A few years ago, about six, when I was studying journalism at the USC, I had the opportunity to interview Bru Rovira, at the time, international journalist for La Vanguarda newspaper. During our conversation he said that a journalist is like a "gadfly". It is that person who stays at the pub's bar, browsing. The years pass by and one tends to forget this things, once so fundamental and decisive. Gets involve in others, builds castles in the air. Now, after four months without a "proper" job, and thanks to this blog, I'm working as a "gadfly", and realising how much I like it.
For those who haven't heard about A Peregrina yet (we talked about it on #2 and 5#) just need to know that is a workshop-house whose occupants only pay two euros per day to cover gas and electricity. In exchange they get enough space to create and experiment. The Furancho de Arte Contemporánea (F.A.C.) is the strategy Ania González, Diego Vites and Olmo Blanco engineered in order to sell and show the artistic stock the Galician surroundings have. A furancho is an old way Galician wine producers developed so they can outlet their own homemade product. These people came up with the idea of using it, not only to sell wine and Galician food, but to also outlet their own artistic production and the production similar artists might have. This contemporary art furancho was presented on March the 23rd as a window –neither commercial, nor institutional, but in between– non-mediated by interests outside of the cultural creation, which tries to create a third way, parallel to museums and art galleries.
Chickpeas, mussels and canned sardines, marinated with a good homegrown wine, were the ingredients which baptized the F.A.C.'s first day of life, in an exhibition called F.A.C. OFF. The adaptation and refurnishing of the A Peregrina's house was exhibited as a conceptual artwork. The more successful space was the shed where most of the people gathered and sat around on Bauhaus-inspired tables and chairs, with a little bit of Galician art-style. The coop was converted into a minimalist white cube, which turned out to be a perfect place to do the interviews (the ones you can watch on the video uploaded in this post [I'm working on the subtitles]). The trailer placed in the middle of the forest which watches over the A Peregrina's house, was also transformed in a exhibition space. They put a televesion and photographs showing the works carried out by the fac'ers, in order to fix the house's sewers in a series called F.A.C. in Shit.
I, with Ricardo Saavedra on the mic, and Elena Cancelas, who turned into our photographer by chance, was roaming around the furancho for a couple of hours. Thanks to that I was able to talk to the components of Baleiro, (who will have their own feature within a couple of weeks), with old interviewees such as Trini F. Silva (always happy to talk to her as she arranges my heardo in the most unexpected ways); friends and family of the organisers of the F.A.C.; and with Ulobit, a Galician group recently created based on improvisation and experimentation, which combines electronic sounds (Juan Gil), with images' projections (Horacio González) and the hurdy-gurdy (Ariel Ninas), and whose lasted project includes clips from Xurxo Chirro's documentary Vikingland -which resulted winner of the this year Play Doc festival-.
The Culturadeseu's crew arrived during the day, and left at midnight on Elena's car (they almost left me behind). I came back to Compostela really happy, and not just because of the wine, but also due to the energy which filled the F.A.C., and the hope the organisers build up this furancho. In times of crisis, I heard, people tend to innovate more trying to change the pessimistic reality which surrounds them due to the lack of solutions and the needed infrastructures. Seems to me, A Peregrina emerges as exclamations marks in a world of dot, dot, dot.
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