Dirty - Juan Dominguez
Sound creation & Live operator
performance - installation
From Plato’s allegory of the cave to the empirical knowledge of the Enlightenment: visibility was (and is) seen as the gateway to truth in Western society. In Dirty, Juan Dominguez presents sound and touch as alternative ways to create new ways of connecting and disrupting hierarchies, and thus radically destabilizing capitalism. Marx predicted that, in our capitalist society, labour would become increasingly alienated from the body. Today, digital interactions increasingly replace physical contact.
In such a world, touch is an act of resistance. Dominguez draws on ‘ayni’ – a concept from the Andes that states: you touching the land means that you are also touched by it. The cosmology of the Yoruba is also inspiring. In this worldview, sound is not a passive but an active force that mediates between people, their ancestors, and the divine. It is reminiscent of Pauline Oliveros’ deep listening: in other words, a form of attention that is slow, deliberate, and communal. These new forms of touch and listening create spaces for collective healing, recognition of the agency of matter, and cultivation of empathy.
This is precisely what the artist aims for as he guides the public through an exhibition, a sound installation, and a clay laboratory. Each phase stimulates different forms of touch and listening. The exhibition focuses on pre-sculptural clay faces and text fragments in clay. Neither figurative nor representative, they evoke the ambiguity of human expression. In the lab, the audience become makers, shaping clay without technical expertise or toward a fixed result. They work in a collective, organic process, focusing on shared labour and time and challenging fixed narratives. A final object is not the goal: the act of making is itself central.
Dirty explores the dominance of looking by emphasizing the critical capacity of touching and listening. The performance unfolds through three intertwined experiences − an exhibition, a sound installation and a clay laboratory − each offering different ways of dealing with touching, listening and making. Juan Domínguez’s work emphasizes the participatory aspect of performance and seeks new ways of responsibility, involvement and co-authorship of all participants. Dirty invites us to ask: What do we listen to when we touch? What do we touch when we listen?
concept and direction Juan Domínguez | artistic accompaniment Julia Rodríguez | sound design Eric Desjeux | a production by Juan Domínguez | with the support of EUROPALIA, La Casa Encendida (Madrid), La Gienta (Granada) | residencies at La Gienta (Granada-Spain), Merida-Mexico Festival Transversales, Valladolid-Spain Teatro Calderón, GC De Markten (Brussels-Belgium), KWP and Kaaitheater
21-22/11/2025 - Europalia @ Kaaistudio - Brussels (BE)
13/12/2025 @ Florencia (Spain)
