Of bodies and machines

Although it was nearly lost in the wave of budget cuts, the insistence of its promoters has successfully secured a third edition of Madatac, the audiovisual and contemporary technology arts exhibit organized by well-known multidisciplinary artist Iury Lech. This year's festival, which is centered around the theme of the body-machine dichotomy, opens on Monday, and includes a week-long schedule of projections, talks and classes. The event was kicked off by a flashmob in Madrid's Callao Square at 9pm on Monday night.

"In the end, we managed to come up with a very strong program, with some real heavyweights," says Lech. "We also managed to secure the Reina Sofía museum, the Matadero and Caixaforum Madrid as venues for the festival."

Competing in Madatac's official selection this year are 78 video creations from 26 countries, which will be shown at the Madadero Cineteca between December 14 and 18. The list of winners will include Best Video Work, Most Innovative Digital Work, Most Promising Video Artist, Best Interactivity and the Public's Choice Award.

Spanish television program Metrópolis (La 2) will select up to 27 minutes of different pieces, which will be shown in a special program on December 23. Auction house Subastas Segre will open bidding on three of the pieces presented in the competition in February 2012.

Video installations by artists Álvaro Petricig, Tommaso Pedone and Paul Wiersbinski will also be shown at the Matadero during the festival, while the Reina Sofía will host two monographic programs. The first of these, Esto es la Guerra (or, This is war), which was commissioned by Gioula Papadopoulos and Giorgos Dimitrakopoulos, is comprised of interpretations of armed conflict by 14 different artists. It will be shown in the museum's Sabatini building on December 13.

In the words of its organizers, the exhibit is "a tribute to one of our oldest, but least resolved, problems, which torments the planet in a variety of forms: armed conflicts, clashes, cyberspace wars and those in the real world, walls that are erected in cities and neighborhoods, walls that divide the mind and the soul."

The pieces were first shown last July at the Festival Miden in Kalamata, Greece. The Reina Sofía's second monographic program, also to be shown on December 13, is Territorios inexplorados: videoarte en China (or Unexplored territory: video art in China), a selection of works from the Asian country commissioned by Xiao Wu, from China, and Spanish artist Marula, who works in Shanghai and Beijing.

This edition of Madatac is also a showboat of invited guests. Palencia's Marina Núñez and America's Reynold Reynolds will hold sessions in which they will show their work, talk about their creative processes and take questions from the public. The first session will take place on Thursday, December 15 at 7.30pm in the Matadero, and the second will be held at the Reina Sofía on Saturday, December 17 at 7pm.

Herman Kolgen will give two audiovisual performances: on Friday, December 16 at 9pm in Caixaforum and Saturday, December 17 at 9.30pm in the Reina Sofía. Finally, Marco Donnauraumma will give a series of workshops in Caixaforum between December 12 and 15 in which he will talk about the use of biosensors in his performances.