On July 10, 11, 12 and 13, Parc del Fòrum hosted a new edition of the Festival Cruïlla, and with it, a new unique artistic experience in the city!
The live arts offer complemented the festival’s comedy and music programme throughout its four-day duration. You could unleash your creativity with the Festival Cruïlla 2024 day ticket or pass and kick off the summer in the best way!
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STREET ART BY TRAM
Once again we had the portraits of the festival’s headliners, which this year was created by the 12 winning artists of the Street Art by TRAM competition: Aral, CONNOR, Creto, Dante Arcade, Iván Bravo, Jota López, Lucas Amaral, Malpegados, Nuriatoll, Paula Uceda, Rice and Valentina Wilson.
All of them were chosen by a professional jury formed by Laura Suñé, creative director of the Festival Cruïlla, Marc García from Rebobinart, Claudia Costa from Poblenou Urban District, a member of Graffic Impact and a person representing the TRAM communication and marketing team.
The portraits taken during the festival days also formed part of a competition, the prize for which will be the commission of a poster design for TRAM for its 20th anniversary, which will be remunerated with €5,000. The winner will be selected by the jury and will be announced the days after the festival.
OFFF Festival and Vasava presented the digital creativity and scenography of the Estrella Damm Stage
The Estrella Damm Stage hosted again this year, not only the concerts of the headliners of the Festival Cruïlla 2024, but also a unique and unprecedented scenographic proposal. The stage exhibited graffic art pieces:
‘Tierra’ – Josue Ibañez (Mexico)
‘Tierra’ is an interpretation of landscapes in motion, utilizing video footage from the Cruïlla Festival and sunsets in Barcelona to recreate moments reminiscent of Impressionist techniques from the 19th century. Viewers perceived traces and movements within these landscapes that intertwine to evoke impressions of the energy and atmosphere experienced at Festival Cruïlla.
‘Bingo’ – Vasava Studio (Barcelona)
‘Bingo’ is a space under construction, fueled by dreams and visions. It’s a laboratory of trial and error where luck and frustration intertwine in an irritating monotony. It is a digital box where we store programmed and self-contained scenes, each one a discarded idea awaiting its moment to come to fruition. Here, fortune and misfortune converge in a provocative game of chance. Will your luck change with the next ball? Each new ball represents an opportunity, a spark of hope amidst the chaos.
‘Urban Anomalies’ – Baugasm (Albania)
Vasjen Katro, known as Baugasm, presented the striking work ‘Urban Anomalies’, capturing the unplanned architectural evolution of Tirana in the post-communist era. This project delves into the chaotic and disordered urban modifications carried out by the citizens of Tirana, who, in the absence of formal planning, transformed the urban landscape into a series of unconventional and unexpected forms. Katro’s vision brings this disordered beauty to life through a dark cinematic lens, highlighting the stark contrast between the planned and the real. This work is not merely a display of unusual architecture; it is a journey to the heart of a city where each building tells a story of necessity and unrestrained creativity.
‘Species’ – Six N. Five (Spain)
Nature undergoes an impressive transformation, reimagining itself with defined edges and geometric elegance, weaving a charming tapestry of the extraordinary. ‘Species’ once again seeks to blur the line between imagination and reality, inviting the viewer to explore a world where organic and geometric elements coexist harmoniously. Through a meditative lens, Ezequiel Pini (Six N. Five) redefines our understanding of nature’s creativity, offering a poetic journey that celebrates the essence of existence in a captivating visual symphony.
‘Gaia’ – PJ Richardson (USA)
Inspired by the ‘Gaia’ hypothesis, which suggests that the Earth functions as a single living organism, the artist has used artificial intelligence as a tool to craft this piece of art. Rather than accentuating our disparities, it seeks to gently celebrate the beauty of motherhood, childhood, nature, and humanity as interconnected facets of a unified and nurturing entity.
‘Maison Autonome’ – Universal Everything (England)
In this generative video work, Universal Everything pushes the boundaries of visual technological innovations to create a fantastic fashion show. These charming characters parade toward the viewer in a random combination of shape, size, and material. Each has its own anthropomorphic walk and personality, wearing a unique garment that could only exist in the digital realm. Their extravagant and seductive haute couture transforms the language of fashion into oversized, fluid, and truly futuristic forms. It presents a positive vision of the future while questioning the role and necessity of designers altogether.
The project was curated by OFFF Festival, a global creative industry platform with expertise in programming, curating, art direction and creative content production.
Lluís Danés presented the set design for the Occident Stage
This year, the new Occident Stage featured the set design of set designer and film director Lluís Danés, who was once again collaborating with the Festival Cruïlla. His creative proposal consisted of a spectacular piece of ephemeral architecture made of metres and metres of red fabric that created an immersive experience for the festival’s audience.
Large-format muralism with the Gargar Festival
After successfully collaborating for the first time with the Gargar Festival, the Penelles Mural and Rural Art Festival, in the 2023 edition, this year we once again had two artists who created two new large-format murals inside the venue.
On the one hand, the multidisciplinary artist from Lugo Bublegum was in charge of creating one of these murals. Influenced by hiphop culture and disciplines such as tattooing, he taught himself to become a professional graffiti artist who has toured the world with his striking yet gentle style that mixes photorealism with elements of graffiti.
On the other hand, the Girona artist Jofre Oliveras was the second artist selected to practice large-format muralism at the Festival Cruïlla 2024. His style is guided by classical expressions rooted in Mediterranean culture, characterised by a commitment to the present and a constant dialogue with the social context.
Fira de Tàrrega presented the LOOPHOLE light installation by Calidos
One of the great novelties of the Festival Cruïlla 2024 was the presence of the LOOPHOLE light installation by Calidos, the Catalan company founded in 1995 that is dedicated to visual arts and technology applied to art, which this year hosted the new Silent Disco stage. The stage was active for four hours each day and was an immersive musical experience with a DJ programme designed by important Barcelona music collectives and projects located in the heart of the festival site.
The LOOPHOLE, which came to Barcelona for the first time after its premiere at the Burning Man Festival and which was the first collaboration between the Festival Cruïlla and the Fira de Tàrrega, is an artistic light installation inspired by the geometric shape of the earth’s magnetic field.
Poblenou Urban District presented the artistic proposal ART BARCELONA
The association formed by professionals, companies and organizations of the creative and cultural sector of Barcelona, the Poblenou Urban District, brought various artistic initiatives under the name ‘ART BARCELONA‘. Firstly, the WAC (Windows Art Circuit), the annual circuit promoted by Poblenou Urban District where the public is allowed to experience the creative process live, will present the work of several multidisciplinary artists.
On the other hand, Francisco de Pájaro, in front of the Art is Trash project, created live sculptures with the waste generated at the festival. In the field of performance, the artist Nathalie Rey made us reflect on consumerism and spectacularisation.
There were also murals by I MEDIANERAS I, Aleix Font, DOMINI, El Dios de los Tres, Paste Up – Rockaxson and Aphrodite. Finally, the artists Asis Percales and Geco lead a participatory macrocomic in the form of a mural in which the festival audience was able to take part.
