Antònia Folguera is a curator who excels in connecting the realms of digital culture, music, arts, science, and technology. With a diverse portfolio spanning festivals, conferences, podcasts, and radio shows, she fearlessly explores the frontiers of creativity and innovation. As the curator of Sónar+D, the Creative Technologies Conference affiliated with the renowned Sónar Festival, Antonia orchestrates a convergence of ideas, inviting visionaries from various disciplines to push the boundaries of art and technology.
Her influence extends beyond Sónar+D, as she actively participates in curatorial teams for the Eufònic Festival and STRP, fostering groundbreaking artistic expression and technological exploration. Additionally, as a co-founder of XRCB, the Barcelona Community Radio Network.
In this blog post, we delve into Antonia's remarkable journey as a curator, exploring her unique perspective, notable contributions, and her endeavors in digital culture. We also explore the exciting themes of this year's Sónar+D.
Can you share with us how you started your career in music? What motivated you to pursue this path?
Oh, well, I have to go way back when I was a teenager; I've always loved music, and I’ve always wondered how things work. If I have a piece of technology, I’d normally take it apart just to see what's inside (I kind of don't trust things that I don't know how they work). I've always been interested in music technology, and when I was little, I was wondering where certain sounds, e.g. a synthesizer come from. I would find information wherever I could when it wasn't obvious to me when I saw I don't know “Duran Duran” on TV; if this is not a guitar, what is it?
We are fortunate enough to have many local radios in Catalonia, and I started a radio show in my village. I knocked on the station’s door, and I said, “Hello, I'm Antònia. I'm just across the street, and I'd love to do a music show”, so they invited me to the studio and showed me how the equipment work - the mixer and the turntables and all of these things. And so, in about 20 minutes, I was making my show and kind of curating the music that I liked. And at some point, I started to talk about how the music was done.
Basically, I was trying to tell what I was learning to the people who might not know, and I think that I have done this my whole life on the radio, then later on TV and now in festivals. For me, there is not much difference between curating a radio show or a TV show and curating something that will happen on a stage at a festival. I think that the ideas can be exposed to the audience in different places and different formats. And I have been thinking about what formats can be used to present those ideas. I love the radio, I still work in radio, but I also like audiovisuals, I like film and video, and I think about how I can tell certain stories visually. That's how we, e.g. designed one of the stages at Sonar; we asked the artists and the scientists, can you tell us your story? A festival is our life context with which things happen in real-time - with an audience that's in the flesh, in the space with you and with the artists and the guest.
With the ever-evolving landscape of digital culture, music, arts, science, and technology, how do you stay up-to-date with the latest trends and advancements in these fields?
I think people that have a communication or journalistic background are always actively searching and actively investigating and very actively listening sometimes because ideas can come from everywhere. But basically, the internet is the number one source for everything. I’m also trying to search “dark” corners of the internet for information where I can discover interesting ideas and interesting people etc. So I would say the number one source is the internet; the number two source is other events, other festivals, other conferences or other things that might happen. I don't know in my city, in my neighbourhood or around the world- like this is a very good source of information and inspiration. Also, the people that you meet everywhere, and sometimes people that you meet in places that you wouldn't think of. Suddenly you meet someone, and you're so well, who are you? What do you do? And then but little things spark your imagination. I would advise people who would like to work as a curator in a festival context; always go to places and meet people. I come from a radio background, and sometimes, my excuse to meet people is so that people tell me about what they do, so I set up an interview with them, record it and air it on the platforms where I work at.
How do you stay grounded on a challenging day?
I wish I had the right answer because it's very challenging sometimes; just to find that thing that will help help you focus or that will help you not to be too stressed. So for me normally music helps a lot. I like finding the right music for the right moment. Sometimes I'm very annoyed until I find the right song; if I'm not finding the right song, I try another one and another one. Music always helps. I also love dancing. I think that it's one of the best ways to relax and also to express yourself. I find that by dancing, I can express things that I don't know words or other things. I also like to do simple things like strolling around my neighbourhood. Go into the local bar around the corner, talk with people whose lives had nothing to do with what I do. This keeps me grounded in the physical space that I live in and that I interact with. I spend a lot of time on my computer because I like to spend a lot of time on the Internet. It's part of my life. It keeps me grounded just to get away from it and into things that are apparently not interesting at all.
Photo Credit; https://sonar.es
Sònar+D is known for exploring the intersection of art science and digital culture; what is this year's central theme?
At Sònar+D, we work around three to four topics which we articulate on the programme; this leaves room to breathe, to have more variety and to explore different perspectives. Exploring a topic and not being too strict about it gives richness to the festival, and so this year, we work on an important topic. It's the topic of the year, the topic of last year, which is Artificial Intelligence - a topic we've been covering since 2016. What we try to do every year is to see how artists are using this technology, how they appropriate it to push their artistic and aesthetic language and their views about the world using AI. We also reflect, think and explore the ethical implications of this technology, so every year, we invite someone who is an expert in the field of ethics and artificial intelligence.
This year we are focusing more on robotics, thinking about artificial intelligence with a body. We are inviting Kate Darling, who is a researcher at MIT. She is an intellectual property scientist who also specialises in robotics and ethics.; I think her talk is going to be super, super enlightening and will hopefully bring some perspective in this area. People are either worried or excited when they think of artificial intelligence, so this topic concerns us all.
We explore different topics from the perspective of creativity, and that's climate emergency. We are inviting a biologist that’s also a sound artist from Norway called Jana Winderen - she works in what people call “acoustic ecology”, and her expertise is in recording in aquatic environments - she records little crustaceans that live on eyes or giant mammals such as whales. She is one of these people with a huge, hairy microphone (it looks like they are fishing for sounds or hunting for sounds). Jana will show us how she works and what we discover through sound data. She will teach us in a way how we can listen to our back garden or balcony or the square around the corner with birds and different beings that perhaps we should pay more attention to. I think that her work is incredible.
There is this audio-visual Research Group here in Barcelona called Play Modes; they usually do large-scale installations. They work with light with video with different technologies like motors and all kinds of amazing things. And they are wondering, as artists who work with technology, what would happen if they consciously decide not to use electricity or to keep doing their job, you know, big large-scale light installations without computers.
We're going to have the writer and artist Claire L. Evans (singer of the Grammy-nominated pop group YACHT), that’s working with advanced and edgy technology in her own way. Lately, she has been exploring the overlaps between nature and technology; her talk is going to be visual, and it's going to feature imagery by the artist Sofia Crespo that works with AI, creating images that are inspired by biology.
Looking at some of the AI topics you are going to explore this year, which are the ones that you believe present the greatest challenge in terms of tracking and addressing; the ethical use of AI or copyright issues?
That's a good question that I really don't know where to start to answer. I think that these are both issues that interact together, and they kind of shape what culture, in general, will look like. They are also going faster than we thought, shaping who we are and how we behave in the world. We can, let's say, address questions and concerns in terms of; how to certify intellectual property, how you pay authors and artists for their work, or how you pay them for their work being used without permission, which is what is happening right now that many of these artificial intelligence tools are trained with, basically our data, what we've been vomiting on the internet for the last 20 years or work from artists that nobody has asked them whether they wanted to be part of this dataset. I would say property economy and also the different ways in which we will start to interact with the internet and with each other. I'm not sure at what moment.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Sònar is celebrating 30 years, so both Sònar and Sònar+D are going to be a party in celebration. And so I would invite everybody to come and celebrate with us!
Connect with Antònia Folguera:
Twitter: @bzzzbip, Instagram: @bzzzbip & LinkedIn
Thu, Jun 15, 2023 - Sat, Jun 17, 2023