The festival, established as one of the one most essential events in the city, provides an all-round, contemporary and experimental view of electronic sound creations, audiovisual and scenic creations, digital art, and extended realities
The program in Nave 10 includes audiovisual performances and live shows that explore the relationship between body and technology. Destaca Lorenzo Senni que presenta su proyecto más reciente, Canone Infinito Xtended; Second Self de la canadiense Myriam Bleau y la artista taiwanesa Nien Tzu Weng; 321 Rule del estudio neoyorquino Team Rolfes y el colectivo italiano SPIME.IM.
The festival includes five extended reality projects in the Vortex section: Noire by Stéphane Foenkinos and Pierre Alain Giraud; IMPULSE: Playing With Reality, directed by May Abdalla and Barry Gene Murphy; The Sutherland Test by Adelin Schweitzer; *****2025/… by Carles Castaño Oliveiros, and a guided visit to the metaverse: Uncanny Alley by South African artist Rick Treweek
Fortune Teller by French artist Julie Stephen Chheng is the augmented reality experience that will take over Matadero’s Nave Una, aimed at all audiences.
This year’s circuit of installations comprises the work of Greek artist Theo Triantafyllidis, who presents Drift Lattice in Sala Plató, and Liminal, an interactive installation by LP Rondeau in Nave Una.
Tickets available here
Matadero Madrid, center of contemporary creations belonging to Madrid City Council’s Department of Culture, Tourism, and Sports, unveils the program for the 7th year of L.E.V. Matadero, which will take place from September 18 to 21. Since its first year at Matadero Madrid, the festival has been a key meeting point for digital and audiovisual arts. The 2025 edition reaffirms this commitment with a program featuring national and international artists who explore new languages and narratives born from the intersection of technology, music, and performance.
The curatorial selection for this year is structured around a commitment to offering a critical response to contemporary discomforts, providing a platform for artistic proposals that seek to understand our present through various forms of cultural production. From works about the climate crisis to those reflecting on social vulnerabilities, the impact of hyper-consumerism, or the pathologization of difference, the festival offers a journey through other possible worlds that reveal, question, and reimagine our material reality. The program showcases digital art and extended realities as tools to generate new imaginaries and narratives that embody other subjectivities, where the dichotomy between the human and the artificial blurs. Thus, this edition offers a space designed for those looking for immersive experiences at the frontier between artistic production and technological experimentation.
Live shows and audiovisual performances in auditorium format at Nave 10
The festival’s program kicks off on Thursday, September 18 with Second Self, a hypnotic audiovisual performance created by Canadian artist Myriam Bleau and Taiwanese artist Nien Tzu Weng. This work reflects on the transformation of humans in the digital age through gestures, sound, and movement, all within an aesthetic that interweaves the body and the screen. On the same night MP3, a collective formed by Arnau Pérez, Pau Vegas and Fernando Careaga, showcases MP3 Live #1, a performative journey where dance and electronic music intertwine in real-time thanks to sensors that transform movement into sound. This last piece, a worldwide premiere for festival, was developed with the support of Matadero’s Centre for Artistic Residencies, after being selected in the call for experimental electronic music projects in Madrid (2024).
Friday, September 19 will kick off with the presentation of 321 Rule, the revolutionary creation from New York studio Team Rolfes. Pioneers in motion-capture and real-time animation, their shows immerse the audience in experiences that blur the lines between virtual and physical worlds. On the same day, Carmen Jaci y Matthew Schoen will premiere an audiovisual performance in Spain that explores the relationships between humans and digital data. Using sound, image, and app-inspired interfaces, their work presents a critical and poetic reflection on information overload and identity in the digital age.
On Saturday, September 20, Nave 10 will host ARS NATURA, an immersive piece by Annabelle Playe, Hugo Arcier and Rima Ben Brahim which invites us to contemplate natural landscapes and brutalist architecture as if they were simulations or visions of the post-Anthropocene. This audiovisual journey is guided by an on-stage figure that brings the spaces to life with their sound and presence. On this same day, the Italian collective SPIME.IM will showcase GREY LINE, an intense and sensorial exploration of the color gray as a representation of the uncertain times we inhabit. Their audiovisual live performance will take us through a narrative that intertwines climate crisis, information overload, and moral ambiguity, in an experience where images and sound evoke the saturation of the present.
To conclude the festival’s stage and music program, Sunday, September 21, Italian composer and producer Lorenzo Senni will activate Canone Infinito Xtended, an ever-evolving composition that reconfigures the archetypes of trance music and repetition to capture an emotion that is always unfinished. As part of the festival’s closure, Matthew Biederman and Alain Thibault will present Incertitude, a performance that fuses algorithm-generated visuals and synthetic sound, exploring the tension between control and chance. A piece that invites reflection on the boundaries between the analog and the digital, order and glitch.
L.E.V. Matadero 2025 ventures into new virtual worlds with its Vortex section
This year, L.E.V. Matadero is again showcasing five acclaimed virtual and mixed reality projects. These interactive, long-form experiences will allow the audience to immerse in new virtual worlds and to experiment the artistic possibilities of this digital media. The Vortex section includes five shows that can be experienced in Nave 0, Central de Diseño, and El Taller.
Among the selected works is Noire, an immersive augmented reality experience produced by Stéphane Foenkinos and Pierre Alain Giraud, based on the work of Tania de Montaigne. This piece champions the story of Claudette Colvin, an Afro-American teenager who, in 1955, in Montgomery (Alabama), refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. Through augmented reality, Noire transports the viewer to the racial segregation of the American South, inviting them to inhabit Colvin’s memory and to reflect on her story, which was invisible for decades. The experience is a creation of Novaya studio, specialized in immersive projects that interweave technological innovation and narrative. It was also awarded Best Immersive Work at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.
This year’s L.E.V Matadero includes IMPULSE: PLAYING WITH REALITY, directed by May Abdalla and Barry Gene Murphy. This mixed reality experience, narrated by Tilda Swinton in its English version, explores the perception of the world from the perspective of those living with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). During its 40 minutes, the installation invites you to immerse yourself in the stories of four individuals who have lived between order and chaos, questioning the pathologizing discourses that have accompanied this type of cognition. The piece has been awarded for its trajectory at the Venice Biennale and is a key example of how mixed reality can raise awareness about poorly understood human experiences.
The Vortex section also features the premiere of French artist Adelin Schweitzer’s work, The Sutherland Test, a performance that explores extended reality from a radically different perspective. In this piece, the BUD, a helmet that suppresses the viewer’s vision, is the central element that leads the audience into a sensory experience challenging visual dependence and questioning the worship of images in digital society. This work offers an uncomfortable and revealing immersion that blurs the lines between technology and human perception.
Carles Castaño Oliveiros presents *****2025/… a mixed reality experience that directly engages the audience with a critical and contemporary perspective, produced by Servicios Inmersivos. This installation, which combines immersion in digital space with a strong narrative and political charge, sends participants into a dystopian environment that reflects, with irony and rawness, the contradictions of a hyper-consumerist and overwhelmed society. Through a series of interactive missions, ranging from finding a room for rent in a city to performing surgical operations in clandestine operating rooms, the audience is pushed to act, decide, and face the consequences of their actions. This work transforms the space into a political fiction where every individual decision intertwines with collective destiny, opening a space for emotional reflection on the present we inhabit and the futures we are building in contemporary societies.
This section will also feature a viewing of Uncanny Alley, the acclaimed virtual reality experience by South African artist Rick Treweek, which immerses us in the most enigmatic corners of the Metaverse via VRChat. In a guided group visit, we follow in the footsteps of Gh0st and their community to explore the limits and ruptures of this new digital reality.
Ciudad Aumentada
As part of the festival’s Augmented Reality experiences program, Fortune Teller, by French artist Julie Stephen Chheng offers an augmented reality experience where spirits linked to natural elements—such as water, fire, shadow, or light—hide in the space and can be discovered through a free mobile app. When activated, these spirits reveal desires, fears, and world perspectives, accompanying those who find them with a poetic and introspective vision that connects nature, technology, and philosophy. Inspired by the Yiching and various global currents of thought, the work is an intimate journey where each gaze represents a different way of inhabiting and understanding the world.
Audiovisual installation circuit
Sala Plató at Cineteca Matadero hosts the work of artist Theo Triantafyllidis, who presents Drift Lattice, an immersive simulation of a marine ecosystem where aquatic life coexists with synthetic waste in a constantly evolving digital environment, with music composed by Diego Navarro. This installation responds in real time to global climate and ecological data, becoming a speculative barometer of human impact on ocean health. In this underwater landscape, species like crabs, fish, and diving birds move among algae, nets, and plastics, while autonomous drones attempt to restore ecological balance. Drift Lattice expands research into simulated ecosystems and proposes an approach to the boundaries of natural and artificial environments, as well as the urgent need for collaboration between human, artificial, and natural intelligences in the face of the climate crisis.
AT Nave Una we will be able to enjoy Liminal, an interactive installation by LP Rondeau. This project materializes the threshold between past and present through light, sound, and visual technology. It consists of a 2.75-meter diameter ring that acts as a portal, capturing in black and white the silhouettes of those who pass through it to project them into an image that stretches and fades, symbolizing the inexorable passage of time. Through the slit-scan photographic process and a motion-sensitive sound design, the installation invites the public to inhabit and manipulate the space as if it were a musical instrument, generating sounds according to their position. The work transforms the experience of the ephemeral into a poetic and performative metaphor, where light becomes the visible echo of the past.
The Festival of Visual Electronics and Extended Realities, arranged by Matadero Madrid and curated by L.E.V. with the collaborations of Nave 10, Cineteca Madrid, and Centre for Artistic Residencies, featuring Central de Diseño.
L.E.V. Matadero 2025
September 18 – 21 | Matadero Madrid
www.levfestival.com
#LEVMatadero @levfestival @mataderomadrid
Arranged by Matadero Madrid
Curated by L.E.V. Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual
Partners: Nave 10, Cineteca Madrid, Centro de residencias artísticas
Featuring: Central de Diseño
Supported by: Taiwanese Ministry of Culture, Economic and Taipei’s Trade Office in Spain, Québec Office in Barcelona.
Supported by the Ministry of Culture’s public aids to promote the video game and podcast fields, plus other forms of digital creation, within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, and financed by the European Union – NextGenerationEU
Associated media: Radio 3, OCI Magazine, Clot Magazine, Metal Magazine
Visual identity: Teresa Rofer
Sound design: Borja Alexandre
LINE UP LEV MATADERO 2025_
18 al 21 de sept
LIVE SHOWS & AV PERFORMANCES
LORENZO SENNI _Canone Infinito Xtended _IT
MYRIAM BLEAU & NIEN TZU WENG. Second Self _CA/TW
TEAM ROLFES w/ LIL MARIKO. 321 Rule _US
ANNABELLE PLAYE & HUGO ARCIER & RIMA BEN BRAHIM_Ars Natura _FR
SPIME IM _Grey line Live Av _IT
MATTHEW BIEDERMAN & ALAIN THIBAULT_Incertitude _CA/Qc
CARMEN JACI & MATTHEW SCHOEN_CA/QC
MP3. MP3 LIVE #1 _ES
VORTEX. VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIENCES
NOIRE. Stéphane Foenkinos and Pierre-Alain Giraud _FR/TW
IMPULSE. PLAYING WITH REALITY May Abdalla & Barry Gene Murphy _FR/UK
THE SUTHERLAND TEST Adelin Schweitzer _FR
UNCANNY ALLEY. Rick Treweek _ZA
*****2025/… Carles Castaño Oliveros _ES
AUDIOVISUAL INSTALLATIONS
THEO TRIANTAFYLLIDIS Drift Lattice _GR
LP RONDEAU Liminal _CA/Qc
CIUDAD AUMENTADA
JULIE STEPHEN CHHENG Fortune Teller _FR
