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Ropes and Knots Library (Biblioteca de Cuerdas y Nudos)

Listen with your eyes. See, touch, reflect, experience. The found object is a gateway to generate individual, spiritual and imaginative experiences. A mysterious traveling library, a circular wooden structure that stores unpublished manuscripts, texts, scores, designs, objects, paper balls found in the trash and cylinders full of messages made of ropes and knots.

Created by Jose Antonio Portillo from school and community works. This particular library is inhabited by objects that were born to narrate knowledge and provoke silence in the school.

An installation-show that has toured different cities in Spain and Europe for more than twenty years. It  is a witness to the importance of analogue in teaching, capable of coexisting with digital media.


Tour 2023: Titirimundi Festival in Segovia (10-15 may), Festival Caminhos de Leitura  in Pombal (Portugal, 22-25 june) y Teatro de Palha in Aljézur (Portugal 10-16 july).

Tour 2024: Teatro Soho- Caixabank (Málaga, 16-21 january), Projeto Cidade Invisível, Portimao (Portugal, march to december).


Ficha artística

Autoría y dirección: José Antonio Portillo

Scenery and objects: José Antonio Portillo

Set construction: Theater Hetpalais d’Anvers (Bélgica)

Executive production: Unnica Arts

Music: SordoMondo (Nuria Aparici, Joaquín Pinilla and Jorge Aparici)

Illumination design: Xavi Prieto y Rodrigo Ortega

Mounting direction: Marcos Orbegozo

With the collaboration of the CCB of Lisbon and the Theater Hetpalais d'Anvers (Belgium)



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