SONAR 2008 "FREAKS IN A PURE STATE"

Hybrid beings with a human head and the body of an animal from a mysterious 'genetic experimentation' laboratory in China are at the centre of the festival's image.

The image of Sonar 2008 is mainly in video format and can be seen on the Internet. It consists of seven 1-minute recordings in home video format, filmed in a in mysterious location and showing beings with a disconcerting genetic make-up, that are half human and half animal.

The videos are shot in the back of a "genetic experimentation" laboratory in a remote location in central China. The beings that are the results of biomolecular experimentation are filmed in this setting. The ultimate objective of these experiments is to create a new species of pet like those that used to be exhibited in travelling circuses, like the alligator woman or snake boy.The pets are shown locked in cages and laid out on a kitchen table while they timidly answer the questions asked in Chinese from outside the cage by unseen speakers.

These videos have been gradually uploaded, as viral marketing, to the fake website www.b1158.cn/b1158.html and on YouTube, with no links to the Sonar festival made clear. The result has been spectacular - there were 180,000 hits in only two days, it was no. 13 in the YouTube "Most Viewed" ranking" and no. 3 in the Science and Technology section.

Today, when the festival image is revealed, we have now created links between the videos and the festival's home page www.sonar.es

The escape of "La Pajarraca"

"La Pajarraca", one of the beings in the Sonar 2008 image, escaped the week before its official presentation to participate as a candidate in the Eurovision Song Contest. The official reason for its escape was as follows: "Its resolute character and an irrepressible artistic vocation were behind its escape. It was tired of minimal techno and disconcerted by schranz, and its enormous passion for lyrics and an irrepressible taste for light music led it to compose 'Europajarraca Eurovision 2008', the song with which it entered the competition.

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