{"id":321,"date":"2024-03-13T06:41:32","date_gmt":"2024-03-13T10:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/?p=321"},"modified":"2024-03-13T06:42:02","modified_gmt":"2024-03-13T10:42:02","slug":"march-12-epica-lab-and-la-fura-del-baus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/2024\/03\/13\/march-12-epica-lab-and-la-fura-del-baus\/","title":{"rendered":"March 12. Epica Lab and La Fura del Baus"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Isabelle Fereshteh Sanatdar Stevens<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u201cThe future is no longer in one hundred years\u2026 It\u2019s in one? Two? Let\u2019s find out,\u201d Fran Iglesias shrugged, shrouded in the light illuminating him from behind, streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the sleek building on the coast of Barcelona. Masts of sailboats in the background, and [redacted] pushed to one side of the open room\u2013part of a confidential exhibition that will open a week after we leave\u2013the setting itself was picturesque, and even if the sun that shone in your eyes didn\u2019t have you squinting, the elaborate exhibitions and performance pieces orchestrated and designed by Epica Lab y La Fura del Baus would.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Founded in 1979, Fundaci\u00f3n \u00c8pica is an organization dedicated to examining the relationship between creativity and innovation, and excavating the inextricable links between science, technology, and art. Dedicated not to \u201cfinal products\u201d so much as the\u00a0process<\/i>\u00a0that \u201ccreatives\u201d facilitate for themselves (\u201ccreatives\u201d here encompassing folx in all fields, who might be so inclined to discover, explore, and engage with the world in a thoughtful way), \u00c8pica is mainly concerned with one thing: \u201ctrying to create new knowledge, not art pieces.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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What was especially exciting about the work being supported through \u00c8pica and La Fura del Baus, the company that exists under its wider umbrella, aside from their technological advancements and achievements, was the reason for its creation in the first place\u2013\u201cAnticipatory arts,\u201d Iglesias explained, \u201c… prepare the people for what\u2019s next.\u201d While Epica and the team claim that they don\u2019t know the future, their method of predicting things is rooted in science and research, and their method of introducing their learnings to society is through simulations that require and inspire emotional and personal engagement. Shakespeare, in\u00a0Titus Andronicus<\/i>,\u00a0<\/i>writes of a woman silenced literally (after being sexually assaulted, she is physically assaulted) to demonstrate the metaphorical silence often pushed upon folx who experience abuse and assault. So what does Epica do to place audience members into this predicament themselves (or make it so that their brains would believe it to be the case)? They work with chefs to create cotton candy that when combined with the performance art they\u2019re viewing, leads 1% of viewers to pass out and others to lose feeling in their mouth\/legs and control of their parasympathetic system. They not only deliver but surpass audience member\u2019s wildest dreams, using science to fuel and foster emotional, physical, and psychological responses. They \u201cprepare people for the future\u201d–opening people\u2019s eyes and \u201cprepar[ing] them to listen\u201d so that when the time comes, they will be more able to engage with new things and not be trapped in the confines of previous lived experience. They create settings and scenarios that are \u201cartificial\u201d in nature, but not in impact.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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If there\u2019s one thing to expect when engaging with them and their work, it\u2019s to know that your expectations are probably wrong\u2013they\u2019ll be surpassed in ways you couldn\u2019t even imagine. \u00c8pica will challenge you without allowing you to realize until after the moment passes, that you were even challenged in the first place.\u00a0I know<\/i>: I thought I was going to be drenched in water, when Iglesias made as though he was gearing up to toss a glass of water towards me. But he didn\u2019t toss it, and I wasn\u2019t drenched. At the end of the real-time demonstration of the psychological, physical, and emotional responses they\u2019re always working to elicit, I was only in awe of how fluidly he proved his point.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Isabelle Fereshteh Sanatdar Stevens \u201cThe future is no longer in one hundred years\u2026 It\u2019s in one? Two? Let\u2019s find out,\u201d Fran Iglesias shrugged, shrouded in the light illuminating him from behind, streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the sleek building on the coast of Barcelona. Masts of sailboats in the background, and [redacted] pushed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22646,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22646"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":327,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/artsinbarcelona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}