Zinema belarrietara. Non dago Lekeitio? (2021) = Cine para los oídos. Non dago Lekeitio? (2021) = Cinema for the ears. Non dago Lekeitio? (2021)

Lekeitio. Mikel Laboa 1985  -  José Luis Zumeta (Usurbil 1939 - Donostia 2020) 

Listening sessions of the Lekeitioak by Mikel Laboa

Known but indecipherable places. Comprehensible and at the same time inexplicable sounds. Murals created by the voice. Continuous. Concretely abstract. Extensible. Ragged and with tiny details. The strength of mouths. Those that captivate us when we hear them. The Lekeitioak are a soundscape. The Lekeitioak series by Mikel Laboa has a special place in Basque music. They are iconically strong, symbolically sensitive, resoundingly thorny. Uncomfortable for the author at the time and uncomfortable today for the public. They offer a sonic spelling of a bygone period. They are faithful portraits of the pain built up in private life, as well as in the collective history.

It could be said that the Lekeitioak are the backbone of Laboa’s music-making journey, and as a result, also of his artistic explorations, despite the fact that, paradoxically, throughout the career of the well-known and popular singer-songwriter Mikel Laboa, these works have often appeared as additional tracks. Time and oblivion have condemned the Lekeitioak to auditory paths… In fact, as the pain accumulates, our memory always looks for convenience.

The mural is in front of you. White. Intact. This is a proposal to see nothing in the cinema. Leaving to one side the materiality of the images and what they provoke, to give an opportunity to the dark air of sounds, and to what they provoke. We are not moved by melomania nor audiophilia, but by the humble aim of listening together. Beyond personal acoustic biographies, that´s what the Lekeitioak were created for. 

In July and August 2021, over the course of five sessions we invited an artist to verbally comment on the Lekeitioak by Mikel Laboa, more than to elicit academic essays, to learn about the intimate footprints of these sound items. Artists will arrive from different cultural backgrounds and not so well-known, each of them murmuring their Lekeitioa.

These sessions fall within the Komunikazio-inkomunikazio exhibition’s programme of activities. 

PROGRAMME