El Párraga opens the doors to creation with more than 50 activities

The Párraga Center includes more than 50 activities focused on research and the most experimental contemporary creation. They will begin on September 9, at 8:30 p.m., with the exhibition ‘Outside, inside’, by Fermín Jiménez Landa (project curated by Vanina Saracino, writer and professor of experimental cinema and multimedia art at the Universität der Künste), which aims to reconfigure the relationship we maintain with space, both urban and intimate, “from a series of actions that blur the line between interior and exterior”. The activities will last until December.

Salvi Vivancos stands out, who bases his work on mediating between family film images and their possible reinterpretations, with his exhibition ‘Hippocampus’, which will begin on September 22. The project will be curated by Enric Mira Pastor, Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Valencia and professor at the University of Alicante. The hippocampus “is a brain structure closely related to memory and its link with emotions and memories”, and Vivancos conducts research on the memory contained in home recordings and the generation of emotions.

Artists such as Josep Maynou, with a specific project for the Párraga Center (will start on October 27), Michal Martychowiec, with the ‘Blue project foundation’ (on November 10), Rocío Kunst (October 28) or Laura Turpín (December 1).

During this period, creative residencies will also be held in the scenic space. Five projects of this nature will be developed, which will consist of the transfer of the space for a week (from Monday to Friday), and support from the center’s staff, to carry out a task of researching works that young Murcian creators of the performing arts carry out . The results of the residency will culminate in a test open to the public.

Some of these creation residencies are those of Andrea Carrión, with ‘Más más más de la muerte’, first prize at the CreaMurcia de Artes Escénicas (from September 12 to 16); ‘Esta noche toca’, of creation and exhibition, by Zony Gómez (from October 24 to 28), or the technique of the LabRM project (from November 14 to 16).

In the performing arts programming, ‘Mother Tongue’ stands out, on October 14, directed by Eduardo Vallejo Pinto, a contemporary dance piece by the Ogmia company. Vallejo’s show (choreographer, dancer and producer), originally from Mieres (Asturias), shows the reunion with our origins, in which we come to feel “our land” as something “foreign and unrecognizable”; a “life journey”. The ticket price will be 6 euros, and will go on sale from September.

This program also includes festivals with new trends, such as Titeremurcia, the International Puppet Festival of the Region of Murcia, with ‘The Emperor’s Suit’, by the Siesta Theater (November 5). Or the ROTA experimental music festival, with ‘De la root al noise’ (December 9 and 10).

‘La crack’, the performative concert of experimentation between sound, light and flamenco, by the Dani Hernández collective, Derek. V. Bulcke and Emilio Manzano, will be held on December 2. They drink from “inheritance and current affairs, conservatism and distortion”, and are interested in “banalizing the sacred and sacralizing the everyday both in flamenco and in rituals, liturgies and raves” – tickets also available from September -.

Tattoo beginnings

The cross-cutting activities of the Párraga Center include the 3rd edition of the Mu-tantes artistic experimentation festival, which they called ‘Natural Selection’. A project, by the director Tóbal Sánchez, of innovative creative processes, designs forgotten on a hard drive or ideas rejected by a client. It will be on Saturday November 19 and numerous artists will attend, such as PickMorro, Trashformaciones, Curro Rodríguez or Surco Valbuena. Tickets on sale (€10) from September 20 on the website centroparraga.es.

In this area there will also be approaches to marks and skin wounds in the cycle on historical and contemporary tattoo practices ‘TA-Ū’. The different facets of the tattoo will be addressed (its medicinal beginnings, symbolism, identity aesthetics…). The entire cycle will therefore take place with the wound as the fundamental pillar.

The activity will be through two conferences. The first will be given by Servando Rocha, on Friday, September 30. He will deal with the Historical Wound and the national stigma with his latest book, ‘Criminal’ (La felguera editores, 2022), and will remember the “heavy price of what is different and the exclusion capacities of oppressive systems”. The second conference will be given by Sandra Martínez Rossi, on Friday, October 7, also at 7:00 p.m. Through her essay, ‘The skin as a symbolic surface. Transculturation processes in contemporary art ‘(Fund for Economic Culture of Spain, 2017), she will treat the wound and its root, the aesthetic wound and its cultural implications.