One of the venues which is home to this new community that the collective La Distritofónica represents, and perhaps the most emblematic, is *matik-matik*, a cultural center founded by Julien Calais and Diana Gómez and run by Julien’s brother Benjamin. It quickly became a hub for independent, experimental, and non-commercial musicians and bands to develop, create and present their music. Inaugurated on March 6th 2008, *matik-matik* was conceived as a café with a space for live experimental music, sound and art installations, music listening sessions, as well as a small record shop. It was inaugurated with a set of improvised pieces by electroacoustic musician Roberto García, already mentioned here as being at the forefront of the festival Los Tiempos del Ruido and later the first editions of the Colón Electrónico series. Another of the first live performances that took place at *matik-matik* was by Asdrúbal, after the band was contacted by Julien and asked if they wanted to check out the new venue and play a concert there. From that moment on it became a home to the Distritofónica collective and their members, who grew and developed their music and their projects there, but many others also found *matik-matik* to be a place for creative harvesting and a whole community was built around it. Benjamin Calais remembers that “there was a lot of creativity in the fields of experimental, fringe, traditional and folkloric music, but they were lacking a space. There were not many stages for this music (…) we felt it was a much-needed place” (Jaramillo, 2021). With time the venue came to be known as a bar for atypical, non-commercial music, where you could go to have a coffee or a beer and enjoy a live performance of experimental music, or to party on a Saturday night with live acts by quirky dance-inducing bands or exciting and creative DJ sets. Through its fourteen years of existence *matik-matik* has managed to find a perfect balance between very different kinds of musical expressions, performance situations and social rituals, without it ever being awkward; always maintaining a rounded and consistent curation and more importantly, maintaining a loyal and open-minded community. To a generation of young music students starting to build their musical identities throughout the 2010s (such as myself), *matik-matik* was the place to go for inspiration, where we could have an exchange with other generations of musicians and artists, where we dreamed of one day playing in.

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Besides its regular programming, *matik-matik* is also host to festivals and concert series. Some historical events include the 2009 series Aleatorio, organized by drummer Jorge Sepúlveda, and Labomatik, organized by guitarist Guillermo Bocanegra. Through the years, a festival has grown out of the anniversary celebrations of the bar. Every year around March, they would hold a special event to celebrate their birthday, a tradition that in 2018 turned into a month-long festival to commemorate their ten years of existence. Since then, a special festival takes place every year in March: the twelve-year anniversary celebration was interrupted by the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Colombia, and for the same reason a thirteenth anniversary celebration was impossible, but as I write this a fourteen-year anniversary festival is taking place, a tradition that will hopefully continue for years to come.

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Ciclo de música contemporánea y experimental <libres en el sonido> (Contemporary and experimental music series) occurs sporadically throughout the year at *matik-matik* and has had thirty five concerts to the date, featuring local performers and ensembles of contemporary, experimental, improvised and electronic music. It is organized and curated by Melissa Vargas who is interested in giving a space for a variety of ensembles and performers to show their work, especially those which are just starting to perform, or which are student ensembles which have usually just performed within the confines of their universities.

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The bar was also a major venue for the mentioned Distritofónico festival, which held events at various other locations around the city but ultimately had *matik-matik* as its main headquarters. A similar case is that of the festival El Marrano no se Vende, organized by bassist, improviser, and composer Santiago Botero. In 2013 Botero came up with a concert series for free improvisation which took place at *matik-matik*. By 2014 it had evolved into a one-night mini-festival and in 2015, the first edition of the official festival took place, not only in *matik-matik*, but in other venues such as Locus and Rat Trap. This was one of Botero’s intentions: to organize a city-wide festival for free improvisation that did not take place exclusively at *matik-matik*, but rather moved to other venues in search of new spaces and audiences. The second edition took place in 2016 and after skipping a year, it returned in 2018 for its third edition with a slightly altered subheading: “festival for free improvisation (and a few other musical rarities)”. By its fourth edition in 2019, this subheading had transformed to “festival for improvised, extreme, and strange music”, incorporating musical projects that were not exclusively free improvisation such as hip-hop, jazz, songwriting, ASMR performance, and noise. Throughout the festival, a piggy bank (in reference to the name of the festival, which refers to a marrano, the Spanish word for pig) is placed at the entrance to *matik-matik*, where people can donate money (besides what they have paid for the entrance), and on the last day of the festival, the piggy bank is broken open and the money is distributed among the venue and the participating musicians. There is also the serving of a Lechona, a traditional pork dish (another reference) from the Tolima department of Colombia, which is shared by everyone at the event.

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Another of Botero’s efforts has led to the creation of a record label called Discos Chichigua, dedicated to the release of improvised and newly composed music made in Bogotá. The albums are not released in digital format; instead, they are handcrafted and a limited amount of them printed. By doing so, Botero wants to create a catalogue, a “footprint” of the music that is being made in the city while also “vindicating” the physical format of recorded music. The albums are promoted and can be ordered online, but they exist only as a limited amount in physical format.

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