Yes that´s Lydia Lunch! whom i´ve been a fan of since seeing her perform live in Melbourne with Roland S.Howard in 1989.
Translation of article from Catalan into English by Camila Enrich
The article starts with how Barcelona has
always attracted foreign creators, such as the Peruvian writer Vargas Llosa,
the Colombian writer García Márquez and even George Orwell during civil war,
but all of them came for a short season. The situation changed during the 90’s,
when artists decided to make Barcelona their home city. Now foreign artist come
and stay in the city. They mention the Italian jeweler Laura B. and the French
writer Jonathan Little, “the hypnotic writing of Rodrigo Fresán, the underground art of Chicks
on Speed and the visceral activism of Lydia Lunch. They not only pass through
Barcelona. Somehow they are Barcelona. The city talks about itself through its
own history. Now a day, when different forms of creation are willing to be
relevant and need the political and economical power to have some sense, the
newcomer discovers that the city is far away from the center from where
everything takes place”. The Peruvian
film director Claudia Llosa likes to be away from the neuralgic center where
things happen, like this she takes some perspective of things. Laura B. says
she spends more money on transportation of her pieces but it’s fine with her.
“Showing
the infallibility of all theories in with a coffee between her hands, this time
in Rambla Catalunña, Alex Murray Leslie, singer, graphic artist and fashion
designer –maybe the three forms of art most polluted by the industrial gene-
does not agree with the idea that being outside certain circles is a handicap.
“For me the city has a lot of energy and I think that is moving towards its
best moment. There are many things to do and many spaces, like Hangar, that are
envied all over Europe. The only disconnection that I feel is with the members
and former members of the band, that are not here, but never with industry.
Maybe to have it far away helps the scene to be a bit more spontaneous,
although the city still has to learn a lot regarding this matter. On the other
side of the table, Thomas Noone, a dancer and by definition more related to
institutions rather than to private sponsors, drinks coffee and complains of
the presence of so many Starbucks in Barcelona and starts saying that “we can
complain of things but the city has an international strong image. The other
day a British newspaper wrote on a local dance company “they are from
Barcelona, they must be cool”.
“One
of the good things that happen to artists that arrive from other countries is
how fast they can feel part of the city. You are here and work here and they
make you feel Catalan. This makes things easier. Plus, no one has ever asked me
to change my artistic speech and make it more Catalan or more Spanish. It does
not come to mind a more open creative structure than this one” says Llosa while
they bring her breakfast at a hotel in Los Angeles. She says she has always felt welcome. Her relationship with
institutions is great and they have helped her. Alex, Australian teaching fashion
design at Elisava, is completely integrated in the local underground ecosystem and
remembers that “in Australia no one has ever helped me as I do get helped here.
Sometimes, when asking for something I have not even gotten an answer. Here,
institutions seem more interesting in helping you and organizing events is not
that difficult. Invariably allergic to any core of power, either politic or
economic, but practical as anyone can be, Lydia Lunch wants to go a step
forward in the involvement of the strong forces of the city in the artistic
project of that “bunch of guiris”. “I want a building” screams putting up her
arms while the waiter at the Café Copa in Av. Gaudí puts ashtrays on the
tables. It is 11.00 am and the woman is full of energy. “I walk at night
looking for buildings and I have already seen a couple of them. I don’t want
the Town Hall to give them to me, I want the construction companies or real
state agencies to give them to me. I want Barcelona, where there is a brutal creative
force, to have something similar to the Factory. In all big artistic movements
of history there has been a building where creation was gathered. I want this
here and I want to capital to give it to us. Vogel, that is starting to uncover
like The Grinch, thinks that the “scene was demolished by the Town Hall. Before
there were people doing interesting things at a musical level. Now is all quite
standard and bureaucratic. To open a bar, invite a DJ or organize a concert
seems like you have to fill in hundred of papers and they always say no. I
think that the Government has always had too much to say on culture. Before,
this seemed good, but it’s not good anymore”.
Fresán,
the argetinian writer, says there is not a long tradition of foreign writers living
in the city. Claudia Llosa says that being away from her country gives her
perspective. However,
Vogel says that he feels no connection to the England he left behind although
he misses when Barcelona was a source of inspiration. I left XXX (unreadable, maybe its Brighton) when the
music became to hooligan. Here
everything was surf, beach and felt like a millionaire before the euro was established.
“I have never thought of going back to the UK…...
ALEX
MURRAY-LESLIE (Bowral, Australia)
Member
of Chicks on Speed, music and
artistic entity are key to understand the past decade, Murray-Leslie is a professor at
Elisava Fashion Masters Course and resident artist at Hangar.org. Each six months she co-organizes The City,
a cultural event with the aim of artists taking possession of the city. When she
arrived five years ago, a boy, who´d seen a concert of
her band the night before, invited her for a coffee. The group has just edited Cutting The Edge,
their latest disc. Murray-Leslie has played in Chicks on Speed @ the last two last editions of The Brandery
and C.O.S. have recently designed a surf clothing collection for women with Insight Australia.
LYDIA LUNCH
(Rocherster, USA)
She has
been one of the most discordant voices of the NY pun with Teenage Jesus and The
Jerks, she was part of the movement No Wave and she is, without doubt, one of
the most mythic figures of the roughest underground. Singer, photographer,
novelist, film director and poet, Lunch these days is about to present a book
and a CD in which she does an exercise of alternative memory parting from the
destruction of Belchite, a small town in Aragon, during Civil War. Radical
political activist, the North American sees herself living anywhere except for
her native country.
CHRISTIAN
VOGEL (Santiago de Chile, Chile)
Although he
was born in Chile, Vogel is British from head to toes. Raised in the Midlands
but developed as a creator in Brighton, he is DJ, producer,
Remixer and
investigator. Vogel became famous with the band Super Collider. Owner of
several record labels –the last one Station 55 as a reference of his music
studio in Barcelona -, the musician lives between Berlin and the Catalan
capital, where he has lived for 9 years. These past years has been investing
his time between the group Night of the Brain, alternative and personal
projects and the collaborations with the choreographer Gilles Johin.
