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.

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.

Into the autonomous community of Madrid

“If you give meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my intention to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.” – Pablo Picasso

I went to Madrid for four days last week. Most of that time was spent in the Prado museum and the Reina Sofía museum with Amanda.

I sent a few postcards after the visit. One of the Sunken dog (Perro Semihundido) and one of The Execution of Torrijos and his companions at Málaga Beach (El fusilamiento de Torrijos y sus compañeros en la playa de Málaga). Those are two of my three favourite paintings. The third is Guernica and I didn’t feel like sending a postcard of that one.

Sunken Dog was painted by Goya onto the wall of his house and is considered as never meant for exhibition. The execution on the beach is a representation of killing by an absolute ruler of people fighting for some form of liberty in Spain.

A big part of returning to Madrid for me was being able to revisit the painting Guernica in the Reina Sofia and to finally make it to the second floor of the Prado to explore the artwork there.

I was reading something on the Spanish Civil War generating a large corps of partisan news reporters who soon after arriving to report on the conflict sided with the Second Spanish Republic in an ultimately doomed fight for liberty. Some quit their jobs with right-wing papers to enter the war. I think my interest in the three artworks above is tied to the failure of that fight and the ongoing failure of the left in Australia and globally. I could try and unpack that here but won’t, I write poetry to do that.

This week Pascalle Burton published the third issue of her zine, Today, the Voice you speak with may not be your own. It has a poem that I started after my last visit to Spain and finished while on this residency. This issue has the theme ‘Film’.

Image by Pascalle Burton

The last week has been focussed on a restructure of the manuscript, which is going at a slow pace, putting together two fifteen minute performances, and writing my first ever grant application.

We have an Open Studio here in Can Serrat on 28 June, I plan to use one of the performances I am developing for that event.

Open Studio in El Bruc

I am part of an open studio at the Can Serrat International Art Centre here in El Bruc, Catalunya, on 28 June.

Open Studio - Can Serrat

There will be exhibitions of art from several of the other current residents, including Ariel Grout.

From a 2012 Open Studio by Ariel Grout

Readings from three other writers, including India’s Vikram Kapur  and West Australian Helen Hagemann. 

Read Vikram's When the White Man Came for Chai on his website (first published in Ambit Magazine, Issue 204, UK, April 2011).

Amanda Coghlan will have an installation of nine images focussed on the campaign for Catalunya's independence and the preservation of El Bruc.

I'll be performing a combination of poems from my developing manuscript for all the veronicas (the dog who staid) and That Place of Infested Roads (life during wartime) published by the Knives Forks and Spoons Press.

The Timbaler of El Bruc

About a week has passed in Catalunya, I’ve been up Montserrat Mountain to the abbey and experienced an El Bruc festival.

The abbey is Benedictine and a major pilgrimage and tourism destination to visit a Black Madonna. It is an experience to look out over a congregation gazing up at the statue. People crying, people chatting, people shushing, people checking their phones.

I’ve sent a postcard off with some of the feeling of the monastery written onto it. The abbey has a museum holding artifacts from the Middle East, as well as artwork by Salvador Dalí. The work they have by Joan Miró is travelling as part of a touring collection of the 100 best works from the abbey museum.

This weekend was the Drummer Festival celebrating the legend of the French army fleeing from El Bruc due to a local drummer boy who made the French think a huge Catalunyan army was descending upon them.

The festival opened on Saturday evening with drumming teams in a grand procession down the main street, the locals in orange were chaotic and led by a drummer with a red mohawk. Three teams visiting from nearby towns also took part, they were purple, yellow and blue.

I was asked where my vote went, it went to blue. They were having the most fun with their small team. I don’t know if there was a winner, I hope so.

Sunday had the French army invading the town. There was an evil French general who had excellent crazy eyes.

And who ordered his soldiers to steal the daughters and wives of El Bruc and threaten them with execution.

And then threaten their fathers and husbands with execution, he then pretended to let them go, and then he had them shot.

A blind drunk raised the town to fight. He talked and talked and drank and drank and kept smacking his drummer boy guide on the back of the head.

There was the firing of blunderbusses and muskets into the air, pork crackling and pig face was eaten, and tea and sweets from Morocco were given away.

To close the day Catalunyan irregulars attacked the French camp on the edge of town. Pitchfork and reaper armed militia came down a large cliff on ropes while drummers and blunderbuss armed troops came up from a creek. They seized a French canon, then battled the retreating French into the centre of the old town. The air was full of smoke and rolling barrels and flung sandbags. There was fake blood. And to the crash of blunderbuss and with the smell of sulphur the last French soldier was pitchforked to death where the earlier executions had occurred.

Sunday is a recreation of events on 6 and 14 June 1808. On both days much smaller forces from Catalunya defeated the invading French military.

During this week gone I’ve managed to finish one poem, and with Amanda’s help, give the manuscript a restructure and edit.

This Tuesday I’m headed to Barcelona to visit The Joan Miró Foundation and the Museum of History of Catalunya.

I’m still listening to the Transistor soundtrack, but mixing it up with the music of FTL, Pitiri 1977 and Samorost 2.

All the photographs are by Amanda Coghlan, except the one of a postcard.

Canberra to El Bruc

I am in Catalunya, just north of Barcelona, in a town called El Bruc. I am staying a month for a residency.

I’ve set some objectives for the time here, structuring and editing a new poetry manuscript, identifying poems to form into a performance, putting together a new poem for the Queensland Poetry Festival, and developing performances for that and the Red Dirt Poetry Festival in Alice Springs. I have a few other things to pursue but they overlap with these.

During the flights and stop-overs to Barcelona I started collecting images from different newspapers I managed to grab in airport lounges. My favourite three are from the International New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

I'll also be writing postcards while I am in Spain. My first is to my mum.

El Bruc is that stretched town below the mountain. I am looking forward to going up that mountain. 

For the trip I bought the game Transistor so I could listen to Darren Korb's new soundtrack.



l still enjoy listening to his soundtrack for Bastion, I think this new music is also excellent.

The building I am in is an old winery with plenty of space and there are only nine other people here.