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Marc Viaplana is an artist, photographer,
ex-pool shark, anarchy expert
and writer. In a former life he
was in one of Barcelona’s original
punk bands, Ultimo Resorte. We met
up to discuss bombs, Gaudi’s rumoured
sexual problems, lemon
squeezers and art.
SF: Marc, how did you get involved
with the Orsini project?
MV: So, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Bomb”, right?
Blame it on two conspirators of the
deepest dye: my mom and Quico
Rivas. The first, for introducing me
to that beautiful shiny sphere
crowned with deadly thorns that
caught my attention when I was a
kid, during one of those boring visits
around museums with which
she used to punish my brother and
me every Saturday morning. The
second, an anarchist schemer of
the highest order, also a writer and
art critic, all of which, unfortunately,
died recently. I met Quico six
or seven years ago, and the very
same day we met for the first time,
he told me of a project for which he
had been compiling material: a
book about the Orsini bomb. So it
started a bit like a prank, meant to
be a short monography to épater
not the bourgeois this time but
those who claim that violence was
never anarchist.
SF: And how have you gone on to
develop that?
MV: In the mid eighties, I saw
Picasso’s Gernika in Madrid. But it
wasn’t a painting. It was the ultimate
installation. It was behind bulletproof
glass, shaped a bit like a coffin,
it had this white security line
painted on the floor and, best of all,
a guardia civil in full regalia, machine
gun in hand. Fan-fuckingtastic!
Finally, a threatening art experience!
And it was none other
than Picasso himself who said that
art needs to be dangerous.
The Orsini wants to be a metaphor
of that, and something that
reads differently in different environments.
Inside an art gallery,
you call it art. Outside the same art
gallery, you call the cops. And
that’s part of the idea too. In times
where art only challenges your wallet,
artists get away with things
only tolerated to them, because “if
it’s art, it’s safe”, so why not exploit
this little leeway we have?
SF: So who or what was Orsini and
what connection does it have with
Barcelona?
MV: It mostly depends on who and
where you are asking. For most
people outside this city it is the
name of some rotten Italian lineage
that bred religious and political
freaks of all sorts, including several
popes. For those with a penchant
for historical blood baths, it
was some Italian count – he wasn’t
– or some anarchist – he couldn’t
be less – or a revolutionary – yeees
– who many years ago tried to blow
up one of the Napoleons but instead
got his head cut off.
In Barcelona, known then as
the city of bombs or the rose of fire,
Orsini refers to that spiky, naval
mine-looking, spherical anarchist
device that went off in the stalls of
the Liceu while William Tell was
playing in 1893. Incidentally, and
adding to the legend, it was the
same opera that was being played
in Paris in 1858 when Felice Orsini
threw his bombs at Napoleon III.
SF: It became so symbolic that
even Gaudi was moved to put a depiction
of one in la Sagrada Familia,
right?
MV: Well, legend has it that his first
and only attempt at love was aimed
at some girl who wasn’t that
day at the Liceu only because –
allegedly – she couldn’t decide
what type of dress to wear. Gaudí
wasn’t her type either, and whatever
the reason, it all ended up in a
sculpture with some weird Mephistopheles
holding that bomb.
SF: You turned your back on a successful
art career about 10 years
ago; it seems more than a little ironic
that when you return to the
fold it is with a fucking bomba!
MV: I became an artist because I
couldn’t be anything else. Not that
I wasn’t good for anything else. But
after a few years of getting away
with it, it became a job. I’d spend
more time arguing with curators,
gallery owners or insurance companies
than doing what I was there
for, so I quit.
Anyone who’s seen my works of
yesteryear will be hardly surprised
to see what I’m into these days. Because
the big sized photographs I
used to make were showing guns
being shot, close-ups of bullets after
being shot, or holes made with
those bullets.
The Orsini project is then a follow-
up of my old work. The difference
is maybe in the approach.
Now I write about the Orsini and I
“art” about it too, like two side projects
without a distinct line of separation.
The writing, even if in
historical terms, deals too with
symbolism
and the esthetical perception
of the bomb, and as an object
it’s inseparable from its history.
SF: And you do actually make those
beautiful little fuckers. Who
buys them and why?
MV: Most people who have bought
one don’t think much of art, they’re
not art collectors, they don’t even
feel that they own a work of art,
they just like the object the same
way they could like Philippe
Starck’s lemon squeezer.
Most people who have bought
one don’t think much of art, they’re
not art collectors, they don’t even
feel that they own a work of art,
they just like the object the same
way they could like Philippe
Starck’s lemon squeezer.
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