Uk Warp
Jacques Videochose _Fr Recherche & Déveloprement
LCY Live ax _Uk (World Premiere)
Martin Messier 1 drop 1000 years _Ca / 14 lieux
Myriam Bleau & Nien Tzu Weng Second Self _Ca/Tw (World Premiere)
Puce Mary _Dk Pan
Riccardo Giovinetto F E M I N A | E X T E N D E D _It
RRUCCULLA Sound Sketches _Es Lapsus
Sin Maldita & Lei Aelcrush av _De/Fr Hxperdub. Unguarded
– Performative AV installation:
Romeo Castellucci & Scott Gibbons The Third Reich _It/Usa
