Intermediæ english blog

19 Steps, Cross Armed
Video installation and performance by Félix Fernández

From 12 of june to 16 of june
Performance: Thursay 13th, 8.30pm.

Félix Fernández has put a corridor of light in the nave of Intermediae, which acts as a metaphor for interrupted transition, an extreme situation where the performer’s body has been enclosed, where he wanders around, passed through by fragments of encapsulated memories coming from the screens, which act as the only windows in this symbolic space, where the individual is encountered as prisoner. Allegorical images and sounds allude to a time in life, which is dispersed between memory and expectation, self-censorship and illusion.

Félix Fernández builds a sensory texture for the spectator, the “witness”, who can then empathise with this individual who is taking heed of his affectations and actions, counting them down. Choreographically speaking the artist moves around this corridor of light by repeating stances, and experimenting with body language in a way that the body is encountered only as a definitive frontier. The physical presence of the performer is seized by a reiterating sound, marking out the rhythm of his gestures and the succession of images and scenes transmitted on four channels that have been put on loop. In these intervals, regulated by the sound of a thud - that enclose and rule over, cut things out and censor-, there is the construction of representations of a subjectivity that evades, technologies pertaining to surveillance and punishment, and superimposes itself on to the suspension of the artists rights, in order to find ways to continue “being”, “existing”, “living”…
 
A collaboration with Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (ECPM) as part of the programme for the 5th World Congress Against the Death Penalty.  
 
Félix Fernández was born in 1977, in Celeiro (Lugo). He graduated in Fine Art at the Faculdad de Pontevedra, whilst also training in contemporary dance and theatre performance, at the same time, with Marina Abramovic, Johannes Deimling, Elena Cordova and Esther Ferrer, among others. In 20120 he was awarded a scholarship by FENOSA- Gas Natural for a residency in Berlin and New York and in 2012 he was artist in residence for six months in this institution’s museum. In 2008 he obtained another residency in the Centro Coreografico Galego and was awarded prizes by the Comunidad of Madrid; by Casa Encendida, in 2005, and by INJUVE, in 2004. His work has been awarded a prize by the Canariamediafest  and Casa de Veláquez, in 2010, and by the Festival Internacional de Cine de Ourense, in 2011, and in 2012 he received an award from the Festival Rendibú de Murcia.

Idea and design: Felix Fernandez
Curator: Suset Sanchez
Production and Coordination: Ensemble contre la peine de mort, Intermediae and  Matadero Madrid.
Cameras: Luis Guevara and Tommaso Marzocchini
Setting up: Konvertible

19 Steps, cross armed (trailer)

Open Studio by The Authorless Film Factory
Colectivo Cine sin Autor (Authorless Cinema Group)

Space to meet and show work processes. From Tuesday to Sunday during Intermediae opening hours.

Screening of works in progress. Wednesday 27 February at 6 pm at Cineteca.

The Authorless Cinema Factory started its activities in May 2012 at Intermediae.
Since then, many people who have nothing to do with film production have taken part in making their films collectively.
 
Throughout 2013 films in progress will be shown monthly at the Cineteca at Matadero Madrid. A meeting space open to everyone interested in actively taking part by offering their opinion and even getting involved in the production process.
The participating public can do more than just see films here: they can do so in a new social model of filmmaking.
Social Cinema. Horizontal. Participatory. Inclusive. 21st century Cinema. Cinema XXI

Open Terrario / Streaming Scenarios: ON & ON Presentation of Season #2
PlayDramaturgia

Saturday 19 January at 7 p.m.

Three months have passed since the start of Streaming Scenarios, a process of exploring the possibilities for dialogue among live arts and real-time video broadcasts via the Internet. 
Something along those lines was said by Pablo Gisbert, one of our collaborators, when we sat down to reflect on it: “Our times require we take action. And since we are too cowardly to take up arms, we have to do our best in our field: the world of ideas. They need to be specified, filled with content, and shot.” That is what we are doing.  ON&ON serves to recharge and present the second phase of the project. More ideas, more action, more playwriting and hard punches… more Streaming Scenarios.

Open Terrario/ Screening of Evelyn and meeting with Isabel de Ocampo, Beatriz Gimeno and Feminicidio.net.
Feminicidio.net

Thursday 17 January at 7 p.m.

Otro Tiempo works to fight violence against women, with a focus on documenting the murders of women in Latin America. That is the purpose of the news portal it created, Feminicidio.net, with information on gender issues and online education. The group recently offered the course, “Prostitution: contributions to an open debate”, led by Beatriz Gimeno.
The formative process comes to a close with the screening of the film Evelyn (2011), directed by Isabel de Ocampo. Evelyn travels to Spain from her hometown in a Latin American country. She believes she will be working as a waitress but she is deceived and kidnapped, forced to work as a prostitute at a roadside brothel.

PROYECTOR (PROJECTOR) / International Video Art Festival.

Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 FROM 6-9 pm. Screenings and meetings.

PROYECTOR continues exploring international dialogue (especially between Portugal and Spain, who once again seem consigned to the stigma of the periphery) and formal experimentation. It takes an active, critical, citizens’ look at the issue of location. Location of the body and the street. We take on space as a political element, aiming this year to focus of the dimension of the body and public space as venues for civic empowerment, debate and activism. We believe visual practices must be focused centrifugally toward the population and that is why we stand for the street, independent spaces, and artists’ workshops as venues which should be close to citizens. PROYECTOR wants to reaffirm the “social performativity” of art, working through visual language to strengthen its inherent capacity for agency and transformation. 

In keeping with the importance the festival gives to the social role of cultural mediation, there will be guided visits. In addition, PROYECTOR will have a set of talks and roundtables conceived as a niche for generating a critical mass and creating work in a network.

OPEN TERRARIO/ In Medi Terraneum 2012. Simultaneous Video Art International Festival:
Argentina, Spain, Greece, Italy and Uruguay
In Medi Terraneum
29, 30 November and 1 December 2012 at 7 p.m.

In Medi Terraneum- Simultaneous Video Art International Festival, held for two years in Argentina, Uruguay, Italy and Greece, is opening its call for projects in Spain for the first time and will present at Intermediae the videos chosen from the five countries.
Including errors as part of the creative process and creation based on collective intelligences are the two main themes at the core of this third edition, which culminates in a day of urban video-activism, the presentation of its venue in the Cloud, and the creation of a hybrid work via live streaming at all the venues, coinciding with the closing of the festival.

Thursday 29 November at 7 p.m. Presentation of the finalists’ works and start of the exhibition, which will last three days. Presentation of the “Venue in the Cloud”.

Friday 30 November at 7 p.m. Day of urban video-activism

Saturday 1 December at 7 p.m. VJ and DJ session with the creation of a hybrid work in live streaming with all the venues.

Participating countries: Argentina, Uruguay, Spain, Italy and Greece
Organized by: Intermediae Matadero Madrid (Spain), Instituto Cervantes de Palermo (Italy) and Instituto Italiano de Cultura de Córdoba (Argentina).

OPEN TERRARIO/ El Ojo Cojo International Film Festival


From Thursday 11 October to Sunday 14 October, 7 p.m.

Organized by El Ojo Cojo Cultural Association, since 2005 this festival has been held in Madrid, where it arose to Foster intercultural dialogue and the integration of disadvantaged groups, disseminating films that would otherwise not reach movie theatres in Spain.
   
Thursday 11
>7 p.m. - Ngutu, 2012, documentary. Dir. Felipe Del Olmo and Daniel Valledor. Spain, 4', Spanish. 
Ngutu is a street newspaper vendor who sells very few copies. Feeling indignant, he decides to observe pedestrians carefully to get ahead in his business.

>7:10 p.m. - De las calles al terreno de juego, 2012, documentary. Dir. Carlos Sánchez-Llibre and Josep María Badell. Spain, 80', Spanish, English, Afrikaans and Xhosa.
"Sport has the power to inspire and unite people". While the Spanish national team made history at the first World Cup on the African continent, in parallel a children’s championship was held in which three of its participants had the great opportunity to meet their football idols. This is the portrayal of the dream of social cohesion inspired by Nelson Mandela’s words.

>8:30 p.m. - La cosa en la esquina, 2011, fiction – animation. Dir. Zoe Berriatúa. Spain, 10', Spanish.
Oh my God, there’s a horrible, disgusting black thing on the corner... but you can’t see it? Really?

Friday 12
>7 p.m. - Encapotado, 2011, animation. Dir.  Velislav Kazakov. Canada, 9 '25'', English .
A man falls from the roof. In a chain of absurd events and cover-ups, the body is repeatedly “dead” until it finally reaches a clinic.

>7:15 p.m. - De Caravana, 2011, comedy. Dir. Rosendo Ruiz. Argentina, 95', Spanish.
Juan Cruz, an upper class photographer from Córdoba, Argentina, has to take pictures at a dance given by La Mona Jiménez. In this setting where the customs are unknown to him, he will discover a different world: that of Sara, an attractive young woman with whom he will live a love story and a dangerous caravan of adventures.

>8:30 p.m. - Llámame Parker, 2011, short documentary. Dir. Péris Romano. Spain, 3', Spanish.
We can’t be lawyers, plumbers, waiters... They have to be other... PROFESSIONS.

Saturday 13
>7 p.m. - Slides, 2011, fiction. Dir. David Ilundain, Eugenia Poseck, Luis Arribas, Paul Severn, César Urrutia, Javier San Román, Jesús Liedo, Paco Ortega. Mexico, 17', Spanish.
An adolescent recites a poem to his girlfriend. A boy plays with his toy figures. Someone unexpected transmits a message that is very lucid. When he gets home, a young man finds his father asleep by the TV. A woman gives a person some food. A married couple has sex. A teenage girl gets dressed up to go out.

>8 p.m. - Los Dioses de verdad tienen huesos, 2010, documentary. Dir. Belén Santos and David Alfaro. Spain, 90', Creole, Portuguese, English and Spanish.
Life in Guinea Bissau is not easy because it is one of the poorest countries of the world. Children with serious health problems must be evacuated to Europe to save their lives. Five very different people tell us about the difficulties involved in doing this, such as the day the assassination of the President of the Government paralyzed the country. But our protagonists teach us that in Africa what is easy is difficult but what is impossible becomes simple.

Sunday 14
>7 p.m. - La mirada perdida, 2012, fiction. Dir. Damián Dionisio. Argentina, 11', Spanish.
Argentina, 1976. Claudio is forced to live with his family clandestinely, due to his political ideals. The house where they live is discovered by a group of military personnel. With no time to flee, Teresa will try to offer her daughter refuge in a world of fantasies, to keep the girl from seeing the horror she is about to undergo.

>7:15 p.m. - El Eco del Dolor de Mucha Gente, 2011, documentary. Dir. Ana Lucía Cuevas. Guatemala/United Kingdom, 93', Spanish and English.
In 2008, in one of her frequent Internet searches about Guatemala, Ana Lucía Cuevas almost accidentally finds she has discovered a Secret File of the National Police Force in Guatemala City. Ana Lucía, who was forced into political exile, decides to return to her country in search of information about her brother Carlos, who went “missing” in 1984 at the hands of State security forces. Produced and filmed over the course of four years, this unique documentary, directed by a Latin American woman, documents that return journey.

OPEN TERRARIO / Screening and presentation of El cielo del Ojo
Friday 18 May at 7 pm.

Cielo del Ojo is a group project for video creation, comprised of five European voluntary groups focused on film production and distribution: Franti of Italy, Nisi Masa France of France, Ms. Balthazars of Austria, Euphoria Borealis of Finland and Cinestesias of Spain.

The thematic axis of the project is El Cielo (the Sky or Heaven), a sufficiently broad topic to allow all types of film expression: Video art pieces, standard film stories, animation stop motion, documentaries and false documentaries.

Each group made a two minute video produced “Exquisite Corpse” style: the ending of each one is the beginning of the next. During pre-production, a travelling box was sent by the different cities where those involved in the project lived.

The overall result was edited with a soundtrack created by sound artist Alberto Bernal.

More information www.cinestesias.org

A film about Home from Jennifer Cox on Vimeo.

SCREENINGS AT TERRARIO / A FILM ABOUT HOME
Jennifer Cox
Friday 24 September, 7:30 p.m.

On Friday 24 September at the Terrario at Intermediae, artist Jennifer Cox presents her documentary “A Film about Home”, inaugurating the Cápsulas de tiempo (Time Capsules) series, which looks at relations between memory and place. Jennifer Cox defines this highly personal audiovisual project as a film about home, or a film about searching for a home.

> dearjennifer.org
> Download Time Capsules: The Memory of a Place programme