Only That Which Moves Exists

In November 1919, Joaquín Torres-García wrote “I believe that only that which moves exists” to Rafael Barradas, in a year which signaled the dawn of the short-lived art movement coined Vibrationism.

This phrase is, therefore, the pretext from which to put forward this ten-podcast series on electromagnetism, radio, waves and electric energy as the theme and subject matter of one strand of early twentieth-century art.

In this instance, we are examining an unusual history of sound in art, one which does not begin with music, the phonograph or an avant-garde manifesto. Rather, it stems from the interest of a group of painters, composers and writers in conceiving of reality as a vibrating space.

This podcast series explores some of the medical, scientific and occultist sources with which these artists tried to understand Hertzian waves or the movement of new urban cultures in order to produce a series of objects for healing, poetic, scientific, political and aesthetic ends.

The series rests its gaze on the figures of Carmen and Rafael Barradas, František Kupka, Shelley Trower, Joan Salvat-Papasseit, Ramón Goy de Silva, Marcel Duchamp, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Linda Henderson, Steven Connor, Carmen Cecilia Piñero Gil and María Lluïsa Faxedas Brujats, and features the generous collaboration of Lucrecia Dalt, María Salgado and Xavi Rodríguez.