Son[i]a #348 Marc Vives

It’s not just that Marc Vives’s work eludes categories and concise descriptions, which it does. Rather, it is like a kind of art of elusion itself, a tenacious and obstinate exercise in dodging limits and clear formalisations. His is a generative systems art, an alchemy of closeness, a kind  of cartomancy that zeroes in on social relations and interpersonal  connections. And It tends to put pressure on the logic of the white cube and the logic of cultural management, one thing on top of the other, all at once. Collectively, whenever possible. Above all, it is a practice of doing and of everyday life and experience, which often includes voice, music, language and staging, but does not fit into what is usually considered performing arts.

Marc constructs situations, although he generally takes the role of an observer of processes rather than an architect. He puts forward and activates proposals with various ramifications, which are not meticulously calculated stagings but mappings of relations and their scope of power. Sometimes he is like someone who leaves a handful of lentils to sprout without knowing what will happen. Other times, like someone who sticks two packets of Menthos in a bottle of Coca-Cola and sits down to see what happens after shaking it vigorously.

In this podcast we talk to Marc Vives about swimming, about nerves, about floors stripped of paint, and about strategies for eschewing comfort and courting risk and emptiness in the usually safe environment of the art world. He talks about process as something more than just a path towards a goal, about catharsis and escape valves, and about his solo and collective work. And about his love-hate relationship with the mountain of Montjuïc.