Carles Congost

What Good Are Songs? TC. Music has always played a leading role in your work.

CC. Music is the backbone of most of my pieces. This was even the case in my Tolo Cañellas, curator of the exhibition, and Carles Congost converse about first solo exhibition, back in 1995, curated by Manel Clot at La Capella, in Bar- the works on display at La Casa Encendida and the artist’s new video, pro- celona. The show was titled The Congosound and featured three rudimentary duced specifically for this project. videos related to new technology and club culture. The videos were accompa- nied by a series of drawings and objects that revolved around a common idea of repetition. That was in the 1990s, when few things fascinated me as much Tolo Cañellas (TC). This exhibition consists of one new production and four as music, dance and nightlife. earlier pieces. One of them, Paradigm, created in 2012, marked a narrative turning point in your work. How did that shift come about? TC. So that’s where The Congosound began?

Carles Congost (CC). In the years leading up to Paradigm, I had been work- CC. Not exactly. I had already adopted the alias The Congosound sometime ing on a video trilogy with very clearly defined themes, where everything before but it was with the exhibition when it really took shape. From then on, was at the service of the story they were trying to tell. I’m talking about Un and for over a decade, it became a shared project with musician Vicent Fibla mystique determinado [A Certain Mystique] (2003), Memorias de Arkaran and with Jessie, a singular muse of the Barcelona nightlife. Working as The [Memoirs of Arkaran] (2005) and La mala pintura [Bad Painting] (2008). Congosound, we composed and produced music for my videos and for a small Everything that happens in these videos is subordinate to some kind of local label specialised in electronic music. However, over time, it became more message or statement. At the same time, the three videos try to create a and more difficult to keep that dynamic going. In 2007 I presented an instal- contrast between the stories they tell and how these are represented. The lation at the MUSAC in León called The Congosound’s Live Prototype: an au- set and staging of each video are related to a film genre or subgenre: musi- tonomous robotic stage that, theoretically, could be used to give live music cal, fantasy and horror, respectively. The constant allusions to these genres performances without leaving your house. It was meant to be an ironic com- led me to invent very elaborate, contrived images and situations that were mentary on the decline of youth bands, as well as on job obligations and time activated when speech came into play. In each video, the message was am- management once you reach your thirties. plified by the collision between those genres and the main theme: contem- After that came a long period of inactivity broken only by the release of porary art. the single Pepsi Love (Feat. Ryan Paris). It remained dormant until 2015 when, thanks to a grant from Fundación Botín, I decided to create a Catalan version TC. But in Paradigm you got rid of the dialogue. of the song Come On, by the now-defunct band Jules Tropicana, for my video Abans de la casa / Un biopic inestable a través del sonido Sabadell [Before House CC. Exactly. My approach in those videos was at odds with my photographic / An Unstable Biopic via Sabadell Sound]. At that point, I contacted the vocalist work, which is more suggestive and, paradoxically, more cinematographic. In and musician Josep Xortó. The result was the single Això que sona és nostre any case, at the time I saw this situation as a problem—you could say it even [The Sound Playing Is Ours], which became a small independent hit in Catalonia anguished me. So, a few days before shooting Paradigm, which I had initially and, thanks to the remix by producers Fred Ventura and Paolo Gozzetti (Italo- planned along the same lines as the previous videos, I exploded and decided connection), was also a modest international success among fans of New Italo. to eliminate all the dialogues and any reference to the art world. Silencing my actors shifted the focus of attention, forcing me to fall back on certain rules TC. Abans de la casa / Un biopic inestable a través del sonido Sabadell is a of cinematographic language which I hadn’t even considered up to that point. conceptual work that mixes different points of view and narrative forms, The result of this change in methodology is a suspended narrative that is for- and in which you directly refer to British artist Jeremy Deller, with whom mally richer and more open. you share a wide range of interests and concerns. What was the creative All these reflections appear in a segment of my video The Artist Behind process like? What did you intend with this work? the Aura (2014), where I retrieve the lines of dialogue eliminated from the first version of the script, which recreate an interrogation between a police CC. With Abans de la casa / Un biopic inestable a través del sonido Sabadell, officer and an abstract painter. the initial idea was to make a documentary about this mid-1980s Catalan mu-

2 3 sic phenomenon. But after some preliminary research, I realised that I didn’t comfort zone, because that phrase is far too hackneyed nowadays, but let really want to interview the true protagonists of that movement as that ap- me put it this way: what they did with me required a considerable amount of proach would lack critical detachment and irony—and I couldn’t imagine try- generosity and effort. Originally, I had planned on a more ironic, humorous ing to explain the Sabadell sound without those two ingredients. approach to the one-hit wonder phenomenon, presenting the performers of two 1980s megahits—Words and Dolce Vita—staging several comic gags on TC. So how did you decide to structure the video? a set representing the seven wonders of the modern world. I saw the two artists who were going to be featured, F.R. David and Ryan CC. I knew that I couldn’t treat it like a conventional music documentary be- Paris, as two textbook cases of one-hit wonders, but after reading the script, cause I was interested in the Sabadell sound as a symptom of a specific cul- one of them felt uncomfortable with the tone of my proposal. He made me un- tural, economic and political moment in Catalonia. So I sat down to write a derstand that some artists—not all, of course—had a problem with that term, script that would stimulate associative thinking and let me tell the story in a so I began to think about the emotional implications of coming to grips with the different way. My goal was to offer a poetic, critical look at the cultural aspi- “one-hit wonder” label. That’s when I understood that this, and no other, was rations of Catalan society at a time when the neoliberal theories of Margaret the angle truly worth exploring, as that’s the true source of the conflict. At a Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US had permeated practically certain point, I decided to stop the project and start again from scratch. every sphere of social, cultural and economic life. In 1987, the British mag- azine Smash Hits ran a lengthy interview with the British Prime Minister in TC. That same year, the curator of Manifesta 11, Christian Jankowski, invit- which Thatcher underscored the importance of music and how it inspired ed you to participate in the biennial with Simply the Best, in which a young young people to head up a profitable, exportable project. At the same time, in Swiss fireman works to organise an event in which Tina Turner is supposed Catalonia, the protest messages of older singer/songwriters were temporar- to participate. You originally wanted her to be part of the cast. Why did she ily sidelined by the eagerness of Jordi Pujol and his followers to promote the refuse? What part would she have played? idea of fem país or “building a country”. Nationalism and industry, without acrimony or hard feelings: that’s what Sabadell sound is to me. CC. The presence of a world-famous celebrity like Tina Turner in the local con- text of Zurich was certainly interesting, and it helped me illustrate some of TC. In 2016 you were able to produce Wonders, where you explore the meg- the city’s idiosyncrasies. The main theme of Manifesta 11 was labour and the ahit and one-hit-wonder phenomena through two ex-members of the band different ways we relate to it. Her case was particularly interesting so I decid- Musical Youth. What do those concepts mean to you? ed to mention it in my video. But in fact Tina Turner was just another cog in a complex mechanism of references. I did—perhaps rather naively and impul- CC. I like the idea of the megahit as something that is played every day, every- sively—sound out the possibility of a cameo. It was something both Christian where, until the end of time; songs bigger than the people who write or per- and I wanted, especially since he’s quite used to involving celebrities in his form them, melodies we are forced to live with, as they are part of our daily works. The people in Tina Turner’s entourage were invariably considerate but landscape. We encounter megahits wherever we go, wherever we are, wheth- they explained to us that she had no desire to attract media attention as she er in a public space or our home computer. In the final scene of Wonders, had chosen another way of life. In hindsight, I think her involvement probably Dennis Seaton sings a tune called Get Out of the Song, composed specifically would have been the main attraction of the work and would have altered its for this project from one of the many texts that Eloy Fernández Porta wrote perception, not necessarily for the better. and selected for the script. It’s fitting, as it talks precisely about “getting out of the song”, about the moment when a song ceases to belong to the artist TC. What good are songs? and becomes everybody’s patrimony. CC. ¿Para qué sirven las canciones? [What Good Are Songs?] is the title of a TC. How did you get on with them? Did they surprise you? segment of my video Supercampeón [Superchampion] (2000), in which the puppet Mr. Cd’s Eyes puts that question to Genís Segarra—a member of the CC. My relationship with Dennis and Michael was very inspiring. I don’t know bands Astrud and Hidrogenesse—on the set of a children’s television show. what more I can say. And yes, I was surprised at how they got involved and In the video, Genís struggles to answer the question, creating a rhetorical and really tried to understand the project. I won’t say they stepped out of their almost indecipherable loop that generates a new sound device.

4 5 My current musical ensemble, Josep Xortó + The Congosound, has giv- CC. Jimmy the Banshee’s character appears in the video as an insert that en me a chance to brush up on my composing and lyric-writing skills, rein- could serve as the introduction to a future project. I like for my works to in- forcing my conviction that songs are important and deserve to be recognised clude different ideas that are developed to different degrees, to pick up plot as an art form in their own right. In the final phase of my touring exhibition lines from earlier works and, at the same time, offer hints of things yet to A Sense of Wonder, held in 2018 at the Fabra i Coats Centre d’Art Contem- come. When I began working on the new video for the exhibition, I decided porani in Barcelona, I wanted to underscore this idea by creating a specific to focus on British singer Jimmy Somerville, lead vocalist of the synth-pop video art piece with the sole aim of presenting the songs we had written and bands Bronski Beat and The Communards in the 1980s. He interests me both produced up to that point (Port de la Selva, Les xarxes [The Nets] and Nova as a musician and as an LGBTI activist operating within the mainstream. esplendor [New Splendor]), as well as a new version of Això que sona és nos- Jimmy the Banshee combines biographical details of the singer’s life tre by Hidrogenesse. with elements drawn from Irish folklore, like the legend of the banshees and I don’t see songs as a minor form of expression or an innocent enter- their monstrous shrieks. In my story, Jimmy Somerville and his popular fal- tainment devoid of intent. Everyone agrees that not all songs are brilliant, and setto are both perceived as a monstrous presence, as a threat to the prevail- not all lyrics deserve a Nobel Prize. We all know the rules of the game. In most ing macho culture of the day. cases, pop is not meant to be transcendent, and some pop songs merely fol- Some time ago, I met up with my friend and fellow artist Javier Peñafiel low a tried-and-true commercial formula. But even these songs are still rele- and told him of my plans to work with this character. We ended up discussing vant in some sense. In his encyclopaedia of pop music Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!, the the evolution of LGBTI activism from the 1980s and 90s, when the main fo- musician and essayist Bob Stanley analyses most of the twentieth century cus was making AIDS visible, to the current “millennial rage”, which is health- through different songs and how these performed on the charts. Stanley tells ily feminist and anti-patriarchal but whose permanent state of anger—I us that the importance of a song can only be measured by examining its rela- won’t deny it—makes me rather uneasy. Javier and I have begun writing to tionship to other songs and to the context that produced them. Consequently, each other about this topic, and in the future we hope that correspondence a hits chart works like a time capsule—it contains the zeitgeist of an era. might serve as the basis for a publication.

TC. You use that same question as the title for your show at La Casa Encen- dida and the video you have made for it. Tell me about this piece. How does the “hit” concept figure into it?

CC. One of the characters in the video ¿Para qué sirven las canciones? sees how the anti-establishment paradise built up around her romantic relation- ship crumbles due to the invasive effect of a catchy hit song. The main char- acter’s circumstances force her to accept a more or less dead-end job which, among other things, entails constant and involuntary exposure to piped music that goes against her ethical and aesthetic principles. In connection with what I was saying earlier, this piped music isn’t just an innocent list of randomly selected songs; it’s a carefully designed construct pregnant with meaning. We are exposed to this musical overexposure every day, especially in large retail stores, where it affects not only the customers but also, and es- pecially, the employees. I was interested in talking about how hit songs take over the public space, about the hit song as an inevitability and, ultimately, as a disturbance.

TC. In your video you insert the story of Jimmy the Banshee, based on the singer Jimmy Somerville. Tell me about this story and how you worked it into the piece.

6 7 Paradigm

2012 HD colour video, 10 minutes

Paradigm is one of Carles Congost’s subtlest and most conceptually profound works. It undoubtedly marked a turning point in his videography, modulating his tendency to use humour as a discursive element, and exponentially inten- sifying his interest in the actual language of film, which he uses as an elusive metaphor for the many questions he raises and deliberately leaves unan- swered. The slightly slow-motion footage shows two men of different ages in- side a vehicle that has been stopped by the police. A white-haired officer with a stern expression orders them to open the car boot. After inspecting the vehicle, the police officer takes a harmonica from his pocket and plays a few melancholy chords. The sound has a cathartic effect on the car’s occu- pants and attracts the attention of some children playing in a nearby park. The extremely elaborate narrative and stylistic elements of the video are used tangentially to constantly add new layers of meaning, all of which are inconclusive and open to any interpretation. Paradigm talks precisely about changing the paradigm—social, sexual, generational and artistic—in a stream of possibilities that rises to a crescendo, constantly shattering the traditional paradigm of narration itself. Through small dramatic gestures, the characters act out a ritual of bizarre intensity and reinforce the transcendence of what we are seeing without ever revealing its true nature. The absence of information about how the characters are related—we don’t know if the vehicle’s occupants are father and son, lovers or simply strangers—or why they were stopped, or the spirituality transmitted by the idealised children’s choir in the park are just some of the elements that make everything in the video a plausible metaphor. Paradigm incorporates all kinds of narrative stereotypes drawn from different film genres, which Congost re-codifies through extremely detailed planning. The video’s unsettling original soundtrack was composed by the musicians Evripidis Sabatis (Evripidis & His Tragedies) and Stefano Maccar- rone (Mendetz). In Paradigm, we can find more or less obvious references to crime and mystery films, road movies, buddy movies, melodramas, musicals, social dramas and even Westerns.

CAST: Delmar Richardson, Ricardo Montalbán, Mikel Pérez, Ibrahima Trahore, Joan Horrach, Uma Kim, Esther Horrach, Guillem Horrach, Joan Lafaja, Camino Lafaja, Martina Solà Pérez, Nil Solà Pérez.

8 Abans de la casa / Un biopic inestable a través del sonido Sabadell [Before House / An Unstable Biopic via Sabadell Sound]

2015 4K HD colour video, 22 minutes

Sabadell sound is a term now used to describe a musical phenomenon that emerged in Catalonia in the 1980s and was closely linked to the rise of Italo Disco, the dance music that was all the rage in clubs across Europe at the time. For a while, the district of El Vallés—in the province of Barcelona—had its own unprecedented immersion in the music industry, supplying local and national dance clubs with a massive amount of homespun material that, in some cases, spread beyond Spain’s borders. The movement’s commercial appeal was largely owing to an ingenious marketing plan designed to conceal the true origins of its productions, using stickers that falsely labelled them as “imported music” or limiting the linguistic repertoire to a brand of pseu- do-English that ultimately became one of its most recognizable features. In his research, Congost deliberately shunned the documentary per- spective—that simple archaeological exegesis of a movement—to approach the subject from various angles, generally more suggestive than demonstra- tive. As the title tells us, his film is an unstable biopic made up of fragments, flashes, nods and cultural allusions of every sort, an attempt to comprehend an event by sifting through the ideals, aesthetics and ambitions of the histor- ical moment that prompted its emergence and subsequent demise. The video takes a sarcastic look at the “official” definition of culture, in- fused with the artist’s genuine devotion for the subject of his research. In Abans de la casa / Un biopic inestable a través del sonido Sabadell, historical back- ground information is supplied by interviewee Ángel Casas—legendary host of the TV show “Musical Express”—while the ironic counterpoint is provided by the deceased Catalan comedian Eugenio, a contemporary and relevant public figure performed by his official impersonator: ReEugenio. In this sequence of allusions, which includes the idea of rehashing an existing style, the artist ends up inserting his own music video, featuring the singer Josep Xortó, in a Cata- lan version of the song which according to experts lit the fuse of the Sabadell sound phenomenon. In this process of refocusing on Sabadell sound, Congost enlisted the aid of other relevant local and contemporary artists to give his bi- opic discursive and fragmentary substance: the poet Eduard Escoffet energeti- cally raves about the industry’s role, while members of the dance company Les Filles Föllen perform choreographies inspired by the aesthetics of the period.

CAST: Eduard Escoffet, Àngel Casas, Josep Xortó, ReEugenio, Xaro Campo, Marina Cardona, Èlia Genís.

10 Wonders

2016 4K HD colour video, 15 minutes

Wonders revisits a little-known chapter of music history in the 1980s, when the neoliberal theories of Margaret Thatcher and the Reagan administration extended to every aspect of the economy, culture and society. The video focuses on the “one-hit wonder” phenomenon, a term used in the recording industry to describe bands or artists who have one hit song that marks the beginning and end of their professional careers. Sometimes, one-hit wonders (or disposable artists, if you will) are de- liberately orchestrated by record labels and musicians working in collusion, hoping to cash in on the latest pop fad, but in many cases it is just bad luck, and talented musicians who are honestly striving to launch a stable career find that the tide of changing fashions and fickle audiences has suddenly turned against them. This is what happened to Dennis Seaton and Michael Grant, two of the five members of the defunct reggae band Musical Youth. After several years performing at pubs in their native Birmingham, these young men of colour were catapulted to international fame with the release of their single Pass the Dutchie in 1982. The members of Musical Youth were nominated for a Grammy and, for a brief time, shared the spotlight with some of the biggest names in the music industry at the time, such as Stevie Wonder, Donna Summer, Paul McCart­ ney and even the great Michael Jackson. Yet, try as they might, they never managed to duplicate the success of Pass the Dutchie, and the record label eventually turned its back on them. In 1985, the band’s five members were forced to return to their former lives and to admit that, despite their youth, they were already “has-beens” in the eyes of the public and the media—a hard lesson that had different consequences for each of them. Carles Congost’s exploration of this phenomenon is exquisitely sen- sitive and humane. Wonders combines the testimonies of two of the band members, Dennis and Michael, who agreed to contribute to this project by reminiscing about some of the high points in the band’s brief existence, with thoughtful and poetic meditations on success and abandonment written specifically for this project by essayist Eloy Fernández Porta.

CAST: Dennis Seaton, Michael Grant.

12 Simply the Best

2016 HD colour video, 22 minutes

Simply the Best was made at the express invitation of Christian Jankowski, artist and curator of Manifesta 11, the international showcase held in Zurich in 2016. As is customary in this prestigious nomadic biennial, the host city became another element of the show’s conceptual narrative, linking the art to the geographical and social setting in which it was produced. Jankowski invited a number of artists to create work related to the city’s professional associations or trade guilds, under the generic theme of “What People Do for Money”. Carles Congost chose to work with the Zurich fire department, astutely capitalising on the iconic personality of this collective. The video uses the “mockumentary” format to portray the day-to-day routine of a young Swiss fireman who loves gospel music and is helping to organise a fundraising festival where Tina Turner—the international music icon who settled in Zurich after retirement—will be the guest star. Using the concepts of work, money and freedom as discursive stimulants, Congost cre- ates a series of juicy semantic, symbolic and operative juxtapositions. At one point in the film, the young fire-fighter talks with a relative who has fallen into disgrace after mismanaging a substantial inheritance. In the course of the conversation, it becomes clear that they have very different perceptions of work: one longs to recover his financial independence and es- cape from the daily grind of his job, while the other clearly views his profes- sion as a vocation. In a surprising game of associations, Congost references the term FIRE, an acronym that stands for “Financial Independence, Retire Early”, used by economists and financiers around the world to describe a movement that views salaried employment as a modern form of slavery. At the same time, he shows a gospel choir made up entirely of white people, leading us to reflect on the historical circumstances that gave rise to this mu- sic style.

CAST: Max Hubacher, Martin Klaus, Fritz Hortig, Schutz & Rettung Zürich, Xaro Campo, Guillem Marquès, Sara Torres, Soledad Revuelto, Judith Harmala, Jordi Mestres, Carlo Coppola, Joan Galí.

14 ¿Para qué sirven las canciones? [What Good Are Songs?]

2020 4K HD colour video, 15 minutes

Carles Congost’s latest production, created specifically for this show, and also the source of its title, revisits filmic fiction to tell a youthful and eminently urban tale or, more accurately, to interweave a series of short stories told by the people who lived them. Congost uses a simple anecdote, the chance re- union of two friends and former classmates, to raise a number of questions about the younger generations, their nonconforming mindset, methods of in- dividual rebellion against systemic impositions, their increasingly precarious existence, and thwarted dreams or ideals in the midst of the ongoing crisis of the capitalist model. “What good are songs?” is not a new question in the artist’s work. In fact, it appeared in one of his first videos, Supercampeón [Superchampion] (2000). This query, a not-so-innocent reminder of issues surrounding the status of songs as cultural products deliberately manufactured in a con- sumerist system, is clarified here by exploring critical paths integrated in a framework of social and political reflection with undercurrents of genera- tional tragicomedy. The omnipresence of music in our lives and the analysis of the “hit song” phenomenon in light of its presence in the public space as simply another landscape feature, inevitable, cathartic and disturbing; its connivance with an assembly-line consumer culture that prioritises the cheap and ephemeral; its programmatic ability to instil ideas and values, at times reaching propagan- distic levels not always commensurate with society’s needs and demands. All these questions are gradually revealed in the video as we become acquainted with the different characters and their aspirations—along the way, we begin to suspect that their life decisions are simply part of a larger, structured, pro- grammed, alienating plan that is also transmitted (naturally) through songs.

CAST: Aida LLop, Manel Llunell, Ángel Serrano, Lucía Cafeína, Albert Berrio, Joel Sabaté, Artiom Tomás, Fito Conesa.

16

What good are songs if they that must continue to run its course somewhere else. We don’t know pre- cisely what it will mutate into or what shape that city will take, but we do have no body? know that, forever cut off from the familiar and known, it is a sentimental destination no one can ever visit again. Even its builders, the erstwhile lovers, Agustín Fernández Mallo can never walk its streets again, not even as squatters, because squatting is too down-to-earth for a floating town. Thus, that city literally becomes a utopia, the only truly utopian place, because it is so completely isolated 1. How a monster speaks and its very existence is so upsetting that not even real politics—which, as we know, dreams of utopia but always reaches dystopia—dares to touch it. The monster’s tragedy is knowing that he is made of bits of other bodies, flesh There, in that deserted city, it becomes possible for those of us who are on and organs of unknown provenance. The monster’s tragedy is not knowing this side, who live in real cities, to imagine—to idealise—eternal love: we call who he is. That is why the monster is so desperate to love. That is why his it romantic love, a notion that fans of experiencing the impossible have been love is rejected. We call this monster love. cultivating quite successfully for centuries. But that romantic love is not the The sense of smell in snakes resides in their forked tongues. Each of only option. Look at it this way: if it is true that information is neither creat- the two tapering ends detects a concentration of smell to the right or left, ed nor destroyed but merely transformed, then we can envisage that world leading the reptile to change direction if it identifies the scent of a predator built by lovers and now cut off from our own as a piece of lost information, or to slither closer if it catches a whiff of a potential prey. Similarly, pigs, a kind of information love we unsuccessfully attempt to retrieve. The idea boars and dogs rely on their two nostrils to orientate them in life-or-death of that solitary city of love mutating into new forms and floating aimlessly situations. Humans are a different story. Our nostrils are incapable of direc- through the universe is certainly an unsettling thought, but there must be a tional smelling; if we had one hole instead of two, nothing would change. The way in, a hole we can wriggle through to experience in real time—if only for Latin word for love, amoris, means mother. The Greeks, however, had two a few seconds—the material and sentimental information that reflects us different words for love: eros, or carnal love, and agape, referring to types there, without control, like a warped mirror of what we once were. The cru- of affection that are not strictly physical, such as friendship. We call this cial question is then the following one: if everything in that city of lost love forked love, a love which at some point we lost, and with it the ability to find is information, what news does it hold? Or better yet: does the lost city of an our sentimental bearings. We are certainly lost. But we have come up with anti-establishment love generate anti-establishment news, or news allied different strategies. Unlike other predators, we humans cannot express our with the establishment? That, and no other, is the question. If it could be an- intention to attack by baring menacing fangs or teeth. Consequently, when swered, it would unravel the knot, the conflict that has tormented those who strangers approach us, we look at their hands, trying to read the promise of fall in love with the enemy in times of war since humans became sapiens, love or hate in those outstretched extremities, the human substitute for jaws. even though we know the body of that adversary, now lost in other cities, We call this gestural love. Compulsive talking, pontificating and preaching, will never return. in addition to being an age-old strategy for trapping a prey, are also part of that gestural love. No mouth moves without a purpose—especially that 3. How a monster returns of the ventriloquist, a creature split into two irreconcilable halves: actor and monster. The prattle of politicians and public orators, and therefore their power of per- suasion, has nothing to do with the content of their speeches and everything 2. How a monster is abandoned to do with the inherent musicality of their words. Hitler is a sequence of for- tississimos, Churchill alternates between fortissimo and piano, Fidel Castro The idea of a city devoid of human presence, a ghost town left at the mercy ranges from pianissimo to mezzo forte with no discernible pattern in that os- of the elements, is an old concept that can be found in several mythologies. cillation, JFK is a steady mezzo piano punctuated by the odd piano subito, Over years of cohabitation, couples also build veritable cities of matter and and so on. And, so, this one truth is revealed: leaders interact with people, affect, of inimitable rituals and habits—they invent their own language. The not through the semantics of their words but by means of the hidden musical surprising thing is that this universe, created by two people, is not destroyed score on which their words are inscribed and modulated. For proof, we need to if the couple breaks up—it simply becomes a ghost town, an intimate ruin look no further than the tweets publicly exchanged by senior officials, where

26 27 what matters is not the message but the intensity, tone, rhythm and imagined prosody. Conversely, those other things we normally call songs, played on ra- dio stations and sound systems, have nothing to do with music: they are ac- tually speeches that end up morphing into the voices of leaders, genuine texts of power. The music used at political rallies or piped into department stores clearly illustrates this: it is a parody of what it aspired to be. There is a general principle known as Poe’s law which states that, in the absence of additional information, it is impossible to distinguish between an extreme ideological view and its parody. There you have it: there is no way to tell the difference between a rave and a bargain-hunting crowd in a department store. But what about love? How does love fit into all of this? Romantic love seems to be the exact opposite of a political rally or a musical hit. To begin with, in both music and politics, being a one-hit wonder is the sign of a failed career and loss of power. Yet in love, having just one hit in a lifetime is considered a triumph of sentimentality. But there is something else, a slightly subtler nuance. Roman- tic love between two people—which, when it happens, is unique and therefore has its own original soundtrack—appears when it is impossible to imagine an electronic, manual, or digital device capable of capturing and recording the music that flows from our lovers’ mouths. Consequently, love is the loss of one’s own voice, the impossibility of reinventing oneself in a thing called pow- er. We call this unrecordable love. Two facts are immediately apparent: 1) an- ything that can be recorded on an audio track, film or paper involves some kind of manipulation or trickery; and 2) politicians and musicians never reveal their true intentions, never bare their skin in public and, of course, never peel back their skin to show what lies beneath. The idea of publicly shedding one’s skin, of self-flaying, is an important one, and it goes back a long way. This explains why a man—and a once-reviled musician to boot—would return to his home town, not to settle a score with those who scorned him but to give a loud yell—not an ordinary shout but a banshee cry, that haunting shriek from Irish folklore that announces the death of a loved one in such a manner that something new can be born. It is, indeed, the public self-flaying of the monster who returns as a successful musician, a cry so loud that it breaks two barriers at once: the sound barrier and the barrier of prejudices. That is when the real breakthrough happens: the new skin emerges, the mon- ster is accepted, love becomes simultaneously pro and anti-establishment, and the streets of the city the lovers abandoned are miraculously walked upon once more. There is no subterfuge, no tricks or catches: the cry of the returnee cannot and will never be recorded because, like love, it is “the loss of one’s own voice, the impossibility of reinventing oneself in a thing called power”. In fact, no one has ever recorded a banshee cry, and yet it unques- tionably exists: every now and then we sense it in paintings, sketches and drawings, the places where things are represented, where we can return to our abandoned cities and rebuild them.

28 LA CASA ENCENDIDA EXHIBITION PUBLICATION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

DIRECTOR CURATOR DESIGN Lucía Casani Tolo Cañellas Setanta I am grateful for the Paradigm (2012), efforts and enthusiasm of produced with the DEPUTY DIRECTOR ASSEMBLY COPY EDITING all the people involved in support of Galería Mónica Carroquino Artec Exposiciones Exilio Gráfico the works included in this Horrach Moyà (Palma de publication, especially Mallorca); Abans de la EXHIBITIONS DEPARTMENT AUDIO & VIDEO TRANSLATIONS Salas Polisemia the team who helped me casa / Un biopic inestable María Nieto García make them a reality: a través del sonido MANAGER TRANSPORT PRINTERS Núria Marqués, producer; Sabadell (2015), awarded Crisóstomo CeGe Pol González Novell and one of the 21st Fundación Vanessa Casas Calvo Josep Pardo, directors Botín Visual Arts Grants LIGHTING DL PUBLICATIONS AND EDUCATION of photography; Joan (Santander); Wonders COORDINATION Intervento M-24968-2020 Galí, art director; Julietta (2016), awarded with Elena Fernández-Savater INSURANCE Lutti and Hector Ferreño, the second Video Art MANAGEMENT Hiscox assistant cameras; Oriol Prize organised by the AND PUBLIC PROGRAM Rovira, assistant director; Xarxa de Centres d'Arts Blai Barba, sound Visuals de Catalunya, designer; Pol González Arts Santa Mònica Novell, Rafa Ruano and and LOOP Barcelona Bernat Granados, editors; Festival (National Miquel Mestres, Andrés Contemporary Art Papas Pérez, Josep Collection, Generalitat Xortó and Gayoncé Rose, de Catalunya); and musical producers; and Simply the Best (2016), Carlos Contreras, Gina produced by Manifesta 11 Ros, Saray Mac and Rosa (Zurich) with the support Codina, wardrobe and of Acción Cultural makeup artists. Española (AC/E).

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Exhibition

Carles Congost: What Good Are Songs? 10.08.2020 — 01.10.2021

Rooms B and C

La Casa Encendida Opening hours lacasaencendida.es Ronda de Valencia, 2 Tuesday to Sunday, facebook.com/lacasaencendida 28012 Madrid 10 am to 10 pm twitter.com/lacasaencendida T 91 506 21 80 Exhibition spaces are instagram.com/lacasaencendida cleared at 9:45 pm youtube.com/lacasaencendida vimeo.com/lacasaencendida lacasaencendida.es blog.lacasaencendida.es