Barcelona is home to Sonar. Barcelona is a great city. Sonar is a great music festival. Barcelona is fun. Sonar is fun. The first day of Sonar is always an unusual one. The Barcelonians are still at work by day thereby allowing an extra day for the hordes of Americans, Italians and English to invade the CCCB and Las Ramblas in search of the perfect mojito to compliment the most perfect electronic beats Sonar can furnish them with. Bizarrely, mojitos are small in number in, arguably, Spain's finest city. With or without mojitos, the first day of Sonar is nevertheless always an exciting one with an abundance of techno and electronic music (as one would expect from a music festival) and also an array of art in various forms: whether it be digital art, the latest in electronic musical gadgetry or cinema. Thursday's Sonar By Day had much to offer in the way of art in digital and more traditional mediums. The CCCB (Sonar By Day's home) is currently housing an exhibition of artists' opinions and interpretations on war and terrorism. La Guerra, although it offers nothing especially new about the horrors of war and its effects, is particularly notable for its harsh, brutal and non-escapist treatment of what war actually is. In our modern age of ever-impending terrorism (or so we are led to believe by various governments and media) we are all far too aware that war is horror and accomplishes very little except death. La Guerra focuses on the after-effects of war in detail with interactive screens describing terrorist attacks and wars of the past eighty years, oil and charcoal drawings, "information" films of the 1950s and video personal accounts of ordinary people caught within the boundaries of government wars. This exhibition continues until September 2004 and is worth visiting for the shock/emotive value. Aside from death, war and depression Sonar hosts its own (slightly) more upbeat selection of digital art. The smallest and most interesting exhibition is within the Sonarama arena. Inside this cylindrical tube of a building a variety of art exhibits can be found with seemingly no obvious connection except they all look quite pretty. The most noteworthy exhibits are those by Antoni Tapies and R. Morreau. Tapies' three conjoined works decorate three sides of a CCCB terrace and are as abstract as his other works. The significance of the Spanish expressionist's work on display here is accentuated by its title, Rinzen, meaning "sudden awakening in enlightenment". If abstract expressionism is your bag, baby, then you have found your mecca.
Morreau has a variety of exhibits on display here, the most interesting of which is an enchanting black and white film (a series of five on rotational display at Sonarama) depicting Loie Fuller dancing to the beat of "La Papillon" only she is aware of. The film's elegant simplicity is given further appraisal by a series of still photographs taken by Eugene Puiet highlighting the simplicity of the movement demonstrated by Fuller and captured by Morreau. Beautiful, delicate and entrancing all at the same time, Morreau's pieces will arouse the fantasist in any heart, no matter how stone-encased. Watch this space for further exclusive Sonar updates and meandering musings over the next couple of days. Barman, dos cervezos, por favour! Discuss ...
