By Andrea Montes, member of the Baud team.
March 2017
Finally, you have the opportunity to see it with your own eyes. Under the unmistakable sensation of the first times, you enter that great temple while the history of mankind becomes tangible through your eyes. And then you see it. Each stroke comes to life before you and you discover that internalizing all that beauty is the true experience. You smile as you size it up and find nuances hidden, even above you, in that canvas. In that moment, you understand. That Da Vinci was worth every expectation.
March 2020
The new space is digital
Technology has become our lifeline and an inexhaustible source of inspiration and content. Cultural experiences must now be transferred to the digital environment. However, it is not a simple adaptation of format, but must seek the creation of a complete sensory and emotional experience that goes beyond any online content to use. We must generate more immersive, more ephemeral, more personal or more didactic digital experiences that, through technology, build that connection so present and tangible in our lives, far from a screen. In this new normality, the digital environment is the most normal thing.
"Art and culture can help act as a remedy. [...] As a 'social connector' that people can interact with from home."
Valentina Montalto, European Commission Science Hub.
April 2018
Another one, another one, another one! Two hours of singing and jumping have not been enough. A crowd cheers your name in a seemingly endless dance. And, then, you appear again to rekindle that pure connection of the present moment. Chord after chord bathed in lights that come and go. Your voice ceases to be yours and becomes yours. Hundreds of people moving to the beat you set. It is that visceral and free dialogue that gives meaning to everything. Adrenaline, applause and the feeling of having lived a once in a lifetime experience.
April 2020
Redefining the physical experience
Social distancing, as a preventive health measure, has become the main obstacle to the usual development of any cultural experience. The physical space must be adapted with safety as a priority objective, giving rise to solutions of all kinds (architectural, capacity limitation, added services, etc.). The collective live experience begins to transform to become more individualized and intimate. While it is true that the creation of this personal atmosphere of trust should not slow down our connection with the outside, with the true purpose of the cultural performance. Let's make sure that physical barriers do not become mental barriers.
The union between artist and audience
The success of culture in this new physical space will not be possible without a greater involvement of the artist and the public. There are two attitudinal transformations that will influence a complete artistic experience: on the one hand, the artist must transcend his protagonist role to initiate a more participatory dialogue that demolishes any pre-established hierarchy, generating a new territory of common expression. On the other hand, the user must stop being simply a receptive spectator and become an active participant who builds, together with the artist, that territory. Any form of art, today more than ever, requires an individual and mutual commitment to seek that bidirectional connection that enhances the cultural experience. The artist and the public create a new language.
"We have seen the birth of a way to explore the arts and participate in the cultural world, the challenge is to take advantage of it."
Marc Merpillat, La Vanguardia.
May 2018
Your eyes are wide open, but they seem to be closed. The curtain slides to the rhythm of the first musical notes and the light illuminates a huge space that, however, becomes small when that first figure appears. It is followed by many others, forming a single color full of nuances. You observe the precision of the dance in each movement. You admire the anatomy taken to its most beautiful limits. You discover the strength that lies in delicacy. And, you understand that art is born from ourselves.
May 2020
The need for new creativity
Art has the duty to be a critical and reflective reflection of the time it inhabits. For this reason, today's reality demands new artistic solutions. If the container of any cultural experience is changing, how can the content itself not change? A culture tailored to this era must be created by transforming artistic proposals so that they respond to contemporary mental and emotional concerns and to the operative circumstances of their context. A new creativity that writes a new history.
"In the fear of the future, culture has the capacity to draw another kind of narrative, to mobilize another kind of utopias."
Judit Carrera, El País.
These are the four keys that outline a cultural paradigm that is, to say the least, different. If they are properly activated, it will be easier to approach a satisfactory artistic experience in today's world. However, due to the very nature of art, they must be temporary solutions for a transitory reality, since certain issues that concern both the artistic community and its most loyal public remain up in the air.
How to economically sustain a sector that thrives on the organization of large-scale events? How to combine online and offline environments to consolidate a single coherent and continuous experience? How to maintain the essence of art and the artist while fostering new creativity? How to favor the accessibility of culture despite digital and physical barriers?
Questions that, in themselves, contain hours and hours of debate. And an immense desire to jump at a music festival, to enjoy your favorite museum without limits, to lose yourself in the darkness of a packed stalls.
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