Festival IF Barcelona with the Mercat de les Flors. Body, object, movement

What if everything around us was also something else? On the back of this question, the IF platform was born in 2015. That year, IF organized an academic symposium at the Institut del Teatre, published the book Figures del Desdoblament and set up a large exhibition by the same name at Arts Santa Mònica, where they also programmed a series of presentations to make known and promote the world of puppets and visual theatre as well as objects from all angles. Today, the Mercat de les Flors also poses the question with the aim of offering some joint answers.

Figurative theatre and playing with people’s perceptions, which are a feature of the Festival IF Barcelona, also permeate many of the choreographic pieces that make up this season at Mercat de les Flors. This convergence of interests is probably due to the metaphorical reading of these issues in the context of the high complexity scenario in which we are living; today, our environment is a multidimensional space made up of a thousand layers (social, cultural, technological and economic) where objects speak to us, and people mask themselves. That is why spaces, our bodies, objects and movement are the elements of interaction in our daily lives, and in these works.

During the joint curatorship between the Festival IF Barcelona and the Mercat de les Flors, artists already familiar to the venue have been brought together. Artists such as David Climent, the creator of the “bastard” theatre company Los Corderos sc, who will perform with the Madrid-based company El Canto de la Cabra, the quintessentially ironic dancer Macarena Recuerda Shepherd or the Italian dancer Federica Porello, who regularly collaborates with Mal Pelo, as well as “geographer of thought” Jaime Refoyo and set designer and performer Xesca Salvà. Also there will be the self-taught object manipulator Xavier Bobés. For more than 15 years, he has walked a singular path between performance and installation, creating pieces of poetic craftsmanship for discerning audiences.

Bàrbara Raubert