ARTIST RESIDENCY AT THE ARCHIVES: IRANE CLAVEL
Artist residency at the Soinumapa sound archive
Soinumapa (Audiolab)
Basque Country
Spain
June – December 2026
This is an initiative of Audiolab as part of the “Creative Europe Tramontana IV” project.
Cartography of Invisible Waters
Immersive sound installation and album by Irane Clavel
From June to December 2026, the violinist and composer Irene Ballesteros Pérez, known as Irane Clavel, is in residence at Soinumapa, the sound archive managed by Audiolab, as part of the Artist Residencies at Digital Archives call of the Tramontana Network.
Her project, “Cartography of Invisible Waters”, builds a new sonic imaginary in which rural water becomes a poetic force. In rural and mountain areas, water has historically been the architectural and social backbone of life: the placement of farmhouses (baserri), roads, bridges and communal washhouses depended on the proximity of streams and springs, and water set the rhythm of work, communal practices and the stories passed down through generations.
The work draws on the water sounds of the Soinumapa archive, presented not as historical evidence but as raw material for a composition: natural water (rivers, streams, springs and fountains), mechanical water (mills, canals and sluices), domestic and social water (washhouses and everyday water sources), oral testimonies about droughts, floods, agricultural labour and rituals, and contextual sounds such as bells, footsteps on bridges, tools and traditional songs related to water.
The violin is the main transformative instrument. Through extended techniques, such as prepared violin and scordatura, and multiple recorded layers, it seeks to emulate the behaviour of water rather than imitate it, gradually merging with the archival recordings until the organic and the interpreted become indistinguishable. Electronic processing and spatialisation blur the boundaries between archive and violin.
The work will take two forms: a multichannel sound installation, in which the audience moves through distinct acoustic and visual zones, and an album, a series of tracks designed for home or broadcast listening.
Born in Valladolid (Spain) in 2002, Irene Ballesteros Pérez, known as Irane Clavel, is a violinist and composer. She studied violin at Musikene and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in violin and electronic composition at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Hochschule Luzern), under the guidance of Sarah Saviet, Francesca Verunelli and Emilio Guim. Her work, developed under the Anarkopop label, explores electroacoustic composition through an approach that fuses costumbrismo, a focus on everyday customs and popular culture, with postmodern aesthetics and contemporary pop imagery, emphasising gesture and theatricality in performance.
She has taken part in projects such as KASPA, a transdisciplinary research on violin and percussion music, and UKAN, dedicated to premiering works by emerging composers, and attended Colloquium48 in Basel. She has performed at festivals including Lucerne Festival, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Impuls Festival and Mixtur Barcelona. Her music has been performed by ensembles such as Dissolution Ensemble, Ensemble Hélix and Luft Linien Duo, and she has received masterclasses from composers including Georges Aperghis, Sarah Nemtsov and Thierry de Mey.