CASCADAS

2020-2025
Research Platform & Study Group
Barcelona

CASCADAS is a multi-year research project and self-organized study group initiated by Júlia Rúbies Subirós. The platform explores and facilitates intergenerational exchange, informal knowledge transmission, and collective memory within Barcelona's independent contemporary arts scene.

The project’s impulse originated in 2019 during a workshop led by Quim Bigas at (the former location of) La Poderosa, where participants unboxed the physical paper archives of the pioneering, dissolved independent platform La Porta. Discovering a vast history of vital, scene-building artistic work that had become completely invisible to a younger generation of makers only eight years after its closure sparked critical questions:

Who are our immediate predecessors?
What is the role of alternative, self-managed spaces as community anchors, as homes built around shared affinities?
And how can artistic knowledge circulate intergenerationally outside of institutionalized academies?

Video of this first phase where we can see Silvia Sant Funk speaking with Gloria Ros, Montse Álvarez and Júlia Rúbies Subirós about La Porta and the project origins: SEE VIDEO

In May 2022, the project underwent a radical transformation, evolving into a continuous, horizontal study group. Operating under a choir-inspired format called 'El Seminario', the group serves as a space for shared inquiries and collective practice, hosting peer-to-peer workshops and discursive reflection spaces with guest artists such as Semolinika Tomic (alongside Federico Ricciotti) and group member Noela Covelo Velasco. Later on, another workshop was organised with Monica Planas in a similar spirit.

The study group was supported by Salmon Festival 2023-2024 which allowed for a continued activity of the collective.

Project Initiator: Júlia Rúbies Subirós Collaborators & Study Group Members: Iver Zapata, Noela Covelo Velasco, Emma Villavecchia, Víctor Ruiz Colomer.

Guest Artists & Intergenerational Interlocutors: Sílvia Sant Funk, Sofia Asencio, Quim Pujol, Carme Torrent, Semolinika Tomic, Federico Ricciotti, Quim Bigas
Institutional Support & Residencies: La Poderosa, La Caldera, INJUVE (Apoyo a la Creación Joven)

Platform Chronology & Public Manifestations

• November 2021 | Hacer Historias Festival: An activation at El Mercat de les Flors where generation-peers and study group members (Iver Zapata, Noela Covelo Velasco, Emma Villavecchia, and Víctor Ruiz Colomer) shared somatic practices and research methodologies directly with the public.

• February 2022 | Conversa en Moviment (Sâlmon Festival): A performative duet and embodied conversation score created and performed by Júlia Rúbies Subirós and Carme Torrent at El Mercat de les Flors.

• May 2022 | The Shift to 'El Seminario': CASCADAS restructures from a curated workshop series into a horizontal, self-organized study group and collective thinking practice.

• August–September 2022 | Prácticas Cruzadas: A public transmission laboratory and platform sharing hosting guest practices by Semolinika Tomic (with Federico Ricciotti) and study group member Noela Covelo Velasco, alongside assemblies for collective reflection.

November 2023 | SSSASSSEEEEEEEEKKK (Sâlmon Festival): Participating as an official research affiliation of the festival, CASCADAS invited visual artist Mònica Planes to host a collective, four-day sculptural and movement experimentation workshop at FOC. The laboratory utilized movement as a generative engine to disrupt individual physical habits, investigating the physical body's relationship to raw materials, architecture, and the objects it inhabits.

PRESS on the first phase of CASCADES