The Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània (CCCC) presents this Thursday, November 13, the premiere of 'Amphibian', a scenic piece by Claudia Campos and Claudio Burguez that combines art and science to imagine new perspectives on water and land management. The piece, part of the public program of the exhibition 'The Mark of the Flood in Artistic Practice', is a hybrid between a performative lecture and a cross-cutting conversation involving different fields of knowledge and professional practices such as biology, geology, and urbanism.
According to a statement from the Generalitat, the managing director of the Consortium of Museums of the Valencian Community, Nicolás Bugeda, explained that 'The Mark of the Flood exhibition and its public program is the result of not only research but also mediation work, accompanying the artists affected by the flood to whom we are providing support and visibility'.
The artists explain that 'the concept of the amphibious, which we have been working on since 2021 in our project 'Turia, the Mad', refers to the need for transformation, adaptation to the environment, the idea of metamorphosis'. They add that 'the title of the piece also refers to the artistic evolution after the flood, how our research, which began four years ago at the CCCC on the Turia river, transforms today into this piece that unites other forms of knowledge between science and art'.
The piece also features visual artists Juan Sebastián López Galeano, Carlos Molina, and María Victoria Parada, set designer Vir Roig Hernández, accompanied by biologist Lucía Moreno, architect and urbanist Pau Mendoza, and geologist Laura Martínez.
The 'Amphibian' project has its precedent in 'Turia, the Mad', a research and creation residency by Claudia Campos and Claudio Burguez at the Centre del Carme, within the framework of Transversal Aesthetics by Idensitat, which fictionalized the 1957 flood. From this residency, three pieces emerged: a dramaturgy, an object-book, and the project 'Valencia, Amphibian', which reflected on the relationship between art and nature in a city.
Part of the writing developed during that process was staged on October 17 and 18, 2024, a few days before the arrival of the flood. In the afternoon of October 29, part of the 'Amphibian' team was in the Sierra de Chiva, and that experience radically changed both the content and their ways of relating to the work. From this experience, the video creation that envelops the set design of 'Amphibian' emerged. Using real images of what happened during the floods, altered by generative AI, these visuals, along with different objects and special lighting, introduce the spectator as part of the piece. 'Art gives us a speculative license, an exercise in imagination that allows us to approach science from the sensory and from care, opening up other avenues of understanding', explain the artists.
'Amphibian' is part of the public program of the exhibition 'The Mark of the Flood in Artistic Practice', organized by the CMCV, which brings together the voices of 43 artists affected by the 2024 flood. Within the framework of its Culture Resident program, from November 6 to 20, round tables will be held at the CCCC, Open Studios with visits to studios in the territories affected by the floods, a visit to the PLUTO residencies, and encounters between artists and local, national, and international agents.
