This festival celebrates sound, music and audiovisual experimentation, research, promotion and advocacy, taking an innovative perspective on the sound arts, related to the use of electronic and digital technologies.
Escuchar [Sonidos visuales] [Listening: Visual Sounds] is a landmark in its field. The festival has run continuously for the past 27 years and is renowned for providing a space for production and experimentation that explores the multiple dimensions of sound. Every year, the festival opens the doors for sound to be expressed in all its splendour, and to be intertwined with the visual and performing arts, creating truly unique events.
In 2025, the festival will echo the theme of the Museo Moderno’s annual programme, Arte Es Teatro [Art Is Theatre], delving into the intersections between music, the theatrical arts and performances. This edition of the festival offers performance-based concerts, a lecture dedicated to the relationships between music, sound and theatre; a hybrid concert; and a sound and light show. Each activity highlights the central role that sound plays in the contemporary scene: capable of transforming spaces, corporealities and modes of perception.
Curated by: Jorge Haro and Leandro Frías
6:30 p.m. Lecture. “Música y teatro: una relación conflictiva. Lo oculto y lo develado del sonido en el teatro” [‘Music and theatre: A conflictive relationship. The hidden and revealed aspects of sound in theatre’], by Rubén Szuchmacher
8:00 p.m. Performance-based concert. Objetos y palabras [Objects and Words]
Carmen Baliero. With the participation of Francisco Benvenuti
A play featuring everyday objects and two actors or actresses, it presents a performative discourse constructed from words as sound objects and uses everyday objects as musical instruments. The words, as an expressive element, are taken from pre-existing texts whose original function had nothing to do with poetic discourse.
9:00 p.m. Performance-based concert. Respira [Breathe]
Javier Bustos
Respira [Breathe] is a sound performance that features an experimental electronic bandoneon built and designed by Javier Bustos, who reinterprets this traditional instrument in a cyborg-like style. The bellows of the bandoneon transform and manipulate specially-programmed samplers and synthesizers, which allow the flow of air to modify the sound and lights of the stage to reflect the movements of the body and the ‘breathing’ of the instrument. The constant flow of air through the bandoneon gives the sound experience an organic feel and invites the audience to respond with their own bodies. In addition to Respira, Bustos will present an ad hoc piece he created for this edition of Escuchar [Sonidos visuales].
11 a.m. Escuchar MINI [MINI Listening]. A concert with students from Schools No. 2, 13 and 23 of School District 5 and School of Music No. 5
Escuchar MINI is a segment of the festival dedicated to creating sound experiences for children. It includes the staging of a concert that brings together audiovisual productions created by primary school pupils from different state schools in the La Boca, San Telmo, Barracas and Pompeya neighbourhoods. It will also include an interpretation of works by twentieth century composers such as Steve Reich and Frederic Rzewski. It is part of an innovative educational project that focuses on expanding listening through experimenting with the materiality of sounds and visuals.
The live performances are coordinated with audiovisual productions that have also been created by the students as part of the Proyecto Distrital de Artes Electrónicas [District Electronic Arts Project] (2025), in which knowledge and productions from the artistic, technological and digital fields converge. The presentation offers a journey through sound and visual interpretations that express interdisciplinary aesthetic relationships.
Teachers: Julio Pérez, Leandro Yabkowski, Silvina Adámoli, Eugenia Aristimuño, Juan Oliva, Lucio Carreira, Anahí Suray Veiga, Roxana Jorge, Natalia Sanz, Rodrigo Noya, Aldo Felaj
Supervisors and support teams: Gabriela Badola, Bibiana Beer, Rosa Chalkho, Diego Portillo, Alex, Carolina del Bono, Eugenia San Julián
8:00 p.m. Hybrid concert
Cecilia Quinteros will present a piece she created especially for this edition of Escuchar [Sonidos visuales], in which she weaves together elements of her previous works, Narel and Qadira, with new material.
9:00 p.m. Sound and light show
Dr. Zoppa (AR/MX)
Dr. Zoppa is the alter ego of Francisco Colasanto. This will mark the premiere of this performance that offers an immersive audiovisual experience that combines experimental electronic music with visual elements and laser projections. The stage design consists of a semi-transparent cube that envelops the performer, serving as a support and container for the performance. From within the structure, Dr. Zoppa unfolds a live performance permeated by Intelligent Dance Music (IDM), algorithmic processes and highly precise rhythmic textures, while the faces of the cube will be transformed into canvases filled with incessantly mutating images.
Rubén Szuchmacher (Buenos Aires, 1951) An actor, theatre director, teacher, playwright, translator and performing arts manager, Szuchmacher graduated from the Teatro Colón’s Instituto Superior de Arte as a régisseur, or stage manager, and also studied dance, under Ana Itelman, and piano, under Susana Bonora. His artistic output includes acting and directing theatre performances in official, commercial and independent settings. He has worked as a teacher of acting and stage direction in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Chile, Germany and Spain, among other countries. He has served as a cultural manager at several institutions, such as the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas and the Elkafka theatre space. His theatre work has been recognised by all of Argentina’s award-giving bodies. He is the author of Lo incapturable [The Uncapturable], an essay on staging and theatre direction. In 2023, he was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes.
Carmen Baliero (Buenos Aires, 1962) Baliero is composer of both experimental and popular music. She has also been honoured on several occasions for her work as a composer of music for theatre and film, having received the ACE, Trinidad Guevara, María Guerrero and Florencio Sánchez awards, among others. She is senior lecture of Composition for Poetic and Dramatic Texts at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes (UNA); senior lecturer of Introduction to Music and the Music and Vocals Workshop for the Diploma in Performing Arts at the Universidad de La Matanza; and works as a private tutor in composition and stage voice work. She has held theoretical and practical workshops on composition and music for theatre in various provinces of Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. Between 1991 and 2007 she worked as a teacher and head of the Music Department at the Centro Cultural Rojas. In 2016, the Instituto Nacional de Teatro commissioned her to write her book, Música para teatro y otros temas [On Music for Theatre and Other Matters]. She is currently working on her second book, La enseñanza musical y otros temas [On Music Education and Other Matters].
Javier Bustos (Mendoza, 1976) Bustos is an Argentinian artist and educator who resides in Buenos Aires. His work is transdisciplinary, ranging from experimental lutherie to the visual, electronic and performing arts. In his artistic practice, he proposes a poetics of listening and sound production based on interactions between low technologies and new media. He has participated in numerous contemporary art exhibitions and held concerts and workshops in several cities throughout Latin America and Europe.
Cecilia Quinteros (Buenos Aires, 1985) A cellist, composer and multi-instrumentalist, Quinteros is interested in blending classical techniques with experimental methods and electronic processes. She has collaborated with artists from the worlds of dance, theatre and the visual arts, and she has participated in festivals throughout Latin America and Europe. Her work encompasses more than twenty collaborative recordings and solo projects. Quinteros is the recipient of awards from Ibermúsicas and the Fondo Nacional de las Artes, and received an Honourable Mention in the 2023 National Music Competition for her piece Narel. In 2025, she released her second solo album, Qadira and was commissioned to compose, perform and record the soundtrack for the feature-length documentary Brace for Oblivion, directed by American filmmaker Xackery Irving.
Francisco Colasanto (Dr. Zoppa) (Buenos Aires, 1971) Colasanto holds a PhD (with Honours) in Music Technology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and a degree in Electroacoustic Composition from the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina. He is a full-time Level A academic technician and coordinator of the Bachelor’s Degree in Music and Artistic Technology at the National School of Higher Studies of Morelia, UNAM. He currently serves as deputy director of the Mexican Centre for Music and Sound Arts (CMMAS). He has authored several publications, including Max/MSP: guía de programación para artistas [Max/MSP: A Programming Guide for Artists], CMMAS (Morelia, Mexico, 2010). He has received numerous international awards from prestigious institutions such as Harvard University, ZKM and the Fondo Nacional de las Artes.
