The Book To Come
Marcel Broodthaers, ‘Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard’, 1969. Photo: Filiep Tacq.
Thursday 13 October 2016
‘Una patá a los dados…’ by Israel Galván, Pedro G. Romero and Filiep Tacq
2pm / Bulegoa z/b, Bilbao
‘Una patá a los dados… A Kick in the Die.
A preliminary conversation, a preface, an introduction.’
Session twenty-two, ‘The Book to Come.’
Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolirá le hazard was published posthumously in 1914 by Gallimard. It was read out, interpreted and rewritten by Marcel Broodthaers in 1969, and is being used as a departure point for a dance by Israél Galván, flamenco bailaor. This session, Una patada a los dados, with Pedro G. Romero and Filiep Tacq, is based on the poem.
Stéphane Mallarmé is considered to have invented the space of modern art, having been the first poet to have freed writing, or the poem, from the rigid margins of the page, letting his words roam openly over the printed page, almost like the markings of music, also coinciding with the birth of film. His works also break the linear order of reading, allowing greater abstraction and giving birth to new interrelations between phrases and words, and a new autonomy for language that extends beyond the writer's intentions, social context and the conditions of his time. Marcel Broodthaers took this a step further with his reading, covering each line of text with black bars or rectangles and making the poem an illegible image of full and empty spaces. A rhythm of black parallel bars like a score, but also a kind of constructivist architecture, or an abstract film, or a censored archive, or a cybernetic printed image, or… Broodthaers printed his own name on the cover instead of Mallarmé’s, and substituted the word “poem” with “image”.
Una patada a los dados started with a conversation on Mallarmé and his in Seville between artist and curator Pedro G. Romero, book designer Filiep Tacq, and bailaor Israel Galván, on Mallarmé and his checkered influence on the genre of flamenco; on Broodthaers’ reading and the visibility of Mallarmés poetry in it; on the possibility of making a book, or using the strategy of doing so as a way of thinking about these issues. The conversation was later used by bailaor Israel Galván to prepare a third “three-way” conversation to take place in Louvain, Belgium, on 17 November this year, where he performed, danced, kicked, spoke in his own way.
Filiep Tacq (Kortrijk, 1959) has been working since 1984 as an independent graphic designer specialising in books, art catalogues and artist books. He has lectured at the Sint-Lucas Instituut, Gante and the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. Tacq has 31 Bienal de São Paulo. He has worked on publications for artists such as Francis Alÿs, Ibon Aranberri, Marcel Broodthaers, James Coleman, Abbas Kiarostami, Moyra Davey, Pedro G. Romero, Rosa Barba and Teresa Lanceta, and for instutitions including Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, DIA Center for the Arts, New York, Manifesta 2 in Luxembourg, MACBA, Barcelona, and Bulegoa z/b. Filiep Tacq set up the project The Book to Come with Bulegoa (2015–2017), based on five books by Marcel Broodthaers.
Pedro G. Romero (Aracena, 1964) has been working as an artist since 1985. He is currently working on two large apparatuses, Archivo F.X. and Máquina P.H. He is a member of unia arteypensamiento and PRPC (Plataforma de Reflexión de Políticas Culturales), Seville. Romero curates the project Tratado de Paz for DSS2016 Cultural Capital.
Archivo F.X. and its projects have included La Comunidad vacía. Política. for Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, and Economía Picasso/Economía for Museo Picasso Barcelona. His recent work has unfolded through La Escuela Moderna for the 31 Bienal de São Paulo. Wirtschaft, Ökonomie, Komjunktur was published by Spector Books, Germany, after a project exhibited at the Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart.
Máquina P.H. supports the Plataforma Independiente de Estudios Flamencos Modernos y Contemporáneos www.pieflamenco.com. Romero is art director for bailaor Israel Galván and works with different artists, from Rocío Márquez to Tomás de Perrate, for instance. Romero curated Ocaña. Acciones, actuaciones, activismo 1973–1983 for the Virreina, Barcelona and Centro de Arte Montehermoso, Vitoria. Mudito publishers have just brought out Exaltación de la visión on the films of José Val del Omar. Romero is currently working on Máquinas de Vivir. El flamenco y la arquitectura en la ocupación y desocupación de espacios, presented at the Berlin Biennal; CGAC, Santiago de Compostela; unía arteypensamiento, Seville; Cristinaenea, Donostia; MACBA, Barcelona, and Secession, Vienna.