Oriol Nogues’s artistic activity is deliberately multidisciplinary, being articulated and organised around a series of projects which are developed at the same time and in turn feed off each other, presenting us with a range of different contexts and mechanisms of reception. His work can only be understood as an exercise in symbolic construction, always accompanied by a critical and pedagogical function; thus the fact that the projects take place simultaneously allows him to develop a process-based working method, in the course of which sets of images, objects, texts, actions, slides and other kinds of meaningful material are generated, ultimately reaching their audience at different times and places, as in the case of the performance and exhibition taking place at La Conservera.

Despite the apparently diffused nature of the production, the same aesthetic concerns run through and across all his activities, whether in the field of visual or theatrical arts. Representation, imitation, action, performativity, mascarade, etc., are recurrent motifs in his output and his thinking.

The visual poems presented in the series of filmed actions entitled Loca algarabía (Wild Commotion, 2008-2010) use the illusionistic techniques of seventeenth-century theatre to construct new forms of resistance in the private space. They are exercises in domestic escapism which seek to highlight the artificiality of the signs by which we apprehend the world while at the same time arguing that we need to be able to deny objective reality.

Denying objective reality is what lies behind Karaoke del desamor (Karaoke of Lovelessness), a device which endorses the therapeutic virtues of pure theatre in a playful and at the same time ironic way. “The theatre is where you can happily die in agony, knowing that the applause will bring you back to life.” One sings to pain cathartically, for one’s own pleasure and always using other people’s words. It is a karaoke, an empty stage available for visitors to burst into song. Either alone, in front of the filmed actions and the other visitors, or with their companions as an audience. And with the filmed image/action of the artist as a backdrop. This karaoke is freely available to anyone who wants to use it, but only for songs of lovelessness, of amorous despair. Alcoholic, suicidal songs; extreme, but still popular. Songs that are essentially “theatrical”: monologues sung in the first person with a message clearly directed at someone in particular. Because all love stories end unhappily, simply because they end. And because a story does not become a story until we can sing it. That is the reason for this karaoke of lovelessness: so that everyone can sing their own tale, can invent it, and so our lives become stories.

HOW OUR LIVES BECOME STORIES - Performance

COLLECTIVE ACTION FOR THE PEOPLE OF CEUTÍ

Saturday February 4th at 12:00. Patio 2 of La Conservera.

Narrating to exist. Living to tell a story.

Every community is a story that is constantly being narrated.

To narrate (oneself) is in a sense to invent (oneself).

This collective action is intended as a portrait/story of the collective actant, in this case the people of Ceutí. The project is the result of a process of symbolic construction based on elements that express the identity of the town. The narrative formulated through the action is intended to serve as a representation of the collective actant.

The community is invited to act, to narrate (itself). What for? Simply to perpetuate itself. A story is a story when we can tell it. The same goes for a community. And after all, to narrate (oneself) is to invent (oneself)… Why shouldn’t we raise our thirty-foot pole with a ham hanging from the top, not to celebrate any festivity but just from a desire to give meaning to our act? Let our elders bring out their palm fronds in the procession, let them make garlands of fruits, while the call of our bells and our drums, swathed in a cloud of Klein blue smoke, carries our wishes beyond the last house, beyond the last vegetable garden.

And may something save our souls…

Oriol Nogues

PARTICIPANTS: The bugle and drum bands of Santa María Magdalena, San Juan Evangelista and Cristo de la Sangre, the Aula de Primores, the Club del Pensionista, the Peña “El Tomate”, the bellringers of the church of Santa María Magdalena and Pirotecnia Murciana S.L. (Archena).