CONFLUÈNCIES, artistic interventions in the province of Valencia

CONFLUÈNCIES. Artistic interventions in rural areas is a process that carries out specific actions in each of the participating municipalities*. Initiated in two of the inland regions of Castellón -Alto Mijares and Alto Palancia-, the programme has continued to expand throughout the territory to reach three small towns in the province of Valencia, travelling from north to south: La Puebla de San Miguel, in the foothills of the Javalambre mountain range; Sempere, on the shores of the Bellús reservoir; and Carrícola, in the shadow of the Benicadell.

Confluències, ithin the context of IVAM al territori, aims to generate a framework of artistic creation and mediation in which the gestures, voices and gazes of the people who live in these places are involved. It aims to establish, through dialogue and coexistence with the artists, a two-way flow of experiences and knowledge. On this occasion, sound artist Rubén García and physics PhD Pep Vidal have joined the project. Likewise, Makea Tu Vida, a collective that has already intervened in the municipality of Sacañet (Alto Palancia), is once again developing its proposals in the highest municipality in the province of Valencia.

Following these processes of exchange and listening between artists, inhabitants and landscape, specific interventions have been prepared for each locality:

• In La Puebla de San Miguel (Rincón de Ademuz), Makea Tu Vida ggenerates a space of coexistence for its neighbours in the surroundings of the church square.
• In Sempere (La Vall d’Albaida), Pep Vidal has created an intervention that evokes a history inundated by water, reflecting in this way on the limits of control.
• In Carrícola (La Vall d’Albaida), Rubén García invites us to investigate the sound fields of selected places within the municipality and to connect with our capacities as listeners, always through attentive listening.

*The twenty-four localities where the Confluències programme is being developed are the villages of the so-called Route 99, and their interventions are the result of the Generalitat Valenciana’s invitation to the IVAM to take part in this initiative. In addition to the villages of the Alto Mijares phase, other municipalities that make up the route and in which Confluències proposes its intervention programme are: Fuente la Reina, Villanueva de Viver, Matet, Sacañet, Higueras and Pavías (Mancomunidad Alto Palancia) Vallibona, Herbés, Palanques, Villores and Castell de Cabres (Els Ports); in the province of Castellón: Sempere, Carrícola and La Puebla de San Miguel in the province of Valencia; and Benillup, Benimassot, Famorca and Tollos (El Comptat), in the province of Alicante.