"I have dedicated myself to many things. Perhaps the one that has involved the most continuous effort over time has been my career as a researcher and university professor in Human Geography. I have a great appetite and great curiosity and I am not afraid to try new things, which is why I had a pop group in the late 80s, I had a music pub specializing in 60s music, I have organized parties, concerts and various events, I have been a DJ, I have run a cooking blog, I have curated exhibitions, I have worked as a visual artist... And I'm surely forgetting things."
The artist and researcher Quim Bonastra sips a Spritz. He has arrived at the Bar with the night coloring the city sky and "eager for fun and to get out of the house after the pandemic." His life has been and continues to be a constant search and discovery of stimuli and new messes to get into body and soul: "Each new discovery involves an effort, an immersion, a full dedication to that thing, which always runs in parallel with others, some of which, inevitably, have to take a back seat due to physical and temporal limitations. This entails letting go of what can no longer occupy the foreground, which causes some pain and some sadness. I have to mourn what I leave behind. It is a pain that mixes with the joy and excitement for the new."
He sips a little of the typically Venetian drink, based on prosecco and Aperol, and concludes, with the smile of someone who lives very intensely without ever taking himself too seriously, always capable of taking distance from himself: "I realize that this conversation is serving as a bit of therapy for me."
Expansion of the artistic focus
Proud of his foray into the world of artistic creation, to which he has been dedicated in recent years, Quim Bonastra clarifies that "I was already dedicated to artistic things, from teaching and from research. So the growing involvement has been a natural evolution in which you find yourself immersed. It started with university teaching, using art for your students to learn geography expanded to research on art, education, and geography, which, in turn, expanded to curating exhibitions. That led me, almost without realizing it, to creation. In parallel, with some colleagues I met at MACBA, we formed an artistic collective that is now three years old: MITO Collective. We work, using different techniques and methodologies, on the myths that are formed in contemporaneity, which we understand as Alessandro Baricco: assemblages of heterogeneous and chaotic elements."
During the pandemic, the collective launched the project Augmented Irreality. "Based on the sensations and perceptions about the reality we were living and that people we talked to had, we created a series of slogans like Hackers & Bodies, Snacks & Doctrine, or Diaphanous Mystery that, more than meaning something concrete, connect with the pre-rational and pre-cognitive. From there, a public art project was born through which citizens became artists, projecting the slogans from where they were confined, onto their neighbors' facades. Thus, the projector is at once spectator, creator, and exhibition device, and must make key decisions in the work: its duration, its visibility space, its moment of appearance, the record of this appearance. Also, consequently, it deals with the possible consequences of its action, which are also part of the work: from neighbors' criticisms to applause, from attempts to boycott the projection to interest in it happening again." Augmented Irreality has reached twenty-five cities, on five continents.
--- And from MITO, do you have anything in mind in the short term?
--- Yes, the audiovisual performance Espejismo Lúcido. Apuntes para el cierre de una pandemia. We will present it at the Oliva Artés venue of the Museu d'Història de Barcelona on Wednesday, November 24, with free admission and no reservation. The idea is to perform a collective exorcism of the pandemic, in which the public can collaborate by sending us messages through their mobile devices, which we will convert into images and words.
Barcelona by choice
"At the end of the 18th century, an ambassador of the Ottoman Empire and his retinue disembarked in Barcelona on their way to Madrid where he was to meet with Carlos III. As he came from a territory suspected of being a perennial focus of the plague, he had to undergo a quarantine in a lazaretto in what would now be more or less Bogatell beach. The camp he set up was lavish and the entertainments he organized to pass the boredom of the quarantine were most exotic, eccentric, and wild at the same time, ranging from concerts by his musicians to battles between improvised factions of his retinue. Upon hearing about it, the citizens of Barcelona flocked to the beach every day to see this unprecedented spectacle. I believe this explains quite well the Barcelona I like. A city that, without denying what it is, knows how to appreciate interesting things that come from outside and even knows how to incorporate them critically," explains Quim, originally from Lleida, who confesses to having a love relationship with Barcelona.
"Barcelona is a city that, without denying what it is, knows how to appreciate interesting things that come from outside and even knows how to incorporate them critically""I am lucky to be able to live in this city by choice. My life and my partner's would be less complicated and cheaper in Lleida, but here we are. And I don't understand those who criticize the city all day long: that if this is no longer what it used to be, that if in other places they are more astute and know how to do better business, that if they are taking the city away from us, that if I want to go live in the countryside". Quim is critical of aspects such as overtourism, excessive real estate speculation, or "the loss of some places where we had been happy," but he champions "some changes that are happening here and that many criticize, such as, among other things, pedestrians reclaiming part of the space occupied by motor vehicles."
And, having finished his Spritz, Quim Bonastra orders another, thinking aloud about the imminent dinner, which will be "à la carte, with starters, main course, second course, wine, dessert, and coffee. I'm sure I won't finish it all ---he flashes a smile---, but I have a voracious appetite." Almost as much as his insatiable artistic hunger.