Poet, essayist, translator, art critic, columnist… Director at the cultural centres KRTU and Arts Santa Mònica, and curator of the Miró, Pla and Dalí Years. He made his acting debut under Albert Serra’s direction. Is there anything missing?
All I’ve done is somehow complementary. I’m the product of a time of amazing breakthrough, for we belong to a generation that rose awareness of the meaning of knowledge and freedom. That made us both self-demanding and free. I’m open to the unexpected and it’s still possible that I’ll end up making things I had never imagined I woul .
You’ve always stood for hybridization, for interrelating disciplines: what have you found in this territory of convergence?
A great part of my intellectual work has tried to bring together radically different disciplines, such as the platonic and the empiric world.
What are the similarities between art and science?
Both create a new world by using metaphors that may transform reality. Science observes facts and, by comparing and staring at the differences, comes with universal rules. Art does the same: observes and transforms. Both need new questions to obtain different answers.
These days, with the digital revolution, our relation to culture has completely changed. On one side, the web democratizes access to knowledge but on the other, the overflow of information makes our attention drift…
We swing between an old system and a new one. Years ago we were really excited about technology whereas nowadays an apocalyptic prejudice regarding its use is starting to spread. I believe if we are aware of these extremes we’ll correct several mistakes.
Technology has always sought innovation. Art has often fallen for the fetishism of the new. In the cultural field what’s more important: to innovate or to preserve?
Around the world you can find civilisations centred on innovation and others focused on preservation. I like hybrid cultures — aware of transformation and able to look into the well of memory for unusual elements. You can find this in the ultra-local world, in small cultures such as the Catalan one. What makes it survive is its capacity to both remember and innovate.
Talking about small local places, you’ve been going to Cadaqués every weekend of winter and summer for more than 25 years now…
Without being completely aware of it, it has become my place for internal work, a large part of my literature has been written there.
Dalí, Duchamp, Beuys, Hamilton… very few places have summoned so many great artists!
Cadaqués has especially shone in four great periods: the pre-avant-garde, with Pitxot and Picasso and the Modern Style circle. Later on, the surrealist group around Salvador Dalí leading to Duchamp. After that came the pop movement and the art gallery of Franco Bombelli. And today, in our post-modern world we see Huc Malla following in Bombelli’s footsteps, and now we’re incorporating Perejaume or Plensa’s generation and the even younger ones.
What does Cadaqués have to attract so many artists?
It’s a leisurely place with the complexity of Novalis’ cosmic infinity.
What was Cadaqués like years ago?
It was an ultra-local world, really small and very difficult to get to. It took the same time for Picasso to get from Paris to Figueres as from Figueres to Cadaqués. It took Rosa Regàs 4-6 hours by Vespa coming from Barcelona. At that time it was a really local community. Nowadays there are many summertime incomers.
A golden age?
Cadaqués is still full of treasures. That’s what I live. But I also like to study the other side of it. For me it's a luxury to be able to meet so great artists there, such as Jordi Colomer, Albert Serra, Tom Carr and so on…
Before we leave it, could you recommend a book to read by the sea?
‘Germà de gel’ (‘Ice Brother’), by Alicia Kopf, at the same time hot and cold. Another thrilling read is ‘Charles Baudelaire’s love life’, by Camille Mauclair, with a prologue by Edgardo Dobry. It’s obligatory to read ‘The secret life of Salvador Dalí’, one of the most extraordinary books in universal literature, and, of course, ‘Cadaqués’, by Josep Pla.
What music to play on a summer eve?
Something by Pascal Comelade, a musician from Ceret, very close to Cadaqués, especially ‘Sardana for the defenceless’. Also a song by Carles Santos, who gave his last concert in Cadaqués last summer. It was really moving.
A film (or a chapter of a series) to savour on a hot night?
I definitely like ‘Louis XIV’s Death’, by Albert Serra. It’s the decline of every living thing.
