Pablo Helguera Archive

Academia de los Nocturnos at Exit Art from helgueraarchive on Vimeo.

Part of the exhibition Collective/Performative at Exit art, This project consisted in a series of gatherings, culminating in a 3am performance, inspired by the 16th-century Spanish Academia de los Nocturnos (Academy of the Night Revelers) who created the first “tertulia,” an intellectual soiree, that functioned as a secret literary society.

The Academia de los Nocturnos (Academy of the Night Revelers), which emerged in in Valencia, Spain, in the 1590s, was one of the first artistic social gatherings in the form of the soirée. Part a secretive fraternity meeting late at night, part a gathering of wannabe poets, the academy held literary contests on a regular basis and became a support group for the then emerging modern literary art forms. In tribute to the closing of Exit art, this event revived this golden age community in the form of a week-long sonnet workshop, culminating with a very late night (3am, in fact) performance and literary contest on the last day of operation of Exit art.

The academia de los nocturnes was first presented at Mildred’s Lane in the summer of 2011.