October 2020
by Silvia Batet

Culture and terraces

When I was asked to write one of these routes, I realized the disconnection that the confinement had generated in my culture consumption. Consumption of culture, as they say in these times, in which we have gone from people to mere consumers. The good thing about this case is that when we consume is culture, it is not consumed, it is not worn out or exhausted: rather the other way around. Culture grows and transforms, expands and revitalizes; it even starts dancing.

Faced with this disconnection I had from the cultural landscape, I did what any of us would have done: I called that friend we all have who is aware of everything that is going on, who absorbs cultural news by osmosis and always knows what is happening. And to my surprise, she replied “What is happening in Barcelona?… I don’t know, I haven’t fond out. I just know the terraces are always full. ”

So we started the route in a hybrid between a terrace and a cultural space, as there are several in Barcelona, ​​recently opened in the neighborhood of Gràcia: La Muriel. Muriel has just opened where the Mecànic bookstore used to be, and her name already resonates in the neighborhood as the new trendy space. Directed by Pau Roca, actor and director of the company Sixto Paz, it wants to be a space where the creative processes coexist with the restaurant activity. They are also defined as a “space open to the neighborhood, pleasant for parents and children,” which is mainly what we found in our visit. An open space, with some tables separated by the mandatory safety distances, where parents have a beer while several groups of children move freely, doing headstands and side somersaults. They let us stay forty-five minutes, there are reservations. The waiter tells us that proposals can be sent to request creative residencies; and that these are carried out in front of the attentive (or not so attentive) eyes of the customers who drink coffee. We will have to spend another day to see how this relationship process of creation-noon rest develops.

Our second destination is the Exploding Fest # 6, a music and dance improvisation happening in Vallcarca. This destination becomes a frustrated wish because I realise, too late, that capacity is very limited and tickets have been sold out. Problems of the covid era, in which you have to book even for an outdoor event in a square. However, I look forward to future opportunities to attend this event.

I then head, alone, to Espacio Trafalgar, which presents an exhibition of the work of the mysterious urban artist Banksy. I am somewhat suspicious of the “touristy” atmosphere in the website and at the box office, but I am pleasantly surprised and even find myself laughing at several works by this irreverent graffiti painter, who, like a modern superman, still remains anonymous. His work invites us to reflect on power, innocence, consumption, the art market. I am especially struck by the paradox that is created between the critical exhibition and the “exit from the gift shop”, full of merchandising products that talk about anti-consumerism.

On the way to Teatre Tantarantana, I pass by the Antic Teatre, the hybrid terrace-cultural space par excellence in Barcelona. In the program there is the poet Laura Sam, with her book Incendiaria, and at the terrace the poster “Fully booked”.

At Teatre Tantarantana I attend the play Pigs also eat green, written and directed by Andreu Rifé. This play describes itself as “a comedy of violence,” and in general it causes me more discomfort than laughter. However, it is a discomfort that derives from understanding, or even identifying, with some of the situations he describes in relation to family structures.

The next day, I decide to give myself a classic Sunday and head to Montjuïc, where access to the Mies Van der Rohe pavilion is free on the first Sunday of each month. It is a space that I know but that I do not get tired of visiting. A speaker hidden among the plants tells me its story. Then I go up to MNAC, where I am struck by the exhibition Inconcrete Sketch by Catalan artist Èlia Llach. It is a small exhibition. Her reflection on the precision of the stroke, and the relationship between sketch and drawing, makes me think of a dancing body, creating inconcrete strokes in space constantly. Dance is always a difficult sketch to identify.

As I still have energy, I walk around the permanent collection of the MNAC. I loose myself especially in the exhibition of Romanesque art, amazed at the number of apses of Romanesque churches that have been extracted and moved here, and the obvious similarities between them all. Its features are absolutely concrete, rigid. I am overwhelmed by the stern faces that look at me from everywhere, as if trying to tell me something from the past. My favourite is the most famous one, the Pantocrator of the church of Sant Climent de Taüll, where I spent the holidays for years. I think of how the creator of this apse would feel as he shaped it in the coldness of the small church, in that remote valley in 1123, what his life would be like. I also think about how it would feel to be able to see him here today, in this majestic building in a city unimaginable at this time, in our young faces with masks admiring his work.

I leave the building and I take a beer at the terrace of a bar, looking at the city. I almost don’t find a spot!

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Text by Silvia Batet for GRAF. Silvia is a choreographer, dancer and resident artist at La Visiva