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Interview
5 November 2017 2.00 h

Vicenç Altaió

On the legacy of Joan Brossa

'Brossa wanted to change the world through artistic language'

Writer, es­say­ist, poet and critic Vicenç Altaió has taken over at the helm of the Joan Brossa Foun­da­tion with the mis­sion of breath­ing new life into it. To Altaió, a man who calls him­self a “dealer in ideas”, there is no short­age of ini­tia­tives for re­launch­ing the en­ter­prise. And he has the per­fect launch­ing pad: the new Espai Brossa, which opens on De­cem­ber 30.

Brossa once said: “There are too many artist foun­da­tions. Hav­ing one is like a posthu­mous pedestal.”
I was the first to be sur­prised when the Foun­da­tion was formed after his death. As I knew him well, I didn’t think it was in his men­tal orbit, es­pe­cially be­cause his was more of a street cul­ture ap­proach. Every­thing that em­anated from nou­cen­tisme, which he was by na­ture op­posed to, was a com­plete para­dox as far as Brossa was con­cerned. How­ever, I also know that at that time there was great con­cern to pre­serve his work, and that was what the Foun­da­tion was meant to do. To un­der­stand where he was com­ing from you must bear in mind his an­tag­o­nism to­wards Tàpies and the idea he had of a foun­da­tion.
Where did the an­i­mos­ity stem from?
In the sev­en­ties, when the Maeght Gallery started up in Barcelona, Brossa was very crit­i­cal of Tàpies’ re­la­tion­ship with the mar­ket. Now, years later, I can be open about the ten­sion be­hind the quar­rel: Tàpies de­manded our loy­alty and Brossa thought that was a joke. Brossa is a pro­le­tar­ian poet, a poet who wants ac­tion as a rev­o­lu­tion­ary, who wants to change the world through artis­tic lan­guage.
Let’s talk about his Foun­da­tion. What has been hap­pen­ing all this time?
In the first stage, in order to keep it­self going, apart from pro­tect­ing the rights to his work, they tried to sell the Brossa who was fash­ion­able for his post­mod­ernism: the poem-ob­ject en­cap­su­lated, pack­aged, out­side his more comic and trans­gres­sive self. I think he was turned into a con­sumer item. In the sec­ond pe­riod, and with­out such a strong in­flu­ence from Pepa Llopis [Brossa’s widow], it was Mestres Qua­dreny who, as pres­i­dent, de­cided to put the col­lec­tion into the hands of Macba, which took on the cen­tral role in re­search and es­pe­cially in in­ter­na­tional pro­jec­tion. This was ex­tra­or­di­nary, be­cause here was Brossa, who had been crit­i­cised in a lit­er­ary con­text, being ush­ered into a tem­ple of art through the front door. It’s very strange that his legacy didn’t go to the Na­tional Li­brary, but to MACBA.
So, at that point the Foun­da­tion could eas­ily have dis­ap­peared.
Yes, but that’s when the City Coun­cil ap­peared and of­fered us premises. They sug­gested that I take over as pres­i­dent to launch the third stage. I ac­cepted as part of the debt I owe Brossa and the cul­ture of the coun­try. Given that I know more about di­rect­ing than pre­sid­ing, my pro­file is more hands on. That’s how I see cul­ture.
When did you meet Brossa?
In 1978, he was vis­it­ing the painter Al­fons Bor­rell in Sabadell, where I had the Èczema mag­a­zine. He re­ally liked what I was doing. Then in 1982, he and Mestres Qua­dreny asked Glòria Pi­cazo, Rosa Quer­alt and I to take charge of Espai 10 at the Miró Foun­da­tion. That is to say, a poet and a mu­si­cian in­vited me in­side the world of art. Being the in­tel­lec­tual that I am, I had a spe­cial re­la­tion­ship with Brossa. We had very deep con­ver­sa­tions about the cul­tural land­scape, about mu­se­ums... What re­ally brought us to­gether was cul­tural ac­tivism. Brossa was a per­ma­nent ac­tivist. In the sev­en­ties, he was still very crit­i­cal of po­lit­i­cal re­form, wary of cap­i­tal and the role of the banks and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, he didn’t trust the mis­sion of in­sti­tu­tion­alised cul­ture. Brossa is more an ob­server of the city from the out­skirts, rather than delv­ing un­der­ground, and that was the way we saw things. Brossa over­lapped with the up and com­ing gen­er­a­tion and en­thused us with his non­con­for­mity. He was a ruf­fian, dar­ing, but very young at heart. He had a tremen­dous re­la­tion­ship with young peo­ple.
And where do you see the Foun­da­tion headed now?
The past, pre­sent and fu­ture all at once. My con­tri­bu­tion so far has been the cre­ation of the study cen­tre, which should be­come the en­gine be­hind the Foun­da­tion. The chal­lenge is to con­tinue the pro­jects that are al­ready un­der­way – the pub­li­ca­tion of the com­plete body of his po­etry and care­fully cat­a­logu­ing all the vi­sual and ob­ject po­etry. We need to de­fine the real Joan Brossa space and, even more im­por­tantly, con­vert the Espai Brossa into a sce­nario for prac­tis­ing a new writ­ten ex­pres­sion and turn it into a cen­tre of po­etic ac­tivism. The other part is re­search, along the lines of KRTU. That has been ne­glected and I want to bring it back.
Are there any ex­hi­bi­tions in the pipeline?
We’re get­ting there. Per­haps fig­ures like the de­signer and in­tel­lec­tual Joan Josep Thar­rats, and the psy­chi­a­trist Joan Obi­ols.
Is there an open­ing date?
It will open on De­cem­ber 30, on the an­niver­sary of Brossa’s death, even if it’s just an empty space. We’re work­ing on the idea of a young artist cre­at­ing an in­stal­la­tion ev­i­denc­ing this di­a­logue be­tween past, pre­sent and fu­ture. I also want to make a place for the boards of the var­i­ous art foun­da­tions ex­ist­ing in the city: Miró and Tàpies, and Macba should also be in­cluded. We have also in­vited the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment. We’re very hope­ful. We wouldn’t un­der­stand them say­ing no.
What do you think of the Macba ex­hi­bi­tion?
I think there are two very in­ter­est­ing things. First, his­tor­i­cal co­in­ci­dence. Brossa, a vital poet, un­shaven and with holes in his shoes, in the con­vul­sive years of the 1970s went from being an artist of the mi­nor­ity to be­com­ing pop­u­lar, swept into the mu­seum space in a time of in­sti­tu­tional de­mo­c­ra­tic re­volt. The sec­ond is the new per­spec­tive pro­vided by some­one who is not re­ally one of the gang. Pedro G. Romero has man­aged to com­pile a care­ful doc­u­men­tary ex­hi­bi­tion, but one with open mean­ing so every­one has to make the ef­fort to in­ter­pret this huge pile of pa­pers. From the Foun­da­tion, we’ve done every­thing pos­si­ble so that the ex­hi­bi­tion goes well and the cu­ra­tor will be able to work freely to renew the pro­posal. The re­spon­si­bil­ity of a foun­da­tion is mainly not to get in the way or set lim­its, but to pre­sent a work to be in­ter­preted by many peo­ple of dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions and with rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent views.
Speak­ing of the cur­rent tur­moil... Where would Bro ssa stand today?
We didn’t open the ex­hi­bi­tion on Sep­tem­ber 20, to protest the at­tacks of the Span­ish gov­ern­ment on our in­sti­tu­tions. Brossa is still on the streets. But there’s a dif­fer­ence: in the 70s, cul­ture was a lead­ing pow­er­ful, sym­bolic and even moral force. Today, the ex­cesses of the model of in­dus­tri­alised cul­ture has some­what pushed aside the role a fig­ure like Brossa would play.
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