The director of the Grec, Cesc Casadesús, proudly presented the first “polyphony of acts by the same artist”, thanks to the festival’s involvement with Barcelona, ??which has allowed it to “connect many spaces in the city”. The artist who is the subject of this special cycle is the Lebanese Rabih Mroué, by whom a theatrical piece can be seen at the Teatre Lliure, Riding on a cloud, and a film and shorts are underway at the Filmoteca, some performative conferences at the Filmoteca and at Macba, and a workshop at Fabra i Coats. They are acts that he calls “non-academic classes”.
“I am not here to explain our history, that of Lebanon, nor to give explanations – declares Mroué in the presentation of the cycle -. What I try to avoid is hierarchy and I want it to be reciprocal. I come with my backpack and I try to make it understandable with my own stories, and not simplify it. Our personal lives are much more complex and we have to maintain them”.
Of all his artistic manifestations, on the Lliure stage this Monday and Tuesday you will be able to see perhaps the most personal piece, Riding on a cloud, based on the story of his brother, wounded in the war. “This is a personal and very sensitive story. My brother was shot during the war and he survived. The problem was how to explain this story without falling into compassion. I wanted to speak from the tragedy of history to a more philosophical level, to make us reflect on history: language, because my brother lost his speech. How to make a representation when the characters coincide with the actor? Is it him or is he an actor? These are questions I ask. What people will come to see is not a documentary, it is theater”.
Mroué also explains that it was his brother Yasser, who intervenes in the piece, who encouraged him to do Riding on a cloud: “My brother wanted to do this piece and I thought about it for a long time, because it is very personal, sensitive, and there was a tragedy that wanted to go to another level. When I accepted it, he gave me everything: the photographs, the objects… I felt like I had a bomb in my hands and I didn’t want it to go off in both of our faces, but I think we did it”. And he adds: “Since 2013 we’ve been doing it together and he wants us to do another one and I don’t know what else to do.”
The curator of the cycle, Pablo Martínez, considers Mroué “one of the most important artists of our time: he not only speaks to us about the conflict in Lebanon and the Middle East, but he is important for his form, for his way of approaching the images in a performative way: the visual arts”.
Catalan version, here
