What we are on in fall '24



We keep on steadily working on the new piece, 

making music, projections and other stuff necessary. 

This is a small fragment of a projection from Luoghi, by Locus LRM Performance.

The image is an analog projected still life, partly frozen into epoxy and transformed by the lenses.

The music is a mix of Dan Bau, Pure intonation portative, and Hosho and Likembe (with the buzzers) played by us.





 

New plans include fixing our new working space and finding two movement collaborators

for the new piece Luoghi plus also — and likely this will go first— for  the previous piece Kowloon, 

which will be shown again sometime soon and needs some rehearsing



Getting ready for 2023



Despite the many vicissitudes this autumn we keep working on Luoghi (which was intended as a working title but likely it will remain). 

For this winter we are refining music and sound —always a pivotal part of the structure of the piece—and also thinking about rehearsals and personnel, and mainly on setting up / strike stuff. 




Considering the practical part of setting up a piece, what is viable or not ends up being the gist of the piece. 

Many artists and most art related people do not seem to realise how results, especially in terms of form, depend on that. 




Summer 2021



 Estamos buscando un mejor espacio de trabajo, mirando opciones, y nuevos intérpretes. Ya vacunados, quizá sea posible volver a trabajar en estudio pronto; crucemos los dedos

We're looking for a better working space, looking for options, and new performers. Vaccinated already, perhaps we could work in studio again soon, cross our fingers. 



Goodbye 2020, welcome 2021


 



    During this abnormal 2020 we kept working on Luoghi,  while the plans for a presentation of Kowloon in London and Luoghi rehearsals await.  



We have been focusing on all the stuff that can be done at home, whilst working with new collaborators in the studio remains unsafe.



 We kept on working on our usual analog projections; we modified old machines and created the sort of "still life" backgrounds (or foregrounds, and in-between too) we need for some scenes 





We wanted to create watercolor-like scenes, with the difficulty of transfering these colours to live movement with light fixtures, projectors, props and performers. After much pondering we found a way, we will refine it in the studio;  you will see it in our presentation.

 Part of the music ( yes, we call it music, not sound-whatever) is also being prepared at home. 



We really hope the situation allows us to go on pretty soon, and does not leave a too profound scar on arts, especially live art. Trust human resilience.    

LRM Locus- presentation at Momentum World - Leicester UK february 2020



LRM Locus' creative directors will be presenting "Creative interdisciplinary work for a Changing World"
 at the Momentum World Erasmus+ meeting in Leicester, UK 
on February 10 to 13 - 2020.

LRM Locus in Romania - Erasmus+ Program




These days we were invited to participate in an Eramus+ meeting in  Constanza, Romania. There we held a talk and workshop about LRM Performance /Locus and our creative process.
It was a real pleasure to meet some new friends  and to share knowledge and amity.
Thank you so much to our host  Youth Vision and to  BB&R for their support










LRM Locus at Eisfabrik Hannover




Next 28th April, LRM Locus will be at Eisfabrik in Hannover, invited by Atelier Eisfabrik Pepa Salas Vilar to talk about in interdisciplinary work and our projects. 



Kowloon, Miniere Sonore Festival 2018 : Rumor(s)cena Magazine article

Con motivo del estreno en Italia de Kowloon la revista Italiana Rumor(s)cena publica este realmente estupendo artículo de la historiadora del Arte Idoia Hormaza



Esta es la traducción al castellano.

On the occasion of the Italian premiere of Kowloon the Italian magazine Rumor(s)cena publishes this really great article by Art historian Idoia Hormaza
Scroll down for english translation


Ocurre que las reglas se llevan impresas en el cerebro.
Ante un espectáculo inesperado, inconscientemente se buscan nexos. 
Las  luces, aquellos sonidos, aquellas acciones.

Kowloon bebe de inspiraciones, entre otras cosas, asiáticas (no en vano el título se corresponde con el nombre de un barrio en Honk-Kong) busca romper con la narración lineal. El espectador se halla doblemente inmerso en una oscuridad, la de la negrura inicial del escenario y la de la lógica. 

Se construye un espacio para la imaginación en la que se trata de recuperar la esencia de un arte dejando de lado lo aprendido. Toma de aquí y de allá pero con un carácter eminentemente interdisciplinar, reivindica la imaginación en un estado puro, sin condicionantes, sin referencias, sin antecedentes. 

¿Qué es lo eminentemente característico de una función representada por actores?
Si vamos más allá del teatro, más allá de la performance, más allá de la música, más allá del espectáculo lumínico, más allá, aún, más allá de las representaciones, de los tiempos, de los personajes, de los idiomas… LRM Locus parece querer atrapar en lo efímero la ruptura. 
El público queda totalmente desubicado y sujeto entonces por fonemas visuales y acústicos que no componen un léxico al uso. No hay léxico, no hay frases, no hay sintaxis… queda una masa informe de emociones trepidantes que suben y bajan, que sacuden y que sorprenden.

Otro logro maravilloso es el de la posibilidad de leyes físicas opuestas, la gravedad-la ingravidez, la luz-la oscuridad, el movimiento-la quietud… Transcurren los sucesos difíciles de detectar, de acotar, el cerebro no tiene el tiempo de aferrarse a certeza alguna. Kowloon se sucede sin esperar. Serpentea, vuela, ondea, se expande, se mece, grita, se imprime, se revuelve, se duerme… 

Al contrario que en los buenos trucos de magia, desvelar los materiales que lo hacen posible tan sólo desvelan más belleza. Cada pequeño componente de Kowloon es una obra de arte en sí misma, no sólo como ingenio y artificio sino también como objeto. Sin nostalgias la tecnología ya obsoleta brota como plantas de las sepulturas. Donde una pantalla de móvil rota se expresa y se convierte en decenas de estrellas, el paso de uno a otro, ese lapso en la indeterminación, de éste y mil y un detalles es Kowloon. 

Al contrario de lo que ocurre con los organismos vitales, diseccionar Kowloon no supone su muerte sino en una ciencia acientífica, y por ende de creatividad exponencial, descubrir otras formas de vida, de arte. 

Si en este Kowloon hay alguna muralla, evocando al original, sería el del fin de la función: la realidad.

Info sobre el estreno en Italia (en Italiano e Inglés) : 

English 
      It happens that the rules remain imprinted in our brain. In the face of an unexpected spectacle, we unconsciously tend to look for links. The lights, those sounds, those actions. 

Kowloon draws its inspiration, among other things from Asian references (not by chance the title corresponds to the name of a district of Hong-Kong) and intendedly seeks to break linear narrative. The spectator is doubly immersed into darkness, that of the initial black out of the stage and that of logic. 

A space is created for the imagination which is all about recovering the essence of an art, leaving aside all that has been learned. Taking from here and there but with an eminently interdisciplinary character, it reclaims our imagination in its pure state, without conditions, without references, without antecedents. 

What is eminently characteristic of a play represented by actors? If we go beyond theater, performance art, beyond music, the light show, the performances, time, characters, languages ... 

LRM seems to go after capturing the rupture in the ephemeral. The audience remains totally disorientated and subject to visual and acoustic phonemes that compose no useful lexicon

Without any nostalgia, some already obsolete technology sprouts like plants from tombs. Where a broken cell phone screen expresses itself and becomes dozens of stars, the transition from one to the other, that period of indeterminacy, this and a thousand and one details is what Kowloon is. Contrary to what happens to living organisms, dissecting it does not suppose its death for it becomes a non-scientific science with an outcome of exponential creativity, through which we discover other forms of life, of art. 
If there is any wall in this Kowloon walled city –evoking the original one–  it would be the end of the function: reality.


https://www.rumorscena.com/18/08/2018/kowloon-lrm-locus-rivendica-limmaginazione-allo-stato-puro-al-festival-miniere-sonore

More Info on the Italian premiere Here:
http://minieresonore.com/event/lrm-performance-locus-in-concerto-26-agosto-2018/

Kowloon –Premiere in Italy –Estreno en Italia


El 26 de Agosto de 2018 estrenaremos Kowloon en Italia: Festival Miniere Sonore 



On August 26th 2018 we'll be premiering Kowloon in Italy at the Miniere Sonore festival



http://minieresonore.com/event/lrm-performance-locus-in-concerto-26-agosto-2018/

Kowloon premiere at Casa de Vacas Cultural Center Madrid



Last July 28th and 29th we premiered Kowloon in Madrid, at Casa de Vacas, a well-known Art Center in Madrid located inside Retiro Park, one of the most important cultural heritage gardens in the center of Madrid.

We had three intense set-up days where we had to adapt and redesign some aspects of the piece  to fit different dimensions from the original format.
We held two quite successful presentations which were completelly sold-out, attended by more than 200 people.








Kowloon en Casa de Vacas







Los días 28 y 29 de julio, a las 20:00 horas LRM Locus presentará Kowloon en Casa de Vacas, en el Parque del Retiro.

La entrada es gratuita hasta completar el aforo
No está permitido tomar fotografías ni grabar vídeo
Recomendado para mayores de 14 años



Kowloon – premiere 24 & 27 Enero 2018



El 24 y 27 de Enero LRM–Locus estrenaremos en España Kowloon
en el espacio de Arte Est_Art, Madrid 




Kowloon es nuestra obra interdisciplinar abstracta de 56  minutos inspirada en aspectos de la cultura cantonesa


Kowloon, de LRM - Locus:  
¡Atención a los horarios que cambian dependiendo del día!

Miércoles 24 Enero – 20.00h

Sábado 27 de Enero – 19.00h 

Entrada gratuita hasta completar aforo. 


Recomendado para mayores de 14 años. 
No está permitido fotografiar ni grabar 

Estaremos encantados de contar con vuestra presencia





Ignacio Vleming Critique of Kowloon by LRM Locus


Ignacio Vleming 

Is editor and scriptwriter of art, culture and tourism videos with a degree in Art History and Audiovisual Communication from the Complutense university working as a journalist, cultural manager and community manager since 2004; worked with the  Spanish Ministry of Culture, 2 de Mayo Cultural Centre, National Museum of Romanticism, and Lázaro Galdiano Foundation. He is author of the poetry  book  “Clima artificial de primavera” (La Bella Varsovia, 2012) and he texts for the game-book “Inspiración Instantánea” (Modernito Books, 2013).

This text is his critique of our work, Kowloon, originally published in spanish in The Underdogs Magazine


KOWLOON, A MYSTERY TO BE PRESERVED

Under the title of Kowloon, the name of a peninsula that is part of Hong Kong and in which its Walled City was overcrowded with chinese exiles for decades, LRM Performance present their latest work: a piece heir to the best avant-garde theater with expressionist lighting and absence of dialogues.

Contrary to what is usually said about non-narrative proposals such as LRM Performance's, Kowloon uses rhythm and tempo with unheard-of exquisiteness, among other reasons because it relies on a solid formal structure –key to the success of any show and the very essence of beauty.

Although it may seem that another order is possible, the different scenes follow each other forming a homogeneous and harmonious whole, unalterable and closed as a universe that has no raison d'etre other than its contemplation. Way to go!


The sound environment, built up of volumes and weights belonging to architecture –areas of light and shade like those evoking the now-destroyed Walled City of Kowloon– generate an atmosphere from which mysterious characters emerge, ranging from the sinister to the tender or from disgusting to the sublime.

It could be said that we are in front of a moving landscape, with its changes in scale and intensity:  the smallest point of the horizon that grows as we approach to it until it becomes a huge cathedral behind which rosette lies nevertheless just a close-up of our own viscera.
I believe many directors and playwrights, even those who practice other kinds of theater –or rather those who do– could handle themselves more easily on stage if they followed the same guidelines that govern this piece.

The public should be asked to attend Kowloon as if they were to watch a firework display, a Ballet or a Mendelssohn concert, and ask no questions about what this play does or does not say. Questions that obviously have no answer, because true art creations conceal a mystery that must be preserved.

Ignacio Vleming, 2017

Kowloon - Silvia Santillana review and critique


"… A disturbing, magical, overwhelming staging, where the harmony of the parts becomes tangible in the eyes of the beholder through the movements, stillness and silences of its players, plus an impeccable technical apparatus, which acts as a catalyst for the most primary pulsations of the human being"


Esta es la traducción del artículo de Silvia Santillana sobre Kowloon,  de LRM Locus, publicado en Va de Arte – 

This is the English translation of the review of Kowloon by Silvia Santillana published at Va de Arte: 

Silvia Santillana is an Art Historian specialized on critique and cultural communication. She is editor at El Cultural (El Mundo newspaper) and at the digital plattform QAH Patrimonio.

Spanish version :


KOWLOON,  OR LRM LOCUS'  IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE 

June 24, 2016



     When the lights go out, darkness overwhelms us, our senses sharpen up. An indescribable feeling surrounds us. A powerful impression lurks in the shadows. We do not know where we are or where we are going. Suddenly, a light constricts our pupils projecting us into an intense, imponderable glow wrappping up an illusory space full of lights and sounds. It's Kowloon (2015), the latest work from the LRM Performance (Locus) collective.


Kowloon is everything and nothing at the same time. A disturbing, magical, overwhelming staging in which the harmony of the parts becomes tangible in the eyes of the beholder through movements, stillness and silences of its players, plus an impeccable technical apparatus which acts as a catalyst for the most primary pulsations of the human being. There is something in Kowloon of a primeval state, of a chrysalis or an amphibian, a transitory state towards another something fleeing the anecdotal and connected to multiple underlying ideas. That idea, those traces of physical and eidetic experiences like frames of a movie or prefigured memories create a lattice, a hive of invertebrate creatures and indefinable shapes, escaping all logic and any categorization.





In Kowloon the idea of ​​the occult, of assembling images and materials compounds the essence of the creative process of this group formed by the performers David Aladro-Vico, composer, and Berta Delgado, visual artist, along with the guest movement performer for this piece, Chen Zhihan. A multidisciplinary work that shuns the traditional and present performance art trend of minimalist space and naked body.  Here, space is a labyrinth, an illusion, where the three performers may get lost, metamorphose, turn into hundreds, into one, or into none. A space that creates new perceptions with screens and mechanisms, revealing a pristine truth through its disguise,  one we can only access through art.


The idea of an ​​indefinable organism, which is cellular and mechanical at the same time is also present in this suffocating space inside the studio and in the beholder's mind; an immersive experience of 56 minutes and 22 scenes, which alludes to the Walled city of Kowloon (Hong Kong), demolished in 1994.

This fort created in the seventeenth century eventually became a Chinese enclave within British territory. Its structure began to grow after World War II, becomng a maze of buildings, one above the other, densely populated, a tangle of conducts, cables and pipes; a jumble of forms where sunlight barely penetrated. This phenomenon was documented in books and films, whose images remain in the memory through various cultural events such as Hong Kong cinema.


But above all, it is the spiritual atmosphere of Kowloon, through artificial lights and sounds, taken and altered from nature itself, which impresses us and puts us in touch with some eastern thought, not only from Hong Kong, but from different sources and locations. Thus Paprika anime film creator Satoshi Kon or master Lao Tse's basics of Taoist philosophy  seem to be present in Kowloon; a performance  disregarding no popular, current or traditional characteristics of Asian culture.

In that mélange of refined, frantic movements, endless lights and sounds, one also seems to contemplate the beginning of civilization itself, being part of the time when Prometheus stole fire from the gods to deliver his gift to mortals. With this action, the protagonist was punished to remain chained in an eternal torment and regeneration cycle which we cannot ignore in this LRM Locus' chaotic and mystical experience, making it clear their influences come not just from the Kowloon peninsula or Asia, but  from human beings and their emotions.



According to LRM Performance (Locus) collective's account :

"Our work seeks unmediated emotions, therefore expressly avoids narration by including the widest possible set of influences, carefully assembled to generate emotions instead of a thread or concept."


Thus, the "Anarchitecture" Gordon Matta-Clark or northern Finland's Onkalo nuclear repository  are just some of the images that make up the universe of Kowloon. In a mix of chance or fate, LRM Performance (Locus) studio is in Usera, the neighborhood with the highest number of chinese settlers from the Canton province in Madrid, along with many  other expatriates from around the world.

Traveling between the physical boundaries of the current political map we realize everything is possible within the human mind; Kowloon is proof of that. Any interpretation is free, and all creative work aims at giving wings to the imagination of the viewer; something LRM Performance -Locus not only achieved but exceeded, by referring us to a pure and chaotic state through the immersive experience of their toiled and wonderful work. "

Silvia Santillana 


Marie-Claire Decay (Museo Salvador Victoria) on LRM Performance / Locus

We had our presence at ARCO –Madrid's big contemporary Art Fair: Marie Claire Decay , president of the Salvador Victoria Foundation discussing on "Current validity of abstract Art" included us LRM Performance-Locus as "new trends in abstraction" 

Tuvimos nuestra presencia en ARCO - la gran feria de arte contemporáneo en Madrid: Marie Claire Decay, presidenta de honor de la Fundación Salvador Victoria incluyó a LRM Performance - Locus como "nuevas tendencias en abstracción" dentro de su conferencia "Vigencia del Arte Abstracto en 2017"



Marie Claire Decay on LRM Performance - ARCO 2017

LRM Locus reviewed in PAC : Young spanish performers you should know


"Diez jóvenes performance españoles que debes conocer" 
artículo en Plataforma de Arte Contemporáneo (PAC), ahí estamos. 

"Ten young Spanish performance you should know about" [sic] 
We LRM Locus are there, at PAC (Contemporary Art Platform) (in spanish):

Translation:   
LRM Performance is an interdisciplinary collective formed by Berta Delgado and David Aladro-Vico, with the collaboration of Chen Zhi-han. 
Their works are abstract, not narrative or conceptual. Transdisciplinary performances  that will not leave you indifferent, where we can find music, light, dance and projections


http://www.plataformadeartecontemporaneo.com/pac/10-jovenes-performance-espanoles-que-debes-conocer/

Kowloon - El Estado Mental magazine - critique


This is the translation of the critique 
– almost an essay– on LRM Locus'  Kowloon, by Angel Alonso, 
published in the magazine El Estado Mental, aug 27th 2016

Esta es la crítica – casi un ensayo– de Angel Alonso sobre 
Kowloon de LRM Locus, 
recién publicado en la revista  El Estado Mental 
– puedes leerlo aquí



There is a backdrop

Kowloon, by LRM Performance-Locus
Angel Alonso


LRM Performance - Locus invited me few weeks ago to a private pass of their new work, entitled 'Kowloon'. I did not know what was I going to witness. I had only seen some photographs. In addition, members of LRM Locus  told me about their interest in Tsai Ming-liang, Roy Andersson, Andrei Tarkovsky, Apichatpong Weerasethakul or Fruit Chan's films. Perhaps that is why I began to wonder how invoking the cinematic memory within the transience of a performance would be. And it certainly stirred such visual memory, but in a much different way than I could have imagined.

Somehow, for this text I try to follow their work's game proposal and build up a non-narrative description of the piece. Therefore, in the following lines descriptions of specific moments of the piece are mixed with personal references to the world that  was stirred up in me when attempting to come back to Kowloon.



Before me, a closed drape. And behind it some sort of corridor. There has to be a wall at the end. But I cannot see it and I want to touch it, when suddenly comes to my mind a television image which may not exist but I want to remember: someone runs down a corridor which ending wall inescapably falls away.

I need to remember that image because I also need to touch what just appeared between the backdrop and that wall I feel moving away. But I can't, and because of it, I remember. Perhaps next time I may be able to touch that threatening, virginal and set adrift realm. Yes, perhaps the next step of LRM Locus will be allowing me to touch what I believe are sea creatures or arborescent crustacea. Or maybe they will allow me to caress and look carefully at it all when the lights come back on and Kowloon is gone. But I'm still in the darkness and I feel the sea so close inside the hall  that the sound of a door is like a ship about to wreck to me. Threatening worlds  you want to get closer to, a bit like what happened to David Drayton in The Mist (Frank Darabont, 2007), when he got out of a car and watched the solemn wandering gigantic creatures coming with mist from another world destroying anyone who dared in.

Kowloon seems also menacing, yet some drops dripping from it and a glimpse between its darkness make it more beautiful than sinister. Three body shaped drops walking around an ocean expelled as to pack it with walls, ratlines or sails to unfurl while the wind is being counted.

Those bodies also fear the sea and its creatures, they look at it downcast and in  quick glances,  discovering it in flashes of light. They may be inside an animal, as they  say Jonah was in a whale. Sometimes they touch the creature and the inside of her womb, or go to the remains of their wrecked barge.

One of them tapped a wall. Looks with its hands, not its eyes. And I feel the joy of hands sliding to touch, just for such joy, fear and faith they have when facing the unexplored, now that their eyes did not succeed in gazing and felt beaten from the distance by something unknown. Hands raised towards a new world, as if this quite determined item towards which we project [1] requests it, and they had to respond,  touching, to the call of the seemingly ignoble materials of Kowloon.

while hands are raining,
light hands, selfish hands, obscene hands,
waterfalls of hands that once were
flowers in the garden of a tiny pocket. [2]




Long time must have passed since I found them at the bottom of that ocean, for suddenly the flowers appear scattered over the body of one of the inhabitants of Kowloon. And the flowers are different, and also fossilized because, in a muddy cave on a remote system or at the bottom of the ocean, minutes are traveled as decades. Bodies that lost their human appearance in a liquid world –for the sea can do anything, as Ariel said to Ferdinand in The Tempest (William Shakespeare, 1611) with a ballad tone that always comes to me when a person is masked with plastics resembling lichens:

Full fathom five thy father lies; 
              Of his bones are coral made; 
    Those are pearls that were his eyes: 
              Nothing of him that doth fade, 
    But doth suffer a sea-change 
    Into something rich and strange. [3]

Then again, how long have they been in Kowloon so that their bodies changed? How much time did unfold before me while lights blink on and off? Did their bodies journey through the different ages of that world or did they simply create new galleries that take it away from me and it becomes strange again? Or maybe I did not even see the same bodies all the time and before me passed, generation after generation, all descendants of those three beings who arrived there one day.

I believe every slight flash of light showing me again that corridor which wall I still cannot gaze at, was enshrining all the Kowloons I once lived in as a traveler or watched on a screen. The experience of shutting and opening your eyes -of interrupted lights - placed me beyond any chronology and yet, allowed me to remember all the stories and lives I inadvertently wished for. It was only a fifty minute trip and escape. While that piece of Hong Kong made me open my eyes to shut them out immediately, the experienced sensation of light taking place at a given time was the condensation of an extraordinarily incomprehensible story, which unfolded in a stumbling world I could only snatch a wisp from.

There lie, succeeding each other, trillions of oscillations, that is, a series of events such that if I wanted to count them, even with the greatest possible economy of time, would require thousands of years. [4]



Images from Kowloon, by LRM performance–Locus, (2016) 
and The Mist (Frank Darabont, 2007)


[1]  Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phénoménologie de la Perceptión (1945)

[2] Cernuda, Luis,  Qué ruido tan triste (1931)

[3] Shakespeare, William,  The Tempest (1611), Ariel's  Song

[4] Bergson, Henri, L'Énergie spirituelle (1919)

Kowloon - El Estado Mental magazine - critique


This is the translation of the critique 
– almost an essay– on LRM Locus'  Kowloon, by Angel Alonso, 
published in the magazine El Estado Mental, aug 27th 2016




There is a backdrop

Kowloon, by LRM Performance-Locus
Angel Alonso


LRM Performance - Locus invited me few weeks ago to a private pass of their new work, entitled 'Kowloon'. I did not know what was I going to witness. I had only seen some photographs. In addition, members of LRM Locus  told me about their interest in Tsai Ming-liang, Roy Andersson, Andrei Tarkovsky, Apichatpong Weerasethakul or Fruit Chan's films. Perhaps that is why I began to wonder how invoking the cinematic memory within the transience of a performance would be. And it certainly stirred such visual memory, but in a much different way than I could have imagined.

Somehow, for this text I try to follow their work's game proposal and build up a non-narrative description of the piece. Therefore, in the following lines descriptions of specific moments of the piece are mixed with personal references to the world that  was stirred up in me when attempting to come back to Kowloon.



Before me, a closed drape. And behind it some sort of corridor. There has to be a wall at the end. But I cannot see it and I want to touch it, when suddenly comes to my mind a television image which may not exist but I want to remember: someone runs down a corridor which ending wall inescapably falls away.

I need to remember that image because I also need to touch what just appeared between the backdrop and that wall I feel moving away. But I can't, and because of it, I remember. Perhaps next time I may be able to touch that threatening, virginal and set adrift realm. Yes, perhaps the next step of LRM Locus will be allowing me to touch what I believe are sea creatures or arborescent crustacea. Or maybe they will allow me to caress and look carefully at it all when the lights come back on and Kowloon is gone. But I'm still in the darkness and I feel the sea so close inside the hall  that the sound of a door is like a ship about to wreck to me. Threatening worlds  you want to get closer to, a bit like what happened to David Drayton in The Mist (Frank Darabont, 2007), when he got out of a car and watched the solemn wandering gigantic creatures coming with mist from another world destroying anyone who dared in.

Kowloon seems also menacing, yet some drops dripping from it and a glimpse between its darkness make it more beautiful than sinister. Three body shaped drops walking around an ocean expelled as to pack it with walls, ratlines or sails to unfurl while the wind is being counted.

Those bodies also fear the sea and its creatures, they look at it downcast and in  quick glances,  discovering it in flashes of light. They may be inside an animal, as they  say Jonah was in a whale. Sometimes they touch the creature and the inside of her womb, or go to the remains of their wrecked barge.

One of them tapped a wall. Looks with its hands, not its eyes. And I feel the joy of hands sliding to touch, just for such joy, fear and faith they have when facing the unexplored, now that their eyes did not succeed in gazing and felt beaten from the distance by something unknown. Hands raised towards a new world, as if this quite determined item towards which we project [1] requests it, and they had to respond,  touching, to the call of the seemingly ignoble materials of Kowloon.

while hands are raining,
light hands, selfish hands, obscene hands,
waterfalls of hands that once were
flowers in the garden of a tiny pocket. [2]




Long time must have passed since I found them at the bottom of that ocean, for suddenly the flowers appear scattered over the body of one of the inhabitants of Kowloon. And the flowers are different, and also fossilized because, in a muddy cave on a remote system or at the bottom of the ocean, minutes are traveled as decades. Bodies that lost their human appearance in a liquid world –for the sea can do anything, as Ariel said to Ferdinand in The Tempest (William Shakespeare, 1611) with a ballad tone that always comes to me when a person is masked with plastics resembling lichens:

Full fathom five thy father lies; 
              Of his bones are coral made; 
    Those are pearls that were his eyes: 
              Nothing of him that doth fade, 
    But doth suffer a sea-change 
    Into something rich and strange. [3]

Then again, how long have they been in Kowloon so that their bodies changed? How much time did unfold before me while lights blink on and off? Did their bodies journey through the different ages of that world or did they simply create new galleries that take it away from me and it becomes strange again? Or maybe I did not even see the same bodies all the time and before me passed, generation after generation, all descendants of those three beings who arrived there one day.

I believe every slight flash of light showing me again that corridor which wall I still cannot gaze at, was enshrining all the Kowloons I once lived in as a traveler or watched on a screen. The experience of shutting and opening your eyes -of interrupted lights - placed me beyond any chronology and yet, allowed me to remember all the stories and lives I inadvertently wished for. It was only a fifty minute trip and escape. While that piece of Hong Kong made me open my eyes to shut them out immediately, the experienced sensation of light taking place at a given time was the condensation of an extraordinarily incomprehensible story, which unfolded in a stumbling world I could only snatch a wisp from.

There lie, succeeding each other, trillions of oscillations, that is, a series of events such that if I wanted to count them, even with the greatest possible economy of time, would require thousands of years. [4]



Images from Kowloon, by LRM performance–Locus, (2016) 
and The Mist (Frank Darabont, 2007)


[1]  Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phénoménologie de la Perceptión (1945)

[2] Cernuda, Luis,  Qué ruido tan triste (1931)

[3] Shakespeare, William,  The Tempest (1611), Ariel's  Song

[4] Bergson, Henri, L'Énergie spirituelle (1919)

The Lighting Mind Magazine- Diego Fraile: Kowloon

Diego Fraile, art historian and journalist wrote this wonderful critique of Kowloon for The Lighting Mind Magazine:




The Reverie of Kowloon, LRM Performance's new project

     "I'm in complete darkness. Behind me, just the pulse of a clock that is synchronized with the beating I feel in my temples. Without a warning, I was blinded by the light. Pierced. With the cadence imposed by roaring noise and ancient instruments, a beast formed of plastic shreds is advancing frontally with secure steps. At its feet, like the arcana of the devil, two figures crawling under the weight of the straps. While green and golden rays of light penetrate the space around me, I struggle between consciousness and the abandonment of the senses. Finally, I let myself be dragged in. I'm in Kowloon.


Berta Delgado, David Aladro-Vico and Zhihan Chen, also known as LRM Performance (Locus) are flesh and blood. However, when their new project Kowloon comes alive, they dissolve into light and sound, actions and emotions. But, despite what this partnership with the immaterial might suggest, the experience of Kowloon holds a tension between the visceral and the purely mental. David Aladro-Vico told us that with this kind of art they sought to break the pervasive and ubiquitous mediation of screens in life and aesthetics. There certainly is depth in Kowloon. Lighting effects and soundtrack surround you and cause a physiological reaction. There is no interaction with the public and the vision is unique and frontal, but the viewer is organically transported in there. It is a physical and sensory experience.




During the development of the piece, I could not help thinking of the realm of dreams. LRM Locus consider narrative an impediment for aesthetic and emotional reception. You cannot make a story of what you are seeing, you can only surrender to the pleasure of the moment and the sublime imagery. As the sleeper awakes and vainly tries to fetch from his memory the dream just parading through his subconsciousness, the Kowloon experience resists being told. Like dreams, it can only be experienced. It is this relationship with the dream which helps to explain the strong sense of distance and at the same time, of participation in the dancing afterglows. 

Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of reverie, tries to capture the wonderful poetic potential of that moment between sleep and consciousness in which neither of the two planes has yet complete power over the other. The moment when, for Bachelard, poetic creation was possible. Kowloon exerts a spell of reverie.



Kowloon comes together in a melting pot of influences from different media, with predominance of asian references, of which its creators speak about without fear. In a time when virtually access to all culture is within the reach of a click, it is absurd to consider yourself a great demiurge. There is much more value in receiving, processing and creation of a new piece through personal baggage. As it always has been said of Picasso, it does not matter how many images he absorbs, but how he digested them. But make no mistake, Kowloon is not a collage of quotations. The iconography –which takes place in scenes combining lights, projections, sounds and actions in the guise of film sequences– constantly amazes and astonishes our eyes and minds.


Retrieving Bachelard once again, he believed the moment of reverie could not be something merely passive, but rather one "asking us to activate our participation in the creative imagination". There is where the magic of the piece lies; each one of us receives and constantly reconstructs it according to his or her own experiences and memories. Where some see the warmth of a post-apocalyptic desert, others see a cemetery of bones or a struggle between good and evil. 
The viewer dwells in Kowloon. The creative act not only derives from its creators, but it continues inside those who experience the work. Therefore, Kowloon, which has no narrative, can not be narrated. It must be lived"