Sous les violons, la plage

A string quartet hangs in mid-air. Haydn’s notes drift softly overhead. At your feet: a pile of stones. You know what to do.

In this rebellious sound installation by Catalan art duo cabosanroque, you're invited to dismantle classical music - literally. Throw a stone. Break the system. Watch harmony unravel in real time. 

Taking its name from the May ‘68 slogan “Sous les pavés, la plage!” (“Under the cobblestones, the beach!”), the piece trades reverence for rupture. It’s both protest and play: a controlled demolition of cultural authority, disguised as a beautifully wired musical sculpture. Because sometimes, to hear something new, you have to smash what came before. 

Each and every impact against the violins, viola or cello generates a slight random modification of the harmony, rhythm or tone of that voice and every hit takes us a little farther away from the original composition. Destruction as a form of progress and collective creation. Together, we're making new music.

The show can be seen continuously on:

- 14 & 15 August from 16.00 - 21.00
- 16 & 17 August from 14.00 - 21.00

Cabosanroque are Laia Torrents Carulla and Roger Aixut Sampietro. Their work revolves around sound and its performative capacities. The interventions question the exhibition space and formats; they also question the spectator when it comes to inhabiting this physical, temporal and conceptual space. They are interested in artifice and its relation to humans. 

They look for tensions between disciplines such as music, theatre, visual arts and sound to open up margins, spaces in conflict with one another. Their academic background (music, industrial engineering and architecture) leads them to use technology in all their works, always understood as a tool, as a medium and not as an aesthetic, in a continuous process of research. They often collaborate with other artists, thinkers and writers. 

Since 2012, their works have been exhibited in Spain and internationally.