Page 220 - Únete. Join us (Bienal de Venecia, 57 edición)

220 ¡ÚNETE! JOIN US! JORDI COLOMER
VI. The golden dream
As I write these lines I’m on my way to Sitges where Jordi Colomer awaits alongside his shooting team, several extras, and two stewardesses. We shall be meeting at an old racetrack that was built in 300 days—at a time when even the dumbest people used to look smart in photographs; so I go from a disused runway to a no less disused speedway. This racecourse surrounds a 16th- century farmhouse and at some points is sloped with cambers of up to 90%. I’m told it was formally opened by King Alfonso XIII and Primo de Rivera in the 1920s, but was soon largely abandoned after the inaugural season. It never really became successfully operational, even despite racer Edgard Morawitz’s initiative some years later, when he announced an unprecedented competition between a Bugatti sports car and a light aircraft. Ever since then, quite a few things have befallen the place. I know that the stands, which once upon a time were covered with a corrugated iron roof, served as barracks for the army of the Spanish Republic during the Civil War. Later the place became a poultry farm, and was used for live nativity scenes and film shootings on several occasions. Traces of this can still be seen on the ground. There’s also plenty of weeds, and random droppings from sheep grazing nearby.
“I have a hole in my trouser’s pocket”, I tell the technician who’s adjusting my mike, which is stuck to my body... The thing is I don’t know why instead of taking notes I’ve become part of another flock. I’m amazed that the people coming along with pieces of cardboard ask so few questions. It’s as though being exposed to this last stretch they allowed themselves to be infected by it, and were open to anything, even a race between fake façades.
“Now you lot are slaves carrying pieces of buildings, trying to get there as soon as possible. At some point it would be a good idea if you exchanged those fragments amongst yourselves, without stopping. Keep running, always facing forward.”
We count to twenty after the van from which we’re being filmed starts moving, and then we set off. This time I’m part of the scene, which makes my account of it different from all the other cases.
The good thing about leading the race and ending last-but-one is the views: all the cardboard panels simulate façades from 1970s style beach hotels, and I allow them to overtake me. It’s almost like traveling in time. To Benidorm, to Ibiza... At any rate, I would have loved to cheat, as in old movies. As a kid I loved It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The plot was just a string of gags. Life and speed.
At the end of this lap, which is taking us a while, I’ll be able to see the same façades as they’re turned around, once they are mounted on their scaffoldings, and I’ll be able to see around the sides. They weigh several kilos each, but dance around gracefully, assisted by extras acting as stagehands, and it’s so beautiful we don’t foresee the danger. Suddenly two scaffoldings get stuck between telephone and high voltage cables. Cut! The electrician comes.