Far back in ancient times, the territory of the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula formed something close to a territorial and cultural unit. This fact would be practically irrelevant if we didn’t still confirm a wide range of connections between Portugal north of the River Mondego, Galicia, Asturias and Castilla y León, which are clearly evident in rural contexts. Types of crops and livestock, tools, vernacular architecture, words, forms of community organisation, etc. etc. give rise to obvious feelings of familiarity (but we also do or say this or that!).
The origin of Binaural Nodar was intrinsically linked to this feeling of cross-border cultural attachment, through informal artistic meetings held in the village of Nodar between 1999 and 2003, with the participation of artists such as Rui Costa (Nodar/Lisbon), Iñaki Ríos (Valladolid), Pablo Rega (La Coruña) and Nilo Gallego (León). These and other meetings were decisive in designing the intervention methodology of Binaural Nodar, which was founded at the end of 2024.
In the first few years of the association’s work, several artists from the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula were hosted, such as Roi Fernández (Pontevedra), Xexús Valle (Vigo), Nilo Gallego (León), Cristina Tascón and Ingrid Quiroga (León), Iñaki Ríos and Natividad Plasencia (Valladolid), and in 2007 the Fronte[i]ras festival was co-organised, an artistic and curatorial reflection on the concept of the border, conceived between two cultural associations from both sides of the Galician-Portuguese border, Binaural Nodar and Alg-a.
Between 2015 and 2019, the cultural connections of the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula were expanded through the organisation of five editions of the Ocupai Festival – Iberian Festival of Art and Action, in which dozens of companies and artists from Portugal and the Spanish regions mentioned above were programmed, such as Jorge Pascual, the somospeces collective, Nilo Gallego, La Xata la Rifa, Marina Oural Villapol, Pequeña Victoria Cen, Pandereteras Gritsanda, Igmig, Isaac Cordal, etc. etc.
In 2021, an artist residency was organised with artistic collectives from the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula, Binaural Nodar (Portugal), Oficina Galega de Outros Asuntos do Movemento (Galicia), La Xata la Rifa (Asturias) and Somospeces (León), who shared aspects of their respective territories and the artistic forms they have developed (poetry, dance, music, performance, sound art, video, etc.) with the other collectives, with the aim of creating some results that might represent a certain idea of being-in-common.
In 2022, the artistic project “De Nodar em Nodar” (“From Nodar to Nodar”) by Luís Costa was conceived, which explored links between two rural places with the same toponym located 400 km apart, one in São Pedro do Sul and the other in the municipality of Friol (Galicia, Spain). In the same year, the artist residency “Ruralidades Limítrofes” (“Neighbouring Ruralities”) was hosted in the municipality of Viseu, a project by Luís Costa and the poet and performer from León, Jorge Pascual.