Image: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid
Matadero Madrid will open its new season in September with an interdisciplinary programme that brings together art, film, technology, literature and family activities. The city-run cultural centre said the schedule will include the return of annual events such as L.E.V. Matadero, the Electronic Visual and Extended Reality Festival, alongside a new exhibition by Carlos Aires and a film-and-dance cycle devoted to choreographer Damien Jalet.
The season begins with the Damien Jalet programme, running from 5 to 12 September across Cineteca Madrid and Centro Danza Matadero. The cycle focuses on Jalet’s relationship with moving image and presents a selection of films, videoclips and short works. According to the announcement, Jalet will also lead a practical dance workshop on 12 September for dancers, choreographers and filmmakers.
Later in the month, L.E.V. Matadero will return for its eighth edition from 17 to 20 September. Curated by the Datatron platform and organised by Matadero Madrid, the festival is framed as a meeting point for sound, audiovisual and digital creation, with concerts, audiovisual performances, installations, stage works and experiences linked to extended realities. A professional XR Camp linked to the European network RIT: Realities in Transition is scheduled as a prelude from 16 to 18 September.
The centre’s exhibition highlight will be 'Bailad, bailad, malditos', a site-specific work by Carlos Aires opening on 11 September in Nave 0 as part of the 'Abierto x Obras' programme. The show runs until 24 January 2027. The institution says the installation will transform the former refrigerated chamber of the municipal slaughterhouse into a dance floor held up by more than one hundred supports and punctuated by around twenty screens. Curator José Luis Romo has worked with Aires on the project.
The artist has built the work around the space’s visible scars and history of violence, using the ruined architecture as a starting point for an environment that combines sculpture, sound and moving image. Matadero describes the piece as a sensorial installation that invites visitors into a forest of metal and into a landscape shaped by euphoria, unease, darkness and dance. It is presented as Carlos Aires’ first solo exhibition for a public institution in Madrid.
Other programmes in the season include the third edition of 'Back to the Book', the independent literature and publishing festival, which will take place from 11 to 13 September at Matadero Madrid and Casa del Lector. The announcement names Julieta Venegas, Paco Roca and Lucía Solla Sobral among the participants, and says the festival will continue into a more international direction this year.
Matadero Madrid also said Medialab will launch LAB 5, 'La mecánica de la verdad', a collaborative research project on the technological production of the real. The autumn schedule will continue with family workshops, new artistic residencies and the return of Animario, the International Contemporary Animation Festival, at Cineteca Madrid from 10 to 13 December.
