He looks a bit tired. "I suffer from insomnia and I like to get up early, a small disaster," he explains, before ordering a short coffee with oat milk and no sugar: "One of the few vices I have left." The morning light streams through the windows and the notes of Carl Perkins' Pointed toe shoes accompany the new day atmosphere that is breathed at the bar.
The artist and museographer, Lluís Alabern, has just come from running. "I've been running since childhood. First on the athletics tracks, later cross-country and in the mountains." To his credit, he has covered thousands of kilometers in the form of marathons and mountain races.
"I have written about the crossroads of all these demarcations," he clarifies, regarding his recently published Breviario del viejo corredor (Siruela), which the author himself defines as a succession of "stitched fragments, reflections of an old runner in which running mixes with drawing and orography with life."
Born in Barcelona in '68, he explains that he was born a technician. "When I was little, before playing with a newly gifted toy, I would take it apart. I understood over the years that I was that, a technician. Someone who needs to touch and delimit objects and landscapes to understand what surrounds him." His first vocation, however, would be that of a press cartoonist, "I wanted to be a graphic humorist."
As a cartoonist, he has visited a great number of galleries, books, and museums, either through exhibitions or through performances. At the same time, he currently holds the position of Head of Museography at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. "I am proud to have perceived that my province is the humus, the space of basic nutrients. I am a specialist in the humus of museums, in searching for art in the margins, in walking through the minor regions and in making all of this a profession." And, whoever says walking, sometimes can say running.
Sudden stop
Upon turning fifty, Lluís Alabern pulled the handbrake. "I got tired of my mediocrities. I understood that I was an ordinary father, an anodyne husband, an invisible artist. I destroyed everything I had written up to that moment." Thus, almost all of his writings, published or unpublished, disappeared, including La trastienda del arte, a compilation of fragments from his diary from 2007.
"I stopped drawing for a few months, convinced that I could never contribute anything interesting. I dedicated myself to jogging through the woods, bathing in icy rivers, diving into the sea, working at the museum driven by a certain inertia." At that moment is when he restores an old Corbetta bicycle, there are many ways to run, and many places to do it. "A few months later, I wrote in one go the diary that I have just published."
"I got tired of my mediocrities. I understood that I was an ordinary father, an anodyne husband, an invisible artist. I destroyed everything I had written up to that moment"--- And what are you up to now?
The artist and museographer sips a brief drink of his coffee and resumes speaking slowly, with a rhythm of leaves swayed by the air. "I participate in some forums to reflect on where the museums of the future in the city of Barcelona should go. I am also looking for a nice place to rehouse my library, currently disassembled, packed, and stored in an attic."
In addition, the parishioner claims to be discovering the Sierra de Queralt, "jogging around Berga," and announces that he already has a new book in preparation.
The city of oblivion
"Barcelona is the mold city. The one I always use to understand others," explains the artist who has recently returned to the city after twenty years living abroad. "Barcelona has changed a lot, but it also remains the same," he assures.
Although he is against zoos, "in fact, they depress me," he admits how fascinated he was, for years, that Snowflake lived in the one here: "The only known albino gorilla! It seemed like visiting a buddha, a superior being who questioned us, a lament of wild life. An icon that those of us who knew him have not forgotten. I believe Barcelona still owes him a tribute."
"Barcelona is the mold city. The one I always use to understand others"--- Yes, and not to forget its weight and its presence in the historical imagery of this city.
"I am frightened by Barcelona's capacity for forgetting ---the regular replies, already finishing his oat milk coffee---. I lived, thanks to my elders, a certain Barcelona of freedoms, of cultural festivity, of social architecture, of countercultural initiatives. Little of all that remains. The Barcelona of gentrification clogs me up!".
--- What neither clogs nor chokes is our gastronomic offer, in case after the coffee you feel like having lunch: some portions, a sandwich…
"I'm more of a portion person," replies Lluís Alabern, sketching a smile that follows the cadence of Funnel of love by Wanda Jackson.
--- I eat mine, and pick at the other diners'---, he warns.