'SUSPENDED'

The 8th edition of the International Open Performance Art Festival takes place between two cities: Alicante and Murcia; and has been organized by their most avant-garde cultural spaces: the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACA) and Las Cigarreras Contemporary Culture, both in Alicante; and the Centro Párraga (Research and development space for the performing arts), in Murcia.

Open Performance is a festival conceived by and for the study, development and knowledge of 'Performances', an artistic discipline on the rise that has difficulty accessing more traditional circuits. All the artists and theorists participating in this eighth edition have extensive international experience in the field of 'Performance'. They are Bartolomé Ferrando, Margarita Aizpuru, Paco Linares, Ángela García, Ana Matey, Nieves Correa, Fernando Baena, Yosem, Abel Loureda, Yolanda Pérez Herreras, María José García and Domix Garrido.

'Performance' or action art is a transversal artistic expression that draws from the various disciplines and current artistic languages, difficult to classify due to its hybrid nature. The concept 'Suspended' is nothing more than appropriate when applied directly to its essence: the state of transit, of not belonging anywhere, without precise or agreed-upon definition, suspended between two, three or four dimensions.

Scenic art, plastic art, technological, musical, poetic, philosophical, architectural? Everything and nothing at the same time. How do these such extensive parameters condition the action artist? The suspension in the midst of their creation, the involuntary contamination or the provoked contagion is the basis for the theme chosen for this event: 'Suspended', with all the cultural and social meaning that this expression carries. 'Suspended' will offer a new point of view, a theoretical and practical revelation not without confrontation.

8Open Performance is:

1- A co-production between Las Cigarreras Contemporary Culture, MACA, Centro Párraga in Murcia, the Acción!MAD Association in Madrid, the Open Performance Association in Murcia and the State Secretariat for Culture of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.

2- An exhibition-display of 'performances' and their creative processes by the participating artists.

3- It consists of a theoretical section focused on lectures, meetings and round tables led by the participating speakers, researchers and 'performers'.

4- It takes place in open and closed spaces for the realization of the actions (art centers and public spaces).

5- It will have graphic documentation of actions and lectures through photographs and video recordings.

6- It will be extensively disseminated through new technologies and traditional media.

Hannah Collins is a multifaceted artist specializing in large format photography. She lives in Barcelona, London, and California, where she teaches at UC Davis University. Professor at the Royal College of Art in London, she exhibits in galleries and public institutions and museums in Europe and North America.

At the same time and in the same space, by the same person, theory and practice together: Speaks and acts, acts and speaks. Theorizes and practices, practices and theorizes, and begins again. But it never repeats itself. In the end someone must have understood something, but it is difficult to say who and what has been understood from this discourse on performance.

Because in reality, what is performance?

A hybrid? A torture? A leg-pull? A pleasure? Anything? A surprise? A shame? A boredom? An amusement? A lack of ideas? A new genre? A discovery? An artistic expression? A risk? A joke? A perversion? A gag? A gratuitous act? A challenge? An effort? A scam? A knowledge? A theatrical deviation? A communication? A desire to please? A desire to provoke? A desire to do directly? A new artistic experience? A natural, illegal, adulterous offspring of art? A major genre? A minor genre? A deviation? A path? A dead end? A rupture? An ideal of artistic integration? A practice of artistic integration? A practice of freedom? A search for a new language?

The city of Alicante received last May the 'Google Digital City Award', an honor that according to Google's own representatives is granted to those Spanish municipalities whose small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have a "strong presence" on the internet and regularly use 'online marketing' tools, as reported in a statement by the city council.

The MACA hosts the Google Academies, which is nothing more than a specialized workshop in Google AdWords where you acquire the knowledge to know how to promote your business or your clients' business online.

The workshop is divided into two parts. The advanced Google Academies, from 10 to 1:30 PM, aimed at an audience more knowledgeable in the subject, and a second part, the basic Google Academies from 3:00 PM to 6:30 PM.

Corporate mobility event prior to the annual strategic program of Móvil Forum 2012, which is part of Telefónica's Partners Program, an initiative by the company to bring its customers the best ICT solutions on the market. With its origins almost eleven years ago, it originated one of the first technology forums promoted by an operator. Currently, Movilforum is made up of the main technology partners in the ICT world (software manufacturers, terminals…) and more than 120 participating companies (in Spain alone), as well as thousands of associates.

Therefore, the main clients of Telefónica attended the event.

Among the activities scheduled for the celebration of MACA's first anniversary, last Tuesday, March 21st, a round table discussion titled "Tàpies facing Tàpies. A Duo Conversation" took place in the auditorium.

During it, Juan Bautista Peiró, professor at the Universitat Politécnica de Valencia and author of one of the texts in the exhibition catalog, and Rosa Mª Castells, curator of MACA's collections, discussed the life and work of the Catalan artist.

Around 75 professionals from different sectors attended the "First Conference on LED Lighting in Museums" organized by ERCO in collaboration with the Aural gallery.

The program included a theoretical presentation by ERCO technicians, the seminar organizers, in the MACA auditorium and continued with a practical workshop in the temporary exhibitions room, where professionals were able to observe and study the different applications of LED technology applied to the lighting of various artworks.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Alicante whose collections are formed by works created fundamentally in the twentieth century. They range from the so-called avant-gardes to all the approaches and artistic manifestations that took place in the decades of the second half of the past century. They are expressed on different supports and materials, with diverse dimensions and techniques. In turn, the temporary exhibitions are related to these collections and allow for expanding or deepening some aspects of contemporary chronology. However, contemporary architecture is absent from both the permanent collections and those temporary manifestations.

The architecture of the MACA itself, a project created and directed by the Sancho Madridejos Studio, is a beautiful building of great functional efficiency. The syncopated projection of horizontal and vertical spaces establishes a formal order based on the geometry and texture of the materials used in construction, while revealing a kind of tension resolved by the overhead passage of light, a kind of "felt" spirituality more emotional than real.

The MACA proposes in a conversational format, meetings around art and architecture around the architect's table. In the MACA Library, the last Thursdays of each month, from January to May 2015.

This first cycle will consist of different manifestations. The first and fundamental one will show works by an architect related through his vital and professional activity to the province of Alicante. The selection criterion will be conditioned by the modernity of the proposals, understanding that modernity, first of all, in a chronological sense, attending to those architectures and architects who were protagonists and participants in the advent of contemporaneity. The exhibition of some models will allow for offering three-dimensional models, reclaiming the model as such, as the authors of the Renaissance defended. And to illustrate the complete work process, sketches and preliminary drawings will be shown alongside the project plans and notes developed during the construction process. All of this with the ultimate aim of understanding and grasping in some way the constructed space.

The architect's table, a table from 1912, real and present (deposited in the MACA by its owner Alfonso Navarro Guzmán), serves as an ideological foundation to link the exhibitions and will serve as the material support for the models so that we can traverse, while dreaming, the imagined space.

Since 2015, MACA has proposed meetings in a conversation format, centered on art and architecture. Reflecting again

on the relationships between architecture and art, understanding the process of construction and reconstruction of architecture from a more artistic or philosophical point of view, leads us to delve deeper into this proposal. In the MACA Library, the last Thursdays

of each month, from September 2018 to May 2019. Eva Prats is an Architect from the ETSA of Barcelona and Doctor Architect from RMIT Melbourne. Ricardo Flores is an architect from FADU-UBA, Master's in Urban Planning and Doctor Architect from ETSAB-UPC. Eva and Ricardo founded Flores & Prats in Barcelona in 1998, a studio dedicated to the confrontation of theory and academic practice with design and constructive activity.

They have worked on rehabilitation projects of disused structures, in the design of urban public spaces with neighborhood participation, and in social housing and its capacity to create community. But the studio has also experimented with the use of films to document projects or edible architecture menus developed for exhibitions of their work in Barcelona, Copenhagen, or Venice.

The work of Flores & Prats has obtained, among other recognitions, the Grand Award in Architecture from the Royal Academy of Arts in London 2009, the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona 2016, the Premi Ciutat de Palma 2017, the AD Architects of the Year Award 2018, and the AR New into Old Award 2019. They have been nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Prize on various occasions and their work has been exhibited in the last four editions of the Venice Architecture Biennial. In addition to their professional practice, Eva and Ricardo are actively involved in the academic world.

They are Professors of Projects at the ETSA of Barcelona, Professors of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT Melbourne, and between 2019 and 2021 visiting professors at ETH Zurich. In the 2022-2023 academic year they will begin as visiting professors at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio. In 2014, the Mexican publisher Arquine published the first monograph on their work, Pensado a mano. La Arquitectura de Flores & Prats, and in 2017 the new magazine Archives dedicated its first issue to the studio's work. In 2020, Arquine and the Barcelona City Council published the monographic book Sala Beckett. International Center for Dramaturgy. In 2021, the Archives Universum magazine dedicated its first issue to the studio's private world and working methods.

Since 2015, MACA has proposed meetings in a conversation format, around art and architecture. To reflect again

on the relationships between architecture and art, to understand the process of construction and reconstruction of architecture from a more artistic or philosophical point of view, leads us to delve deeper into this proposal. In the MACA Library, the last Thursdays

of each month, from September 2018 to May 2019. Ramon Bosch and Bet Capdeferro are architects graduated from the School of Architecture of Barcelona - UPC - BarcelonaTECH since 2000 and 1999 respectively. Bet Capdeferro is pursuing the Master's degree in Landscape Architecture from the Polytechnic Foundation of Catalonia. In 2003 they founded the bosch.capdeferro architecture studio in the city of Girona, from where they work on the transformation of spaces of diverse scale and nature, focusing attention on the relationship between man and the environment. Their professional activity in the studio has always been accompanied by teaching experience at the universities ETSAB-UPC BarcelonaTech, ETH-Zürich, EPS-University of Girona, Cornell University-New York and Washington University-Saint Louis, supporting through theory and research the development of the design and construction process. They conceive the project as a concave and inclusive experience, capable of harmoniously integrating through an open process all the diverse facts and agents that configure it. In 2012 they are selected to participate in the XIII Venice Architecture Biennale - "Common Ground" as members of the "Vogadors" exhibition. In 2015 they win the FAD Architecture Award. In 2016 they are awarded in the Heritage and Transformation category of the XIII Spanish Architecture and Urbanism Biennale - "Alternatives", as well as in the Works Panorama of the X Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism Biennale. In 2011 their work was part of the "Unfinished" exhibition of the Spanish Pavilion, winner of the Golden Lion at the XV Venice Architecture Biennale - "Reporting From the Front". In 2018 they are awarded in the Works Panorama of the XIV Spanish Architecture and Urbanism Biennale – "More Living, More Humanizing". In 2021 they receive the award in the Works Panorama of the XV Spanish Architecture and Urbanism Biennale - "Empty Spain, Full Spain". In 2022 they receive the Architecture Award from the Higher Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain. That same year their work is nominated for the European Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award.