Week after week, the Grec Festival presents the proposals that will soon fill Barcelona with all kinds of artistic disciplines. Yesterday it was the turn of five creation and co-production shows, among which Una illa stands out, the new work of Agrupación Señor Serrano, made from a two-year dialogue with artificial intelligence (AI).
"We have already worked with the AI in Extinction, and now we are going back, but I want to say that it has nothing to do with intelligence," says Àlex Serrano. “An island is about how we have to understand ourselves as humans, and here it is with the AI. In life, we talk and try to agree with each other, but that is difficult. We have asked the AI what we had to do on stage”.
The AI suggested they work with a castaway. “He arrives in an archipelago –continues Serrano- and he goes living on each one of the islands where he has to come to an agreement with the people who inhabit them, but he doesn't succeed and he goes jumping from island to island. Carlota Grau adds: “There is a change of scale with respect to the Extinction of two years ago. Here we play more with metaphors”.
“The camera is robotized –says Serrano–. The conversation with the AI has lasted two years and has been edited. They are very frustrating dialogues and we have had to work a lot. We have ruled out many of the options he gave us. Like it or not, we have had to come to an agreement.” And he concludes: “The AI database has a lot of Broadway, like Cats or Singing in the Rain. You give the AI crap and it gives you crap back. The work has consisted of agreeing with someone who has no idea and is tacky”. (Lliure Theater of Montjuïc, 7-9/VII)
Marcos Morau spoke about the new show by La Veronal, Firmamento: “I wanted to do something for young people, for viewers of the future. I have tried to preserve my language but taking it to another place, not adopting their language. In the work we are in a movie theater and, from there, we see how our body reacts to the stimuli that an artistic manifestation gives it. Firmamento tries to talk about the fact that there are no limits to create, react, interrelate... I have chosen to go back to Marcos when he was 15 years old in a religious school ”, he continues. (Marcat de les Flors, 13-15/VII)
María Muñoz and Pep Ramis, from Mal Pelo, return to their origins with Double infinite. The bluebird called. “After four years with Bach –declares Muñoz–, we wanted to do a very different show, that would return to the world that appears when we are alone, of how we face the essentials of life. It is made by intuition, heart and imagination. We have made an effort to combine body language with that of the text and the image”.
Ramis adds: “We both like to ask ourselves questions about language. What is different? Well, we are 60 and 61 years old and they are different bodies”. Mal Pelo will go to Avignon this summer with a previous show, Inventions. (TNC, 1-9/VII)
Juana Dolores presents the second part of her trilogy, *Hit me if I'm pretty* or the modern princess. “The piece is a feminist rally, which dialogues with Machiavelli's The Prince and Gramsci's The Modern Prince. My goal was to make a feminist work that did not ignore sexist violence”. (Antic Teatre, 6/VII-6/VIII)
The fifth show is Fem una bona pena abans de morir, by Sònia Gómez and Los Sara Fontán. “It is a reflection on death. The scenic space is a study on the black, in collaboration with Joan Morey”, says Gómez. And Edi Pou adds: "We have searched for great stage deaths and we have prepared a catalogue." And they only reveal three: the sacrifice of The Rite of Spring, the death of the swan and Electra. (L'Auditori, 8-9/VII)
Catalan version, here
