The conference of the birds
Pitch Project Performances
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Website:
https://insectotropics.com/
Barcelona, Spain
Desirée Povedano is a cultural manager and producer based in Catalonia (Spain), and co-founder of the cooperative La Kalistopia, where she develops artistic production projects, cultural management and grant-advisory services. She has worked as a cultural officer for several local councils, gaining strong expertise in public-sector programming and cultural policy. She is currently producer for Insectotròpics, supporting international touring and multidisciplinary creations. Desirée was also a producer of Ritmiks – European Young Music Festival, strengthening her experience with Europe.
TCOB – The Conference of the Birds is a night-time, outdoor multimedia performance inspired by Farid al-Din Attar’s 12th-century poem. A flock of birds sets out to find the Simurgh, but our focus is on those who hesitate, get lost, stop, or fear continuing. The piece unfolds as a contemporary ritual for the public space, where the “making of” is part of the show: live painting and live cinema, real-time video creation and projections, electronic live music, and performative dramaturgy build an immersive visual landscape that expands onto façades, screens and the surrounding architecture.
It is a collective journey about doubt, limits, disconnection and the need to keep moving together.
Creative context and artistic motivation
Insectotròpics creates work at the crossroads of technology and raw artistic gesture, exposing the creative process onstage so audiences witness both construction and result. With TCOB, we return to a foundational myth of collective transformation: the quest is not a heroic solo mission, but a shared path where community, listening and horizontal collaboration become essential.
Artistically, the project is driven by a question: what does it mean to keep going in an era of fragmentation and over-connection? The birds’ journey becomes a mirror for our contradictions—desire for belonging versus fear, impulse versus fatigue, speed versus presence. By combining live image-making, projection and sound in real time, the performance turns the public square into a temporary assembly: a place to recognize ourselves through others, and to reclaim the value of the shared journey.
Duration: 50min
COMPANY: Insectotropics
