BEFORE THE CATASTROPHE
An imaginary congress of ethnography from the year 3302
What would happen if a group of researchers from the next millennium (for example from the year 3302) wouldbase their speculations about the past (our contemporaneity) on strange audio relics like tape cassettes ofparapsychology? This is the question that leads the group of participants to stage an imaginary congress ofethnography from the future. Before the Catastrophe is an exercise in estrangement that attempts to rethinkthe narrative about our present and our society through the filter of a sectorial language such as ethnography,used here not to talk about otherness, but to talk about ourselves as if we were the other.
Before the Catastrophe is a methodology that investigates co-creation processes through role-playing, the useof magnetic tapes and the collective improvisation of speeches from a future perspective. The activity wasborn after the accidental discovery of a bag with over fifty audio tapes containing parapsychology lectures,close to a rubbish bin in Barcelona, while Giulia Deval was participating to ITERATIONS, a European projectcommitted to the future of artistic collaboration in digital networked contexts held between Hangar (Barcelona), Trasformatorio (Giampilieri, Sicily), esc medien kunst labor (Graz) and Constant (Bruxelles).
The sound game was first proposed to the resident artists of ITERATIONS and subsequently to various groupsof adults and young people in contexts such as Hangar, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, aspart of the VERSO #3 project alongside Jonas Staal's We demand a million more years; the NUB project spacegallery in Pistoia, where several episodes were broadcast in podcast format on Fango Radio, the Akrida Festivalin Milan and non-institutional contexts.
The project passed the pre-selections of Pierre Schaeffer Award announced by INA GRM, GMVL, PhonurgiaNova and Euphonia being among the best 11 projects in 2019 and won MIBACT’s MOVIN’UP / SPETTACOLOPERFORMING ARTS in 2020.
- Antes de la catàstrofe ES / ENG, Hangar.org / live performance
- Prima della Catastrofe ITA / Fango Radio / Nub Project Space /podcast
- Prima della Catastrofe ITA / VERSO#3 / Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo/podcast