Aire at Art All Night: Nuit Blanche DC

A cinematic, musical and poetic proposal that travels through cities, memories and time, exploring the nomadic nature of our lives.

Art All Night: Nuit Blanche DC is an all-night exploration and celebration of contemporary art, encompassing five of DC’s most vibrant neighborhoods. With this festival Washington, D.C. joins a global network of Nuit Blanche all night arts events that started in Paris in 2002 and has captivated audiences from Toronto to Tel Aviv.

Aire: Visual Concert for Nomads

• Laia Cabrera: film director, filmmaker and video artist.
• Javier Moreno: Musical Director, Composer and double bass.
• Isabelle Duverger: projection mapping, visuals and animation.
• Musicians: Amy Kang, cello; Amanda Lo, violin; Roman Filiú, alto sax; George Dulin, keys; Jeff Davis, drums.

Aire is a cinematic, musical and poetic piece designed as a site-specific visual concert created and directed by Laia Cabrera (filmmaker and video artist) and Javier Moreno (composition, double bass) in collaboration with Isabelle Duverger (animation and projection mapping), into an allegory of images traveling thought time and space and powerfully scored by an original musical suite for those seeking permanently, never having the feeling of forever.

The multimedia show merges immersive video mapped projection design with performing arts by featuring video art and live visuals with an international concert ensemble.

Aire starts with a tune whistled as an evocative element that once playing, recalls the memories, drawing the listener into images of other lives, to the cities we inhabit and live, where we fell in love and built ourselves to then leave them behind.

Exploring the nomadic nature of our lives in a geographical and emotional level, the viewer is taken on an adventure through the senses, where love and traveling are intertwined in an inseparable way, telling the story of the ephemeral and the eternal. How do you leave a country? How do you stay? How do you create ties and embrace or abandon relationships?

This visual musical score explores new ways of using the space and the visual imaginary as a tool for narrative storytelling and audience connection. This international collaborative project was born from research and this expansive spirit.

We use cinema, music and performing arts to challenge all preconceptions, including narrative structure, logical thinking, or boundaries with the audience. It seemed clear that the natural step for us was to join forces with artists from different disciplines to create a new language. We wanted to explore very concrete and recognizable situations in all its artistic possibilities with the ultimate goal to expand our realities and perspectives.

We approach the design as a combination of content and imagery and the way that imagery is displayed. We use different video streams to map the architectural surface, searching for new ways of staging the public space; driven by both the scenographic and dramaturgical aspects.

This project, forged in New York, searches for new forms of expression within the creative frame of contemporary art. The creation of suggestive atmospheres, sustains a collective pulse accentuated by the international diversity of its artists.