Cartography of a Voyage: Jové, Rossell and Hac Mor

‘Cartography of a Voyage: Jové, Rossell and Hac Mor’ is an activity programmed to coincide with the exhibition Àngel Jové. De intactu. Its purpose is to delve into one of the least-known but most revelatory facets of Jové’s practice: the relationship between artistic creation, writing and territorial experience. In this context, the voyage becomes something more than physical movement, working in turn as a poetic and conceptual instrument with which to rethink language, perception and forms of representation.

This proposal takes as its starting point the road movie entitled Sidamún, Alamús, Almatret. Viatge a la Franja de Ponent [Sidamún, Alamús, Almatret: Voyage to La Franja de Ponent] (1986), created by Àngel Jové, Benet Rossell and Carles Hac Mor. The film is a full-length document drawn from detailed video recordings of their travels in the Franja de Ponent region, conceived as a hybrid artefact between cinema, action and writing. Distancing itself from any sort of conventional narrative, the film reveals a fragmentary, experimental gaze in relation to the landscape, understanding it as a space of friction between reality, memory and language. The work makes it possible to situate the intellectual and creative complicities between three leading figures of the Catalan artistic and literary scene in the second half of the 20th century, with strong ties to avant-garde practices and an expanded conception of art. In this regard, the project emerges as a privileged entry point for understanding how artistic gesture in Jové’s work is woven together with the poetic word, with persistent attention to the territory as a space of experience and ideas.

The structure of this activity is expressed through three stages. First, there will be an opening lecture by Maria Josep Balsach, the exhibition’s curator, which will provide the contextual and critical framework for understanding this piece and its resonance with the overall body of Jové’s career: “The extreme lands of memory. The journey of Àngel Jové, Carles Hac Mor and Benet Rossell in the late 1980s: Photography, poetry and cinema”. This is followed by a screening of part of the film, on loan from the Museu Morera, courtesy of Cristina Giorgi, the widow of Benet Rossell. The session will end with a colloquium featuring Lluís Calvo, Joaquim Sala Sanahuja and Mariona Moncunill. Their conversation will seek to open up a shared space for reflection on the relationships between the three creators, and how this project lays out a unique cartography of territory, language and displacement. Quite beyond its condition as a document, the film is conceived as an open experience that encourages us to rethink disciplinary limits and reconsider ways of narrating (and inhabiting) the landscape.

As an extension of the exhibition Àngel Jové. De intactu, and as part of this activity, the Museu Tàpies has programmed screenings of the fragments -never edited- for the road movie Lo Pedrís, viatge per terres de Ponent (1986), by Carles Hac Mor, Àngel Jové and Benet Rossell, in total, 12 hours of recording, in the museum auditorium on the following days:

• Thursday 30 April, from 3 pm to 7 pm
• Friday 1 May, from 10 am to 7 pm
• Saturday 2 May, from 10 am to 7 pm
• Sunday 3 May, from 10 am to 3 pm
• Tuesday 5 May, from 3 pm to 7 pm