Román Torre + Pablo DeSoto
1 June 2018 – 22 June 2018
He has been active creatively in a self-taught way since 2001 and began to make his first collections of lamps, working with recycled materials and other “gadgets” which later evolved into handcrafted serial designs, light sculptures, urban interventions, as well as additional projects and collaborations centred on design, technology and the interaction between humans and machines.
During his career he has received support from various institutions and bodies, winning, in the beginning, the Astragal Prize in 2002, the INJUVE young designer National Award 2004 and the Golden Pen Award at the IMAFY Festival 2008, in El Cairo.
In 2010 he got involved with the scenic world of Avatar*, an interactive dance solo that premiered mid-2010 at Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and was the beginning of an ongoing collaboration with the dance company Erre que erre, with which he continues to be involved. From the beginning of 2011 until the summer of 2013 he co-directed the Welovecode studio, exploring the possibilities of code to create interactive software and hardware which can be applied to different creative projects. This has allowed him to work on and develop the visual part in different projects and large-scale scenic events, such as interactive videomappings, trade shows and various operas, all with the director Carlos Padrissa of La Fura dels Baus.
From this platform and his studio based in Barcelona, he continues developing his own artistic research lines, trying to carry out in parallel and professionally projects which are focused on the integration of a diverse range of interactive visual techniques in different artistic and cultural spheres.
Project in residence
LA ZONA
On March 11, 2011, the forces of a 9.0 scale earthquake and tsunami collided with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, causing a maximum-level nuclear accident that created an exclusion zone for 20 kilometers around. 160,000 people were forced to leave their homes and workplaces in a matter of minutes, when the containment buildings housing four reactors began to explode one after another, spreading invisible radioactive particles into the environment. Currently, the area declared unfit for human habitation includes a geographical area of 800 square kilometers around the defenestrated plant.
If a recent television series of the same name presented a well-documented fiction in which a reactor accident devastated a large region of Asturias, LA ZONA presents to the public, through an interactive installation, some elements of this particular territory affected by the consequences of the radiological accident.
This is the starting point from which Asturian artists Pablo DeSoto + Román Torre will develop their project during a month-long residency at LABoral. The results will be shown through an exhibition that will open to the public on June 22 and can be visited until October 21.
