YOU GOT TO GET IN TO GET OUT. The never-ending sound continuum at La Casa Encendida

Artists: John Akomfrah, Sergi Botella, Lucía C. Pino, Tony Cokes, Lou Drago, Cyprien Gaillard, Paula García-Masedo, Frédéric Gies, Rubén Grilo, Ania Nowak, Michele Rizzo, Alona Rodeh

Exhibition title: YOU GOT TO GET IN TO GET OUT. The never-ending sound continuum

Curated by: Sonia Fernández Pan, Carolina Jiménez

Venue: La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain

Date: October 6, 2021 – January 9, 2022

Photography: Galerna Foto, Begoña Solís and Arturo Laso, La Casa Encendida, 2021 / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists, La Casa Encendida, Madrid and the respective copyright holders

YOU GOT TO GET IN TO GET OUT. The never-ending sound continuum is a project born from a long-term process of research stemming from and moving towards techno. The project began officially in 2018 when we started to develop a new relationship with techno based on curatorial practice and art. But it also began long before that, in the experiences each of us had on countless dance floors through a variety of techno music styles and the wealth of knowledge we accumulated in a continuous process of flux and remix. The ungraspable genealogies, the rhythms on the surfaces and the mythologies in the depths, the most visible of stories and the fuzziest inner-histories, the footnotes, the heartbeats in the sweat of bodies, the canonical and the apocryphal writings, the leaps of the needle, the cultural objects, the moments of celebration and the spaces of conflict of techno all breath within this project.

The monthly podcasts and the collectively-authored book of critical essays on the culture of techno are now joined by the homonymous exhibition, YOU GOT TO GET IN TO GET OUT. The never-ending sound continuum, and a live music programme that will take place during the course of the show. The exhibition (re)produces and extends a gesture in which the experiential condition of the dance floor meets the practices of art. The choice of works and artists that provides the show with rhythm and structure emerges from intuition and desire, notching directions and meanings within the context of a sound continuum that also includes a fragmentation of materials and discourses. The kinds of connections that can take place, beyond the representation of bodies and spaces of the techno culture, in the spaces of art continue to be a source of fascination to us. When the thread of the homogenising narrative is consciously lost, what links the works to one another? What, beyond sound itself, is the hyperlinking materiality of a musical culture? Is it possible to give shape in an exhibition to an emotional synchronicity of aesthetic bodies that resembles that of the many dance floors? What are the gestures and rhythmic experiences of an exhibition? What relations and affections take shape beyond language, beyond the motions of dance? What cultural, political and social domains do these aesthetic practices go through?

YOU GOT TO GET IN TO GET OUT. The never-ending sound continuum is arranged as a mix of works, that from their situated perspective, attempts a kind of dialectical recombination whose centre is a crossing. The show is a proposition of pieces that have been deliberately fractured and disorganically entangled through the synthesis of a montage that aims to reflect what we might call the transitivity of the 4/4 rhythm of electronic music. The diegetic effect is twofold and hides a contradiction: continuity is built upon its own discontinuity.

The series of artists and works that are brought here together here intertwine the culture of techno and the dance floor by means of synaesthesia, rhythms and elements that are shared, repeated, reappropriated and elaborated anew. In turn, each artist and each work suggest alternative crossings whose experience infuses continuous imbrications of historical events, archaeological futures, displacements in space and time, lost origins and hybridisations in transit, as well as technologies, objects, materials, bodies and patterns that rewrite a culture that is inscribed upon them. A spectrum of tensions emerges from the midst of hauntological materiality, oscillating between the support, the liberation and the subjugation of the bodies—as present as they are absent—of a culture that began to stir in Detroit and became a global phenomenon that is endowed with the ability to enter and exit its own codes, spaces and hegemonic strategies.

Podcasts
F-on, rkss, Cio D’Or, tuuun, Magui Dávila & Felisa, Efe Ce Ele aka Feli Cabrera López, Damián Schwartz, Aho Ssan, Rey Sapienz, Refracted, Paula Koski, Hyperaktivist, Adriana Lopez, Femanyst, mouseDown, Michelle Ngz, Grand River, MBODJ

Podcast covers
Carlos Sáez

Concerts
Peder Mannerfelt, Valentino Mora, Adriana Lopez, Laura BCR, Topanga Kiddo, Grand River

Book
Tony Cokes, Carolina Jiménez, Matthew Collin, Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson, Magui Dávila, DeForrest Brown, Jr., Mateusz Szymanówka, Gavilán Rayna Russom, Sergi Botella, Cio D’Or, Tara Rodgers, Enrique Mena, Miguel Ángel del Ser, Sonia Fernández Pan

Graphic design
Kentaro Terajima

Cyprien Gaillard, Nightlife, 2015. 3D motion picture,14’56’’. Installation view. Photo by Galerna Foto / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Installation view from You Got To Get In To Get Out. The never-ending sound sontinuum at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain, 2021. Photo by Galerna Foto / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Paula García-Masedo, Umbral (Flight Jacket), 2021. Steel, bomber jackets (1970s USAF Nomex Cold Weather CVC Flight Jacket, 1970s USAF MA-1 Bomber Jacket, 1980s USAF CWU-45/P Bomber Jacket, 1990s commercial MA-1 Bomber Jacket, 1990s commercial CWU-45/P Bomber Jacket), printing on acetate, jewelry and Puzzle club curtain. Dimensions variable. Photo by Galerna Foto / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Paula García-Masedo, Umbral (Flight Jacket), 2021 (detail). Steel, bomber jackets (1970s USAF Nomex Cold Weather CVC Flight Jacket, 1970s USAF MA-1 Bomber Jacket, 1980s USAF CWU-45/P Bomber Jacket, 1990s commercial MA-1 Bomber Jacket, 1990s commercial CWU-45/P Bomber Jacket), printing on acetate, jewelry and Puzzle club curtain. Dimensions variable. Photo by Galerna Foto / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Installation view from You Got To Get In To Get Out. The never-ending sound sontinuum at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain, 2021. Photo by Galerna Foto / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Rubén Grilo, Orbe, 2021. 4K vertical video on loop. Installation view. Photo by Galerna Foto / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Rubén Grilo, Orbe, 2021. 4K vertical video on loop. Video frame. Courtesy of the artist

Installation view from You Got To Get In To Get Out. The never-ending sound sontinuum at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain, 2021. Photo by Begoña Solís / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Lucía C. Pino, Grand Bal, 2021 (detail). Plasterboard, aluminum, plaster, fiberglass, fabric, fluorescents, cardboard, paper, ink, paint and plastic with glycerin. Dimensions variable. Photo by Galerna Foto / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Alona Rodeh. Dark Ages 2020, 2019. MDF, aluminum, polycarbonate, plexiglass, LED lights and sound. Dimensions variable. Photo by Galerna Foto / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Installation view from You Got To Get In To Get Out. The never-ending sound sontinuum at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain, 2021. Photo by Galerna Foto / La Casa Encendida, 2021

John Akomfrah, The Last Angel of History, 1995. Single channel video, color, sound, 45’07’’. Instalation view. Photo by Galerna Foto / La Casa Encendida, 2021

John Akomfrah, The Last Angel of History, 1995. Single channel video, color, sound, 45’07’’. Photo by Galerna Foto / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Tony Cokes, Mikrohaus, or the black atlantic?, 2006-2008. Video, black and white, sound, 31’07’’. Instalation view. Photo by Galerna Foto / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Michele Rizzo, HIGHER xtn. at You Got To Get In To Get Out. The never-ending sound sontinuum at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain, 2021. Photo by Begoña Solís / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Ania Nowak, Deep Inside at You Got To Get In To Get Out. The never-ending sound sontinuum at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain, 2021. Photo by Begoña Solís / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Yandira aka Sergi Botella, El tío Caramelo at You Got To Get In To Get Out. The never-ending sound sontinuum at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain, 2021. Photo by Begoña Solís / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Lou Drago, Radical Sociability: Enacting Intersectional Affinity at You Got To Get In To Get Out. The never-ending sound sontinuum at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain, 2021. Photo by Arturo Laso. Courtesy of La Casa Encendida / La Casa Encendida, 2021

Frédéric Gies, Technosomatics at You Got To Get In To Get Out. The never-ending sound sontinuum at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain, 2021. Photo by Begoña Solís / La Casa Encendida, 2021