Le Nouveau Printemps has mapped out a program of artists' films, curated by Barcelona's LOOP festival, to be screened at nightfall in the courtyards of various buildings in the Carmes-St. Étienne neighborhood.

An invitation to a meditative and sensorial journey, this selection of films aims to explore the complex relationship between nature and the bodies that inhabit it. Performance, music and dance join the party to reveal the intimate bond that humans have with their environment, and nature's innate capacity to heal and root human beings in their deepest essence.

I Can Only Dance to One Song by Arash Fayez (Iran, 1984), 2021 (10 min 56s)
→ see Cour de l’Hôtel Marvejol, 47 rue Pharaon

I Can Only Dance to One Song explores the role of music in developing a sense of belonging to a place. The project depicts tales of displacement anchored in the experience of migrants through sound and movement. By incorporating dance as an expressive act of transformation, this video illustrates the emotional landscape of the displacement through corporeal acts. This process goes beyond the visible to tell the story of an invisible city, a flawless tale of a place that exists within each displaced person beyond their physical situation.

Plus d'infos

Anoxia. Un Preludio Constante, Fito Conesa (Spain, 1980), 2023 (25 min)
→ see Cour Sainte-Anne, 18 rue Sainte-Anne

Anoxia is a phenomenon that occurs when a lack of oxygen is detected in an organism's cells or tissue. For example, when excessive agricultural fertilizers and livestock waste reduces water quality, as happened in 2021 in Mar Menor. The anoxia episode provoked the death of thousands of fish and mollusks. Artist Fito Conesa chose it as the starting point for a three-act "opera." While denouncing the degradation of the ecosystem and the imminent ecocide in the Mediterranean Sea, he also sketches a map of the network of toll roads along the coast. A song that points up a situation whose predictable consequences are ignored.

Tray Tray KO, Seba Calfuqueo (Chile, 1991), 2022 (6 min)
→ see Cour de l’Hôtel d’Espie, 3, rue Mage

A trayenko (waterfall) is a vital and sacred space for many practices in Mapuche culture. Running water, and the trayenko in particular, is extremely important and linked to the lawen, medicinal herbs that grow near water. Throughout the performance, the body of the artist, dressed only in an electric blue fabric, moves along pulling a long sheet of the same fabric, an extension of himself and evocation of a trayenko, which finally enters the river and the waterfall. The work offers a meditation on the body in the immensity of nature.

Lightning Dance, Cecilia Bengolea (Buenos Aires,1979), 2018, Video mono-canal, B&W (6 min 3s)
→ see Cour de l’Hôtel Reynier – Lycée, 9 rue Mage

Lightning Dance shows several young Jamaicans performing, solo or in a group, dance numbers with the artist in the pouring rain. Their movements reference highly sexualized and popular Jamaican dancehall moves, which Cecilia Bengolea considers to possess healing powers. The resolutely brutal backdrop combined with a lighting effect, and reinforced by the black & white aesthetic, showcases the dancers' moves and captivates the audience while their choreography syncs to sounds of the storm.

Below The Deep South, Noémie Goudal (France 1984) 2021 (11 min) 
→ see Cour Saint-Stanislas school, entrance on Allée Jules Guesde

Below the Deep South (2021) opens with a view of a tropical forest that turns out to be made up of cut out photographic prints. The layers turn into flames until nothing is left but empty space. The films is based on James Bendle's research in Antarctica where deep boring has turned up pollen fossils that are more than 52 million years old, attesting to the prehistoric presence of a tropical forest. The film reimagines the perpetual transformation of the Earth's landscapes, with fire as a metaphor for flux.

In partnership with LOOP Barcelona.

Many thanks to the Saint-Martin, Gourdou Boué and Courtois de Viçoise families, as well as Myriam vocational high school and Saint-Stanislas school for making courtyards available, and to Laure Martin and Les Amis du Nouveau Printemps for their help.