The Chairs of Tàpies. Invoking the Crack

The third edition of the series The Chairs of Tàpies, subtitled Invoking the Crack, presents a total of eight sound events which highlight the voice as living matter and the word as a terrain of construction and transformation. Grounded in hybrid practices fusing performance, music, dance, orality, electronica and poetry, the invited voices become agents occupying the void—that fragile yet necessary space between intimacy and the collective—as it is transfigured into a site of active presence and poetry: the crack.

This series does not solely present oral memory, but it tautens it, reinterpreting it and projecting it into the future, creating a dialogue between tradition and modernity. Voices of our time confront each other and dialogue with the material and symbolic world of Antoni Tàpies, with his commanding gestures, critical gaze and profound connection to the invisible inhabiting both matter and silence. In this context, the chair is no longer just a place to sit; it becomes a space for listening, confrontation and transmission, a virtual altar where the voice takes on shape and is made manifest as an act of resistance and evocation.

Invoking the Crack is thus an invitation to explore this fissure, that minute opening that light, memory and gesture might slip through. This crack is where contemporary voices find a space to reinvent themselves, allowing for new communicative and expressive possibilities to emerge.

Series curated by Judith Barnés.

Programme of sessions:

· Thursday, 12 March, 2026, at 6 pm: Enric Casasses
· Thursday, 9 April, 2026, at 6 pm: Carles Congost
· Thursday, 7 May, 2026, at 6 pm: Ikram Bouloum
· Thursday, 4 June, 2026, at 6 pm: Xumo Nunjo + Ihosvanny Cisneros
· Thursday, 10 September, 2026, at 6 pm: Vignesh Melwani + Carla Motis
· Thursday, 1 October, 2026, at 6 pm: Claudia Pagès*
· Thursday, 5 November, 2026, at 6 pm: María José Arjona
· Thursday, 3 December, 2026, at 6 pm: Rocío Molina

*This event will take place in the Reflection Room on the Ciutadella campus of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra
[Photo: detail of the Sala de Reflexió, by Antoni Tàpies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. © Eva Carasol, 2023.]