“A freshwater mermaid's song” [Canto de una sirena de agua dulce] by Juan Gallego Benot & Carmen Yruela

Through a continuous journey of sound and poetic experimentation, accompanied by visual projections, videos and translated texts, they will challenge the boundaries between tradition and modernity, while playing with ideas of "familiarity" and "strangeness". The result is a sensory exploration of a mermaid song both detached from its origins and rebellious to the conditions of its emergence.

Carmen Yruela and Juan Gallego Benot have spent years collaborating on the complex relationship between poetry and flamenco. Their work explores how the deep, resonant sounds of flamenco can be used to engage with and reflect on contemporary conditions, focusing particularly on modern landscapes and urban spaces. For them, these environments are not just physical places, but spaces of experimentation where traditional forms meet and interact with new critical perspectives. During their month-long residency in Tangier, Yruela and Benot dedicated themselves to creating a shared experimental space where visual, sonic and poetic resources converge. The culmination of their residency will be a performance that reflects the evolution of their collaborative process. At the heart of this performance is the tale of the "siren song", a theme that embodies both confusion and the opportunity to experience extraordinary clarity of sensation. The concept of the siren song, traditionally associated with temptation and mystery, is reimagined in their work as a "freshwater mermaid" - a figure at once familiar and displaced, navigating an environment that reflects her mythological origin yet feels strangely out of place. This dislocation symbolizes the tension between tradition and modernity, a key theme in their exploration. In this context, the siren song becomes a metaphor for how traditional forms like flamenco can be both rooted in the past and reinterpreted to challenge contemporary norms and expectations.

Their show will unfold as a continuous journey, an exploration both sensory and intellectual. Through a mix of live singing, poetry readings and projections of images, videos and translated texts, they will create an immersive experience that embodies the concept of a siren song that has been dislocated, decentered and turned against the conditions of its own emergence. The juxtaposition of tradition and experimentation will be at the heart of this journey, as they probe the ways in which flamenco and poetry can respond to and critique the modern world. By presenting the siren's song as something both known and unknown, Yruela and Benot invite the audience to discover the familiar in a new and unsettling light. The presence of the freshwater mermaid in an urban landscape serves as a metaphor for how traditional art forms can adapt and transform, becoming vehicles for new meanings and critical reflections. The performance will not only showcase the artistic process that evolved over the course of the residency, but also offer a commentary on the fluidity of identity, culture and artistic expression in a rapidly changing world.

Carmen Yruela

Carmen Yruela (Seville, 1998) is a flamenco singer and flamenco singing teacher at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Jaén. She began her artistic career at the age of seventeen in the tablaos and peñas of Seville. Blending tradition and modernity, she is renowned for her interdisciplinary approach. She has performed in Uzbekistan (2022), Argentina (2023) and Estonia (2024). A member of the techno-flamenco group Ciervoss since 2021, she is currently preparing her first album with Hartta. 

Juan Gallego Benot

Juan Gallego Benot (Seville, 1997) is a writer, doctoral student and contemporary art critic for the El País newspaper. Author of the poetry collections Oración en el huerto (2020) and Las cañadas oscuras (2023), he has published the essay La ciudad sin imágenes (2023). His academic research focuses on rhetoric and modernity. He teaches at the Autonomous University of Madrid and the University of Groningen. His poems have been set to music by Iñaki Estrada. He has taken part in a number of renowned literary and artistic festivals.