Wittgenstein, arquitecto (el lugar inhabitable)

• Date: December 9, 2020
• Time: 7:00 pm
• Location: Auditori
• Free activity with prior registration and limited places

Bernardí Roig and Agustín Fernández Mallo present the book Wittgenstein, arquitecto (el lugar inhabitable) edited by Galaxia Gutenberg, together with Fernando Castro Flórez (who will be connected via videoconference). A publication that collects part of the artistic projects included in «Films 2000-2018», which Bernardí Roig presented at Es Baluard Museu in 2018, with the collaboration of the other two authors of the book in some of them. Video pieces from the Wittgenstein project will be screened at the presentation.

This literary meeting is part of the cycle of book presentations #LetsReadTogether with the presence of their authors. The publications deal with different issues in the sphere of thought and reflection on contemporary art. Once the presentation is finished, the writers will sign copies of the editorial news. Attendance at the event requires prior registration due to preventive anti-COVID-19 restrictions, which will be done in strict order of arrival.

Synopsis: Ludwig Wittgenstein, architect deals with something unprecedented: the only two artistic actions carried out in the only two houses that the Viennese philosopher built. In the spring of 2018, Bernardí Roig and Fernando Castro Flórez, who was dressed in a ghostly white tunic, wandered for two nights through the empty rooms of the Kundmanngasse house, Vienna, a home that Wittgenstein had conceived for his sister Margarethe in 1927. Fernando Castro mutates into a ghost of language, who with an anxious and breathless step crosses rooms and corridors without finding a way out to the prison of words.

In the summer of 2017, Agustín Fernández Mallo climbed, drawing a strict straight line, the wall that joins the Skjolden fjord with the cabin that Wittgenstein built in 1914, and where he would devise what later became his Tractatus. It is the very first directive to the Wittgenstein Hut: to reach in the most direct way possible the ruins of the brain of that thinker. The soundtrack could not be other than Concert for the Left Hand by Ravel (to Paul Wittgenstein), an adaptation conceived and performed with electric guitar and effects pedals by the musician Juan Feliu. The two actions and the concert are collected here through films, documents, theorizations, fetishes, sculptures and surprising finds – such as the nail in the cabin, which is illustrated on this cover.

This book would not be complete without the five films of the artistic actions carried out, and which are part of the entire project Wittgenstein, architect. They can be accessed through this link.

Bernardí Roig is an artist with a long and recognized international career. His artistic practice alludes to a society trapped in an era characterized by a lack of historical memory and identity. An individual in a world taken over by the mass media who has lost the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction, between what really matters and what is trivial. Drawing as the fundamental basis of his creative process gives way to various media such as sculpture, photography, installation and the moving image through the cinematographic medium and video. He articulates his figurative visual language based on the exploration of the individual, his obsessions and his desires.

It constructs stories that confront us with isolation, the passage of time, among other topics, and in which it includes references from literature, mythology, theater, cinema and the visual arts. His latest exhibitions are “VIENNA” at the Instituto Cervantes in Vienna and “Restricted Access” at the Miguel Marcos gallery in Barcelona (2020); “Bernardi Roig. The cinematographic construction of the place”, VIDEOTAGE HK, Hong Kong and “Bunker”, Instituto Cervantes de Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main (2019).

Agustín Fernández Mallo has a degree in Physical Sciences and a writer. His last published novel is Trilogía de la guerra (Seix Barral, 2018), Short Library Prize. His latest essay is Teoría general de la basura (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2018), Extraordinary Cálamo Prize. He is the author of the Nocilla Project (Alfaguara 2006-2012), which consists of the novels, Nocilla Dream, Nocilla Experience and Nocilla Lab, awarded with different awards and translated into various languages.

He is the author of the book of short stories, El hacedor (by Borges), remake (Alfaguara), and the novel Limbo (Alfaguara). Author of several award-winning poetry books, collected in Ya nadie se llamará como yo + Poesía reunida (1998-2012) (Seix Barral, 2015). His book, Postpoesía, hacia un nuevo paradigma, was a finalist for the Anagrama Essay Award 2009. His blog is “The Man Who Came from the Cake.” Together with Eloy Fernández Porta they form the spoken word duo, Afterpop Fernández y Fernández.