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A project by La Xata la Rifa
28
May
2021
30
Oct
2021
Image Design: Pasajero37
La Xata La Rifa is an itinerant festival of performing, visual and sound arts in the rural environment that was born in 2011 from the need to leave the circuits and processes of traditional and urban stage creation. As an alternative, its main promoter and agitator, the artist Mónica Cofiño, has sought new forms of interaction with the rural territory and its inhabitants. This relationship began by recovering the format of an ancestral crowdfunding, consisting of the popular raffle of a calf to finance the town's annual festival.
The proposal is self-financed with the active participation of the inhabitants of different rural areas of Asturias, mainly farmers and stockbreeders, where the festival has been held to date. Over the last decade, more than 30 villages and 200 artists have taken part in the different itinerants of a very unique, lively, participatory and innovative event, whose motto is If you have a stable, a raft or a wagon, you have a theatre.
This initiative is linked to LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial within the Reset Rural line of work, initiated in 2021, which aims to incorporate the values of contemporary creation, science, technology and digital culture into the processes of revision, improvement and transformation of the current multifactorial crisis of the model of development and rural coexistence in Spain and Europe.
Within this context, three workshops and two collective actions will be held, related to the first years of the festival (2011-2014), in which the cow was the main motif of the activities. The aim of these actions is also to work on the visual and sound archive that the festival has accumulated over the years.
In addition, the project is also linked to the European network STUDIOTOPIA, which promotes connections between art and science. With this support, the work carried out by La Xata La Rifa will be the object of academic research.
CALENDAR OF ACTIVITIES
Collective Actions
ConBERZAtorios
After planting cabbage to form a 10-metre long X, the vegetable garden will be transformed into a space for conversation and dialogue between art and science, crafts and technology, the rural, the ancestral... between agents who have participated in the Festival in some of its editions: farmers, livestock breeders, astronomers, researchers, artists, dieticians, journalists, rapporteurs, etc...
These informal meetings will be recorded and broadcast on VaraBóliCa radio.
Sowing: 28 May
Conversations: October 2021
VaraBóliCa
A collective action of mowing and construction of a balagar, or grass stick, in the surroundings of LABoral Centro de Arte.
The balagar will be crowned by a radio antenna at its highest point, which will broadcast the conversations recorded between the different collaborators of the Festival throughout its ten years of existence.
Date:
The pole will be put up on 28 May.
Mowing and construction of the grass pole will take place throughout the month of August: mowing the week of 2-8 August and stacking on 10 August.
LABoratories:
LaB/oratory: textographies
The aim of the workshop is to construct a new narrative through the images of the different editions of the Festival.
The artist will accompany the participants through these experiences, research and observation. In this workshop, the text is the starting point and the image the inspiration to build a projection and a collective collage.
Date: 20 and 21 September
Participants: 10 people
Moderated and taught by: Mónica Cofiño
Documentation: Irma Collin
Collaborator: Nerea Lorences
LAB/oraTorio 2: Musical Craftsmanship & Sound Props
Throughout its history, the Festival and the different actions have always been accompanied by numerous objects, costumes and other props that form an indispensable part of the imaginary of the Xata.
In the words of Mónica Cofiño "the encounters with the objects for the shows or the festivals were always magical, they arrived before the performance and then, in their transformation, they found their place and above all their meaning. The songs were the same. The story and the things that sound".
This workshop will seek to bring together props and sound. Together with Pedro Menchaca and Daniel Romero, the participants will sound objects that have been part of some moment of the Festival.
Dates: to be determined between 28 September and 1 October.
Moderator: Mónica Cofiño
Recordings and Sounds: Pedro Menchaca + Colmena
In collaboration with: Daniel Romero
LAB/oraTorio 3: Live Screens
Experimentation with materials and objects from the immediate environment has always been a regular feature of La Xata la Rifa's creative processes.
In this workshop, projection screens will be created with some of these materials and videos of the Festival will be shown on different supports.
Date: to be determined in early October
Taught by: Mónica Cofiño
Collaborators:
Tilo MarTin
Patrick San Miguel
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