Page 221 - Únete. Join us (Bienal de Venecia, 57 edición)

APPARITIONS ThEATRE ANDREA VALDÉS 221
Shortly afterwards the shooting resumes again. “Talk about what you did last weekend”, Jordi instructs a couple of stewardesses from the van. They walk with fluorescent tutus at ankle height. “Talk about how you see yourselves in a few years time. Talk about the future”. And in the last lap: “Talk about what Spain is like”.
Several façades fall behind. Who can be sure that, without being the European dream’s best incarnation, Ibiza, Benidorm, or even Sitges are not its most stable version? Those places where retired people from abroad have been mingling with the locals for years, and people from the countryside come to the mega-cities every weekend, seduced by tri-lingual menus, karaokes, and huge shop windows. As a dream, its materiality is rather shabby but in such cases energizing desires may be seen to complement whatever is not provided by architecture, jointly building up to something. In other words: It’s one’s eagerness to get a tan that makes the dream golden.
I wonder if Jordi Colomer might not be doing the same thing in his own way: with amazing economy, he sets up a world using just cardboard and fans. He probably trusts the rest will be supplied by people themselves as we meet, whether it be in the middle of the desert to exchange stones, at a jam where cars go by another name, running wild down a hillside, at a disused runway in need of a narrative, or in the tracks at a racecourse as darkness falls, while a camera operator laughs at the clouds and asks if they’re real. Who knows...