A new edition of the Unconventional Festival has arrived

The City’s Ministry of Culture is presenting a new edition of the Non-Conventional Festival (FNC) dedicated to performances presented in unusual venues, starring professional and novice artists together.

In this second edition, the Festival returns recharged, in two stages. In the first half of the year, the freshness included the inclusion of shows in various locations in the province of Buenos Aires, such as the municipalities of Lanús, Tres de Febrero and Vicente López. And then, in the spring of 2022, it will resume its programming based in the City of Buenos Aires.

In the direction of Martin BauerIn conjunction with face-to-face activities, most FNC programs can be viewed from anywhere in the country through Vivamos Cultura.

On Sunday, May 22, the program will begin in the province of Buenos Aires with an immersive concert for a large orchestra: Terretektorhby Iannis Xenakis, which will allow the public to sit among the musicians enjoying the unique experience.

The concert will be held at CEDEM 2 in Caseros (Three February), with free admission. It will be a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Iannis Xenakis, one of the most influential composers of the 20th century and in a truly unconventional context because it is a sports center, more specifically the pitch of a futsal gym.

Performed by the Student Orchestra of Buenos Aires OEBA and the Musical Artistic Journeys TAM Orchestra, the percussion ensemble Tambor Fantasma and guest musicians, to be performed by Pablo Druker, the concert will be a unique experience as the sounds literally move around of the audience, sitting between the musicians forming a completely atypical concert situation.

Then, in July, at Lanús you will enjoy minimalist work drum, by Steve Reich, for 9 percussionists, 2 female voices, whistle and piccolo, with lighting and video. In addition to being one of the great composers of the last fifty years, Reich’s mark is considered the first masterpiece of American minimalism.

Reich listened to the audience as the work gradually evolved from simple to complex. In a game of rhythmic unisons and phase shifts, they form new rhythms that move three different families of instruments, gradually increasing their tension and intensity until an abrupt and exciting ending.

In September, at Vicente López, the public will appreciate The black of the starby Gérard Grisey, an open-air show of 6 percussionists, which will combine music and science.

The show is based on the astronomical phenomenon of pulsars (neutron star light years away from Earth), which rotate very fast, emitting radio waves that reach our planet at surprisingly stable frequencies.

Captured and translated into sound, they produce rhythmic patterns as Grisey incorporates into this composition. Prior to the concert, Argentine astrophysicist Gloria Dubner, a well-known specialist on the subject, will introduce the work by telling the public a little more about this fascinating astronomical event.

Meanwhile, in the City, also in September, the experimental opera World Parliament, by Karlheinz Stockhausen for an a cappella choir with a show around the audience. In this extraordinary session, a chorus of parliamentarians gathers to discuss the meaning of love.

The theme serves as a reason to showcase an impressive polyphony in which more than 36 singers will surround the public, vocalizing phrases and syllables in rhythmic-melodic patterns derived from a mathematical formula created of the composer.

In October you will see Experiment with Mundiby Giorgio Battistelli, a musical work presented in a theater in which sixteen workers, a narrator, four female voices and a percussionist are the protagonists.

Bakers, shoemakers, masons and other workers will participate in the good action. The materials, sounds, smells and movements of their work, which they perform on stage, will be presented with music and the recitation of descriptions of instruments taken from the Diderot and D’Alembert Encyclopedia.

When the work is finished, the bread will be baked, a wall will be erected and a pair of shoes will be made to be perfectly matched to the mark. Since its release in 1981, this work has been exhibited at more than 200 venues and festivals around the world.

From the balcony

Between October and November the theatrical show will be on display seventy balconies visible from the balconies that form the corner with the dry square of the Cultural San Martín; a space in the heart of downtown Buenos Aires.

The square will be a large audience, and the balconies and windows of the buildings that make up the contour, in stages. A completely new work will be on display, specially designed for this space, assigned to Argentine stage director Lisandro Rodríguez.

In November, in the Xirgu UNTREF space you can also enjoy Symphony of Speech of the Bar-Dem Duo (Switzerland), with an excellent poetry presentation for two soloists and an “orchestra” of translators/performers.

To make this Symphony of Speech sound, a large group of simultaneous translation interpreters, representatives of the different linguistic communities living together in the city, will perform on stage as an orchestra.

In December, the Slaughterhouse Fair will be the scene of the contemporary dance show Inside the house! by Diana Szeinblum, where three dancers will place their bodies to explore traditional Argentine dances.

The work, released in 2017, aims to remove these dances from their historical weight and explore them as pure movements, to present the tensions between popular culture and “high culture”, the indigenous and the colonized.

It will also be part of the city’s programming, Timber by Michael Gordon, a minimalist percussion show that will take place in December at Fundación Santander Hall.

There, six percussionists will place themselves in a circle, each with a piece of wood of different sizes. This idea of ​​instruments came from a quest by Gordon, the American composer, to find electronic sonorities after years dedicated to creating orchestral works.

The Unconventional Festival has the general and artistic direction of Martín Bauer, the production coordination by Carolina Martín Ferro, the artistic coordination by Rodrigo de Caso and the communication and design by Emanuel Fernández. According to the Minister of Culture of the City Henry Avogadro“FNC is a project that has grown in such a way that now it can expand to different municipalities.”

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