Heavensfield

Exhibition opening at Gràcia Arts Project last night.

Didn't go.




Instead went along to a regular meeting of an English creative writing group to listen to five people give their opinion on the current chapter twelve of Heavensfield - a novel in progress, and to hold forth on my take of three other novels in progress. All good stuff.

Heavensfield could be characterised as a hard-edged cosy.

In general the writers' group meetings are pretty useful, and a good opportunity to not only get feedback on current projects but an opportunity to help fellow writers identify strengths and weaknesses in their current output. There's also a social dimension which can sometimes lead to opportunities to explore other creative, or wholly social, activities.
For example, last night, after the meeting, a gang of writers headed off into the city centre to get with La Mercè, the city's festa major, while I headed off home to eat.

Anyway, didn't get along to the exhibition opening at Gràcia Arts Project last night, but my partner did, and I'll probably check out the show before it ends.

And, I didn't get along to any Mercè events, but I'll be out and about tonight.

Escoles d'Altres Mons - Kim Manresa

Photography exhibition preview at the Maritime Museum in Drassanes last night. 

Names of contributors you'll likely recognise include Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Julian Barnes along with Michael Crichton, Orhan Pamuk, José Saramago, Wole Soyinka, Juan Goytisolo, V.S. Naipaul, Gabriel García Márquez, and one of my current favourite poets, Joan Margarit.

The exhibition and book, Escoles d'Altres Mons/Escuelas de otros mundos, is a collection of photographs of scenes from schools in 50 countries by photo-journalist Kim Manresa. Each black and white photo is accompanied with a text by a Nobel laureate or other prize-winning literary luminary.

Have to say the preliminaries to the exhibition opening were pretty tedious - with six speakers all wanting their say. There were no seats, so for invitees who had come straight from work, or whom had left work early, to dash across the city during the rush hour and then having to stand for 45 minutes and listen to, mostly, self-serving gush was a bit much. There were no refreshments, and what irked most was that the museum's café-bar closed at 8pm.

Still, we made a night of it and repaired to the nearby Bar Pastis to meet up with a friend for a good old chinwag about football, poetry, Guardiola, Cantona, Ken Loach, Maragall and books - great fun.

CENSORSHIP? or cock-up? Repression & Resistance on the streets of Barcelona

Have been active on the Trip Advisor Barcelona travel forum over the past month or so - perhaps a more socially useful form of procrastination than merely surfing.

Anyway, on June 10th El Memorial Democràtic launched a street documentary photography project: Repression & Resistance. It's a fascinating and worthwhile project.

At 12 sites across the city centre there are near life-size photographs mounted on substantial plinths. Each plinth shows a real-life scene from the dark days of Francoist inspired repression

The plinths are erected on exactly the spot where the depicted event took place. So, for example, in the middle of our paseo we now have a stark black and white photo of half a dozen riot police whacking hell out of a petrified group of locals, including an old man and a young woman, cowering in a huddle on the floor. At the junction of Gran de Gràcia, Diagonal and the top of Passeig de Gràcia there is a photo of riot police armed with tear-gas firing rifles.

When out and about with a group of visiting American friends we unexpectedly happened upon one of the photo-plinths. It really brought home to them the terror faced by ordinary folk during the popular struggle for democracy and recognition for Catalunya. And, it reminded them how young a democracy Spain is.

I posted a version of the above text on the Trip Advisor forum, advising visitors to keep their eyes open for the exhibit during their stay. Prompted a fair few responses.

So, inspired by this project I spent a Saturday afternoon wandering from site to site taking photos of the photos. I then wasted a few hours uploading the photos to Trip Advisor. (I think they're there somewhere - lost amid the morass of 24,000 photos of Barcelona). So, then I thought to post a review to Trip Advisor - the review would be searchable, and, if people were so inclined they could view the photos.

Here is the text of the 'review':

Repression and Resistance - a documentary photography project installed on the streets of Barcelona June 10th - September 18th 2010.

A series of 12 near life-size photographs mounted on substantial plinths. Each plinth shows a real-life scene from the dark days of post-Civil War repression. The plinths are erected on exactly the spot where the depicted event took place. So, for example, in the middle of our paseo we now have a stark black and white photo of half a dozen riot police whacking hell out of a petrified group of locals, including an old man and a young woman, cowering in a huddle on the floor. At the junction of Gran de Gràcia, Diagonal and the top of Passeig de Gràcia there is a photo of riot police armed with tear-gas firing rifles.

For more information, including free guided tours, go to:

…gencat.cat/portal/site/memorialdemocratic/.

After uploading 20 photos attached to the reviews (had to split it into two parts) the review was marked as 'pending' (i.e. pending moderation). Six days later I received an e-mail from Trip Advisor telling me that they had decided to not publish the reviews as it was deemed it had infringed their guidelines. No details of the supposed offence were given.

Censorship? Or, ineptitude? I suspect a cock-up by not very well-informed moderators.

But, how to know for certain?

Well, got me fired up, and I'm now on the case ...

Downtown Top Rankin

Ian Rankin was in town last week. He was here to receive the Pepe Carvalho prize. The prize, named after Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's detective, is awarded annually to a writer working in the crime genre in recognition of their career achievements. Established in 2005 previous winners include: Michael Connelly, P. D. James, Henning Mankell and Francisco González Ledesma.

The Prize giving, held at the City Hall in Barcelona, coincides with a week long festival of crime writing - BCNegra. And so it was that Ian Rankin took part in a round-table discussion at a former chapel in the Raval.

I went along with a friend, and fellow writer, to check it out.

Well, I went along to check it out but I also had another agenda. I'm still in search of a well-known writer to scan my novel After Goya and provide a suitably glowing endorsement for the cover. Who better, I thought, than Mr Rankin? Well read, well liked and well regarded creator of one of the UK's most popular fictional characters, surely his imprimatur would strike the right chord with a lot of potential, discerning readers?

I only have one heavily marked up and annotated proof copy at home so I printed off the first chapter and cover design and took them along. I could have ordered a clean version but I didn't want to weigh the man down. I thought if I could persuade him to take the first fifteen pages then, if he liked what he'd read, I would send him an ARC.

I bottled it.

Before the talk started I sat at a café terrace table immediately next to his, not intentionally, he just happened to be sitting at the next table to where my friend was sitting. He was with a group of four or five people. I wasn't nervous, or anything like, but I didn't want to crash his conversation. It didn't seem polite to interrupt his pre-stage quiet time. Maybe catch him afterwards I thought, congratulate him on the prize, and ask whether he was enjoying Barcelona. Not thinking, of course, there would be a very long line of readers all wanting him to sign copies of their books.

What a plonker. (Me! Not him!)

But, to be honest, I did feel a bit of a fraud. I've only read two of the man's books. And there I was, without a copy of his book to sign, contemplating asking him to read, and in a sense, sign, my book.

His talk was good, he gives good chat. It wasn't so much a round-table discussion, more that he was being prompted by a trio of writers and readers. Interesting and witty, though, as my friend noted, his chat was very much more aimed at readers rather than writers. Nonetheless it was an entertaining and pleasant way to spend an hour or so in the Raval (Montalbán's childhood barrio).

If you enjoy crime fiction, and if you ever get the chance, then do get yourself along to BCNegra. It really is a very good event, with a range of interesting discussions featuring some very interesting and talented writers from across the globe. Most events are simultaneously translated (and the translation is good) and all are free.

And I'm still left with the problems of who, and how, to approach a well-known writer to give me a good quote for my cover. Any ideas?