L.E.V Matadero 2021

L.E.V. Matadero will include music live shows again; concerts and performances by classic names and new talents in the fields of electronic and audiovisual sound creation, plus a new section of wide-format audiovisual installations which may be enjoyed in different spaces of the center, throughout the four days of the Festival. Sections VORTEX| Experiences in Virtual Realty and VR Cinema, and Ciudad Aumentada| Urban Experiences in Augmented Reality also come back with unusual creations, to immerse us in unique, dreamlike universes born out of the crossroads of boundless creativity and the latest technological tools. There will be also news concerning our virtual universe Planet L.E.V. Matadero, created during lockdown by Children of Cyberspace and co-produced by Matadero Madrid and L.E.V.

Music shows and audiovisual performances
One of the highlights in our show line-up this year, which will take place at Cineteca’s Sala Azcona, will be Robin Rimbaud, aka Scanner. The artist and composer, a pioneer in the use of mobile phones, video surveillance and police scanners in live shows, will play live his legendary work Mass Observation.

Electronic music producer and visual artist Grischa Lichtenberger of raster-noton, one of the most prestigious electronic music labels worldwide, will bring L.E.V. Matadero his unique sound in an audiovisual performance around his latest album KAMILHAN; il y a péril en la demeure. Multimedia artists and founders of SFX platform, Zoe McPherson and Alessandra Leone will perform String Figures, a transmedia work based in the connections among sound, film choreography, 3D and macrophotography.

Artist, producer and DJ Lee Gamble, in collaboration with Clifford Sage, will play a live show based on his trilogy Flush Real Pharynx, whose last part A Million Pieces Of You will be released on September 10th. Other artists included in the music line-up with new works released in 2021 are Swedish producer Varg²™ and Danish musician Croatian Amor, whose fourth collaborative album embraces new forms of connecting in the digital world; and Bromo, a duo formed by Paloma Peñarrubia and Azael Ferrer, whose activist, documentary and scenic project takes us to an immersive journey through space.

This new LEV will also feature works by two artists which have recently hosted several residencies of musical production in Matadero Madrid: Cruhda [Paula Gómez de Caso], with visuals by Judith Adataberna, and Ivankovà [Irene de la Cueva], in collaboration with artist Álvaro Chior.

Circuit of wide-format audiovisual installations
A first in this new LEV are four audiovisual installations occupying different spaces at Matadero: Cineteca’s Archivo and Plató, and Naves del Español’s Sala de Madera and Sala de Hormigón. One of them is Impulse by Martin Messier, a poetic technological analogy of how the brain works, where energy is made visible through some light paths travelling among huge metal panels.

Tundra collective will premiere its new audiovisual installation ROW: Signals for Space, celebrating the 60th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin first space flight, a challenge to reflect on the power of multimedia art to make mankind advance towards new discoveries and ways of interacting with our surroundings, with ourselves and among ourselves.

Total Refusal, a collective formed by artists Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, and Michael Stumpf, will come to L.E.V. Matadero to premiere us their latest work in progress: a post-apocalyptic, narrated ballet about capitalism and democracy in the city of Washington DC, recorded inside the action video game Tom Clancy’s: The Division 2.

At LEV we will also discover the pop-up book Acqua Alta – Crossing the mirror by creative duo Adrien M & Claire B, a book whose pages serve as the stage for a dance thanks to an Augmented Reality app. Using a very simple graphic style in black and white, ink drawings and folded white paper come together to reveal the virtual life of some little beings and how they plunge into imaginary realms of water.

VORTEX: Virtual Reality and VR Cinema experiences
Since the first L.E.V. Matadero, VORTEX section at Nave 0 collects some of the most surprising and groundbreaking current works in the field of Virtual Reality and VR Cinema. One of them is Aquaphobia by acclaimed multidisciplinary artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen, in which virtual reality is used to connect inner psychological landscapes with outer environments, transforming our perception of our relationship with the future levels and climates of water;

I will sleep when i’m dead by Jeanne Susplugas, where the audience immerse in a skull, among neurons and synapses, thoughts and their narratives; Of hybrids and strings, a fabled plunge about the connection between human and non-human, by Valencia-based Australian artist Lauren Moffatt; or Recoding Entropia by Francois Vautier, a sensitive, visual journey, as physical as rational, from the heart of the cosmic void. 

Augmented City: Augmented reality urban experiences
L.E.V. Matadero’s section Ciudad Aumentada keeps on revealing new layers of reality hidden under the screens of our mobile devices with Fauna, a project by Adrien M & Claire B and the designers collective Brest Brest Brest, which will be hosted in the open air space at Matadero. An installation for all ages, which uses wide format posters and an Augmented Reality app to reveal the wild life hidden inside the walls of the center of contemporary creation.

Planet LEV Matadero. Digital Explorations
During 2020 lockdown, Children of Cyberspace created a virtual artistic experience, produced by Matadero Madrid and L.E.V. which was premiered in the previous Festival: Planet LEV Matadero. An immersive digital universe to be enjoyed in web browsers and in Virtual Reality which, since the beginning, hosts different digital art and experimental installations created by artists worldwide, and has also served as a virtual stage for multiple music and audio visual live shows. In its third year, L.E.V. Matadero will announce updates and activities related to this planet.