Organisation of Ibero-American States: Oier Etxeberria, Olatz Otalora and Xabier Erkizia

The Organisation of Ibero-American States (OEI) has put together several online talks on Basque language, culture and creation in collaboration with the Basque Delegation in Argentina and Mercosur and the Etxepare Basque Institute. The first was a on Elkano´s round-the-world voyage, organised by Fundación Elkano. Now it is time for Basque art and creation. The event will take place next Wednesday, 1 December, at 5pm in Buenos Aires and 9pm in the Basque Country. In partnership with the Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Art in San Sebastian, Oier Etxeberria, Olatz Otalora and Xabier Erkizia will take part in ´Komunikazio-inkomunikazio´, a discussion on ´communication-incommunication´. To join the event, please fill in the following form.

Following the ideas that gave shape to the project on display this past summer at Tabakalera, the presentation is based on the work ´Lekeitioak´ by Basque singer-songwriter Mikel Laboa. (1934-2008). This series began in the 1980s. The three voices involved in the project today offer a cross between different areas related to Contemporary Art, based on the binomial ‘communication-incommunication’ and taking special interest in artistic artefacts that question the division between popular culture and the avant-garde.

To explore all these themes in depth, the exhibition ‘Komunikazio-inkomunikazio’ presented archives and historical documents together with other new productions promoted by Tabakalera. The works were divided into seven sections, forming a landscape in which sound, visuals and text record overlap.

Etxeberria, Otalora and Erkizia will focus on these three areas. Oier Etxeberria is an artist and musician who has been in charge of visual arts at CICC Tabakalera since 2019; Olatz Otalora works as an artist and gallery assistant and has published essays on various platforms; Xabier Erkizia is a sound artist, radio broadcaster, producer and journalist.

Etxeberria, exhibition curator, will talk about some of the genealogies that run through the History of Basque Art and will provide context for some of the works in the exhibition. The artist and sound researcher Erkizia, who also forms part of the working group of the Komunikazio-Inkomunikazio project, will explore the sounds that have been produced in the Basque Country in recent decades, while Otalora, a participating artist in the exhibition, will perform an artistic intervention that plays with the limits between communication and apparatus, the circulation of signs and the production of meaning.