EL PAÍS (4 Oct 2002)

Traditional and modern music, film, theatre, comics, games and food. These are the ingredients of the first Festival Asia, a multidisciplinary showcase of East Asian culture organised by Casa Asia at Barcelona’s Mercat de les Flors, from 11 to 13 October. The festival belongs to the cultural programme begun last September by Casa Asia, a state body based in the Catalan capital and created by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Spain’s platform for relations with the East.

The festival is presented as a sample of the cultural tendencies of the Asian continent, and from next year it will extend to other spaces in Barcelona. “This is a launch edition,” producer Juanjo Arzubialde said yesterday. “Next year’s we want to be the edition of consolidation, and in 2004, coinciding with the Fòrum de les Cultures, which we have been asked to join, our idea is to organise a great festival.”

Tradition and modernity mix in a first edition that aims to show “the lesser-known parts of Asian culture,” said diplomat Ion de la Riva, director general of Casa Asia, who added that in coming years the doors would open to joint proposals by Spanish and Asian artists.

Modernity and tradition

The festival offers a musical programme mixing the most modern tendencies, with a large group of Japanese disc jockeys, with traditional music, with the Armenian virtuoso of the duduk, a wind instrument halfway between oboe and clarinet, and with a mix of rhythms in the Spanish presentation of Iranian singer Sussan Deyhim, who combines Indian, Egyptian, Afghan, Kurdish, Andalusian and African styles with techno hip hop. Among the ticketed shows — the only paid events in a festival that otherwise is free — are the Tokyo Shock Boys, a Japanese group billed as the kamikazes of comedy, whose hard spectacle can include eating scorpions and smoking with smoke coming out of their ears as some of the milder scenes.

The festival will also offer a manga comics show; shorts from various Asian countries; a space for board games with monitors; tastings of Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Indian food; cooking classes; demonstrations of activities from the main Asian capitals; and a space for the various calendars in use on the continent in relation to the Western one.

Ion de la Riva announced Casa Asia’s project to push for a museum of Oriental art in Spain.