Túnel de Estrellas is situated in Hornachos, a small village in the mountainous southwest of Spain. The village was a muslim bastion up until the 17th century when the process of violent christianisation and expulsion of the muslim inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula was concluded.
 The topography of Hornachos, with qanat (underground irrigation channels), terraces and orchards, is reminiscent of the period predating christian dominance. With field recordings and a speculative historical narrative, Andrés makes an attempt to capture the traces of the muslim presence and their resistance to the imposed chrism. The underground network previously served as a ‘desbautizadero’, a place for the ritual of ‘un-baptism’ practised secretly as an act of resistance against forced conversion.
 Túnel de Estrellas is situated mostly underground, and composes sonic environments from recordings of wells and tunnels, fused with oral stories which recall local myths, hiding from the authorities, transgression and near death experiences. The words of contemporary inhabitants animate these recollections. The work gives prominence to sound, installed as a four channel surround sound installation. Privileging the sonic creates a space of unknowing - we do not fully comprehend this situation, but we perhaps experience it more deeply, embracing the less visible, subterranean layers of the landscape, and encountering the place without categorisation.
 The landscape also holds more recent histories of struggle and resistance. During the fascist dictatorship in Spain, leftist partisans hid in these mountains and continued their clandestine fight against Franco. Today it is a place that suffers immensely from drought as a result of the climate crisis, making it extremely difficult for people, animals and plants to live and grow there. Weaving together fragmentary narratives with the sounds of water, insects and amphibious creatures moving through the gaps and crooks of the underbelly of the mountain, the piece invites us to spend time immersed in Hornachos.

Text by Marta Hryniuk


Túnel de Estrellas, 2023. Still

Túnel de Estrellas, 2023. Still

Túnel de Estrellas, 2023. Still

Túnel de Estrellas, 2023. Still

Túnel de Estrellas, 2023. Still

Túnel de Estrellas, 2023. Still





Direction, edit, sound - Andrés García Vical
Photography - Julia Martos
Silent voice - ¿Cómo puedo enamorarme de este jardín?, Jose Iglesias García-Arenal
Color correction - Juan Arturo García González, Ignas van Rijckevorsel
Voices (in order of appearance) - Miguel Acedo, Pedro el Chencho, Lorenzo Corcobado, Antonia González Delgado, Ana Pavo Giménez, Rafael Núñez
Supported by VI Programa de Investigación y Producción, Centro Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Plataforma MAL, Mondriaan Fonds

In Santa Emilia García Vidal organizes a meeting of residents from a neighborhood on the outskirts of Seville, drained by institutional neglect and the drought caused by climate change and intensive farming. Their shared grievances, interwoven with the voice of a female flamenco singer, help shape a community that echoes the voices of the present alongside issues from past generations.

Text by Jose Iglesias Gª-Arenal, curator of Plataforma MAL




Direction, edit, sound - Andrés García Vidal
Photography - Juan Arturo García González and Daniel Molina Páez
Color correction - Guillermo Etchemendi Varón
Production sound recordist - Carlos Manuel Ruiz Jiménez
Singer - Alicia Acuña
Neighbours - Francisco José Portas Marín, Ma José Domínguez Domínguez, Martín Jesús García García, Alicia Acuña, Francisco Felix Aires Borjas , Loli Ruiz Medina , Manon Toussaint
Supported by the Mondriaan Fonds

“Por Dentro, a Media Voz (Inwardly, in a Moderate tone of voice) by Andrés García Vidal is a sound installation with two video pieces. The sound installation shows three musical improvisations by three musicians that are played at the same time as the afternoon call to Islamic prayer in Seville. The video piece is an interview with Pooyan Tamini Arab, a professor of religious studies at the University of Utrecht. The starting points of this long-term research were the recent debates around the amplification of the sound of adhan —the daily call to prayer— and the misunderstood legislative regulation of it as noise. The artist explores the relationship between the sound aesthetics of Islam (as in the recitation of the Quran or the call to prayer) and traditional Arab music from a musicological point of view. In both, the practice of orality prevails as a form of transmission, and both are also based on the Arabic maqam musical system. Within maqam, there are different groups of melodic attainments called ajnas (‘genre’ or ‘type’) that are trichords, tetrachords or pentachords, which are all improvised upon in both practices. Each ajna has associations with specific emotional states. These improvisations are intertwined with reflections by Pooyan Tamini Arab on the ‘materiality of religion’. He points out how a range of discourses, practices and aesthetic forms mediate the way religion is experienced, and how their form of expression matters. In Islam, using one’s voice is one of the most powerful forms of expression, because it also has a series of implications in the public space. Sound is also a powerful means of transmission that mobilises emotions and bodies. Moreover, within Islam, the voice is the communication vessel that summons and sustains a collective body.”

Text by Blanca del Río

Direction, production and sound design - Andrés García Vidal Photography and color correction - Juan Arturo García González.
Por Dentro, a Media Voz was supported by the Mondriaan Fonds.

Website by Johanna Ehde