Camila Cañeque (Barcelona, 1984) moves comfortably between performance, video, installation and writing. From a disenchanted perspective, her work explores isolation, alienation and fatigue to question the frenetic pace of our society.

You’ve lived in São Paulo, in a village in Lithuaina, in New  York… but you’ve also spent a long time here. What does Empordà mean to you? 

When I moved to Empordà I had the feeling of arriving at the right  destination and I didn’t know what to do with it. As happened to Candide when he visited El Dorado, the certainty that Empordà was the best place to be felt unbearable, like being uncomfortable in Paradise. Luckily, this didn’t last long, and the two years I spent here without going anywhere else were wonderful: isolation, animals, vegetables, the sky, good neighbours and visitors. With time, it has become the place where I always come back to, where I have my books: my home. 

In 2013 you developed a project that took you to cross the United  States from coast to coast during 27 days dressed as a ‘flamenca’ and in the sole company of your camera. Were you scared? 

The suit brought a certain feeling of protection, as a kind of armour.  If a murderous Texan truck driver came across a ‘flamenca’ on the road at night I’m sure he wouldn’t kill her. 

What was the strangest thing that happened to you?

The strangest thing to me happened one night in a karaoke bar  on the outskirts of a village in Nevada. A man suggested that the ‘flamenca’ had to dance in Las Vegas, he explained that he managed a theatre and that they would pay me a lot of money. Despite the fact that I was a dis-functional dancer and I didn’t believe his power of influence, I accepted his suggestion and went to Las Vegas. 

Would you do it again?

Living your days as a gymkhana touring the States is something that  if I could, I would do again and again and again. 

That same year you were also ‘censured’ at ARCO fair. You went in and laid facing down dressed as a ‘flamenca’ holding some lines by Federico García Lorca’s ‘Romancero gitano’. After a few minutes, the security staff came and asked you to leave for not having asked for authorization… 

To dare to do that performance I had prepared by fasting for a long  time and I found myself in a liminal state of confusion. That day, although I hadn’t been still for many hours, the dimension of my confusion was identical to the fear I felt for the guard with his walkietalkie, a mixture of shame and honour as a result of the hotheaded reactions around me, and a feeling of wanting to get home and have something to eat. 

Your piece ‘Dead End’ aims to symbolize the death of Spain. I’d say  it was a visionary work. 

By performing a dead end, I wanted to evoke a more universal issue,  a general feeling of exhaustion, not only of the artistic and cultural industries but also of the whole system. 

After having worked mostly in performance, you’ve recently taken  a turn towards more conceptual pieces. In your last exhibition at Hans&Fritz Gallery in Barcelona there were several ‘povera’ sculptures and some paintings. What’s the reason for thVat change? 

I needed to integrate my own personal research with something  material, external and independent from me. 

And what about the puddle? That was the exhibition’s leitmotiv…

The puddle is an image of paralysis in front of the uncontrolled drift  around it. It also means isolation, stagnant water. But, further to its meaning, I think about the place for which the puddle is destined. I imagine it in the future, in the middle of a room, in a context where we won’t be able to leave home any more. People will have a puddle imitating the natural urban and suburban landscape of the past and will water it once a week. This dimension of imaginary anticipation is what interested me the most. 

You entitled it ‘Total Machine’. To the people from our generation this  title reminds us of record collections of noisy music that, amongst other things, made Chimo Bayo popular. Was it a coincidence or you had premeditated it? 

There’s a certain connection between what we had to dance and what  we are doing now. The title wanted to bring into the same room both universes. On one side, the recent past of failed political utopias and ‘bakalao’. On the other side, the robotic, aseptic inactivity of our post-comfort lives. 

In fact, this exhibition wanted to slow down the fast pace of our lives.  Does this need to stop have anything to do with you moving to ‘the  city that never sleeps’? 

New York is good for blood-circulation. It’s a place where the symptoms  of our society very clearly reveal themselves. And in that sense it’s a good counterpoint to my fieldwork. This hyperactive, unstoppable and over-populated city becomes a paradigmatic island to develop my research on inactivity, tiredness and isolation. I also like it because it’s a place where you can easily feel very small and disappear. 

The summer is coming. It seems that everything should go slower, more peacefully. But, instead, we feel the need to fill in our schedules as fast as always: travelling, visiting new places… 

Very soon physical trips will be replaced by psychological journeys, grafted  in our bodies, so it’s worth making the most of them while we can. 

To finish… can you tell us an artwork you admire?

‘The sick’ by Darío Villalba is work I admire these days./