CCCB Exhibitions Until 30/06/2013

BOLAÑO ARCHIVE. 1977-2003

Press dossier

INDEX 1.- Exhibition data ...... 3

2.- Introduction ...... 4

3.- Exhibition texts ...... 6

4.- Roberto Bolaño. Chronology ...... 8

5.- Parallel activities ...... 10

6.- Catalogue ...... 12

7.- CVs of the curators ...... 15

8.- General information ...... 16

A production of:

With the participation of: And the collaboration of:

Collaborating media:

The CCCB is a consortium of:

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1.- EXHIBITION DATA

“BolañoBolaño Archive 19771977––––200320032003” is a production of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de (CCCB), where it will run from 5 March to 30 June 2013. This exhibition would not have been possible without the personal commitment of Carolina López, representing the Roberto Bolaño Estate, whom we wish to thank especially for her dedication.

Direction Exhibitions Service of the CCCB

Curatorship Juan Insua Valerie Miles

Coordination Liliana Antoniucci

Space design and graphic design Ignasi Bonjoch, Anna Catasús Estudi Bonjoch

Audiovisual productions Scripts and production: Juan Insua, Toni Curcó and Maria Padró

Photographic work Adrià Goula

Design and interactive programming Currysauce.net

Translation and correction of texts Marta Hernández Pibernat Debbie Smirthwaite

Coordination of montage and lighting Production and Assembly Unit of the CCCB

AudioAudiovisualvisual installations Audiovisual and Multimedia Department of the CCCB

Registry and installation of originals Registry and Conservation Unit of the CCCB

Insurance AON Gil y Carvajal

With the collaboration of Publicity and External Resources, Administrative and General Services, and the Documentation and Debate Centre of the CCCB

We would like to dedicate this exhibition to Alejandro Quintillá, a passionate reader of Roberto Bolaño, in memoriam.

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2.- INTRODUCTION

BOLAÑO ARCHIVE. 1977-2003, an exhibition curated by Juan Insua (director of CCCB_LAB) and Valerie Miles (co-director of Granta), is a tribute to Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño on the tenth anniversary of his death. The exhibition coincides with the seventh biennial iteration of Kosmopolis, the Amplified Literature Fest, which will take place at the CCCB from 14 to 16 March 2013.

What sets this exhibition apart, beyond its thematic approach, innovative museographic fabric and dialogue with visitors, is the presentation of hitherto unpublished material from the archives of the Roberto Bolaño Estate . The novels, short stories, poems, notebooks, correspondence, family photos, his personal library, interviews, games of strategy and other valuable materials on show constitute an initial exploration of the Bolaño Archive, giving us greater insight into the writer’s creative world and contributing to a freer, more prolific interpretation of his oeuvre. The project is based on three core themes that interconnect to express some of the constants in the creative universe of the author of Los detectives salvajes ( ). The first sets out a specific geography of three places (Barcelona, Girona and Blanes), where Roberto Bolaño wrote almost all of his work; the second presents a creative timeline of the publication of all of his books, and the third introduces us to the working processes of the writer. The exhibition layout is based on these themes, developing them in a foreword , a vital reference to the years spent in Mexico, and three clearly defined periods: 1. The unknown universityuniversity. Barcelona 1977-1980 2. In the kaleidoscopekaleidoscope. Girona 1980-1984 3. The visitor from the futurefuture. Blanes 1985-2003 The visit to the exhibition is conceived as a line of inquiry. The reader-visitor, like a detective, is faced with a series of tests and clues with touches of humour and irony.

Materials in the exhibition  230 originals  100 photographs  100 books  7 audiovisuals produced by the CCCB  A digital archivearchive: interactive consultation of interviews with Roberto Bolaño

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THE BOLAÑO ARCHIVE

Until the end of 2005, all the materials in the personal archive of Roberto Bolaño were kept in boxes, as the writer himself had arranged them. It was only in early 2006 that work began on the task of ordering and classifying the documentation that comprises the Bolaño Archive. The principal criterion for classification was to respect the order in which Roberto had organized his papers: folders with names or without, or recycled from different works, piles of papers with no particular order, boxes full of notebooks, magazines, press cuttings and/or compilations stapled together to form possible books. The numbering of the different binders responds to this criterion—a complicated process—in an attempt to list the materials by genre, but it has also provided valuable information about Roberto’s creative process. The first task was to number and file all the material, at the same time creating a computerized document to describe it all, giving an initial overview of the contents of the Archive. The next steps were to identify unpublished materials, start scanning documents and compile in computerized format all the interviews that Roberto had kept, classifying them by year. Much remains to be done: his unpublished poems, family photos, music tapes and CD s are still pending organization, his correspondence has yet to be analysed in detail and a thorough evaluation of his unpublished texts is needed. Here, it is worth pointing out that of the 14,374 pages filed under “Originals”, the unpublished work includes 26 short stories, four novels, poems, rough drafts, letters and diaries. Then, in electronic format, of 24,000 pages, unpublished work represents some 300: 200 of narrative and 100 of poetry. Finally, the material on show in “Bolaño Archive 1977-2003” is an initial exploration of the contents of the personal archives of Roberto Bolaño.

Carolina López February 2013

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3.- TEXTS IN THE EXHIBITION

BOLAÑO ARCHIVE 1977-2003 Roberto Bolaño (Santiago de Chile 1953–Barcelona 2003) is one of the most original writers of recent decades, whose books have become a vital reference for all lovers of literature. This exhibition pays tribute to his body of work on the tenth anniversary of his death, as well as representing an initial exploration of his personal archives . Immersion into the vast collection of notebooks and pads, hand- and type-written documents, letters, books and photographs that Bolaño kept in the course of his life suggests a great game of detective work, an open case in which the reader-detectives can compare and contrast their findings, blazing new trails in a still unknown territory. The exhibition is organized in three creative periods, each associated with one of the places where Bolaño lived after arriving in Catalonia in 1977: Barcelona, Girona and Blanes. This itinerary reveals a creative chronology that complements the publication date of his books, offering new clues as to the origin and expansion of a unique literary universe.

THE UNKNOWN UNIVERSITY. Barcelona 1977-1980 Roberto Bolaño arrived in Barcelona in 1977, during the transition from Franco’s regime to democracy. He arrived in a city abuzz with a special excitement and newly discovered social liberties. Bolaño took up residence in an apartment in Carrer Tallers, getting by with casual work but throwing himself into literary activity. He wrote poems, narrative and diaries about his experience as an immigrant in District 5. Just as Melville’s whale-ship was Harvard and Yale to Ishmael, Barcelona for Bolaño was a lecture theatre at the Unknown University. These were years of urgency, dreams and hunger, of an apprenticeship of perseverance and writing and reading, and writing and reading some more, on the trail of the “multiple destinies” of those who think and live in literature and for literature alone.

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IN THE KALEIDOSCOPE . Girona 1980-1984 In 1980, Roberto Bolaño moved to Girona, where he worked on much of his written material, and on his ideas about the style and structure of what were to be his first stories and novels. This was a period of isolation during which the writer practised his techniques of textual fragmentation and assembly, at the same time indulging his passion for games of strategy. It was a long autumn in Girona: Bolaño tried to get his work published and submitted his short stories to municipal prizes, while, “ringing in the kaleidoscope, like an echo, are the voices of all those he used to be, and this he calls his patience”. This was the creative patience that hatched a literature for lovers, nomads and losers, a transgressive literature with a destiny that remained improbable.

THE VISITOR FROM THE FUTURE . Blanes 1985-2003 Roberto Bolaño arrived in Blanes in the summer of 1985 to close the cycle of his “countless extra-literary jobs”. In this coastal town, whose geography he had imagined as he dogged the footsteps of Juan Marsé’s Pijoaparte, Bolaño consolidated his literary world with an extraordinary output of novels, short stories and poems that were to establish him at last as one of the most original writers of the new world literature. In his tiny studio, in Carrer del Lloro, grew a possessed body of work in which the reader slips into the character of police agent, poets are detectives and the history of Latin America and Europe are the backdrop of a disturbing story that questions the meaning of the world we have created. It is the legacy of an apostate who has journeyed through the abyss but who continues to play. It is also an exhortation to continue exploring the enigma of literature, its future, based on this fiction that we call reality and on the reality of the fictions that fight against death, loss of love and immobility.

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4.- ROBERTO BOLAÑO. Chronology Santiago de Chile 1953—Barcelona 2003

1953. Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was born on 28 April in Santiago de Chile, to Victoria Ávalos Flores, a teacher, and León Bo laño Carné, a truck driver. He spent his childhood in Viña del Mar, Quilpué, Cauquenes and . 1968. The family moved to , where the writer spent the best years of his adolescence. At the age of 15, he decided to leave school and devote himself to reading and his ambition to be a writer. 1973. He took a long trip around Latin America, arriving in Chile with the idea of supporting the government of Salvador Allende, in the months leading up to Pinochet’s coup. He was arrested on a trip to Concepción but released after eight days thanks to a chance meeting at the detention centre with two police officers he had been at school with. 1975. Back in Mexico City, he set up the Infra-realist Movement with Mario Santiago, Bruno Montané and other Mexican poets. 1976. Public reading in Gandhi bookstore of the first infra-realist manifesto, “Déjenlo todo nuevamente” (Give it all up again), written entirely by Bolaño. His first book of poems, Reinventar el amor (Reinventing love), was published. He prepared an anthology of young Latin American poets, Muchachos desnudos bajo el arcoíris de fuego (Naked youngsters under the rainbow of fire), which was published later, in 1979, when he was living in Barcelona. 1977. Arrival in Barcelona. After a brief period in an apartment on Gran Via, he rented a studio in Carrer Tallers. These were the years of the Spanish Transition to democracy. This period saw the start of his intense friendship with Antoni García Porta, with whom he was to write Consejos de un discípulo de Morrison a un fanático de Joyce (Advice from a Morrison Disciple to a Joyce Fanatic ), 1984 Ámbito Literary Prize for Narrative and a work that marked Bolaño’s European publishing debut as a novelist.

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1980. He moved to Girona, the city where his sister, Salomé, and brother-in-law lived. In the summer, he worked as a night watchman at the Estrella de Mar campsite in Castelldefels. 1981. He met Carolina López, whom he married in 1985. 1983. He won third prize in the 2nd Valencia City Council Alfambra Prize with the short story “El contorno del ojo” (Around the eye) . The Argentine writer Antonio Di Benedetto won second prize. This coincidence gave rise to the short story “Sensini”, which won the City of San Sebastian Literary Prize in 1997. 1985. He moved to Blanes, where his mother had opened a jewellery shop. Carolina López started working for the town council, prompting the couple to settle there. 1990. Birth of their son, Lautaro. 1992. He was diagnosed with a serious liver disease. In the same year, he won the Rafael Morales poetry prize of Talavera de la Reina Council (Madrid) for “Fragments” from La Universidad Desconocida (The Unknown University ), and the City of Toledo Prize for the novel La senda de los elefantes , published years later with the title . 1993. Publication of La pista de hielo ( ), winner of the 1992 Alcalá de Henares Narrative Prize. 19941994. He won the City of Irún Literary Prize with Los perros románticos (The Romantic Dogs ). Thereafter, he devoted himself exclusively to literature, leaving behind his numerous extra-literary jobs (dish-washer, camp site guard, jewellery salesman, etc.). 1996. Publication of La literatura nazi en América (Nazi literature in the Americas ) and Estrella distante ( ). After the publication of these works, Bolaño presented his editor with a book a year. 1997. Publication of the volume of short stories Llamadas telefónicas (Phone Calls ), which won the Santiago de Chile Municipal Prize. 1998. Publication of Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives ), winner of the 16th Herralde Novel Prize (1998) and the 11th Rómulo Gallegos Prize (1999). He returned to Chile after over 25 years. 2001. Birth of his daughter, Alexandra. Bolaño was always highly protective of his children, “my only homeland”. He dedicated many of his books to them and to Carolina López. 2003. He died on 14 July. A few days later, as he had expressly requested, his ashes were scattered in the Bay of Blanes. 2004. Posthumous publication of 2666 , his culminating work, winner of several prizes: Salambó (Barcelona), Ciutat de Barcelona, Municipal de Literatura de Santiago de Chile, Fundación José Manuel Lara (2005), Altazor (2005) and National Book Critics Circle Award (New York, 2008). Other of Bolaño’s texts were later published: Entre paréntesis (2004, Between Parentheses ), La Universidad Desconocida (2007, The Unknown University ), El secreto del mal (2007, The Secret of Evil ), El Tercer Reich (2010, ) and Los sinsabores del verdadero policía (2011, Woes of the True Policeman ).

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5.- PARALLEL ACTIVITIES

 KOSMOPOLIS 2013. THE AMPLIFIED LITERATURE FESTIVAL

Coinciding with the exhibition “Bolaño Archive 1977-2003”, Kosmopolis (14-16 March) offers a poetic performance, a colloquium, a talk about the adaptation for theatre of 2666 , a dramatized reading of El policia de las ratas (Rat Police) and the preview of the film Il futuro , based on Una novelita lumpen (A Lumpen Novella) by Bolaño.

Bolaño on stage Thursday 14 March, 8.30 p.m. in the Teatre CCCB (in Spanish) Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666 is a work of great narrative complexity. Dramatists Alex Rigola and Pablo Ley will be explaining the process of turning it into a five-act play. They will also be offering, for the first time, a dramatized reading of El policia de las ratas, a text by Bolaño also adapted by Alex Rigola and performed by Andreu Benito and Joan CarrerasCarreras.

Bolaño: gestation of a myth Friday 15 March, 6.30 p.m. in the Foyer of the CCCB (in Catalan/Spanish) Round table with the participation of A. G. PortaPorta, Pere GimferrerGimferrer, Jaume Vallcorba and Jorge HerraldeHerralde, a writer and three editors with whom Roberto Bolaño had close personal links. The moderator will be Juan Antonio MasoliverMasoliver RódenasRódenas. They will be talking about the relation between Bolaño’s life and work, and how this relation has contributed to the gestation of a myth that draws on his Chilean, Mexican and Catalan roots, and on his view of writing as an ongoing process that only death could stop.

Pages written on Jacob’s ladder Friday 15 March, 8 p.m. in the Teatre CCCB (in Spanish) Poetry recital by the poet Olvido Garcia Valdés with musical accompaniment by composer and performer ChChChefa Ch efa Alonso (soprano sax and percussion). The reading, which takes its name from the title of an article by Roberto Bolaño, is a dialogue between the poems of Olvido García Valdés and Bolaño, paying tribute to the latter on the tenth anniversary of his death.

Preview of Il futuro , with the attendance of the director, Alicia Scherson Thursday 14 March, 10.30 p.m. in the Teatre CCCB (in Spanish) Literature is the central theme of Alpha Channel, and one of the highlights of this year’s festival is the preview of the film Il futuro , by Alicia Scherson (Chile, 1974), based on Una novelita lumpen by Roberto Bolaño. The Chilean writer is one of the stars of this 2013 edition at the CCCB, which hosts the exhibition “Bolaño Archive 1977-2003”.

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 EDUCATIONAL IDEAS: THE CREATIVE PROCESS OF ROBERTO BOLAÑO

1. Roberto Bolaño in the classroom. Teaching materials for class work that link the contents of the exhibition with themes on the curriculum. This material has been devised by the Grup de Treball Univers Bolaño (CRP la Selva II), working under the Zone Training Plan 2012-2013 of the Department of Education. More information will be given in the course of the exhibition at the CCCB and, at the end of May, we will give a presentation of the whole project and in-school experiences. 2. Writing workshop . The activity is made up of three phases. In the first, we will explore the Bolaño Archive to extract the keys to his creative process. The facilitator will give the appropriate indications and guidance, and, using a selection of manuscripts, show the close relation between Bolaño’s life and his body of work, the importance of enigmas, games and humour in his poetry and novels, the foremost characteristics of his creative process. In the second, we propose a reading of short autobiographical texts, one by Bolaño and two by writers he admired (Nicanor Parra and Jorge Luis Borges), and the Proust Questionnaire, which Bolaño answered in a Chilean newspaper in 2000. We will end this phase by watching an excerpt from the documentary Bolaño cercano , by the director Erik Haasnoot (2008), in which Vila-Matas talks about his friend. The third phase of the workshop proposes the specific writing exercise: a self-portrait of the student or an imaginary portrait of Roberto Bolaño. The material produced will form part of the exhibition project. 3. Publications in cccbeducacio.org . Our virtual platform allows students to share their work with the education and cultural community. We are interested in their work! 4. Special visits for teachers (on request ) With the participation of students in Latin America, thanks to the Anilla Cultural Latinoamérica-Europa .

More information about educational ideas at http://www.cccbeducacio.org/

Please reserve in advance by writing to the Education Service at [email protected] or calling 933.064.135, Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Price of the workshop: 3 € per student (minimum 10 students).

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6.- CATALOGUE

Languages: Catalan edition with English translation / Spanish edition with English translation 176 pages 50 b/w and colour images 17 x 24 cm Published by CCCB and Direcció de Comunicació de la Diputació de Barcelona Texts by: Juan InsuaInsua, Valerie MilesMiles, A. G. PortaPorta, Enrique VilaVila----MatasMatasMatas, Javier CercasCercas, Patricia EspinosaEspinosa, Olvido García ValdésValdés, Bárbara Epler RRP: 15 €

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BOLAÑO IN CATALONIA PROLOGUE OF THE CATALOGUE

“I’ve worked at every job in the world, except the three or four that anybody with a little pride would turn down. My wife is Carolina López and my son is Lautaro Bolaño [In March 2011, after this piece was written, Alexandra, the second child of Carolina and Roberto, was born].* They’re both Catalan. In Catalonia, I learned the difficult art of tolerance. I’m much happier reading than writing.” Roberto Bolaño, “Preface: Self-Portrait”, in Between Parentheses. Essays, Articles and Speeches, 1998-2003, New Directions Books, New York 2011, p. 16 [*editor’s note] .

On 7 March 2012, only a couple of months after I had taken over as director of the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Catalonia, I had an experience that gave me great personal satisfaction. That day, Juan Insua and I got into my car and drove to Blanes, where we were met by Carolina López, Roberto Bolaño’s widow, and her friend and helper Valerie Miles, co-curator of the exhibition “Bolaño Archive 1977 – 2003”, which we now present. We spent almost the whole day in Blanes, in the Bolaño family residence. The four of us had lunch in one of the restaurants on the seafront promenade. It was a cool but sunny day. In Carolina’s home we were able to view the Bolaño archive and take stock of the enormous job of classifying and filing that had been done. We could examine the notebooks and diaries in which Bolaño wrote – in his tiny but calligraphically impeccable handwriting – and sometimes drew. Some of the texts are those of already published works while many others are yet to come to light. It was a moving, magical moment. Roberto Bolaño is now a cult writer. His work has been praised by the most prestigious critics. His books have had an extraordinary international reception, both inside and outside the Spanish-language domain. Recognition of Bolaño’s work certainly came late. Indeed, it only came in 1998 with the publication of Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives ) and would not be complete until the posthumous publication of his monumental 2666 . Nevertheless, as the exhibition shows, the indisputable quality of his work is not a matter of chance but fruit of his undeniable talent and dogged, obsessive labour of writing, his tenacious toiling over so many, many years, during some of which he was barely able to eke out a living. It is impressive see how someone is capable of making such a radical, total commitment, with such absolute conviction, to the laws of literature, of creation. Nothing made him lose heart or abandon the cause, although his bitter experiences and disappointments were legion. He was truly iron-willed. Throughout his life, Bolaño not only wrote torrentially but he also read widely and vastly. His opinions and judgements, especially those pertaining to literature, brim with raw, even brutal sincerity, to such an extreme at times that it is difficult to understand unless one takes into account his incorruptible commitment to literature and the passion and visceral energy with which he devoted himself to it.

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Bolaño arrived in Catalonia in 1977, after having lived in Chile (where he was born) and Mexico. He spent the rest of his life, which was cut short by a serious illness in 2003, in Barcelona, Girona and, in particular, Blanes. He lived in Catalonia for a little more than half of his existence, and here he made good friends and wrote the bulk of his work. He and Carolina López settled in Blanes and had two children, Lautaro and Alexandra (my children are my homeland, he would write). Roberto Bolaño was always grateful for the welcome he received in Catalonia and especially in Blanes. He felt good here. One has the impression on reading his texts that, in Blanes, he found the social setting and family comforts he needed in order to do what he loved: write. The exhibition presented by the CCCB is a modest attempt to offer a better idea of what Bolaño was like and how he spent his years in Catalonia. It paves the way for better understanding of his fascinating work in the light of his archive – of published and unpublished manuscripts – and the creative chronology of his texts, providing the basis for an interpretation which, if not totally new, is more profound and more complete. It also reveals him as neighbour, friend, husband and father, the most intimate Bolaño. We are convinced of the enormous appeal of this exhibition, not only for the general public but also for lovers of literature and, in particular, Bolaño’s literature. I should like to conclude these few lines by giving public expression to my gratitude to Carolina López, thanking her most particularly for her confidence in the CCCB team, her constant availability and willing assistance, without which it would not have been possible to produce this exhibition.

Marçal Sintes Director of the CCCB

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7.- CVs OF THE CURATORS

Juan Insua (Zárate, Argentina, 1954) Juan Insua is head of projects of the CCCB Lab and director of the Kosmopolis literary festival. He devised and directed the cycle “Cities and their Writers”, with exhibitions about James Joyce, Fernando Pessoa, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar and Gao Xingjiang. He also created and directed the cycle of installations Leading Lights of the 20th Century and projects such as Now. Meetings in the Present Continuous, BCNmp7. Musics in process and R+C+i. Research and Innovation in the Field of Culture. In 2003, he was awarded the City of Barcelona Prize and, in 2008, the FAD medal (Foment de les Arts i del Disseny).

Valerie Miles (New York, 1963) Valerie Miles studied in Pennsylvania. She has worked in publishing and cultural journalism since her arrival in Spain over 20 years ago. She was publishing director of Emecé and associate director at Alfaguara, and, in 2008, she set up Duomo Ediciones, where she published a selection of the New York Review of Books collection. In 2003, together with Aurelio Major, she launched the Spanish- language version of Granta . She teaches on the postgraduate programme in Literary Translation at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. She recently published the anthology Mil bosques en una bellota (2012).

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8.- GENERAL INFORMATION

“Bolaño Archive 1977-2003” From 05.03.13 to 30.06.13

Times Tuesday to Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Closed on Mondays except public holidays

Guided visits In Catalan: Sundays at 11.30 a.m. In Spanish: Saturdays at 11.30 a.m.

Admission: 6 € ConcessionsConcessions: 4 € for senior citizens, under-25s, large families, single-parent families and group visits (minimum 15 persons), and for everyone on Wednesdays Free admission for under-16s, Friends of the CCCB, senior citizens in possession of a Targeta Rosa card, the unwaged, holders of the Teacher’s Card of the Generalitat de Catalunya, and on Sundays from 3 to 8 p.m.

Press Service CCCB · Mònica Muñoz, Irene Ruiz and Emma Miguel· 93 306 41 23 · www.cccb.org

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