When the Balearic poet Bartomeu Rosselló-Pòrcel died on 1938, he left behind nineteen unfinished poems. The Catalan poet Josep Palau i Fabre, touched by the lost of his young friend, decided to complete the nineteen poems. He did it as if he was Rosselló.
To commemorate the 100 anniversary of Josep Palau i Fabre’s birthday, the Palau Foundation (Barcelona) organised an exhibition curated by Julià Guillamón. While we sat in the terrace of a coffee shop, he explained me how he was keen to to give physical and visual presence to Palau i Fabre’s poetry through the exhibition. I quickly connected with him since we had previously worked together in the CCCB exhibition ‘Espriu. I looked upon this land‘.
The notes in a piece of paper from my conversations with Guillamón resulted in the creation of a video installation titled ‘Peix’ (Fish).
The installation consisted of a voice over (Palau i Fabre’s voice reading the poem of the same name) and the image of a gold fish in a fish tank, sometimes disappearing, others being multiplied, swimming following the rhythm of each verse.
The architecture studio Llamazares-Pomés designed a system of cubes to display various poems within the same venue. I worked with them to create a cube with a small window and the inside covered with mirrors,inside which the video would be played. The structure created an experience where the visitor could not only listen the poem read by Palau i Fabre’s own voice, but also get immersed in the fish tank.
This piece, along with other installations, was at the exhibition Jo sóc el meu propi experiment (I am my own experiment) at Palau Fundation (Caldes d’Estrac), in Palau Robert (Barcelona) and in Espai Santa Caterina (Girona).
Among the collaborators there were the artists Ignasi Aballí and Enric Farrés, the filmmakers Laura Ginés and Morrosko Vila-San-Juan, the writer Sergi Pons Codina, the illustrator Arnal Ballester, the designers America Sanchez and Albert Planas and myself.