It’s over 18,500 kilometers, as the crow flies, from Villa Gesell, Buenos Aires to Tokyo. Lolo, born in Argentina, and Sosaku, born in Japan, met in Barcelona, in between the two. “Physically speaking, we met in 2004, but in a spiritual sense we’ve been together all along,” says Lolo. At the time, Sosaku had been traveling around Europe and stopped in Barcelona. One night, he wound up crashing on the sofa of a girl he met at a party. Turns out Lolo was her roommate. “When I woke up, I found Sosaku sitting on the sofa. He helped me decipher a Japanese magazine that had taken some of my work, then showed me some of his own art. Ten minutes later, we did our first drawing together.”

The two have been collaborating ever since. At first they worked on drawings, but never quite felt satisfied with the result. So they experimented with music. The results were special but sounded too familiar. “We realized that to make an entirely new sound, we had to make new instruments. Then one day, we found the answer in the pendular movement of an object swinging from the ceiling.We do a lot of research alongside our creative work, so it took a few years to get to some very particular sounds. After nineteen years working together, we don’t even know where the ideas come from—it’s a relationship that feeds itself. Sometimes we’re in the studio, side by side, not talking, each of us doing something different, and we’ll start finishing each other’s work.”

We met up with Lolo and Sosaku to see De la Tierra, a site-specific project presented in Shanghai in 2017 that has landed at La Veloz, a former factory on the outskirts of Barcelona. The installation embodies a potentiality in which the built environment creates relationships that leave out human beings.

Next up, we visited their studio. Packed with all kinds of objects, it brims with the air of possibility. This is a playful space where work happens outside of genre constraints like theater, music, sculpture, painting, and film. Neither of them received formal training in music or art. “We’re messy. Our welding is bad. We even blow holes in the metal. Our painting machines are always broken. But that’s the way we operate. But some of the work turns out super clean.”

From automated devices like painting machines to handmade instruments, their work seems to have arrived from a strange realm separate from our everyday lives. Lolo and Sosaku learn from observing, making mistakes, and letting their work speak. “If you respect the unexpected, things work out fine. Once you start pushing for control, you block the natural flow of things.”

Candela started dancing at age four. “I’ve danced for my entire life,” she says. “It’s become a natural part of me.” Born in Seville and raised in Cádiz in southwestern Spain, Candela began her studies with classical dance and later majored in contemporary dance at a school in Granada. After graduating, she spent time between there and Madrid and also lived in London, but she didn’t feel at home. Six years ago, she settled down in Barcelona.

We met up with Candela at Can Framis, a museum focused on contemporary Catalan painting. It’s in the Poblenou neighborhood, not far from the city center. on the opposite side of the city from the esteemed Institut del Teatre, where Candela currently enrolled. She says she likes the clean lines and heaviness of the building.

“I’ve always been intrigued by the artistic process. At school, I’m concentrating on conceptual contemporary dance, a style similar to postmodern dance that originated in New York in the 1960s and captured the attention of a large number of Catalan choreographers. The academic nature of the program has been great for me. It’s very difficult to find a school where they teach you to become a choreographer and not a dancer.”Candela puts great emphasis on the message of the performance, striving to create something very personal. Her pieces are connected on a narrative level, seeking to balance the material with the immaterial.

“I’m always firing on all four cylinders. All the details are important, not just the physical, but the makeup, costumes, scenery, colours, and especially the concepts that define the work. There’s also an emotional component that can’t be captured with words. We live in a time where what we take in with our eyes has so much weight. That’s why I consider the visual and the physical equally important.”

Candela’s work reflects on the relationship between new media and the body, especially the female body, and the imprint this has had on the younger generation, whose visual experience is mediated by devices. For her, it’s all about practice. “I like routines. But I’ve had a love-hate relationship with dance. My thirst for knowledge is what led me down this path. I have great passion for training and learning. Expertise is the result of perseverance.”

An example of these ideas in action can be found in performance pieces such as 19762. or The Death at the Club Alone and Connected, which premiered at Staatstheater Kassel Skillfully composed, these new, dreamlike environments are born from the expression of her own and other people’s bodies. “My dance speaks to the concrete, but with a kind of innocence that leaves space for the viewer. Dance relies on fantasy. Take that away, and it’s not dance anymore."

We met DJ and producer Maguette one afternoon at the space her musical collective, Jokkoo, shares with a few other cultural initiatives. Located on the third floor of a warehouse near Montjuïc Cemetery in the Barcelona industrial district of Zona Franca, the space looks out over the neighborhood where Maguette grew up. Over the years, Maguette has watched this place transform as the city’s music scene evolved.

“I’m always investigating music. I can listen to the same albums for years, but staying up to date with what’s happening is what nourishes me. I have a brother, two years older than me, who was interested in African American culture, so I started listening to that music too. I also spent hours watching MTV Base, learning about other Black artists. Being part of the small Black African community here in Spain, it was a way of connecting with other Black realities in other countries, of feeling represented and less alone.”

Maguette has been DJing since 2019, though it began as a hobby. Having studied event production, patternmaking, and costume design, she started a small clothing brand. But then she began practicing with her partner, Baba Sy, who invited her to perform at a local club called Razzmatazz. The wheels were in motion.

Maguette’s mixes are eclectic and unpredictable, a diversity of songs and sounds from around the world that transcends style. “My reference is the BPM. I feel very comfortable playing with different genres. I’m constantly looking for underground sounds. No one really knows what’s going to happen in my sets—myself included.”
Maguette is always listening to what people (not algorithms) are selecting to play in radio shows and mixtapes, and makes her own mixes too. Ultimately, her goal is to create personal connections. “I see DJing as a way to share music with a huge number of people,” she says.

In 2017, she and Baba Sy co-founded Jokkoo, which means “connection” in the language of the Wolof people of Senegal. The idea was to give visibility to the various scenes heard on the African continent. “We noticed that there wasn’t a broad representation of the African music scene in Europe. Especially the brand-new sounds and genres.” Today, Jokkoo includes likeminded DJs Opoku, Mookie, Miriam, B4mba, and Ikram Bouloum. Together, they’ve been programming lineups for clubs. “It’s really fun collaborating. We’re creating a new music scene.”

Maguette likes to leave room for improvisation so that interesting moments and conversations can arise. “You can’t let routine take over. Spontaneity is key, if you don’t want to miss out on the magical and the unexpected. We’re here to enjoy the present. I’m with the people I want to be with and we’re living the lives we want to live.”