Mutek Barcelona is one of the most prestigious branches of the Canadian Mutek festival, which since its inception in Montréal twenty years ago, has distinguished itself as one of the most important and international events with original and cutting-edge programming on the planet.

For the festival, each edition is an opportunity to renew its commitment to the public and contemporary art by reinventing live electronic music, audiovisual practices and their interpretation in the dynamic and experiential framework that distinguishes the festival. Forty-five projects of artists from seventeen different nationalities will participate in this tenth edition with their live acts, audiovisual pieces, DJ sets, installations, presentations, conferences, etc. A total of twenty-three premieres and eighteen artists' debuts who act for the first time in the city of Barcelona.

The #MutekEsX program is focused, more than ever, on collaboration, building bridges through our international network, generating synergies with the local community and serving as a real platform to promote and make visible both artistic communities in the fields of creativity and technology. This year, the festival is held in nine locations: L’Auditori, Antiga Fàbrica Estrella Damm, Institut Français, Roca Barcelona Gallery, Nitsa/Astin, Laut, ImaginCafé, WeWork and UPF. It is right to stress their involvement with universities and academic centres, the Digi_Lab academic program is decentralized and taken to five universities.

In short, there is going to be a bunch of awe-inspiring events taking over the city of Barcelona, but we have made a selection of the ones you definitely cannot miss.

Nonotak
The opening of the 10th edition of the festival, on Wednesday 6, will be held at the Roca Barcelona Gallery, a platform for disseminating knowledge and innovative ideas related to the architecture and design sector. There, Noemi Schipfer and Takami Nakamoto, aka Nonotak, will present their installation Zero Point One, an amazing exercise in fluorescent lighting, changing grids and a variable auditory environment. Moreover, Nonotak will also embody the Light As Matter lecture, which will take place at the IaaC Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia on Tuesday 5.

Kelly Moran
A fully trained performing artist and musician, Kelly Moran debuts in this festival edition with her artistry that spans from classical, electronic, minimalist, jazz and metal genres. Moran has self-released several albums including Optimist in 2016 and, just a year after, the highly acclaimed Bloodroot on Telegraph Harp, which was listed by the New York Times as one of the 25 Best Classical Music Recordings of 2017. Moran will be performing in the Saturday afternoon’s Experience event at the Antiga Fàbrica Estrella Damm.

A/Visions 1
The ongoing exchange with Montréal headquarters and its rich scene of dramatic audiovisual artists and electronic producers continues with the live performance at the Institut Français. Martin Messier and French artist Yro will be making their Barcelona debut with Ashes, a poetic A/V consideration of materiality. It’s a Spanish debut as well for the dynamic duo of visual artist Push 1 stop and musician Wiklow, who present Membrane, a hallucinogenic 3D piece animated by a custom-built screen interface. 

Play at Laut
Thursday night’s Play program will be presented in the heart of Barcelona on an intimate and sophisticated dance floor. Laut will be the room that will host the intuitive Boska with his mix of sonically texturized and reduced genres. Also, Verraco, from Colombia, who directs the record label and the Insurgentes collective, will appear next to the Spanish live hardware pioneer, Umo. These three talents will impart the necessary frequencies to warm up the first night of the tenth edition of Mutek.

Mutek x Reebok
Reebok joins the festival in its tenth anniversary to present the Mutek x Reebok program, which promotes different events, such as the Diversity in Curation conference, a group of panelists who create spaces in their programming that reflect marginalized people and bold new art forms that deliver radical perspectives and provoke audiences to move in new directions. Or the Networking Party powered by Xceed, a festive, open and free meeting to foster interaction and create synergies. Also, the Saturday roundtable and Q&As at Antiga Fàbrica Estrella Damm with artists like Mina & Bryte, ETM, Ikram Bouloum, Mans O and Tutu in a more intimate and personal way. And last but not least, Nocturne 2 in Astin, where Drakis, Don Sinini, Mina & Bryte and Still will perform.

A/Visions 2
L’Auditori, one of the most emblematic spaces in the city for contemporary performance, will host the A/Visions 2 program on Saturday with the Spanish premieres of Isotopp, a dramatic new work based on particle acceleration by the acclaimed Québec artist Herman Kolgen and A-Mint (acronym of Artificial Musical INTelligence), the project of the conceptual artist Alex Braga, featuring the pianist Francesco Tristano as a special guest. Both Kolgen and A-Mint will be also present at Universitat Pompeu Fabra for a talk on different days.  

Digi Lab 6 - Conference
Gender Equality in the Creative Industries & Institutional Action. How do governments and institutions support cultural changes in action? What are the international organizations that are pushing the change of social norms? At the heart of Mutek, the festival reaffirms its commitment to inclusion and gender equality by bringing together professionals and representatives of local and international organizations in a panel that will review examples from different sectors and countries where actions related to equity and diversity are working to create and generate changes.

Ambient at ImaginCafé
ImaginCafè, a cultural centre specialized in technology, innovation and creativity applied to the arts, will host two sessions of deep contemplation. The Ambient program presents Rafael Anton Irisarri, who draws soundscapes oriented with epic and emotive touches of ambient, drone and noise. Also part of the program is Michele Mercure, who will perform in Europe for the first time in thirty years, presenting his sound of porous electronic art that overlaps ambient, abstract, and industrial sensibilities.

Wolke 7
The Argentinian duo based in Berlin formed by Miguel Dahbar and Alexis Cabrera will perform at the Experience event on March 9. Inspired by the rhythmic trips of the Andes and Central America, the duo began to fuse this essence with electronic instruments, afro-Latin percussions, guitar and soundscapes. As they put it, Wolke7 “tells the story of a young magician's apprentice, a long emotional way through the nature that surrounds him, to understand the laws of the universe and develop his powerful essence.”

Nocturne 1&2
The Nocturne series at Nitsa/Astin on the weekend propose a high-flying sound odyssey. On March 8, the resonances of Nocturne 1 will sink deep into the hands of b2b by Kode9 and Mala, Gabor Lazar or Jacques Greene, to name a few, together with the national talent of Ylia, Ikram Bouloum and Olaf Blanch. On the following day, Nocturne 2 presents the grand closing of the festival setting an unprecedented immersive mood. DJ Storm, Don Sinini, Mina & Bryte… and to conclude a week full of discoveries, Donato Dozzy, the master of masters in hypnotic and metal techno, will play an exclusive three-hour set.