CURRENT & DEMOTOPOGRAPHY OF BARCELONA
Part of the European project CRAFTWORK 4.0 →
Presented by: ESPRONCEDA – Institute of Art & Culture
Venue: Carrer d’Espronceda 326, Nau 5, 08027 Barcelona
Date and time: Thursday, 15 October 2026 · 18:30–21:30
Two co-created projects brought together in a joint exhibition within the European project CRAFTWORK 4.0 ALL
Exploring materiality, territory and transformation at the intersection of contemporary craft, art and digital experimentation
Opening programme – Thursday, 15 October 2026 · 18:30–21:30
18:30 – Doors open & welcome reception
19:00 – Official welcome and introduction to CRAFTWORK 4.0 ALL
19:30 – DEMOTOPOGRAPHY OF BARCELONA · Project presentation by Jade Nijman & Bruno Rodrigues Martins
20:00 – CURRENT · Project presentation and performance by Kristina Miltcheva & Paola Idrontino
20:30–21:30 – Exhibition viewing, artist conversations & networking
ESPRONCEDA – Institute of Art & Culture presents the culmination of the CRAFTWORK 4.0 ALL Barcelona Residency, bringing together four international artists to present two new collaborative projects: CURRENT, by Kristina Miltcheva and Paola Idrontino, and Demotopography of Barcelona, by Jade Nijman and Bruno Rodrigues Martins.
Developed within the framework of the European project CRAFTWORK 4.0 ALL and presented as part of NEB & Inclusió, ESPRONCEDA’s programme connected to the New European Bauhaus, the residency explores new relationships between contemporary craft, artistic research, sustainability, digital innovation and co-creation.
After months of artist matching, online sessions, training and exchange, the four artists come together at ESPRONCEDA from 5–16 October for an intensive two-week residency. Working in pairs, they move from remote dialogue and research to hands-on experimentation and production, combining different disciplines, materials and perspectives to create two new collaborative works. The residency culminates on 15 October with a joint exhibition presenting CURRENT and Demotopography of Barcelona: two distinct projects that share an interest in materiality, transformation, technology and our relationship with the environments we inhabit.
At the heart of the Barcelona residency is co-creation. Rather than bringing finished individual works to ESPRONCEDA, the artists have developed their projects through an extended process of dialogue, knowledge exchange and collaborative experimentation.
The residency creates a space in which different artistic practices intersect, from textiles and craft techniques to video, sound, projection, digital technologies, scientific research and the exploration of natural materials. The two resulting projects reflect this approach through very different relationships with space, territory, materiality and digital media.
The Barcelona residency represents the physical culmination of a process that began months earlier. Through artist matching, online co-creation sessions, training and exchange, the participants gradually developed shared concepts, methodologies and directions before meeting in Barcelona.
From 5 to 16 October, ESPRONCEDA becomes a space for the next phase of this process: material experimentation, prototyping, mentoring and production. The artists work together intensively to translate their previous exchanges into two physical installations, culminating in their public presentation on 15 October. The resulting works demonstrate two different approaches to contemporary craft. CURRENT creates an immersive and speculative environment through textiles, light, sound and digital media, while Demotopography of Barcelona transforms Barcelona itself into material, data and an evolving landscape.
Together, the projects reflect the central ambition of CRAFTWORK 4.0 ALL: to create new connections between craftsmanship, contemporary artistic practice, sustainability, digital innovation and collaborative knowledge.
CURRENT is an immersive installation situated between a marine environment and a speculative cosmic landscape. Bringing together textiles, sculptural forms, light, projection, sound and digital elements, the work creates an atmospheric environment in continuous transformation.
The project emerges from the encounter between Paola Idrontino’s textile and sculptural practice and Kristina Miltcheva’s exploration of worldbuilding and hybrid analogue-digital environments. Textile structures become organic architectures, while light, projected imagery and sound introduce shifting layers of movement and perception.
Through this combination of craftsmanship, material experimentation and digital technologies, CURRENT explores fluidity, transformation and interconnectedness, questioning the boundaries between the natural and artificial, physical and digital, familiar and imagined.
Kristina Miltcheva is a Bulgarian-Canadian multidisciplinary artist and cultural producer whose work explores worldbuilding as both a decontextualising experience and a form of inner-world exploration. Based between Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, her international practice engages with themes of dystopia, mindfulness and the mystical. Her artistic approach combines analogue and digital techniques, textile collage, styling, fashion, 3D visuals, projection mapping and speculative narratives to create immersive environments that invite audiences into introspective experiences.
Paola Idrontino is a multidisciplinary artist based in Barcelona, working across costume, textiles, photography, sound and performance. Her practice explores storytelling through sculptural costumes, masks and textile forms inspired by grotesque, organic and otherworldly creatures. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including MACBA, Barcelona Design Museum and Barcelona Maritime Museum, and featured internationally in publications such as Vogue, Hi-Fructose and Schön Magazine. Together with RDMT, she is also part of TERPER, an experimental audiovisual project combining electronic music, spoken word, found objects, sculptural costumes, reactive light and live audiovisual performance.
Demotopography of Barcelona explores Barcelona as a territory continuously shaped by those who inhabit, cross and transform it.
The project creates a physical and digital mapping of Barcelona’s 10 official districts through a horizontal textile landscape incorporating materials collected from Barcelona, including soil, sand and pigments. The physical layer represents the city’s residents, colour intensity following a fixed, documented ratio tied to real resident population data for each district, while the digital layer represents tourism, a vertical projection over the textile showing real hotspots of overtourism and the city’s officially recognised high affluence areas.
Rather than representing Barcelona as a fixed geography, the artists approach the city as an evolving landscape impacted by tourism. Residents and tourism are read together, on the same surface, at the same time, revealing interactions and potential conflits, and suggest how individual and collective actions continually reshape the territories we inhabit.
By bringing together sourced materials, textile processes, projection, sound and digital tools, Demotopography of Barcelona creates a dialogue between urban landscape and data, territory and human presence, physical traces and invisible flows.
Jade Nijman holds a PhD in Visual Cultures (EHESS) and is affiliated with the Jean Nicod Institute (EHESS–ENS–CNRS). Her research lies at the intersection of cognition and spatial navigation, oceanic representations and mediation. She regularly participates in workshops and conferences dedicated to ocean preservation, including UNOC, IOC Venice, IUML Nantes, SNS Pisa and INHA. She is currently developing a practice as an artist-researcher focused on the relationship between artistic and scientific knowledge, in connection with the emerging critical field of the Blue Humanities and its contemporary challenges.
Bruno Rodrigues Martins (Guimarães, 1993) works with video, light and sound across installation and performance. His practice moves between documentary research on territories and the development of sensory environments that construct narratives through space and through their relationship with those who encounter them. His work has been presented at Sahng-Up Gallery in Seoul, Videoformes and Nuit de l’Image Européenne in Clermont-Ferrand, and gnration in Portugal. In 2025, he created the visual component of Quimera, the opening performance of Braga25 – Portuguese Capital of Culture.
CRAFTWORK 4.0 ALL is a European project co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, connecting 12 organisations from 12 European countries through an international and intercultural co-creation platform.
The project supports new and emerging craft artists and practitioners, fostering collaboration, skills development and opportunities to promote their work nationally and internationally. It encourages the use of new technologies and interdisciplinary approaches to innovate the craft sector while preserving its knowledge, history and cultural heritage and contributing to its future.
The Barcelona residency is also presented as part of NEB & Inclusió, ESPRONCEDA’s programme developed within the framework of the New European Bauhaus (NEB). As an official New European Bauhaus partner since 2021, ESPRONCEDA promotes projects that connect art, culture, sustainability, inclusion and innovation.
Through artistic experimentation, interdisciplinary collaboration and co-creation, NEB & Inclusió explores new ways of responding to contemporary social and environmental challenges, bringing together the core New European Bauhaus values of sustainability, inclusion and aesthetics.
Press contact
Maria Rubies
maria.rubies@espronceda.net
+34 607 639 552
www.espronceda.net
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