Edu Comelles

13 June 2019 – 20 June 2019

Edu Comelles, who lives and works in Valencia, is an artist, musician and cultural manager. His work combines experimentation, sound art, music production and sound design in different fields of culture.

He has performed, solo or with collaborations, at festivals such as Sónar, Mutek, Eufónic, Fase and many others; he has also participated in events such as Mobile Week BCN, Escuchar in Buenos Aires and Radar in Mexico City. His performances often take place in singular spaces, from natural spaces, to public washing places, churches, gothic cloisters and an endless number of atypical spaces.

His work, live or in the form of installations or compositions, has been heard at the Reina Sofia in Madrid, LABoral in Gijón, Tabakalera (Donostia), Espai Rambleta, Bombas Gens in Valencia; Etopia (Zaragoza), CAAM (Gran Canaria) or the CCCB, Caixaforum and Arts Santa Mónica in Barcelona, his hometown.

In 2017 he won the prestigious Leonardo / BBVA Grant in the digital art category with the project Spectre. He has also been awarded prizes and grants such as Emergents (Málaga), Labore (Euskadi), Laboral / Lo Pati, or the Pépinières européennes grant in Huesca; as well as having been selected in competitions such as Naturalizarte, Art Públic / Universitat Pública or the Biennal de Mislata in Valencia, among others.

Since 2007 he has been directing Audiotalaia, a digital platform or netlabel dedicated to the training, edition, production and dissemination of experimental music and sound art under Creative Commons licences. Every summer, this platform organises the Summer Camp, an international meeting of young sound artists that takes place in the interior of Catalonia.

Comelles has promoted the Sound Art and Experimental Music Section of the Ensems Festival in Valencia between 2016 and 2018. He curated the Espai Sonor cycle at the EACC in Castellón between 2016 and 2017. In Valencia, between 2010 and 2014, he was the director of the concert series Herzios, Off_Herzios and La Gallera Suena, programming concerts in different venues and art halls in Valencia.

Comelles holds a PhD in Fine Arts, a Master in Sound Design from the University of Edinburgh and a Master in Visual Arts and Multimedia from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Since 2010 he has been giving workshops on soundscape, microphony and self-management all over the country, in self-managed spaces, galleries and cultural centres.

Project in residence

Prat

During his residence at LABoral, Edu Comelles will develop the project Prat, winner of the DKV Seguros – Álvarez Margaride Production Grant. The result of his residency will be presented in an exhibition that will open on June 21st and can be visited until September 2019.

Prat is a sound and visual installation that through a system of about 50 loudspeakers recreates a soundscape of an imagined meadow. By means of a multifocal system, the installation will transform LABoral’s exhibition space into a landscape inspired by the summer meadows, created, however, from artificial sounds that are unconnected to this natural context.

At sound level the piece will be built taking as a starting point sounds produced by electrical household appliances, mobile devices, computers and any kind of contraption that produces waves or electromagnetic fields. These waves, which fill our daily lives, are inaudible to humans and pass completely unnoticed.

The artist will use a process of registration and sound design to construct a landscape formed by an infinite number of insects that as a whole will weave a sound environment. Thus, Comelles reflects on the ubiquity of contemporary communication systems, the invisibility of electromagnetic waves and the effects of the so-called anthropocene on natural systems


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