Forest performances and water as an instrument: Eufònic arts festival 2025

Arts festival Eufònic returns this July with 70 artists spread across 35 venues in Terres de l'Ebre. The 14th edition will feature auditorium performances, as well as concerts, audiovisual installations, performances in the natural landscape, workshops, participatory activities, and more. 

Sound, visual, and digital-performing arts define Eufònic, all in the context of being deeply rooted in the landscape that surrounds it, the Terres de l’Ebre area, some 200km south of Barcelona. At the forefront of cutting-edge creativity and culture, the festival received the National Culture Award in 2023, one of the most important cultural distinctions in Catalonia. 

The avant-garde festival features concerts, audiovisual performances, artistic installations in museums and temporarily adapted natural spaces, sound actions in the landscape, workshops, and participatory activities. 

The Terres de l’Ebre region forms a central part of the identity of the festival, according to director Vicent Fibla. “Any kind of cultural manifestation should be connected with the landscape, the place where it is happening,” he tells Catalan News. 

“The Ebre River, the delta is sinking, like all these problems right now concerning climate things. There are a lot of activities in the festival that are talking about this,” he adds. “Eufònic is happening here, and it can’t happen anywhere else.” 

Hydrophones and aquatic soundscape 

Jana Winderen is one of the world’s leading sound artists and an expert in underwater sound recordings, researching hidden depths with the latest technology, focussing on large, immersive sound installations. Her work reveals the complexity and strangeness of the unseen world beneath. 

At Eufònic, she is presenting her installation ‘Listening with the Blue Swimmer.’ With a two-week residency in the Terres de l’Ebre, Winderen created her latest work based on careful and deep listening to the Trubacador area and other spaces of the Ebre Delta. 

“For 20 years now, I've been specializing in underwater sound, so I use hydrophones that I record the sound with,” she told Catalan News. “They are particularly made for underwater listening, different to a microphone in air. So I've also recorded bats’ echolocation, there's loads of bats in the delta.”

On an artistic residency in Catalonia, she has visited the Delta area three times, in 2023, 2024, and again now in 2025, where she is creating her aquatic soundscape. She explains to Catalan News that she’s been curious to learn about the climate issues that the area faces, and has incorporated her learnings into her installation. 

Her exhibition, housed in the La Lira d'Amposta arts centre, also features drawings of creatures she has seen locally in the area, including a stickleback fish which she enthusiastically explained is known for rapid evolution in its environment, as well as a space to invite visitors to reflect, with scientific papers about the local climate and blank pages to draw on. 

‘Amniotic River’

Also touching on the theme of listening to water, Korean sound artist based in Canada, Lina Choi, will be presenting her sound action ‘Amniotic River’ in the Terres de l’Ebre this month. Through her work, she asks why people have an innate desire to listen to water by exploring rivers, oceans, and rain. 

An enchanting ambient performance leaves the audience in a deep, relaxing trancelike state. Water is the primary instrument used in this so-called ‘sound action’, poured into a traditional clay jug and then manipulated in various ways, all transmitted to the listener through sensitive microphones inside and around the jug.  

“I put a hydrophone in the water and then I play with the water. That amplifies the sound,” she tells Catalan News.

Between poetry, installations, exhibitions, ambient, electronic, house, techno, subversive folk, exotic post-punk, and even live-coding, Eufònic has a diverse, inventive, and original lineup that will inspire contemplation while entertaining. 

The festival is centred in the town of Amposta between July 10-13, but with performances and installations spread out over the course of ten days throughout the region, in towns such as Miravet, Paüls, Roquetes, and more. 

Most activities are free, with the exception of the musical and audiovisual performances on Friday and Saturday, July 11 and 12, in Amposta, with one-day and two-day tickets available.