Àngel Jové: Bite the Image. Film series
The Museu Tàpies, in collaboration with Espai Texas, presents the film series Àngel Jové: Bite the Image, which explores the cinematographic side of one of the most unique creators in the contemporary Catalan scene, an artist who was radical, experimental and interdisciplinary.
Alongside his artistic career, Jové developed a body of work of a potent experimental character the field of cinema. After (1968), a part of a performative action, to the creation of Primera muerte (1969) with the El Maduixer conceptual group — considered the first piece of video art in Spain) — his audiovisual work became a terrain for radical research on the image. This line of work culminated in later projects like Lo pedrís, viatge per les terres de Ponent (Lo pedrís, voyage to western lands, 1989), made with Benet Rossell and Carles Hac Mor.
Starting in the late 1960s, Jové would take on regular roles in the films of Bigas Luna, becoming an actor with a cult reputation in films like Bilbao (1978), Caniche (1979) and Angustia (1987), as well as in other productions of Catalan and Spanish film in the 1980s and 1990s. His artistic career has likewise been the subject of film, as seen in the documentaries Gonzalo Herralde made about him over various decades.
The series Àngel Jové: Bite the Image thus proposes an approximation to the audiovisual side of Jové, with three sessions combining screenings and contextual contributions from respective experts, with the aim of polyhedrally placing Jové within this form of register.
Programme
Session 1 —The cinema of transgression: Àngel Jové and Bigas Luna as a paradigm of the 70s
Screening of Bilbao (1978), by Bigas Luna
This session features an introduction by Jordi Balló, who will address how this film represented an aesthetic and thematic rupture.
Date: Wednesday 20 May, 7 pm
Session 2 — The view of Gonzalo Herralde: documentaries on the work and thought of Àngel Jové
Screening of Capiscar la fior de la mà morta (1991) and Altra volta mossego un tros de pa. Cristòfol-Pavese (2007).
A dialogue between Gonzalo Herralde and Maria Josep Balsach, curator of the exhibition Àngel Jové. De intactu, at the Museu Tàpies.
Date: Wednesday 3 June, 7 pm
Session 3 — Experimental cinema: conceptual artistic practice at Primera muerte
Screening of Primera muerte (1969) and Eco de Primera muerte (2017)
The final session will begin with a presentation by Daniel Pérez Pàmies, Professor of Film History (UdG) and member of the research group GROC, and will close with a presentation by Imma Prieto, director of the Museu Tàpies, who will focus on Jové’s role in the early years of video art.
Date: Thursday 11 June, 7 pm
