Merche Blasco: Através

18.03.2024 / 19:00 – 22:30
With Merche Blasco

Através creates cybernetic feedback loops among humans, technology and the environment. Multimedia artist Merche Blasco has created assemblages especially for Através that allow the performers to expand their expressive possibilities beyond the limits of human perception.

Everything is interrelated and interdependent, yet there are still boundaries separating human and non-human beings. The use of technology can either widen the divide or help bridge it. How these technologies are designed and used shapes the relationships among the various entities. This is the core concept behind Através by multimedia artist and composer Merche Blasco. Her work focuses on embodied performance practices of electroacoustic music along with new ways of listening by referring to the principle of assemblage. In her performances, by constructing ‘imprecise’ technological instruments and letting them interact with her body and organic materials, she aims to establish horizontal relationships – for example, between performers and audience and between humans and non-humans. The assemblages created especially for Através allow the performers to expand the possibilities of expression beyond the limits of human perception, forging a representation of the ecological consequences of human actions, interpersonal relationships and the constant process of disembodiment to which people are increasingly subjecting themselves. Através creates cybernetic feedback loops among humans, technology and the environment: connections and dependencies.

This work has been conceived together with the participating artists and musicians. Merche Blasco was awarded an Artists-in-Berlin fellowship in 2022 and has been based in Berlin since then.

Através was commissioned by and developed with the support of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and MaerzMusik. An early part of the project premiered at Heroines of Sound Festival in Berlin in July 2023.

Merche Blasco: composition, live electronics
Miriam Parker, Anna Clementi, Alessandra Eramo, Lorena Izquierdo, Ute Wassermann: performers
Clara Levy, Biliana Voutchkova: violin
Matthias Müller, Weston Olencki: trombone
Don Aretino & Muyao Zhang, threeASFOUR: costume design

Performance times: 18.03., 7 and 9 pm

Villa Elisabeth
Invalidenstr. 4a
10115 Berlin

Photo: Michael Sugarman © Merche Blasco