Last November, in the context of the XIV Mostra Sonora i Visual at the Centre Cívic Convent de Sant Agustí, South Plug presented Plaça Sense Cel (Square Without Sky), an audiovisual work that opens a space for listening and reflection in relation to the bombing of Sant Felip Neri square, which occurred in Barcelona in 1938, during the Spanish Civil War. An experience in which real-time analogue synthesis and simultaneously generated visuals construct a dramaturgy that speaks of uncertainty, anticipation, impact, ruin, and what remains after.
Plaça Sense Cel — Recorded on November 13th, 2025, Sala Noble del Convent de Sant Agustí, Barcelona
Barcelona, November 1938. Sant Felip Neri square was bombed during the Spanish Civil War. It was not a military target, but an aerial attack against the civilian population. The marks of the projectiles are still visible on the facades of buildings around the square, like scars in stone. This bombing is part of a series of aerial attacks on Barcelona between 1936 and 1939, which left thousands dead and transformed the war into something unprecedented. Sant Felip Neri was one of those specific moments that condenses that horror. A place where panic, noise, and death arrived suddenly and irreversibly.
It is from this event that the narrative of Plaça Sense Cel is born. The Mostra Sonora i Visual and the Convent de Sant Agustí generated an open call in 2025, conceived for creative proposals that would relate to Barcelona’s historic neighborhoods and their memory. South Plug responded to that invitation with this work.
The dramaturgy of the work flows through five moments: calm, alert, impact, darkness/ruin, mourning/respite. They do not appear as separate blocks, but as layers that overlap and dissolve. The audience moves between what was, what happens, what remains. The work was created as a rehearsed improvisation: layers, textures, and intensities were defined, as well as a specific area of movement and both sonic and visual elements, but space was left open for reinterpretation within each layer.
“This work does not seek to literally represent what happened, but rather to generate a space for reflection around this historical fact, combined with what the work itself can generate in each person. Although it is situated in a concrete fact, it functions on its own: it is not necessary to know what happened in that square to be affected by the work. It could well be situated in the current context we live in globally, which makes it quite timeless”, explains Juan de Dios Valdivieso, director of the work.
Live music was produced by Free Norman, a duo formed by Toni Gutiérrez and Carlo Juranccelli, who specialize in analog and modular synthesis.
Toni Gutiérrez is a sound designer and electronic luthier (Antonus Synths). Specialist in pure analogue synthesis, instrument construction and maintenance. In Plaça Sense Cel he provides the timbral body of the work: bass drones that sustain, basses that tremble, granular layers that are processed live. Pure hardware, without digital mediation.
Carlo Juranccelli is a musician and producer. He works with synthesizers, drum machines and samplers. His signature is rhythmic, dark, textural, with roots in trip-hop and mechanical pulse. He is responsible for the forward motion, the rhythmic tension, how time flows toward the impact.
The generative visuals were produced and controlled by Xina Pucheta and Micaela Villafañe (audiovisual communicator), who worked with textures, shadows, superpositions, and masks through TouchDesigner, all in real time, synchronized to the emotional curve of the work.
Directed by Juan de Dios Valdivieso (South Plug). He articulates the concept, the script, and overall vision, the sound-visual dramaturgy, how the work breathes.
From the invitation of Festival Mostra, we seek to present Plaça Sense Cel in new spaces, understanding that it is a work that does not repeat itself — no two presentations will ever be the same —, because of the component it has: not only the control of modular electronic music, but how the work is constituted in terms of script. Moments rather than scores.
