PEP GATELL

The art, design, and new media school LABA Valencia, in collaboration with the Espai Tactel Gallery and Valencia World Design Capital 2022, presents the Blablanights masterclass cycle.

Pep Gatell was in charge of the 2nd masterclass of the cycle, held on March 26, 2021, with an intense and enriching session on “Performing Arts and Technology,” in which he reviewed the forty-year history of the group La Fura Dels Baus, always at the forefront of technology.

The masterclass is available for a month in the video located at the top of this same page.

Pep Gatell, President and main promoter of the Fundación Épica, has been the Artistic Director of La Fura dels Baus since 1980.

La Fura dels Baus is a company in constant evolution that has tackled, since its founding in 1979, innovative challenges in the field of performing arts. Its actions, performances, opera, cinema, theater, and its research on the integration of technology and new media with the performing arts have made a significant impact both with critics and international audiences. It is no exaggeration to say that since “Accions” (1983), La Fura dels Baus has become a cult group for thousands of followers worldwide.

Pep Gatell has participated in the company’s productions, always contributing and integrating the most technological aspects (synthesizers, CD-ROMs, websites, user-performance dynamics, 3D stereoscopes, phone applications for performances, among others). He has directed more than 250 different productions across theater, installations, performances, large-scale shows, cinema, and operas, performed on four of the five continents.

He was the director of the group’s first digital theater laboratory, Work-In-Progress-97, creating telepresence between cities connected by RDSI with real and virtual actors. He collaborated on the early editions of ArtFutura, an environment that allowed him to work with robotic engineers from Silicon Valley’s Survival Research Laboratories as a technical producer in Barcelona. He also worked with Rebeca Allen, a video artist and programmer of the first flight simulators for the U.S. Air Force. Together, they created El Bosque Animado, with 120 undulating monitors on the ceiling of the Mercat de les Flors in Barcelona.

At ArtFutura, he presented Palau de la Memoria, with videos by Marc Neale and Grant Gee, and music by John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin).

He has given lectures at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Elisava, IED, and in the architecture departments, both in Master’s and Postgraduate courses dedicated to scenic space.

He has taught courses on the language of La Fura dels Baus and over 30 workshops/workshows. Always in search of new perceptions in his works, he collaborates with the R&D department of the third-best restaurant in the world, Mugaritz, where he also directed the documentary Campo a través, which was presented at the Berlinale in 2016.

In the La Fura dels Baus performance M.U.R.S., he is responsible for the audiovisual aspect, particularly the mobile app, developing a new interactive platform, which is always a hallmark of the company.