Rock Your Research - Music and Society Lab - The Negatives of the scene - 11/06/2026

"We don't need more light. We need to learn to see in the dark."
— overheard at Ruido Rosa, 02:47 a.m.

"Los Negativos de la Escena" is a photographic and participatory exhibition developed within the framework of the Rock Your Research (RYR) project, a Cooperation Partnership in Higher Education funded by the European Union through the Erasmus+ Programme, under action type KA220-HED (Cooperation partnerships in higher education), Call 2024 Round 1, with Form ID KA220-HED-82B7C8CA.

The exhibition is produced by Medialab UGR (Universidad de Granada) in co-organisation with Fundación Miguel Ríos (Espacio Caja Sonora) and hosted at Ruido Rosa (Granada, Spain). It brings together a series of analogue black-and-white photographs that document the invisible infrastructure sustaining Granada's independent music scene: neighbourhood record shops (Marcapasos, BoraBora, Subterránea), intimate bars and social hubs (La Estrella, Loop Bar & Records, Ruido Rosa), analogue laboratories (La Química Film Lab), sound technicians, graphic designers, cultural activists and community organisers whose daily labour keeps the scene alive without ever appearing on a poster or a setlist.

The photographic and curatorial direction is by María Hoppy, photographer and curator, whose use of analogue film processes gives the series both its aesthetic coherence and its conceptual core: the negative — the latent image that makes every positive print possible — as a metaphor for all the cultural labour that enables music to exist but remains systematically invisible in dominant narratives of urban culture. The photographic base is collective, created in collaboration with the Asociación Sociocultural Espárrago a Contrapelo and driven by the energy of visual artist and cultural agent Lucía de Chapi Piruli. Further collaborators include graphic designer and DJ Claudia Lakore, cultural activist Sara Ruidosa, and local record-shop representative Toni Jiménez, whose combined participation ensures the shared, community-rooted authorship of the visual material.

The exhibition is structured around three research axes identified through participatory community laboratories: (1) Spaces, Commerce and Technique, documenting independent concert halls, record shops and analogue labs; (2) Bars and Key Points, highlighting intimate social venues as neuralgic centres of cultural diffusion and trust-building; and (3) Technical, Production and Graphic Design, rendering visible the backbone of professionals whose work precedes and enables every public musical event. Each axis was co-defined by participants — music lovers, early-career researchers, artists and activists — during a series of Rock it Cafés and citizen labs held at community spaces including Se Vende Bocadillos and the II Rock Café (Granada). These encounters followed the Rock it Labs methodology developed within RYR, which positions higher education institutions as facilitators of experiential, curiosity-driven collaboration between artists, researchers and citizens rather than as top-down producers of knowledge.

The exhibition also generated a public round table held during its inauguration at Ruido Rosa, featuring Claudia Lakore, Sara Ruidosa and Toni Jiménez, which connected street-level cultural activism with academic research perspectives in a dialogic format aligned with RYR's Rock it Cafés methodology. A forthcoming digital interactive cultural map of Granada's music ecosystem — aligned with the project's Rock it Map activities — will extend the exhibition's impact as a living, updatable open resource for researchers, cultural organisations, policymakers and citizens.

The project is coordinated by Linnaeus University (Sweden, OID: E10176223) and implemented in partnership with ACEEU GmbH (Germany, OID: E10248776), Vetenskap Allmänhet — VA / Public & Science (Sweden, OID: E10209218), Universidad de Granada (Spain, OID: E10208989) and Universidad de Málaga (Spain, OID: E10209121). The total project budget is €400,000, co-financed by the European Union, with a duration of 36 months (01/12/2024 — 30/11/2027). The National Agency of the applicant organisation is SE01 — Swedish Council for Higher Education (Universitets- och högskolerådet). This exhibition constitutes a result of Work Package 3 (WP3 — Rock it Labs) and Work Package 4 (WP4 — Rock it Exhibition), both led by the Universidad de Granada within the project

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.