With the support of Gijón’s Town Council and the Principality of Asturias, the festival will host a four-day line-up in different spaces of the town, including local, national and international artists, featuring live shows and audiovisual performances.
After announcing the first batch of names for this 18th year, with such outstanding artists as Aïsha Devi, Martin Messier, Evian Christ, Myriam Bleau & Nien Tzu Weng, RRUCCULLA, Sin Maldita & Lei, Cachito Turulo, Riccardo Giovinetto, Jacques, Puce Mary, LCY, and Bromo, now the festival reveals the rest of names of this year.
The line-up at Teatro de la Laboral will also include two-piece SYNSPECIES and French-Swedish artist Noémi Büch; the new names at Muséu del Pueblu d’Asturies are Peruvian Dengue Dengue Dengue and Asturian Kessell&Kerqus; the additions at Jardín Botánico Atlántico, in a collaboration with Fundación EDP, are British artists Scanner and Sophia Loizou.
Among this year’s highlights are the shows in the stage boxes of the city’s two main theaters. Besides Romeo Castellucci’s performative av installation The Third Reich at Teatro Laboral, now we can also confirm the installation Distrust Everything by Italian artist Lorem at Teatro Jovellanos.
Other activities are: an audiovisual installation about our relationship with light, at Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto, created by Guillaume Mamin, and some augmented and virtual reality experiences to be announced soon.
Day tickets and full festival tickets available for sale here
L.E.V. Festival (Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual) celebrates its 18th year in Gijón from 1 to 5 May 2024. 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 now the festival is announcing its complete line-up.
Among this year’s live shows at Teatro de la Laboral, Nave de LABoral Centro de Arte, and Muséu del Pueblu d’Asturies, we have five world premieres by artists L.E.V. have been keeping track of since their beginnings, such as Myriam Bleau and creative duos Synspecies and Bromo, as well as some newcomers to our festival, such as LCY and Kessell&Kerqus. The audience will also enjoy the live shows of such renowned audiovisual creators as Martin Messier and discover the most recent albums by essential artists of the electronic music scene around the world, such as Death is Home by Aïsha Devi, Revanchist by Evian Christ, or Does It Still Matter by Noémi Büchi.
All these projects are full of reflections about the world we live in. Some alert us about the climate crisis and its aftermath; others talk about scientific, ethic or philosophic issues exploring the essence of humanity, our spiritual dogmas, relationships, symbols and ways of living in the world, as well as the oppression originating out of the tools of social power and their impact on human lives. The scenic resources used in this year’s audiovisual shows stand out for their freshness and development, generating totally unique feelings and experiences by using devices that go far beyond audiovisual media.
Other projects will show a contemporary vision and reinterpretation of the present, past and future of rave and club culture and the power of sound creation, beyond the limits of any music genre. That is the case of the evocative work by Sin Maldita&Lei, or the specific sound exploration of traditional and contemporary rhythms by Dengue Dengue Dengue. The latest digital tools, such as artificial intelligence applied to artistic creations, will also have a space in the festival through projects such as F E M I N A E X T E N D E D by Riccardo Giovinnetto, using AI to explore the notion of virtue in the Renaissance.
Other add-ons to the line-up of audiovisual performances are works as authentic as the ones by the unclassifiable French artist Jacques, or Puce Mary, artistic alias used by Danish artist Frederikke Hoffmeier. Some of the most up and coming local and Spanish artists are included as well, such as RRUCCULA or Cachito Turulo.
Some of the highlights of this year will be showcased at the stage boxes of Gijón’s two main theaters. Besides the already announced performative av installation The Third Reich at Teatro de la Laboral, created by Romeo Castellucci, a key figure in contemporary scenic arts, now we can also confirm the installation Distrust Everything by Italian artist Lorem at Teatro Jovellanos. Besides, L.E.V. Festival recovers the space at Laguna Boreal in Jardín Botánico Atlántico with two live shows of immersive soundscapes to experience with wireless headphones, created by British artists Scanner and Sophia Loizou.
Alongside with audiovisual installations such as Guillaume Mamin’s at Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto 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, Synspecies, Noémi Büchi
Once more, Teatro de la Laboral will be one of the main spaces in the Festival, with live shows on Friday 3 and Saturday 4 May. At this space, one of the most iconic places in the city, we will be able to enjoy the new projects by Aïsha Devi, Myriam Bleau & Nien Tzu Weng, Martin Messier, Riccardo Giovinetto, and Bromo, and now we can also announce shows by SYNSPECIES and Noémi Büchi.
The SYNSPECIES project, created by Elias Merino and Tadej Droljc, revolves around a fictitious audiovisual universe of the same name. The duo presents the world premiere of Asbu at L.E.V., which unfolds a symbolic audiovisual narrative about the genesis of this universe. This work explores concepts such as speculative fiction, strangeness, superstitions, a particular vision of cyberspace, the sublime, the hard facts about how nature works, ontology focused on objects, dreamlike visions, and myths and folk tales. Co-produced by L.E.V. Festival, INDEX Biennale, WeSa Festival, SnaporazVerein, and NODE Festival in a collaboration with Basemental, this project is supported by the European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists (EFFEA), a platform created by the European Festivals Association (EFA) co-funded by the European Union.
The other name, French-Swedish composer and sound artist Noémi Büchi comes to L.E.V. Festival to play live her new album Does It Still Matter? (-OUS Records, 2024). The album offers a new type of avant-garde which is not based on creating something new, but on eschewing the stiffness of genres, to abolish and reconstruct the musical past. Her pieces juxtapose multiple layers of analogue synthesizers, crystalline sounds and almost brutal noises, deploying compositional structures close to pop songs. Powered by an orchestra of countless elements, her music creates transcendent intonations which resonate in the deepest parts of our bodies. Unpredictable electronic maximalism to immerse ourselves in the present, and reflect about our linear perception of time.
Nave de LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial
Evian Christ, Puce Mary, Jacques, Sin Maldita & Lei, LCY
As we advanced in our first announcement of L.E.V. Festival 2024, live shows come back to Nave de LABoral Centro de Arte on Sunday 4 May at night, headlined by English musician, producer and musical programmer Evian Christ, founder of the Tranceparty events. He will play live his newest album Revanchist (Warp, 2023), where he explores the latent potential of this genre. The eclectic line-up in this space also has room for the industrial darkness of Puce Mary, artistic alias used by Danish artist Frederikke Hoffmeier, and her intense live shows; and the sound collage of singular French artist Jacques and his new show Videochose. The audiovisual avant-garde of Aelcrush, a collaboration between Berlin-based artist and music producer Sin Maldita and French multimedia artist Lei, and the absolute premiere of the live av by LCY, a London-based, visual artist and DJ born in Bristol, famous for their obscure and deconstructed sets, complete the line-up.
Stage boxes in Gijón theaters
Romeo Castellucci at Teatro de la Laboral, and Lorem at Teatro Jovellanos
As a first this year, L.E.V. Festival organizes two performative audiovisual installations at the stage boxes of two of the most important theatres in the city of Gijón: Teatro de la Laboral and Teatro Jovellanos. After confirming the appearance of Romeo Castellucci at the festival with his piece The Third Reich at the stage box in Teatro de la Laboral on Wednesday 1 and Thursday 2 May, now L.E.V. adds the project Distrust Everything by Italian artist LOREM, which may be enjoyed on Wednesday 1, Thursday 2, and Friday 3 May, with free access and in different sessions, at the stage box in Teatro Jovellanos.
The Third Reich by Italian artist Romeo Castellucci, famous worldwide for creating theatre plays based on the entirety of arts, and oriented towards an integral perception, brings us a frantic experience which reflects about language and its impositions, about the explicit violence of a totalitarian, unique, mass-produced language, which this installation transforms into white noise until making the audience lose control over their perception. The sound of the installation has been composed by experimental electro-acoustic musician Scott Gibbons.
During the last years, LOREM has established himself as a leading figure in the field of machine learning applied to arts. His project Distrust Everything, which lands in L.E.V Festival with the collaboration of Teatro Jovellanos and the European project RIT (Realities in Transition), invites us to use our imagination as a way to escape from the realism that hampers our language and experience, using a multichannel installation which explores the relationship between human unconscious and the algorithmic one. The project is based on the data obtained by artist and researcher Mirek Hardiker, who spent 21 years compiling transcriptions of dreams. Now these data feed the neural networks which shape the narrative of this aesthetic production, as intense as disturbing.
Muséu del Pueblu d’Asturies
RRUCCULA, Cachito Turulo, Dengue Dengue Dengue, Kessell&Kerqus
As in previous years, and with the support of the Youth Office of the Gijón City Council, on Saturday 4 May Muséu del Pueblu d’Asturies will host daytime live shows by essential Spanish bands such as RRUCCULA and Cachito Turulo, plus two new names: Dengue Dengue Dengue and Kessell&Kerqus.
Dengue Dengue Dengue is a tropical bass two-piece. Felipe Salmon and Rafael Pereira, producers, DJs and graphic designers from Lima, hide behind their signature masks to explore the rhythms of Peru and other parts of the world, recreating them using electronics, combining the old and the new, analogue and digital, to create a truly singular sound and visual experience. Their musical explorations range from psychedelic cumbia to dub, salsa, footwork, tribal and techno, a sonic palette constantly expanding.
Kessell, artistic alias of Valentín Corujo, half of the renowned asturian techno duo Exium, and Kerqus, Gijón-based Asturian producer, join forces to display their dominion in the ambient, dub and experimental genres in their first joint album, Druid. Their music is the result of a long friendship and a shared passion for electronic music. Each track takes the listener to a trip of intricate sonic spaces, a perfect mixture of organic and synthetic sounds, creating an immersive experience, both relaxing and energetic.
Jardín Botánico Atlántico
Scanner, Sophia Loizou
To bring the 2024 festival to a close, L.E.V. Festival comes back to Laguna Boreal del Jardín Botánico Atlántico on Sunday 5 May with a live matinee featuring two avant-garde electronic creators, Scanner and Sophia Loizou, an experience which may be enjoyed with wireless headphones, so that listeners will be able to move freely around the unique surroundings of this location, while reducing its environmental impact. All this, thanks to a close collaboration with Fundación EDP and in line with its values of sustainability and environmentally friendly integration.
Since 1991, Scanner, artistic alias of British artist Robin Rimbaud, has travelled around the world thanks to his wide range of soundscapes, which goes from minimal electronica to film melancholia. This live show, entitled How to make art from life (with the help of a few ghosts), is an immersive and intimate exploration of sound, through binaural recordings which connect the listener to its environment. With no screens, this show invites us to live for the moment and embrace a sound adventure as poetic as evocative.
Another British artist, Sophia Loizou, musical producer, composer and audiovisual artist, works in the crossroads of contemporary music, speculative fiction and ecology. She will showcase Vesta, an immersive work about the hidden dimensions of sound. Using field and archive recordings of submerged, seismic and electromagnetic frequencies, Loizou puts the spotlight on sonic footprints and the spectral shadows inhabiting the limits of perception. This piece is also featured in binaural format, creating an immersive sound experience which invites us to expand our listening practices beyond human limits.
Audiovisual installation at Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto
Guillaume Marmin
As every year, L.E.V. Festival, in a collaboration with Centro Cultural Antiguo Instituto, located in the city center, programs a free-access installation from 2 to 12 May. His creator, Guillaume Marmin, works in installations and performances which promote the exploration of light, sound and space. His works mean a renaissance of visual creation, freed from conventional narrative restrictions and mainstream media. Either by researching science issues or using a mysterious symbolism, his creations put the spotlight on our relationship with light. That is the case of Oh Lord, an audiovisual installation created in collaboration with the Observatory of Paris Meudon and the Grenoble Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics, using several databases about sun observation to create a device that materializes and animates light beams. In our time of environmental and energetic challenges, this star is placed, more than ever, in the center of our fears and hopes.
L.E.V. Festival 2024
1 – 5 May | Gijón
www.levfestival.com
@levfestival #LEVFestival
An initiative by: L.E.V. (Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual)
Supported by: Gijón’s Town Council and the Principality of Asturias
Project funded by INAEM, Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte and the European Union-NextGeneration EU
Promoted by: Fundación EDP
Partners: Divertia, Laboral Ciudad de la Cultura, Cultural, Youth and Museums Department, LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Québec Office in Barcelona, RIT (Realities In Transition), EFFEA (European Festivals Fund for Emerging Artists), Arenas Movedizas, Conseyu de Mocedá de Xixón, Radio 3, OCIMAG, CLOT Magazine.
Spaces: 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, and Jardín Botánico Atlántico.
Graphic design: Pasajero37 | Motion Design: Lateralideas
LINE UP
Aïsha Devi _Ch/Np Houndstooth
Bromo CRISPR the pattern of life _Es Oigovisiones (World Premiere)
Cachito Turulo _Es Humo Internacional
Dengue Dengue Dengue _Pe
Evian Christ Revanchist Live _Uk Warp
Jacques Videochose _Fr Recherche & Développement
Kessell & Kerqus _Es Detroit Underground / Granulart (World Premiere)
LCY Live av_Uk (World Premiere)
Martin Messier 1 drop 1000 years. INSCAPE Edition_Ca 14 lieux
Myriam Bleau & Nien Tzu Weng Second Self _Ca/Tw (World Premiere)
Noémi Büchi Does it still matter _Ch -Ous
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
Scanner How to make art from life (with the help of a few ghosts) _Uk Alltagsmusik
Sin Maldita & Lei Aelcrush av _De/Fr Hyperdub, Unguarded
Sophia Loizou Vesta _Uk Houndstooth
SYNSPECIES Asbu _Es/Si (World Premiere)
__PERFORMATIVE AND AV INSTALLATIONS
Guillaume Marmin Oh Lord _Fr
Lorem Distrust Everything _It
Romeo Castellucci & Scott Gibbons The Third Reich _It/Usa
