On lines. A/V Performance by Dania Shihab and Carlos Vásquez Méndez
Saturday 15 November 2025, 8 pm
- Participants
- Dania Shihab and Carlos Vásquez Méndez
- Venue
- CCCB. Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
- A project by
- Loop Festival x L'Alternativa
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On Lines is a live audiovisual collaboration between Iraqi experimental musical Dania Shihab and Chilean filmmaker Carlos Vásquez Méndez, where they explore the concept of lines as a perceptual boundary and symbolic threshold. The collaboration explores the history of the line, how an imaginary landscape is composed not of objects or surfaces but of movements and stillness. A line as a conduit, a border, a path that we delineate as we navigate terrains and leave our indelible mark. A path which is traced by bodies and stories. Vásquez Méndez and Shihab explore landscape as a meshwork of interweaving trails along which life is lived, and conversely of lands which are limited by its borders.
Understanding the line as a score, or a form of notation and translation from the visual to the sonorous where directions, tendencies or predispositions are indicated, Vásquez Méndez threads a network of signs, drawings and lines of light inspired by the soundscape proposed by Shihab, establishing a conversation between two dissimilar languages (images and sounds) that, despite their differences, achieve a sensitive communication that converge right at the border, understanding this not only as a contour on each side, but also as a meeting point.
During the performance Shihab will be creating a live improvisational performance using various techniques such as granular synthesis, and field recording manipulation, time stretched sound and tape loop manipulation, to form a soundscape interpreting the visual work of Vásquez Méndez in real time, who who threads together different loops of film containing lines, horizons and paths that, as they are projected, superimpose layers of concepts and meanings that connect the aesthetic with the political, in a kind of discontinuous and intricate timeline.
Dania Shihab (Baghdad, 1982) lives and works between Australia and Barcelona. She is a sound artist and musician, born in Baghdad, raised in Tasmania, and currently based in Barcelona. She divides her time between Spain and the most remote corners of Australia, where she works as an emergency doctor. Her artistic practice explores the complex terrain of migration, interstitial identity, and the shifting boundaries of state sovereignty from the perspective of a forced migrant. She has performed in venues such as Cafe Oto and La Casa Encendida, and at festivals including Sónar, Sonic Acts, and Mira. She was selected as an artist for the SHAPE+ audiovisual arts platform in 2024, completed a residency at Providenza (France), and will begin a new residency at EMS (Sweden) in October 2025. She has been selected as an artist for the main residency program at La Becque (Switzerland) 2026. She is the founder and director of the experimental platform Paralaxe Editions, and her music has appeared on labels such as Geographic North, Ecstatic, Somewhere Press, Superpang, OOH-sounds, and Longform Editions.
Carlos Vásquez Méndez (b. 1975, Santiago de Chile) lives and works in Barcelona. He is a visual artist, filmmaker, and researcher. He is interested in the relationship between art and the document, discourses on the representation of the real, and the role of the artist as a critical historian. Through his practice, he has explored obsolescence as an aesthetic-political discourse or as a media archaeology, especially focusing on celluloid, the material with which he has developed most of his work. His films have been screened at Jeonju, FIDMarseille, Mar del Plata, First Look, Cineteca Mexicana, OpenCity, Process, Black Canvas, BPI/Centre Pompidou, and others. He received the Joris Ivens/Centre National des Arts Plastiques award at Cinéma du Réel (France) in 2016 and the Mayor’s Award in Yamagata (Japan) in 2019.
His cinematic installations and performances have been exhibited at Virreina Centre de la Imatge, La Capella, Filmoteca de Catalunya, Fabra i Coats, and Arts Santa Mònica. His work is included in the Light Cone catalog.
