Tango–Guitar–Flamenco Week: Embolismo por soleá (Seguiriya y Muerte) (ESP)
Flamenco performance inspired by tree embolism, a phenomenon caused by drought and, climate change.
Embolismo por soleá (Seguiriya y Muerte)
Embolismo por soleá, seguiriya y muerte is a flamenco performance inspired by tree embolism, a phenomenon caused by drought and, climate change. The performance is a collaboration between Paula Bruna, Spanish artist and scientist, Curro Rodríguez, flamenco artist and performer and Alhaja Records, record label that is specialized in experimental flamenco.
Rising temperatures and prolonged droughts associated with climate change are having a critical impact on forests. Scientific studies of embolism become a sensitive indicator of the condition of trees and their vulnerability to these new climatic conditions. Embolismo por soleá (seguiriya y muerte) conceives of embolism not merely as a fact, but as a rhythmic and emotional expression of the tree.
The performance imagines what an entire tree sounds like, and beyond that, what an entire forest sounds like: the interplay of all those invisible rhythms that other beings—insects, animals—can indeed perceive. It thus proposes a radical listening experience, in which flamenco functions as an eco-poetic and political tool, capable of engaging with non-human life and opening new forms of relationship and coexistence.
The performance will be held in an Art Gallery Himmelblau, in an old factory complex in the heart of Tampere city.
The duration of the performance is about 40 minutes. Language of the performance will be English and Spanish.
The performance is a collaboration between Tampere Flamenco Festival, Tampere Guitar Festival and Climate Whirl Art&Science program at INAR, University of Helsinki. The event is supported by Embassy of Spain in Helsinki.
Art & Science Talk: Tree embolism
The performance Embolismo por soleá, seguiriya y muerte is accompanied by a public talk between the artists Paula Bruna and Curro Rodriguez and professor Timo Vesala from University of Helsinki, Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR), who has published various scientific papers around the phenomenon of tree embolism.
The discussion after the performance is moderated by Ulla Taipale, curator of Climate Whirl art-science program at INAR.
The discussion and Q/R duration is approximate 45 minutes.
Please register for the discussion using the registration form.
Paula Bruna – concept, research and direction
Paula Bruna is an artist and environmental scientist whose work explores the relationship between human societies and the ecological world from non-human perspectives. Her practice combines scientific knowledge, speculative fiction and artistic research, asking how art can help us imagine new forms of coexistence. In Embolismo por soleá, Bruna treats scientific recordings from trees not merely as data, but as expressions of a life processes. Her role as author, director and narrator brings the audience to the threshold between knowledge and sensation: to understand the phenomenon, we are invited to listen to it.
Curro Rodríguez – voice and body
Curro Rodríguez gives voice and body to the central figure of the performance: a hybrid presence between performer and tree. The dry branch on stage is not a decorative object, but a parallel body — a piece of vegetal matter that enters direct relation with the voice, movement and space. Through Rodríguez, flamenco appears in its most essential form: as cry, resistance, prayer and physical tension. The body does not simply accompany the song; it carries it, resists it and is transformed by it. The artistic language moves close to a ritual, matter and the elemental force of the flamenco voice.
Fran Mora – live sound / DJ
Fran Mora works live with the recorded sounds of vegetal embolism, turning them into a shifting electronic landscape. His contribution is one of the main structures of the performance: setting the sound of the tree into dialogue with the human voice. Mora’s practice moves between experimental electronics, sound art and cultural research, with flamenco as a space of friction, memory and transformation. In this work, that approach opens a tense acoustic space between the organic and the technological.
Alhaja Records
The label Alhaja Records is one of the key platforms in the new Andalusian experimental electronic scene, it was born from the need to bring together Barcelona and Andalusian artists who make experimental flamenco or, as they usually say, 'futuristic flamenco'. Alhaja Records: Fran Mora – live sound / DJ and Teresa Espadafor – stage manager.
The event is part of the Tango–Guitar–Flamenco Week program. Tampere Tango Festival, Tampere Guitar Festival and Tampere Flamenco Week together form the Tango—Guitar—Flamenco Week, which will be held from 11 to 20 September 2026.