Tales of the Dead

Elena Urucatu & Carlos Maté

By Laura López Paniagua, curator

08.05 – 10.05.2025 | 19:30 Uhr
Kleiner Wasserspeicher | Diedenhofer Straße | 10405 Berlin

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Tales of the Dead is the final phase of The Year Without a Summer, a multidisciplinary project developed
and exhibited by Elena Urucatu and Carlos Maté since 2022. As in previous chapters, this installment
revolves around performative action and installation art, culminating this time in a unique opera where
music is replaced by scent (developed in collaboration with perfumer Alicia de Benito), and a subsequent
exhibition that explores the physical traces let behind by the opera (quasi-steampunk machinery, living
monsters, and other remnants).

The title of the overarching project, The Year Without a Summer, refers to a historical event: in 1816, the
Earth was shrouded in ash and toxic gases due to the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. As a
result, summer never arrived, leading to a devastating famine and a subsequent cholera epidemic that
ravaged the Indian subcontinent and Asia. In Europe, this bleak climate coincided—not by chance, but by
synchronicity—with the rise of the Romantic movement, characterized by a melancholic and agonizing
sensibility. In The Year Without a Summer, Urucatu and Maté explore the echoes and manifestations of the Romantic spirit in the contemporary world, a historical moment they view through a similarly twilight
lens. In line with current millenarian theories, they foretell an imminent apocalypse heralded by climate
change, socio-political collapse, and the emergence of an ominous and unknown technology. Heirs to
this Romantic lineage, they champion the cultivation of a personal and imaginative sensitivity as a form
of individualist resistance against the voracity of late capitalism and its digital agents.

On a summer night in 1816, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecrat Shelley, her stepsister Claire
Clairmont, and physician John William Polidori joined Lord Byron at Villa Diodati, a mansion near Lake
Geneva. Trapped indoors by the atrocious weather, the group entertained themselves by reading Tales of
the Dead (1813), a collection of ghost stories originally published in Germany a few years earlier.
Enthralled by the stories, the group decided to start a ghost story competition of their own, which
resulted in the creation of Frankenstein, August Dawell, and The Vampyre. This opera and exhibition take
their name from that inspirational collection, evoking the night in which the most iconic modern
monsters were born, the Romantic heroes gathered that evening, the perpetual gloom of that year, and
the central narrative of their latest work: the opera tells the story of human extinction.

Maté and Urucatu describe this opera as an attempt to create a Gesamtkunstwerk, a term coined by
composer Richard Wagner to refer to opera as a total work of art, capable of integrating all artistic
disciplines. Based on this idea, the artists present a three-act performance in which a collective of
performer-shamans act as guides for a small group of attendees. The performers lead the actions that
drive the narrative: reading the libretto, listening to the industrial drone that accompanies the tales of the
dead, tasting rain, ozone and oil, and inhaling the scents of a world from its creation to its destruction.
They tell the story of the disappearance of human civilization due to its own foolishness, leaving behind a
barren land inhabited only by abyssal monsters.

The accompanying exhibition becomes an autopsy room in which the elements of the opera are laid out
for examination. Video and sound pieces, perfumes, and other remains are presented as an archive.
Stripped of their original context, can these isolated puzzle pieces still recreate the apocalyptic
experience of the opera attendee? Their fragmentation evokes how memory functions: once events have
passed, only traces remain, mementos with which we reconstruct the story that was—or perhaps invent
others. Is all memory a form of fiction? Is this a déjà vu from beyond the grave?
Once again, by synchronicity, Mary W. Shelley wrote a novel titled The Last Man in 1826, only a few years
ater bringing Frankenstein to life. It is one of the earliest dystopian science fiction novels and also
narrates the near-total extinction of humanity at the end of the 21st century due to a pandemic. Shelley
opens her novel with lines from Book IV of Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton, which masterfully
recounts both Satan’s fall from Heaven and the subsequent expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden
of Eden. In Shelley’s words, quoting Milton: „Let no man seek henceforth to know what shall befall him or
his children.“ For those who dare to listen, the dead speak from the future.

Exhibition:
Rumänisches Kulturinstitut Berlin
Reinhardtstr. 14, 10117 Berlin
May 11 – August 14, 2025

Elena Urucatu and Carlos Maté are a Spanish-Romanian artist couple based in Berlin, Germany. Their
work spans sculpture, performance, image, architecture, and design, focusing on performative
experiments and audiovisual installations where eco-catastrophe and the shadow of extinction are everpresent. Their approach is not didactic, but rather intuitive, psychological, and dark.

They have exhibited their work in museums and institutions worldwide, including La Triennale di Milano,
the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, and the Ljubljana and Istanbul Biennials. They have received
numerous awards and artist residencies, including Production Awards from the Spanish Ministry of
Culture, Medialab-Prado in Madrid, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin.

Opera Collaborators:
Sound Composition: Josué Moreno
Perfumer: Alicia de Benito
Jeweler: Antonio Zúñiga
Chef: Beate Schondienst
Glassblower: Emilio Elvira
Marine Biologist: Álvaro Roura
Sound Engineer: Verbose

Sponsors:
The artists would like to express their gratitude for the generous collaboration of Symrise, the
company with whom the perfume score was researched and developed. They would also like to
thank the galleries Nieves Fernández, Modus Operandi, and 95 Art Gallery, who have supported
the project since its inception, as well as the Romanian Cultural Institute for hosting the
exhibition during the Berlin Art Biennale.