Before this Interview, in a conversation one day, you told me that you preferred to talk about relationships between people than about art. Why?

They tend to be more fertile, even artistically.

You grew up in an environment with a powerful presence of musicians. What traces of that musical influence are present in your work?

It was inevitable. Among other things my father was a jazzman. I grew up listening to Thelonious Monk; that leaves an indelible mark if you pay attention.

In spite of growing up in such a milieu you chose conceptual art. Why?

Because of an innate incapacity of mine to fix ideas into musical notes. I had a bad time.

Your birthplace, Granollers, has an interesting musical past in which your family participated, including even from an artistic point of view during the Contemporary Art Sessions held in the seventies, which were attended by several artists who are considered important nowadays. Did you attend? Did it mark you in any way?

I absorbed and condensed it bit by bit until I decided to participate, and art seemed the suitable format to me, though not devoid of suffering. I worked as a sort of sniper.

What do you mean by a sort of sniper?

No group, no guild, alone. Trying to hit the target.

Is that still how you work? What problems and what advantages are there in working that way?

That’s still the way I do it. When you miss, the error is complete and you learn much more, perhaps you learn to miss better.

In Granollers you met two important people, Jordi Benito and Manel Clot. Tell us how you met Benito and what he meant for you. And about Manel Clot?

Benito was impossible; from him I learned to put things in their place, although he never taught me anything. Clot was different, diametrically opposed, he recommended a mass of  reading material, I read all of it, he was an erudite. There we were, the three of us in Granollers, we were friends, it was inevitable. Both of them are already dead now, they couldn’t take the blow.

Could you explain a little more about what you mean when you say Benito taught you to put things in their place?

To place the different physical components of a piece in a precise position for it to show itself in an attractive way, independently of the interest it may arouse. An animal thing.

You lived in Barcelona for a while but you decided to go back to your home town. Why are you in Granollers?

In Granollers no-one asks me anything, they leave me in peace, I can work without interferences and it’s 30 minutes away from Barcelona, a city which, on the other hand, has always mistreated its artists and has forgotten them sooner than anyone else. Distance has been no hindrance, it’s a liberation.

It took a long time for you to materialize the ideas you had in your head. Why? How did that process develop?

I work by elimination until the final elimination has been completed. When you remove what is superfluous, what is left will work, if it’s strong enough. It’s easy to explain but complicated to do. It takes time.

In day to day life you combine your dedication to a refrigeration engineering firm and your involvement with art. In what way do you combine the two things? Would you like to be involved in art exclusively? Why?

Robert Fripp used to say that if you want to be a good artist you had better be an electrician or do anything other than art. I’m not a professional or an intellectual, so I did something else and it hasn’t gone badly. I’m still there.

You don’t like to speak of works or of pieces, you call them things. What is the reason?

I leave creation to the demigods; the ancient Greeks knew plenty about that. So I do things to see what’ll happen. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn’t. The same as everybody else.

On one occasion, during an installation, I heard you tell someone that it had been very difficult for you to do it badly. What did you mean?

Unbalance. You have to drive your mind hard to reach a certain unbalance. If you can manage that, the thing works. Read Ilya Prigogine and you’ll see it clearly.

In your own words, you strive for what you do do to be an answer that is ultra-slow and devastatingly fast. Can you tell us about this?

For me, art is an answer that should be ultra-slowly devastating, so that, in time, one can revisit the piece and it will continue to manifest itself without proving anything. Duchamp defined that time as 50 years. I don’t know if this is valid nowadays. For me it’s valid in general, but that may not be useful for other artists. Everything is provisional. And undulating.

In your pieces there is an element of chance and an element of control. Is this  consciously so?

Chance has provoked an enormous amount of confusion in the world of art. I prefer semi-control: You must only do it half-way, a little but not too much; not enough doesn’t work, a lot doesn’t either. Back to unbalance again. Mental.

To construct your things you have been using the same computer programs for years and  your installations seek to be as simple as possible from a technical viewpoint. Why aren’t you interested in technology?

In art, sophisticated technical procedures tend to lead to things that are alien to the ultra-slow concept that  I am pursuing; they also establish a tyranny to which one succumbs because it’s what comes easiest
In this case technology avoids the need to think hard. Most artists who obsessively use these procedures don’t work too well in time. Progress in art is false, but there are different ways to do it. That’s where the skill stems from. If we can call it that.

Your pieces show a tendency to use the energy of others. What is it that interests you in that?

The left-overs. Working with the left-overs, the remnants. In reality everything is the remnants of an incomprehensible process. Like life. That’s what it is.

Can you tell me a little about what you consider the left-overs in what you do?

The left-overs are what seems superfluous but isn’t. It tends to arise when something ceases to be popular or is little visited.

In WE, for example, by using the quick sculpture kit the spectator becomes an author, or in  GRAND HALL, where the spectators can download the piece as an App and take it with them permanently and share it with other people who can also download it. What is the role of the spectator in your pieces?

I have never liked interactive pieces, I consider them a weakness on behalf of the artist, because, on the other hand, everything is interactive at a higher level. Another thing altogether is for the spectator –the participating public– to be able to do with the piece whatever seems fit; that is the relationship that WE and GRAND HALL establish with the public.

What do you mean by “everything is interactive at a higher level”?

It is unnecessary to state that a piece is interactive. Everything is interactive when you come to think about it,: seeing an art exhibition, getting on a bus, listening to music, a discussion, bouncing a ball, watching the starry night…

On the other hand you are an artist who likes to collaborate with his artist friends. In what way are these relationships important? What are these collaborations like?

They are couplings rather than collaborations. I have a good relationship with artists, less so with institutions and galleries, and worse with the public. I sometimes regret this.

There are not many artists who work with sound. Is working with sound problematic?

Not many, perhaps, but enough to establish what is being done in that medium. I work outside the perimeters of rigour, between skill and disaster, sometimes in utter disaster. All provisional, as I told you. In art there is never any problem because there isn’t any solution.

Why do you say that you are dead?

ESTIC MORT (I’m dead) was my first piece, maybe a bad start. But it liberated me from a lot of adversities that had more to do with life than with the specific process of making art. It might work for you too. I hope so. Everything lasts for a very short time.

Granollers – Vilassar de Mar, August 2016.

Acknowledgements:

Henrie Adams, Pep Agut, Joan Francesc Ainaud, Adolf Alcañiz, Carolina Alcina, Vicenç Altaió, Efrén Álvarez, Emilio Álvarez, Carlos Amauris, Sílvia Amigó, Xavi Aranda, Josep Maria Armengol, Carles Arumí, Mario Asef, Lorenza Barboni, Fabiola Barreiro, Eva Barreras, Jordi Barreras, Maria Basora, Iolanda Batallé, Jordi Benito, Carme Bleda, Antoni Botey, Peter Bosch, Germano Brutti Salvatore, Roberta Busechian, Vicent Carda, Agustí Casals, José Andrés Casas, Dionís Cases, Josep Cassart, Eva Castellanos, Irene Chilet, Manel Clot, Ginebra Codina, Pep Comas, Tom Costello, Ferràn Conangla, Pere Cornellas, Montserrat Cuchillo, Bruna Dinarés, Marco Domenichetti, Lola Donaire, Marc Dueñas, Fina Duran Riu, Pep Duran, Errant Sound, Santi Espina, Cristina Espuga, Francesc Esteve, Eufònic, Feliu Fàbregas, Robert Fàbregas, Juan Francisco Fandos, Carla Febrer, Bentz Fèlix, Ramon Ferrandis, Lluís Ferrer Escoda, Isa Ferri, Olga Fibla, Vicent Fibla, Marcos Flórez, Frederic Font, Oriol Font, Fundación PazosCuchillo de Pazos, Ferran García Sevilla, Jorge Gareis, Amador Garrell, Francesc Garriga, William George, Àlex Gifreu, Gema González Navas, Luis González, Sílvia González, Anna Guarro, Emmanuel Guigon, Carles Hac Mor, Albert Heras, Sandra Ibars, ICEC Berlín, ICEC London, José Iges, Iklectik, Institut Ramon Llull, Institut Ramon Llull Berlín, Óscar Intente, Vanesa Jiménez, Antoni Jové, Jay Kirkpatrick, Jaime Lee, Noris Leyva, Cristina Lladó, Maria Lladó, Oriol Llopis, Sebastià Llorens, London Improvisers Orchestra, Jordi López, Pepe Lorite, Clàudia Marconell, África Martí, Jordi Martí i Sararols, Jacinto Martín, Marc Martín, Àlex Martínez, Pedro Vicente Martínez Estrada, Andreu Masip, Joan Matabosch, Jaume Maymó, Josep Mayoral, Carlos Mecerreyes, Neus Mèlich, Lola Mesa Saldaña, Raphael Miro Holzer, Carlos Molina, Pablo Molina, Gabriela Moragas, Xavier Mulet, Alicia Murria, Marta Negre, Juan de Nieves, Raúl Nieves, Pol Ortiz, Orquestra del Gran Teatre del Liceu, Orquestra Simfònica de Castelló, Maite Palomo, Armand Parellada, Ramon Parellada, Ramon Parramon, Carlos Pazos, Jordi Pegenaute, Quico Peinado, Javier Peñafiel, Luis Francisco Pérez, Víctor Pérez Ballestero, Juan de Dios Pérez Jiménez, Mar Pérez Unanue, Jordi Pericot, Antoni Perna, Jordi Pey, Eudald Pla, Gerard Pons, Roc Pont, Dolors Porredón, Carles Poy, Sandra Prades, Àlex Pujol, Rosa Queralt, Mikel R. Nieto, Marc Recasens, Alfonso Ribes, Ciscu Ribes Frigola, Olga del Rio, Xavier Ripoll, Carla Roda, Frederic Roda, Asunta Rodríguez, Valentín Roma, Lluís Ros, Toni Rossi (Nousons), Esther Rovira, Teresa Salvatella, Pietat Sanjuán, Roser Sanjuán, Marc Sans, Dènys Sanz, Oriol Saña, Francesc Serés, Nastia Sibiratkina, Andreu Signes, Ramon Sirvent, Eduard Solaz, Jordi Soley, Taller d’Escenografia Castells, Toni Tarifa, Adrià Terol Hernández, Pablo Tomé, Trinta Arte Contemporánea, Jordi Trullàs, Franxesca Valeria Ustárez, Jordi Vacca, Irene Vallès, Eudald Van der Pla, Blanca Llum Vidal, Albert Vilar, Elisabet Wenceslao, Kirill Yusmin, Nan Zhu.