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Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca is a very particular example in the artistic Spanish. His work incorporates the audio visual field as well as stage, in equal proportionsBorn in Moià, Bages, in 1959 and licensed in Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona, Marcel•lí Antúñez was one of the founders of
La Fura dels Baus, where he was also a musician, actor and, as well, artistic coordinator of shows ('Accions', 1984; 'Suz/o/Suz', 1985; and 'Tier Monde', 1988).
The outstanding presence he achieved with La Fura in the international sphere, he individually maintained after abandoning the collective with the performances Epizoo ('94) and Afasia ('98); and the expositions 'La vida...' – Life… - ('93) and ´Epifanía´ - Epiphany ('99).
Creator of objects, drawings and performances, recognised as one of the most remarkable representatives of Spanish electronic art, his works are distinguished by their singularity. Till this day, his work has been presented in diverse museums, theatres and festivals in Europe, Japan, Australia, EEUU and Latina America.
In the spring of 1979 Marcel·lí formed together with
Carlos Padrissa and
Pere Tantiñá the group La Fura dels Baus. They also participated in the creation of
Teresa Puig and Quico Palomar. In the summer of the same year, the collective bought along a mule and carriage and embarked on a tour though diverse towns of Catalonia. With a banner through the villa, the work was a presentation in the square of the village. The road was conventionally prepared and converted in to a stage and the troupe presented an allegory in five acts titled ´Vida i miracles del pagés Tarino i la seva dona la Teresina´ - Life and miracles of the rural worker Tarino and his wife Teresina. Once finalised, the representation was raffled in a bottle of champagne or a rabbit to collect funds and continue the tour. This event marked profoundly the collective and decided to continue their active creativity as a theatre group.
During the years of '81 and '82 Antúnez played in the CIL (Colectivo Sación Libre).
Led by Claudio Julián and Víctor Nubla, this band of multiple formations got a whole generation of musicians of Barcelona between those were, Boris Porter, JM Berenguer and Mireia Tejero. The esthetic of this orchestra toured in around free-jazz and contemporary music. Antúnez participated playing the trumpet and voice work.
In 1981 Antúnez founded, together with Mireia Tejero, "Error Genetico". The formation, which passed the trio to quartet in various occasions, lasted till 1983. The instruments were sax, trumpet, bass, guitar, and at times, drums, and some non conventional instruments and voice. The ideological program of ´Error Genético´ (Genetic Error) predicted ideas such as the incorporations of animal instruments (parrots, monkeys, horses, etc.), the incorporation of the mentally ill and handicapped in the band, and the use of machines and rubbish used as musical instruments.
The position on the stage was accompanied by wardrobe, choreography and useful illumination and they combined the habitual instruments with synthesizers, can percussions, toys and animal recording. Although the group did not develop a great life activity, the band´s experiences were an authentic precedent in the post works of Antúnez.
Till the year 1984 La Fura developed a music-stage activity in the line of the groups like Breat & Pupets or Comediants. The hippy movement gave the last whiplash. In the stage territory the manifestation is current in the form of participative theatre, festive and folkloric.
In the last line of banners, circus and sketches, La Fura maintained an intense activity in a multitude of Catalan villages. These representations acquired diverse formats and titles: 'El Patatus' ('81), 'Cercata' ('82), 'Furarecords' ('83) and 'Electrofocs' ('83).
In 1983 this working formula flowed in a contradictory situation: while Antúnez and the rest of La Fura worked in a festive line, their restlessness and activities outside the group were in another orbit. They no longer felt heir to the festive and their ideas were other ones. This was probably the impulse of the birth of 'Accions' (Actions), performance that assumed a radical turn in the esthetic raise of the company.
The seed of the performance, 'Accions', was presented in October of 1983 in the Theatre Festival of Sitges. The work reconverted the techniques of street theatre: pyrotechnic, the control of the audience, the funambulism and the control of great spaces, in a new approach, more aggressive and radical and absolutely opposite to festive theatre. 'Accions' advocated an extreme corporal lyricism, wild plastic, a noisy and explosive soundtrack…
The period that 'Accions' opened in 1984 until the creation of the performance 'Tier Monde' in 1984, meant ´Accions´ to step in to the international forums. From 1985 and of parallel form, Antúnez developed the series of books of artists titled ´Artcagarro´ and as such he commenced to work with 'Los Rinos'.
The period that embraces 1990 till 1994 was a phase extremely prolific and versatile in the path of Antúnez. Of a completely heterodox way, he worked in fields so disparate like theatre, performance, the plastic arts or cinema. These works gave it individual form or in collaborations with other artists. This period assumed a new change of plan. Antúnez gradually abandoned his participation in collectives, to develop, with more attention, his own personal world.
In 1990 the preparation for the last work, Los Rinos, commenced, the multidisciplinary performance, 'Conferencia en Rinolacxia 91'. This was the most ambitious and complex piece of the whole trajectory of the trio. It was premiered at the
Mercat de les Flors in April 1991. The play was presented in different European festivals.
In Autumn 1991 Antúnez co-directed, with the dramatist Andrés Morte 'El Artifício, Panorama de Caracteres' (The Artificial, Panorama of Characters). This play, interpreted by amateur actors, was written from the remnants of classic texts of Spanish literature and organised in four scenes: Love, Hate, Passion and Death. The setting on stage was conceived from a series of backdrops “mutable” that conferred the stage design as a great spectacle. 'El Artifício' received the critic’s prize for the best stage design of the City of Barcelona 1991.
In 1992 Antúnez and the director Aixalà wrote and directed 'Retrats y Frontón' (Portrayals and Fronton), and 'El Hombre Navarro va a la Luna' (The man Navarro goes to the moon); both short films were premiered in May 1993 in IMAGFIC, Madrid Film Festival. Together with the computer artist Sergi Jordá, Antúnez created the interactive robot, JoAn. This was shown for the first time in December 1992 in L´H Art at L'Hospitalet de Llobregat and, in its second and definite version, in July 1993 in La Boquería Market, he converted himself in an public sculpture for 10 days. The interaction JoAn produces by the voice of the observers provoked the most diverse reactions and expanded their consequences to the public. Since that date the piece has been presented in diverse galleries and museums of Europe.
In 1993 Antúnez created the sample ´La vida sin amor no tiene sentidos´ (´Life without love does not have any meaning´). The exposition contained three installations: Extracted heads, Poems of love and Pleasure machines. In each installation, the artist turned to flesh as basic material.
Antúnez defines his action field in works in where technology use is substantial. He uses hybrids that include different areas of intervention, sharing generic matters and is established in diverse weights. ´Epizoo´ was the first and most emblematic piece of this period. This performance gave way to other action like 'Satel·lits Obscens' (Obscene Satellites), 'Afasia' and his exposition Epifanía.
'La Vida sin Amor...' and JoAn... were the formal and poetic prelude of ´Epizoo´. The technology developed in the robot JoAn found in ´Epizoo´ an authentic field to develop multimedia, while the flesh, passes being a metaphoric element to convert in to a real element with the use of the artist´s own body.
The interactive performance Epizoo premiered in the 3rd Performance Festival of the art centre Arte X'Teresa, in October 1994, in Mexico DF. The technological anticipation that this action proposed like the matters that he proposed – cruelty, body limits, interaction, simultaneousness, etc. – made ´Epizoo´ a performance of notable interest that finished presenting itself in a multitude of festivals, galleries, museums of North America, South America and Europe.
Between 1995 and 1997, Marcel·li developed a task of pedagogy character that had an objective to inform of his work, an experiment in the limits of the body and develop a presentation in a public performance form. The workshops Satel•lits Obcens were developed in Reggio Emilia ('95); Festival la Corte Ospitale, in Lleida '96 Aula de Teatre; in Lisbon '97 Festival Atlántico and in Polverigi '97 (Festival Inteatro).
In November 1998 ´Afasia´ was premiered in the
TNC. The work, an electronic action, visual, sound and robotic, was born like consequence of the ´Epizoo´ experience and the laboratories ´Satel•lits Obscens´. The technical complexity and the degree of interaction that ´Afasia´ proposed was an evolution of the technological brand of ´Epizoo´. ´Afasia´ proposed an inversion of papers, the public no longer controlled the body of Antúnez, but it was him through a skeleton that controlled the robots as well as the images and the sound of the show. It was these peripherals what they needed to develop the three arguments of AFASIA: the philosophical, the narrative and the music; the argumentative brand where AFASIA meant a development in the Satel•lits Obscens pieces.
At the end of 1998 Antúnez received the role of preparing a sample for the Telefónica Foundation. The sample, that took the title of EPIFANíA, was presented in September 1999 in the venue of the Madrid Foundation. Epifanía showed a scene of installations that clearly established some pieces that Antúnez had already created in other works. These were: the idea of the participated prosthesis (´Alfabeto´ - Alphabet), the interactive narration (´Capricho´ - Whim), the use of live materials (´Agar´) and the interest in robots (Requiem).
In November 2000 ´Concéntrica´ (Concentric) was presented in the University Museum of Alicante. The path of the exposition permitted a major revision of the majority of produced works in the decade of the ´90´s dated previously. The sample was divided in ten installations: JoAn, Libros Artcagarro, Codices, La vida sin amor..., Reliquiario, Epizoo, Serie Polter, Agar, Capricho, Alfabeto, and Réquiem; the documents of the performances Epizoo, Satel•lits Obscens and Afasia were projected in a great screen of a small cinema mode. As well, the space disposed of a consulting space where one could see the Aixalà/Antúnez films and demos of Los Rinos and of La Fura. The field project was represented by a hundred drawings and a score of auto-edition volumes, edited like working books, introductions to projects and scripts.
In the present times, Antúnez is found touring Pol, through the great success of his premiere in the Grec summer Festival in ´02 a ´mectronic´ show, in where he uses the robotic as a main theme, one more time.
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