Can Serrat, El Bruc, Catalonia, 23 May 2019

The two weeks have been busy, Can Serrat Residency hosted a day of experimentation at the El Bruc town hall, ran a day trip to Barcelona for a gallery opening at one residency space and an open mic at another. A book club was also organized, as well as multiple paella (paellas?) cooked.

I’ve also managed to make progress on three chapters of the book, Tomas Brown, past Canberran and another of the residents here, translated six of my poems into Spanish and I’ve managed to get feedback on my work as well as provide input into Tomas’s writing project.

The experimentation day on my first weekend here involved a past resident’s work, and building three concurrent narratives from images they supplied while using simple scripts, then turning those into a film. The process took up the entire day for selecting different images, then arranging them. It was a bit hard to follow for me so I am probably missing a bit, I’d only just arrived and was adjusting to the different languages being spoken.* But it was a fun process to watch and I found a way to engage with it alongside some of the other residents who were similarly on the fringe of the event. It was one of those days that will percolate and maybe something creative will come out of it, but even if it doesn’t it was useful to see all the visuals of past Can Serrat residents.

During last week all the residents of Can Serrat travelled to Barcelona for a day and night of engaging with other residencies, we first went to a gallery space and residency called La Place for a Q&A regarding the installation there. Three hexagon tubes were suspended from the ceiling, you could stand up into each of them and a sound would play while (it was explained to us) a smell was released - I completely missed the smells. There was also an abundance of rock salt all over the ground that made a very satisfying crunching sound as people walked on it. The gallery doubles as the work-space while upstairs is were the resident lives. They are looking for people to apply to undertake residencies and exhibitions, and sound installations are one of the things they are about.

The next stop in Barcelona was an open mic at the now closed Jiwar Barcelona Residency. The open mic was a chance for all the current Can Serrat residents to present some of their work, and we heard poetry from one of the past Jiwar residents. My favourite part of the experience was hearing poetry in Catalan, I’ve heard poetry in Spanish before, and in French, but to hear a Catalan poet perform work he’d written about locations in Barcelona was a first for me; the space was excellent too, we were in the back garden of the Jiwar Residency surrounded by apartment buildings, so we had to finish by 8pm out of consideration for the neighbours.

We had a book club this Tuesday gone too; all the residents were asked to read a passage from what they were currently reading or present something that had influenced them. I can’t check the book out of the library here as I don’t have membership (I walk up to the library each day to read), so instead I read Ron Padgett’s The Fortune Cookie Factory, it was the first poem by someone else that I performed and it has stayed with me since I first read it in the Bible of American Outlaw Poetry. We each provided context for our reading and the group then discussed it. This discussion was pretty wandering and interesting as we explored some of the concepts behind the different residents’ work, my favourite discussion centred on the positives and negatives of deconstructing people’s beliefs (to way over summarize).

I will write a about where my project is at in part two of this post, as well as how I’ve interacted with the work of some of the other residents. Until then, here is a photograph of one of the permanent residents, he was sick when I arrived, and so pretty stand-offish, but after a dose of antibiotics he has become really talkative and keen to hang with us temporary residents.

* When I was here in 2014 the majority of residents were from English speaking countries, so it was pretty comfortable. This time while everyone speaks English, the majority of people are from Spanish and French speaking countries and it has taken a couple of days to adjust to hearing those two languages so frequently.

The Sun Eater, Las Meninas and The Grapple Annual

I have a poem in The Grapple Annual, it is a prose poem titled, The Sun Eater, Catalonia, 17 July 1936 to 17 July 2013, Miró and Picasso.

The Grapple Annual - Grapple Publishing

The work is a response to visiting the Picasso Museum and the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona.

Las Meninas - Pablo Picasso

I was fascinated by the paintings in the Picasso Museum which demonstrate Picasso’s analysis and re-interpretation of Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas. 

Picasso's efforts reportedly very much annoyed people as he did not follow the orthodoxies of re-interpreting another artist's work.

Las Meninas - Diego Velázquez’s

I find examining the process of artistic development feeds my imagination. I also find the motivations of artists to be interesting. According to the Tate, "Picasso’s Las Meninas are a bitter satire, revealing Franco’s careful and cynical orchestration of his image in the grand tradition of Philip II of Spain (1527–1598), the great Habsburg King." I didn't get that from the work, I just got that Picasso was happy to upset people within the artistic establishment.

That combination of interests combined with my ongoing interest in the development process of Joan Miró led me to synthesize my experiences in the Foundation and Museum into one written piece.

The Sun Eater - Joan Miró

I have also been developing a performance of the work, this has been aided by input into the text from George Orwell. 

The Grapple Annual was launched at Newcastle’s This is Not Art in early October, you can grab a copy online from the Australian Capital Terriory-based Grapple Publishing. 

Visiting the Joan Miró Foundation

Joan Miró’s Paysage (Landscape) is my favourite artwork in the National Gallery of Australia.

Paysage

This painting has always linked to my childhood experience of watching Italian animation series La Linea (The Line) on television.

The show seemed to appear randomly, I never thought to seek it out through the television guide.

I don’t think the La Linea and Miró’s works are artistically similar, rather it is the concept of creation from a simple line that has my mind automatically link the two. In the animation I had the illusion of an instant imaginative creation, and when I first saw Paysage in the NGA with its long lines it made my imagination work. I think for me the connection between the two is this creation from simple lines, La Linea is a demonstration and Paysage goes further by making the imagination work.

Visiting the Joan Miró Foundation was a big deal to me in July of 2013. I had no concept of the artist past the art. During that first visit I spent most of my time in the temporary exhibition Joan Miró. Printmaking. That time spent provided a depth of insight into Miró’s creative process. The exhibition followed his engagement with printmaking, particularly during the years spent in France as the Spanish Civil War was fought and lost. His artwork during this period dealt with his outlook on the conflict. From what I remember and the notes I took, much of the work exhibited constituted sketches or black line paintings and lithographs. Some of the work that appealed most to me were these black line works.

La Juene Fille (The Young Girl)

This year, after managing to finally visit the second floor and walk through the entire Foundation, I feel like some of the most interesting and exciting works that push my imagination into high gear were in that temporary exhibition.

A poem, The Sun Eater, Catalonia, 17 July 1936 to 17 July 2013, Miró and Picasso, which is forthcoming in The Grapple Annual is my response to that first visit and my visit to the Picasso Museum during the same week in Barcelona in July 2013. The poem was started while walking through the temporary exhibition last year and finally finished just after this second visit to the Foundation.

Painting (The White Glove)

In the Foundation Miró is quoted as stating that his artwork is a starting point for the imagination.

I am in Paris now, I took the TGV fast train from Barcelona to Paris. I fell asleep watching sunny dry Catalan countryside zoom past to the sounds of the Transistor soundtrack. I woke up to the sounds of Lume as I passed small French towns as well as farms that alternated white cows with fields of orange sunflowers.

Postscript to Spain

In Madrid I saw Picasso’s Guernica. The scream of the horse, the candle on atrocity, the newspaper photograph. This in Madrid made me want to create grand horrible things.

In Barcelona, Picasso’s surety in upsetting those who tell you how it is done was explored in his museum. The father looks away as lines in the face look like fractures, but their location indicates intent. That sureness through Las Meninas reinforced for me the necessity of challenging the creation of art in all its facets and ideologies.

I went to the Joan Miró Foundation where Miró’s works made me stride like a giant, and growl as a monster. I felt I'd figured a puzzle as I understood where and when he made art. The deliberateness of his pursuit of ambiguities was to create jumping points for imagination. That the monstrous and dramatic figuration was an enabler for the viewer.

Within the foundations of Barcelona I walked the excavated streets and buildings of generations of Romans who conquered and lived in what would become Spain. I did my best to imagine their existence.

And now that I am back in Australia I continue to unravel my jotted notes, stick figure pictures, and photographs.