And this Friday we’re presenting with ASICS Gel-Kayano a double project, an installation in our Barcelona store’s window display and an interactive game through our App. We take advantage of this to talk to Pau about what he has prepared for us as well as other projects that are yet to come.
PAU MAGRANÉ AND HIS INTERACTIVE PROJECT THAT PRESENTS THE NEW ASICS GEL-KAYANO 5 360
As the great multidisciplinary artist that he is, Pau Magrané manages to perfectly marry many different disciplines in every which way. With music and visuals as key tools in his work, Pau creates installations that recreate unique and unforgettable experiences. And that’s precisely what he’s done with Sivasdescalzo to present the new ASICS Gel-Kayano. Do you want to know more about this? Well, come out to our Barcelona store or download our App (only if you don’t have it yet, of course).
Pau, you create installations, or rather experiences, in which you mix visuals created by you with tracks by your group PLOM, and we can say that for you, the staging itself of the performance is as important as the music. How do you manage to perfectly marry these disciplines? Would you agree that your imagery and your music are your most recurring elements in your work?
They are. Giving value to mistakes in the digital world, what is perceived as imperfect from a human’s point of view, gives me margin to more easily unite these two disciplines that for a long time have pretended to and still pretend to artificially replicate what’s human, to the smallest detail. Even though I recognise my achievements as well as my artistic validity in my research, I don’t try to do that in my work, I like presenting what is going on behind the scenes and marrying what’s apparently impossible, to sometimes good or bad results.
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When it comes to your themes, I’ve seen that as you’ve mentioned, you like exploring the concept of processes, the trial and error, the first prototypes, which can be seen, for example, in your project aptly called Demo. Why are you more interested in the evolution rather than the final product?
In a simplistic way, the evolution, the process... is life, and the end is the death (and also the birth of something new). Despite what my oeuvre suggests, I’m interested in everything, and more than anybody I’m interested in gettting to know the end. But I don’t like spoilers, I like counting with my fingers, for me it’s necessary to make mistakes along the way, watching bad episodes, getting it right and enjoying that vital experience, challenge and reward, adventure, everything would be very boring and monotonous without the process.
Could you tell us how your creative process works? Are you always following the same patterns when it comes to creating something or does it depend on the project?
It depends on each project, in the case of the collaboration between SVD and ASICS, I pitched them an idea I had (which was insane and ground-breaking) that we then narrowed down according to the technology we were going to use and the image the client wanted to give off.
Nyapster is your own music label through which you publish tracks in physical formats; normally in cassettes. Why do you keep on using obsolete products?
I publish digitally on Soundcloud, Bandcamp and under other labels like FLUF or Chirría. I’m interested in cassettes as a physical support, of profitable and immediate production. It’s also a way of going against the grain, of admitting that there are other ways of doing things, and beyond what those people who ignore this culture might think, this technology isn’t obsolete, it’s still being used and hasn’t been replaced (maybe complemented). Many people still listen to music on cassettes, cassettes players are still being manufactured as well as cassettes with new music and re-editions, with users who have an activity that isn’t as mainstream/popular like the one from the end of the ‘80s and beginning of the ‘90s, but they’re still there.
I just mentioned that because I read that you’re generally interested in mixing craftsmanship and digital arts, what is your motivation to turn te intangible into tangible?
We’re made out ofcarbon residue, why should we reject our existential logic?
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You have a master in creating video games, does this influence the fact that your installations are usually really interactive?
Video games have always been references of mine since I was very young, in spite of that, the interactivity of my installations comes not from my studies or resources but from the type of project or concern I have.
On top of this, most of your projects boast a great number of collaborators whom you usually work with, do you prefer to work in a team? What do you take from these types of collaborations?
Nowadays I have no preferences, I like both ways of working. I just understand myself better and further know my own limits. In groups, it’s personally enriching and it allows you to delegate tasks to people who are experts on a certain subject, or who haven’t got much expertise, but the output is unexpected and it allows for the work to expand, reach new levels as well as interesting and previously unthinkable lectures.
Your latest project, as we were saying, is being presented this week and you have made it with Sivasdescalzo and ASICS to celebrate the launch of two new colourways of the Gel Kayano 5 360. Talk to us about this, what can we expect from the window display and what have you prepared for us with the app?
About the project I’m developing under the guidelines of Sivasdescalzo for the launch of two new colourways of the ASICS Gel-Kayano 5 360, it’s a commercial project with an experimental flair in which we play with the concepts of the sneaker: the 360 concept of the sneaker’s sole; the fusion of what’s classic and secure to provide nostalgia in contrast to ariskier performance-based style. We’re definitely playing with ASICS “Era to Era” motto of jumping through very different eras. On a material level it’s been depicted through an installation in SVD’s window display with a raw technological flair, in the shapes and colors of the deconstructed sneaker in a video game developed in HTML5, which will be accessed through any platform that has access to the internet.
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How do you confront projects like this where you work on something so specific? In this case, for example, did you have a very detailed breafing from SVD from which the project was created? Tell us about the creation process...
I normally have a couple or three clear ideas of where the project will be heading, and slowly depending on my resources, I see what’s the best option that I’ll instinctively polish throughout the process. When it came to this project, the concept was given to me by SVD in an instinctive way and it started to take shape through my suggestions, thei requirements and ASICS’.
What are your three favorite artists of the moment?
By random order and choice: Brenna Murphy, Jon Rafman and Pere Llobera.
What are you currently working on, what can you reveal to us?
Right now I’m preparing new music for a live performance with my group PLOM at Club Marabú on Friday 21st June in Barcelona’s Sala Apolo, it will be wild. Other than that, I’m still working as a teacher and I’m focused on taking care of my baby.