Curation is “a strange combination between academia, show business and circus”
An avant-garde music festival, Sónar Barcelona is on its 23th edition and it continues to expand and reveal itself as an inexhaustible source of references in multiple artistic areas. Music, technology and visual arts are the basis of 3 intense days in an open and diversified showcase of the latest trends of the music culture in the electronic field, from new urban rhythms to dance music through experimental sounds and unclassifiable artists transcending genres.
But beyond Sónar by Day and Sónar by Night concerts — with performances such as Nicolas Jaar, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, Arca & Jesse Kanda, Moderat, Eric Prydz or De La Soul — the festival presents the 5th edition of Sónar+D — the congress where technology and creative industries converge — bringing together more than 100 activities and 180 speakers, with Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence as the biggest mottos.
There are also some shows crossing several proposals by Sónar and Sónar+D, such as “Björk Digital”, which involves a DJ set by the Icelandic Björk in the opening night of the festival, at 14th of June, an immersive exposition of Virtual Reality of the creative and unique universe of Björk that will be displayed on CCCB until the 24th of September and a talk within the scope of Sónar+D, the Digital Culture and Creative Technologies Congress.
We recently had the chance to talk with José Luis de Vicente, one of Sónar+D curators, about this aspect of the festival which gives us so many clues towards a future increasingly present.
“What I really enjoyed about curation was thinking like “this is like a strange combination between academia, show business and circus” — José Luis de Vicente
180: When and how did your interest for curation begin?
José Luis Vicente: I don’t have a traditional arts background, so I didn’t study art History. I don’t necessarily belong to the space of contemporary art curation, so my background is a little bit different. I think I was interested in curation when I started looking for something that allowed me to explore contemporary culture. I had already worked in research journalism where everything is really day to day, it’s very focused on short periods of time and longer terms spans of research are harder.
What I really enjoyed about this was thinking like “this is like a strange combination between academia, show business and circus”. It has a little bit of everything: a very strong intellectual component, but at the same time, this thrill of the contact with the audience. That’s why I was appealed to the idea of working in curation: not only in the space of cultural institutions, museums, but also in diverse ones like festivals that can allow you to do things in a very intense way, which is interesting. Also as a sharing experience, my interest for it comes from the social experience.
180: You’ve been presenting at Sónar +D some of the most important figures on digital culture, technology and creativity. How do you see the evolution of technology during recent years and how does digital communication changed in this decade?
JLV: Between 2005 and 2010 were times of incredible enthusiasm with an explosion of many different forms of communication in many new channels. There was a huge outburst of enthusiasm, of the feeling of personal autonomy and creativity, and suddenly you could do so many things. I believe that we’re almost in the post-Snowden, post-Uber, post-Facebook age, an age after such external negativities, impacts, radical shifts in our ways of doing that say that this specific technological configuration of our time is not necessarily ideal, is not the only one possible, and it’s not gonna be forever. I think that has incentivised in many ways to provide personal data as the economic model of the internet. We are on a moment now where we can sit down and reflect throughout whether this technological architectural mindset is going to evolve and be reshaped, because in the years of 2010 or 2008, it seemed much more utopian than today. Today it started to look more like dystopia.
“Sónar is not anymore only a music festival but we don’t want it to be a tech conference, either.” — José Luis de Vicente
180: What’s the most important part of what you do as a curator and in Sónar +D?
JLV: Something that is always happening with the festival is that people only see the festival that we are doing, but I also see all that we wanted to do but didn’t work out. So, there’s always this kind of tension between the festival in people’s head, the festival that existed 1 year ago, what we started to work on and the festival today. Those are 2 different festivals. Where I’m very interested in, and what to me is the most important aspect, is reshaping, reimagining and trying to evolve the experience of what a cultural event in the 21st century is.
Sónar is not anymore only a music festival but we don’t want it to be a tech conference, either. It obviously has elements of both. It’s an arts event, but it’s not just that. Sometimes, we feel that the festival is a futuristic one, where people will be asked to change their form of reading experiences all the time. If a music festival has five music stages with a succession of artists, one after the other, they have the same experience many times one after the other.
We have been doing Sónar+D for 5 years, next year will be the 25th anniversary of Sónar. We do have Sónar for a lot of years, and Sónar+D, at this point, needs every year a tweak, a twist, a change, so that this experience can become richer and different. This year we are doing something new in the history of Sónar, something I think we’ve never done. We are going to start one day before, Wednesday, and Wednesday there’s gonna be no music. Music will only start on Thursday, so this can be considered a big change. It’s going to be a space for community, reflection, concentration and things that are much harder to do as the festival evolves, because Sónar will continue through Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
“I think that in the next 10 years we will be more worried and interested in the question of “are we taking back control?”, “are we using the tools that we want to use for the goals that we have decided?” or “are we just being given the task of doing whatever other people are deciding that technology is for?” — José Luis de Vicente
180: You were talking about this more dystopian perspective on communication and digital culture. How do you imagine in a more distant future this intersection between our most human part and digital culture?
JLV: It’s very hard to predict and I think we shouldn’t be predicting in general, because when we predict anything, we usually end up becoming a bit ridiculous. So, I believe that, if the last 10, 15 years had tech development at the front of changing the world and more things, maybe the next 10 years are going to be more focused in a conversation about what is the space that people want to live in society, for the many changes that are upon us, without us having enough time to react.
I think that it’s very important to have the conversation of who is taking control over the decisions that we are given. Taking back control and being able to take decisions that are not just given in our relationship with technology is a very important thing and I think that in the next 10 years we will be more worried and interested in the question of “are we taking back control?”, “are we using the tools that we want to use for the goals that we have decided?” or “are we just being given the task of doing whatever other people are deciding that technology is for?”. I think this conflict is gonna be the conversation of the next 10 years.
180: Where do ideas come from?
JLV: One common answer to this interesting question would be that they come from being exposed to other ideas. To have as many inputs as possible, to access to all people’s ideas often, so that all people’s ideas will allow you having and modifying your ideas. Of course, that’s not necessarily the case for everybody. I’ve met many big musicians who barely listen to other people’s music, or artists who don’t want to be, in a way, too close to what other artists of their generation are doing. For a lot of them, working is developing a methodology which is radically different and very exciting to the way that they look at the world. This is something that would be amazing to be taught in the university, and it never usually happens: how to develop, how to frame and how to shape your own methodology? This is because there are no universal templates, there are no “Five Steps — This Is How You Do It”. You can be rigorous, you can be straight, but in the end, that creative sparkle — “here’s an interesting idea” -, I believe that is a highly personal process, and because it’s so personal, people get to it through very different means and forms.
Get to know more about Sónar+D: https://sonarplusd.com/
