ENTREVISTA CON JOAN BAIXAS 08/06/10

julio 27, 2010 en Entrevistas, Textos

Vahur Keller. Tallin (Estonia) How would You define Yourself? Who are
You: a painter, a poet? Im an artist. I usually say that Im a painter and a
theatre director, because these are the two things that Ive done most. I also like
very much writing, but mainly I write for the scene. All my life I did lots of writing
for nothing. Now Ive started writing a book, because I think Im old enough for
starting to put it all together. I want to write about my experience with the theatre
and with the world. I started to opening boxes and I saw that I have something
right about that in my diaries. There is a lot: diaries with ideas, with drawings,
with lots of things. The stories that people have told me all over the world, the
stories of real people. I want to write this book this year. I dont know the
general idea yet. Ill write about stories that people have told me, but also about
my experience with people and with the shows. For example I want to tell all the
story about my relationship with Joan Mir who really was a big master of life for
me, not just of art, and I want to explain that. But also my relationship with other
artists, Ive met some so nice people from all over the world. I hope to have the
power of writing to translate these impressions. I really dont want to define
myself also because Im a bit transparent. In our capitalistic world You have to
be somebody at least for these minutes of fame that Warhol talked about. You
have to be a name and somebody. But You know Im nobody. When I am with
the puppeteers I love them and they love me and we have very good
relationship, but the puppeteers feel Aah, his a painter! He did puppetry but
really his a painter!; and when Im with the painters, I love them and they know
me and they are very nice with me but then they think: Yeah, hes here, but
hes really a theatre director!; and when Im with the people of theatre, they
think: Ooh, hes really a puppeteer! So Im there, but Im nobody, and Im very
proud of that. I have not been doing an artistic career to be somebody, I have
been living meeting people, watching things, doing lots of things, but Ive
never worked for my career. I do not need the place on the wall to hang: Joan
Baixas because its nobody. I dont care! You understand what I mean? If
You have something on the wall, You need the definition: its an impressionist
painter or its a photo of a famous film director but I dont want to hang on the
wall, Im very proud of being nobody. Transparency means independence and
thats important. I can do lots of things. I had a very funny situation with my last
show about a girl who was a prostitute and killed her lover. I met her, she was
some character! The show contained many images of her life and at the end I
explained who she was. She killed and cut her lover with an electric knife a
horrible thing it was a big impression for the audience when I told the story! It
was very tender by the character but at the same time a horrible story of blood
and all that. When I started performing the show with the audience, the end of
the show was an impressive image of somebody killing the other human-being
with an electric knife. I talked with the actors and the musician that we have to
invent the way to finish it with the happy ending, for people wouldnt go out of
the theatre too sad. So we did one minute music and dance together, and it was
the first time Ive ever danced on stage. Afterwards I had a review of the show
that Im a very good dancer and the best of the show was the dance. I thought
my god, now Im a dancer! I thought it was so grotesque to dance on the stage
at my age but it works! I noticed that I can do anything it works!
Youve also founded a department of puppetry and visual theatre and You
ran a famous festival of visual theatre and puppetry in Barcelona. What
animal is this visual theatre?
Visual theatre is a crazy name, because all the theatre is visual but at same
time were talking about musical theatre and all the theatre has music, or we
talk I dont know about gesture-theatre and all the theatre has gesture. I
used that name to go one step further from puppetry without losing puppetry.
The expression visual theatre is used a lot for example in England and also
other countries, and I used it to put more focus on the image. The name of
visual theatre was actually invented in Bauhaus. In there, at Oscar Schlemmers
time, it was not just using images but making dramaturgy of the images thats
the point. It was Schawinsky who named the visual theatre. Oscar Schlemmer
was doing the Triadic Ballet and people asked what do we do, do we do
dance? Is it a ballet, or if we do cabaret? The ideas of Oscar Schlemmer were
very much cabaret-like with numbers and music and parody and grotesque, it
was not a ballet. He called it ballet triadic with the humour, he put it ballet with
humour. Oscar Schlemmer had very-very good humour, nowadays not many
people remember that he was a very humoristic man, he did clowneries and
carnevals and all that. And one day they were talking with Stravinsky who said:
What we do, is visual theatre theatre with image. This saying was there
around and I also like to put the focus on the image.
Is it telling a story through the images?
Telling a story or not, but making the show.
Do You think a story isnt important in the theatre?
Sometimes, but not always. Its not essential.
What is essential?
Essential is the show to me. To make something spectacular, that gives an
emotion to the audience. Sometimes its through narrative, sometimes not. For
example, one of the masters of this kind of theatre was Tadeusz Kantor and he
didnt tell stories but he made theatre. Fragmentary, very poetic, around the
things that happened. Things are happening on scene, but they dont tell a
story.
Though he had very strong stories behind it, the stories of his life, of his
childhood.
And of his country. Kantor defined very well the importance of the image on the
stage. Sometimes we forget that he said: Image on the stage needs density..
Were supposed to live in the culture of the image, but with the culture of the
image we mean a light image. What is the culture of the image? The publicity,
the signals on the streets for driving, the logos, the hollywood stars and all that
kind of things are images, so we talk about our culture of the image but its
light image. Image that everybody understands. Avatar is an image that
everybody, from children to adults, understands. But Kantor said that on the
stage the image has to have density; so You dont have to project images and to
do nice beautiful images no,You have to do images that will stay forever at the
hart of the people. Important is that the image on stage has time. If You see an
image of painting, You can stay one minute in front of it and then You have a
general impression of it; but on the stage You are there, sitting in front of the
image so the image has to have the density to go inside, to grow and stay
inside of the mind and the imagination of the people we have to remember the
images from the stage. We can do the light images in the theatre just flash
some people do it a lot, but its not interesting, You know. These are images that
disappear. So I used the name of visual theatre for the festival and for the
school because, more or less, the puppetry is an old art, its a bit a ghetto. Even
if its very contemporary and there are lots of interesting things, for lots of
people, its a bit a ghetto. Its an island, you know. To break that, and to bring
more audiences to the shows and to the festival, we called it visual theatre.
What is the reason for puppetry being a ghetto?
I think partly its a ghetto because of the puppeteers. Because puppeteers have
made this world organization UNIMA and international festivals and all that. This
movement of puppeteers around the world have made lots of contacts between
people during the last century and it has been very positive, but at the same
time it has become a ghetto where puppeteers are talking about puppets and
other people doesnt go to puppet shows.
You meet the same people at every puppet festival. Its a fun in a way,
but
Exactly, You meet the same people, its very nice and at the same time its very
closed. With puppetry world I have a relationship that I go in and out. During
fifteen years I didnt play at puppet festivals, I was performing at other places,
but then I started again in a puppet circuit and its funny that I found there my
old friends: in Australia, South Africa, Germany, very good friends who I know
for thirty years, but they are only in the puppetry world and I know if I go there,
I meet these people. They are there in this puppet-tube around the world. It
has very positive senses and also some negative.
Still, why this have happened to puppetry? For example painters are also
dealing mainly with their thing and communicating mainly with each other.
Why is puppetry so exceptional ghetto?
Maybe its because of the very close relationship with the tradition, I think. The
puppet itself doesnt change. The shows change and artists change, but puppet
doesnt change. Its a strange thing, because what is a puppet? Its a tool, an
instrument, a copy of human-being, a symbol, a grotesque figure, its lots of
things but its there. Its like another humanity a parallel humanity. Its very
much related to the tradition of the puppetry and it hasnt happened to other
arts. Contemporary poet can have the influence of medieval poets, nobody
knows, its his personal vision and interest, but if hes contemporary hes
contemporary. In puppetry, even if Youre very contemporary, there is always
that root that goes to tradition. This is not bad, its a good thing. This root is
always alive and goes further to the very old times to animism and all that. Its
good but it forms that ghetto around itself. But puppetry is not just a ghetto of
puppeteers. For example when Robert Lepage used the puppets, nobody
thought its a puppet theatre. Nobody thinks in cinema that Avatar is a puppet
show, but if You analyze it its a puppetry. Alien is a puppet and Jim
Hensons colleagues did the puppets for the first films of the Star Wars. Yoda
is one of the best puppets in cinema how it moves and the character are
fantastic and nobody thinks that Yoda is a puppet. Nobody says that Alien is a
puppet, but its a traditional puppet that is moved by the hand of a puppeteer.
Its not virtual, made with a computer, its a real puppet made of wood and fabric
but nobody thinks its a puppet. So, there is a lot of puppets out of the world of
puppetry, which means that the ghetto is created by the puppeteers themselves.
They are happy, good for their cultures and for their world, but at the same time
they are closed. I think its very important for the new generations to know that.
When I was teaching at the theatre institute, the students were very surprised
when I showed the films with puppets starting already from Murnau. Faustus is
a puppet film and also Golem which is a puppet that becomes alive. The
monster of Frankenstein is a puppet. Its a creature made by someone: it gets
life, its animated so its a puppet. The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk
writes at his most important book The Spheres most curiously about
animation: he says that in the beginning it was animation. God is an animation
of the human being. Its a very nice idea, its the explanation of the puppet: God
is the puppet of the human being. If You believe in God then God is God, but if
You are not a believer but just a philosopher, then God is a creature made by
the imagination of human being and the human being represents this character,
this puppet, this animation, and human being talks for him and invents the
dialogs of God. God is like Punch and Judy, hes the creation of imagination of
human being. This explanation of animation is fantastic because animation
means: to give ananima and the soul is the beginning of the puppet. Its
something out-inside, its the root of the puppet. So puppetry is much more than
the puppeteers talk about. Puppeteers talk about puppets but they dont talk
about this animation.
Is this the thing that draws You to puppetry and gives You the energy to
deal with it?
Yes, for that puppetry interests me a lot. Animation of mystery, of the things that
we dont know. There are so many things that human being does not
understand, about nature and himself, about the world how does this machine
work? We improvise the explanations. What we do when we dont understand
something? We create something to represent our intuition thats animation.
Ren Girard, a French philosopher who works in USA, puts all his
anthropological works attention to what he calls the sacrificial victim. He says
that human beings are the only animals that can kill one each other. All the
animals in nature can fight, but when one lion wins the other, the looser goes
away, the winner doesnt need to kill him. Animals can dye by accident in fights
but the purpose is not to kill each other. The purpose of the animals fights is to
throw the other male away and to keep the females and the food. Human
beings do not have that, if one human being have won the woman of another
human being, he kills the other. The one who loses doesnt go away, he comes
back and tries to kill the other in an other way, maybe at night. This have really
happened in the fights of different cultures: one group killed everyone from the
other group to get food or women and kids for sex or for work or for eating
them, and to stop that killing, they did put something in-between: the sacrificial
victim. This is very clear in the bible: instead of killing you, I kill something that I
offer to You. Instead of killing the whole tribe, I say Ok. Ill give You the best I
have my son. You can kill my son and we will be in peace. Girard describes
how all the cultures tell that in myths, like Oedipus or Christ. Christ is the
sacrificial victim that God offers to himself. I need to excuse the falls of the
human beings so I transform my son into a human being and human beings will
kill him as an offer to me and so well be in peace. The sacrificial victim is the
beginning of the culture, beginning of myths. Girard has written five or six books
about that, analyzing this process on Greek and biblical mythology, and this
sacrificial victim is finally a puppet. We use puppets to do some things that we
cant do with human beings. Why is Punch a very-very bad character who kills
people etc so strong and powerful? Because in the end he fights with death.
He is the one that can fight with death. Also Petruschka and Pulchinella are
fighting with death all the big characters of puppetry finally have their
important fight with death. They cant win death, but they can escape or put
death in a bag or in a box. They escape from death thats the power of these
characters. So the relationship of a human being and a puppet is very deep. Its
the sacrificial victim, the offering, so for that it doesnt disappear and for that it
creates a ghetto around itself. Because its very magic, very deep, very strange.
Too deep for everybody?
Yes, maybe its too primitive for contemporary art too religious, too mythical.
At the same time some of the most famous artists used the puppets. Kantor
didnt use a puppet, but his actors are like puppets. All the actors have a double
mannequin, and they carry their mannequin and they see the mannequin and
they talk with it and they dance its a puppet. I remember Kantor saying: No-
no-no, I dont do puppets!, but finally he was at the Charleville school doing
puppets. There are a lot of artists of the twentieth century that used puppets
without saying that these were puppets: Robert Lepage, Peter Brook or Bob
Wilson etc.
You said that working with Joan Mir was a great inspiration for You. Was
his work driven from same ideas?
When he went to Paris in 1930, one of the first things that he discovered was
Alfred Jarry and his character Ubu. Mir had a table in his studio where he was
sitting and writing and organizing the world of his and had all his life there.
When he was 85 I saw that he had there the original edition of Ubu Roi from
when he was 27, the time he came to Paris. This small book was the thing that
was with Mir all his life, he wrote there notations and did drawings. He did the
illustrations for three books of Ubu: of Ubu Roi, LEnfance dUbu and Ubu
aux Balears. The theme of Ubu was with him all his life. One thing that I lent
from Mir as an artist was his absolute concentration to his world. He had this
all along his life every minute he was concentrated to his inner-world. For an
artist its not easy because we go in-and-out. We say, we go to work and then
we concentrate he was all the time concentrated. His concentration started
when he was about 19 and his father put him to work to his friends shop. He
was working there for seven or nine months and got sick of the money, so he
told his father I cant work like that, I cant do a normal work, I have to
concentrate on my inner world. I think that is the important point of art. He
decided to live 24 hours a day in the art world. There are people who live 24
hours a day for money, to make business and to be somebody, or people who
live 24 hours a day for religion or for helping other people, or for nothing, but art
its a place, art is somewhere.
Some kind of passion for the purpose?
We say passion, we say concentration we say words like that, but its
different, You know, the art is there.
Do You have this kind of thing Yourself also?
More or less. Not as Joan Mir, of course. He was absolutely concentrated. I
remember the last time I saw Mir at the hospital, and I asked him How are
You?, and he said Now, its perfect Im all day magnetized.. He meant that
he was all the time at the other side at the arts side. He said Everything is
part of my painting, everything. He was 24 hours a day there, at this space that
we call art. That is a form of knowledge, a form of research its a space in the
human mind, a space of questions and emotions finally a space of knowledge.
Spanish physicist Jorge Wagensberg, the designer and director of the science
museum at the Barcelona, said that there are three forms of knowledge: one is
science which is asking the reality all the time and nothing is never sure for
science; second is intuition, which means spirituality; and the third one is art,
which is doing things. The spirituality is more about receiving, the art is more
about doing. You ask the world by doing things: experimenting life and making
forms out of these inner experiences sometimes psychological, sometimes
historical, sometimes political and sometimes just natural experiences. This is
the experience of the world through the art. I like very much this definition of
Wagensberg: three languages to understand the world. He doesnt say religion,
hes very critical about religion, because he says that religion is about power,
spirituality is different.
Do You think religion could be the fourth form of knowledge?
Religion is organized for power, I agree. Religion takes its power from
spirituality. Its a very formal power like all the forms of power. Power of money
and power of military are stupid powers. All the powers are stupid, power is
about the stupidity. Power is about I dont understand, but I will win., I will say
that No way, fuck You!. Power is the bad side of the human being, in any field.
The strongest powers that we know, the military powers, are killing people,
making wars, causing disasters and destroying the human lives, and religious
power is the same. This is different from spirituality.
So in a way Youre an anarchist?
No, I believe in organization, I do believe in democracy, for example. I dont like
if democracy means that some people have took all the power. The idea of
democracy means different kinds of powers its a very good idea.
But is democracy really possible? What we see every day, is not the idea
that we like.
This is like happiness: You cant wait until everything is perfect, You have to use
as much as You can. No one is happy for 24 hours a day all of his life,
happiness is some moments and if You make the bridge between one happy
moment and next happy moment with a lots of troubles in between, You can
become a happy person. With democracy its the same it goes up and down.
The general vision of anything is a disaster, the details are important, not the
general vision. We see the world, and we see the people who went to Gaza with
their boats and that disaster that happened to everyone, because everyone did
the wrong thing. It was the moment of the travel, a very long travel but not the
whole world is Gaza. We are not in Gaza, so we have to enjoy life, because we
are at this bar.
Do You think we should only enjoy or should we somehow fight for our
ideas also?
I think we have to work but not fight. We have to make things better, to improve
things and to make a life better, but it will never be perfect. There will always be
problems political, economical, car that kills somebody at the street, someone
who can have everything and make more love than You Thats always
happening, all the time, so we have to work for the good things and I think its
very important to enjoy the good moments. We have to be happy when
happiness happens at our lives and not to complain Oh, it could be better!.
To enjoy these moments, this music, this bar
Its a really Catalonian thought. But still, is it important for You as an artist
to express Your political views to people?
Yes, I did a lot and I still do. I work with the things that I have in mind, but the
first thing is pleasure. I think that, first of all, art is about pleasure and we dont
have to forget that. Its about pleasure of being alive, about being together,
about shapes and forms: to make a song, to make a poem, to hear a poem
this is a nice thing. Firstly life is a pleasure. I think human being invented art
as a pleasure and does art as a pleasure, because we enjoy it, because its
good. Then, sometimes there are so nasty things that You have to talk about.
Its like Paul Celan making poems at concentration camp. What it means we
cant make poetry after Auschwitz no, its Auschwitz where we can make
poetry. Some of the most beautiful poems ever wrote in Europe were written in
Auschwitz. What it means, that even there is at least one human being who
takes the pleasure to put words together, to express the horror. No, in the
middle of horror, in the middle of death, he finds a pleasure to put the words
together and do a poem. Thats art. Thats art through pain, suffering, politics,
bad moments, problems etc. You can still do the big poems in concentration
camp as Paul Celan did very beautiful and very strong, but he didnt tell about
the horror. When he says this image the black milk of dawn its so strong!
Imagine the dawn at Auschwitz, one more day one more day of life in the
middle of horror, but its one more day! I always explain to Young people that
place where I heard most jokes was in Sarajevo during the war, when I was
playing at the hospitals. Im sure you were telling more jokes during the soviet
period than now.
Absolutely, we had a parade of great humorists then.
Like in the Spain in time of the francoism: we were telling jokes every day lots
of jokes! Humor is a form of art.
Then art had also more essential importance for people. Theatres were
full, for You could say things through art that You couldnt say otherwise.
Now I feel that art has became somehow headless. What could be the
importance of art for the society, for human being? Why does a human
being need art?
I think that its a form of knowledge, language of knowledge. Its fantastic that a
dictatorship period is finished and You have a normal life. Its a pity that we cant
do an art that is just joyful, about happiness and pleasure. But the thing that we
have finished our period of tyranny doesnt mean that we did change very much
the world. The end of Franco is for me and my generation at my country very
important, but in the middle of the world it was very small thing. Humanity has
still many problems. Europe has big problems and we, Europeans, have to
wake up and to think what to do. Its happening, we are there, and it involves
Europe economically, politically, financially, artistically, religiously, spiritually. The
idea of how we consider family is going to be reinvented in Europe. We
proposed to the humanity a way of life that we practiced because we were rich,
but it looks like well not be rich anymore so well change this life. Well throw
away the immigrates, well not take care of old people, well not give help for the
elders when they finish their work, well not have the social security for
everybody will it mean that, or we want to keep all that with no money? Does
it mean that we, rich people, will have to pay more or what it means? How will
we keep that form of life that weve proposed to the humanity? Its a good form:
we believe in social security and democracy and culture for everybody, taking
care of the elders, receiving the immigrates, being multicultural we believe in
all that but we cant pay it anymore. So, what we will do? We will renounce and
we will be racist and well close Europe and well close the cultural institutions
and well leave the old people with the families on the corner without attention
and well have to pay for the medicines and the poor will dye earlier does it
mean that? This model of Europe is based on the richness that we get from
exploitation of other countries and not on our own production. It was based on
good prices of petrol, on good use of the basic materials etc. On that base of
richness we invented Europe this idea of democracy and wellness for
everybody.
Can You propose any solution?
No, I dont know. I think we Europeans have to think and talk because it will not
be easy. The other cultures, Latin America, India, China, have their own ways
and theyll work for them, theyll not work for Europe.
What kind of function does art have there?
I think at least art is one of the spaces to think, to talk, to be aware, to put the
problems on the top of the table. Its one of the things that art can do. Artists are
the luxury of Occidental cultures and just the survival of their-self is the problem
for artists. European artists are confident in the idea that the society has to take
care of the them: we are the richness of the country so we all need subsidies.
If someone says that we have other things to pay so we cant pay the artists
and You have to manage by Yourself, artists will say oh, theyre not culturally
elevated and all that. I think we are not the problem of the society, we have to
do our work with money or no money, with institutions or no institutions. I think
its very good if the institutions take care of the culture, but if the institutions
dont take care because they are political or they dont like to or they dont have
money or because they have problems with unemployment in incredible
numbers etc the artists cant stop. If an artist stops because the government
doesnt pay, hes a liar, hes a shit! Exactly this is one problem of the art the
survival of itself. What are we doing? Are we doing something because we
believe in life and in the model of our society or are we just parasitizing our own
society and hanging on the fee and thinking ooh, give me food, Im an artist!
What do You do? Oh, Im doing modern things.. In last fifty years we,
artists in Europe, believe that we all have to be helped by some government.
Everybody! True or not? and everybody has something so important that needs
subsidy. Ok, I prefer to have subsidy, I mean, who wouldnt prefer! But when I
started, there were no subsidies so I worked and made my life from the first day
that I decided to go into that business. Ive always said to my sons Look, I
have a business with what I can go to any corner of the street and I can do so
good show, that the people are willing to by me a plate of soup. Im sure that I
can make my life and the life of my sons anywhere in the world. At least art itself
has this problem and I really do believe that artists could think of the society. Its
a place to think, a place to have experiences, a place to be together, place of
talking about things so its important part of our society.

You were acquainted to Kantor. How did he influence You?

I met him at his first season in London at Riverside Studios, and after that I saw
him in Paris and in Barcelona and other places, we had in-common friends, who
introduced us, and I liked him very much. He was one of the big masters. So
intense! I didnt have very strong relationship with Kantor because he was a
person closed in himself. It was not dialogue: he was talking and I learned a lot
from him. Joan Mir was living out of the society, closed to his world in his
studio at Mallorca, but Kantor was living his artistic life in Poland, which has
been one of the harts of Europe. Its the country that suffered so much
invasions from everybody, incredible punishment during the two wars, and
Kantor was there. So it was very different for me to talk with Miro, who was like
a monk in his studio, or talk with Kantor who was from there from Poland,
living the war and the camps and the Soviet period.
Kantor was expressing his own and his countrys past all the time. Do You
feel something like that with Your creation also, that You are somehow
connected to Your past Catalonian, or else?
Yes, everything is there. The whole world and the closed community at the
same time. I do not analyze that very much.
You dont want to?
I dont do it. I dont analyze very much my own situation. I have been traveling
around the world for forty years already. I started traveling when I was nineteen,
so I really feel that I am from the world. I live in Catalonia and I like it very much
and its my culture my roots, it is my mother-tongue, my culture and Im happy
with my language but Im not nationalistic at all.
You dont dream about separate Catalonian Republic? When I was in
Barcelona some five years ago, I heard from many Catalonian people, that
they would like to have their own republic.
I dont want to think about that now. Its not important for me at all. Im in the
world. Im really the citizen of the world and I feel very comfortable talking with
people, knowing people from all over the world, thinking of the world. Maybe at
one day I will think about that, it depends in which moment. Because its just a
matter of organization, its just the matter of politics, its not so important.
You have worked in a lot of countries. Is it somehow feeding for You to
work in different cultures, backgrounds, histories? What does it mean to
You?
The main thing is that I learn. I do my job, this is the main thing, but working
with the people gives a lot. I receive much more than I give. There are still lots
of new worlds for me. Last trip was in Latin America: Brazil, Paraguay,
Argentina. I received the experiences of different people, of different cultures, of
different situations and Im very curious. I ask and they talk and I go and I watch
and I read so I receive a lot. Im very happy with that.
Was Your school also international?
Not really, there were some students with Erasmus programs. There are some
sections like gesture theatre, where a lot of students come from other areas of
Spain or Latin America, because they dont need language. In our school the
main group is the actors, and acting is based on language so they need catalan.
Therefore its difficult for foreigners to come to acting school. The main work
that I do in the school, for ten years now, is that the Rose Bruford College from
UK sends their students to Barcelona to work with me. These are the students
from speciality called European Theatre. Twenty or twenty five students from
all over the Europe, and even from America and Japan, come to Barcelona and
work with me very intensively during three months. We work very day, eight
hours a day, and then we do a show. But Ill do it for one more year and then Ill
stop. I dont want to work anymore in the schools, because I feel that what I can
do, is done. Here in Tallinn I had the proof when I saw the lecture of Rene
Baker. I know her really well, she came to Barcelona to work with my company
and after that I asked her to teach at the Theatre Institute, and now when I saw
her lecture, I thought its done. This woman takes a piece from here and a
piece from there, takes my ideas, the ideas of Philip Genty and ideas from
Theatre du Mouvement all the ideas of my generation, puts it together,
organizes it and does a pedagogy out of it. She does it very well! So, there is a
new generation of teachers of visual theatre that are doing very well. I have
nothing more to say. She is better, she is using my experience, and so does lots
of other people. I think its very important to know if something is finished. Ive
done it for several times of my life: I was working with the theatre La Claca for
twenty one years, and one day I said its finished. It doesnt mean that I dont
want to work with the company, but this project is finished. I come, I chop that
tree and I go away. I open new doors new things, new projects it makes me
more alive. I dont want to be the one that teaches puppets at the Theatre
Institute forever. He came to the school and became old there..
What is the new door that You will open now?
Now Im in between. This means writing this book and new door for me is
Mapa Mundi. Its the work with Young people, who can use my experience, but
not in the classroom at the school. Out of the school, with direct collaboration.
Youre going to make the Mapa Mundi with the prisoners. Why are You
doing this?
Charlevilles festival proposed me, that they would like to do something at the
prison of Charleville. There are Young people who had problems with robbery
and drugs etc.
Is it also important for You what backgrounds the prisoners have what
crimes etc.?
No, it is their problem. I like to work with the people from the prison because the
prison is one of the places where people think a lot. I want to know what do they
think and how do they see their situation, how do they see our society. I want to
learn. Its a place where they have lots of time to think, and they have a big
thing to think about I did something that was forbidden and so Im in jail. Im
out of the society Im the bad one. I have the title of bad-one. I Want to
know what do they think, what do they want to do and what do they want to
explain to the others.
Is it somehow essentially connected to Mapa Mundi also?
Yes, I think its a good idea to do it in the prison. One of the problems of Europe
for me is, that everybody becomes bourgeois all of us. All of us like to have
nice cars, holidays and bla-bla-bla to have a comfortable life. Its like the
purpose of life. I dont think that this idea of Europe comfortable life is better
is a very good idea . Its not sure that its better, for comfortable maybe means
eating too much, but eating too much is not better than eating just what You
need for obesity, and sickness and heart-attacks and problems with the
knees. So the European idea of comfortability is maybe a stupid idea. In the
Europe we all become bourgeois and very comfortable. If someone is too
comfortable its not too interesting.
Before You said that art is about pleasure?
Pleasure is different than comfort. Sometimes pleasure is not comfortable at all.
If You want the pleasure of going to the top of Himalaya, its not comfortable. If
You want to have the pleasure of the most beautiful girl to go to bed with You,
its not comfortable Youll have to work. No, comfortable is not the best, for me
its not the purpose of life for sure. I prefer the pleasure of effort. If I want to do
something, I dont care if its hard to do it Ill do it! I have done crazy things
that made me very happy and very strong. I walked at the Australian desert for
days, it was very hard, but it was a pleasure. So asking about Europe, the most
interesting is not to ask about comfort of people because probably everyone will
say the same Oh, I dont want to lose my sofa! I dont want to lose my air-
conditioner! I prefer to talk with people who dont have sofas and air-
conditioners, its more interesting, and people in prison dont have it. I did a
work in association of men who had rheumatoid arthritis, its something with
what Youll have pain for whole day, and its a pain that makes you cry. But it
was incredible when I asked them How can You live with the pain every
day?, they answered Its like that, we have to be happy. We cant take pills
every day, so we have to be confident and go through suffering. So I thought,
these people have the experience of life that nobody can believe. So its good to
ask these people and to learn from these people they know more about life.
Is there some-kind of connection with artists also? Does art also have to
come through the pain?
I think this suffering of artists is a legend. Artists suffer the same as waiters or
taxi drivers: if Youre not happy and have to drive a taxi every day and wait at
the taxi station for hours until somebody calls You. If You have problems with
Yourself, You suffer the same. Suffering of being a mother in the kitchen,
cooking for somebody who is at the factory and having no smiles at home, and
no savings and no good food all that can be a horrible suffering. Suffering is
always there, thats the reality of human-being. Even the most rich people, who
have everything they need, suffer from inner-reasons. Suffering is something of
the human-being it exists. In one moment or another, well all suffer: for death,
for sickness, for somebody from our family, for a friend. For stupid things: for
things that we dont understand, for our education, for things that some teacher,
a mother, a father, a friend or a lover have put into our head. Suffering is a part
of the life its the normal state of life. I always say, suffering it happens itself,
we have to to an effort for happiness. So we dont care of suffering when it
comes, it comes and we try to not talk much about suffering, it happens. But the
nice thing is that the artists can turn their suffering into something very good.
Looks like Kafka suffered very much from his inner life: from his relationship
with his father, from his society around him but he transformed it into beautiful
pieces of art. Those pieces of art go through suffering, You can see the suffering
of Kafka in his work and You understand that suffering. Its like Paul Celan with
the poems in concentration camp, or Frieda Kahlo suffering so much with her
destroyed body and at the same time she is a song for life and for happiness.
Thats what an artist can do, but its the same suffering as of the other human-
beings.
Do You sense it as some-kind of thrive for Your creation to make some
staging or painting?
Ive tried to escape from suffering, but the frame of suffering is always there. I
think we all are aware of that suffering all the time. Its like the presence of
death or even the time passing by. We all would like to stop life for a while for
a little moment and be blind and transparent. What the Buddhists say about the
illumination we all dream about jumping out of this daily suffering, but it
doesnt happen, at least I havent had this experience. The art is the way to talk
with the suffering, not to try to take it out and forget it, but to have it near by:
Okay, come hear, You are the part of the life, so lets go together! I bought
today a postcard of the fantastic painting from Tallinn The Dance of Death.
Death dancing with the emperor, with the pope this is fantastic! The
presence of death and the image of dancing with death making art with death.
Its very wise image, its an ethic representation because it says that the
emperor and pope and everybody will dye and the death is always there
sitting nearby. Death that means the maximum suffering. Its always there and
we cant complain of something that is always there, that is part of ourself we
have to dance with it: make art, poems, songs and jokes.

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