E-Book, Englisch, 592 Seiten
Mallo Nocilla Trilogy
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-80427-009-7
Verlag: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 592 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80427-009-7
Verlag: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Agustín Fernández Mallo was born in La Coruña in 1967, and is a qualified physicist. In 2000 he formulated a self-termed theory of 'post-poetry' which explores connections between art and science. His Nocilla Trilogy, published between 2006 and 2009, brought about an important shift in contemporary Spanish writing and paved the way for the birth of a new generation of authors, known as the 'Nocilla Generation'. His essay Postpoesía: hacia un nuevo paradigma was shortlisted for the Anagrama Essay Prize in 2009. In 2018 his long essay Teoría general de la basura (cultura, apropiación, complejidad) was published by Galaxia Gutenberg, and in the same year his latest novel, The Things We've Seen, won the Biblioteca Breve Prize.
Weitere Infos & Material
What he finds most amazing is that the huge number of races and cultures passing through an airport every day does not alter, in the slightest, either the aesthetic or human physiognomy of the airport; he’s got to the point of comparing it with an atemporal, incorporeal entity: a divinity. Kenny, how about not blocking up the shower plugs with your hair, says one of the cleaning ladies, You’re practically moulting these days. He scratches his head doubtfully and carries on past with his trolley. He leafs through the papers at the newspaper stand, and stops farther along to check out the display at the Prada shoe store, comparing it with the Gucci one, and while he’s at it begins whittling down which pair he’d like for next season when, as every year, he gets given a pair. The great thing about living inside a place like this is that summer and winter are identical, so you don’t need to think about clothes except – like Kenny – purely as something to enjoy; sybaritism in a chemically pure state. Smoking a cigarette, he sits in the café watching TV. A man comes over with a coffee and a plate of assorted pastries. Mind if I join you? he says. Everywhere’s taken. Kenny nods an okay, and before looking away notes that the man is about 45, is dressed in a dark suit by CH, including grey silk tie and grey shirt, brand unknown; judging by the laptop case, he guesses the man to be a member of the liberal professions. As the man eats he tells Kenny his name, Josep, where he’s from, Barcelona, and asks Kenny where he’s going. Kenny, initially reluctant, ends up telling him the whole story, his life in the airport etcetera, though not in any great detail. Josep carries on eating, concentrating mainly on the chocolate donuts. Accustomed as Kenny is to people being astonished by his story, the man’s lack of interest makes him curious, and he asks him where he’s going. Bangkok now, but then Beijing, he says, finishing his coffee. And what do you do, if you don’t mind me asking? I’m a designer. Interesting! says Kenny. Fashion, shoes by any chance? No, manhole covers. Manhole covers? Yeah, the things they use for covering up sewers to stop you falling in, round or square, metal usually (he laughs as he dabs his lips), in here, for example, look, there’s one over there (he points with his sugary finger), that’s a P. H. Rudoff, his studio’s in Frankfurt, he’s German, takes his inspiration from the doors of German-Spanish cars in the 1930s, can you see the handle-like thing there, on the other side from the hinge? The ones outside, I noticed, are by Phillip Bhete, he’s Australian – well, Australian but originally from Britain, great man, the best in my eyes, I know a layperson like you won’t get it, but Bhete, well, he combines marine motifs with a map of the city where he’s working? Yes, I mean it, I can already tell from your face that this isn’t a very cool profession, but I should point out that there are only 17 of us in the world who do it, so everyone knows everyone, we’re like family. Can I get you something? Seriously, my shout. (Kenny asks for a breakfast.) So as I was saying, for our annual conference we get together at someone’s house, wives, kids, the whole shebang, which is why my English is so good; we cover every single continent, nearly – just Africa to go – and we’ve adopted English as the shared language of our profession, and this year I wowed them all with this new material I’ve been developing, because – as you’ll have seen – manhole covers always end up cracking at the edges if they’re square, or in the middle if they’re circular, okay, so I contracted this lab in Canada who work with aeronautical materials, speedboats, that kind of thing, and when we looked into it we came to the conclusion that by mixing certain carbon fibres with some oxalates we’d get a cover with the flexibility and the hardness we needed, right? (He bangs his fist down on the table), yeah, there’s more to it than meets the eye, like, everyone has their own little signature, like a brand – makes sense – mine’s simple – why be complicated? – it’s J.F.K, seeing as my name is Josep Ferrer Cardell (writing it on a napkin), but I changed the C for a K (a flick of the wrist changing the former to the latter), that’s right, I had the idea when I watched that movie, a way of setting my signature apart and at the same time making use of a universal icon, yeah, no one’s gonna forget that, I put it on the far right hand side if it’s a square cover, on the outermost ring if it’s circular, and that’s the thing, my big thing this year, it’s so cool (coming closer to Kenny, half-whispering): I also put it on one of the rings if it’s oval-shaped, and now you’re gonna say, what’s this about oval-shaped? Well, the thing is, I realized quite a while ago that a person, girth-wise, is more oval than circular, and forget about a person girth-wise being square, just don’t even, and that was when I asked myself, why not try this as the new shape for manhole covers? An oval. More comfortable for the workers, a saving on superfluous materials, very important to save on these small questions of design, people think it’s silly but no, it really cuts the overall price – do you know how much Coca Cola saved the year they changed their cans from completely straight-edged to having this little angle chopped off here and here? (taking a can from the adjacent table and holding it up) – I won’t even tell you, indecent amounts! – but as I was saying, I’ve already got buyers for several consignments of oval covers, they’re building a new residential area in Hong Kong and they want them there, plus in the old town in León, a small city in Spain you won’t probably have heard of, but the really good bit is, sometimes I do it for a bit of extra cash, but also it’s one of the elements of my work that I find really satisfying: the models for both places are the same, see? Thanks to me, these two cities have been twinned (clapping his palms together on the table). Just like that! Twinned! Not many people know about it of course, the cool thing is when they’re gonna find out. And you know the way scientists sometimes come across the metatarsal of an animal in Asia, and it’s exactly the same as one in Africa? And they try and work out how that can be? Well something similar’s going to happen in the future, in a thousand years’ time, with my manhole covers, because – and by the way no one knows about this – I’ve already connected ten pairs of cities, various continents, not gonna tell you which, like I say, the cool thing is people finding out, although, oh yeah, you won’t be able to, you’re stuck in here for the rest of your life, doesn’t it frighten you the thought of dying in here? And what about when you get old? Is there like a pension plan or something? Order something else, it’s on me, really. Anyway, like I was saying… I can’t show you what I’m working on just now, I’m low on battery and the design just mullers energy on the hard drive, it’s that massive. But this thing about connecting cities and places, it’s fundamental, other people saw that, Jules Verne, Journey from the Earth to the Moon, remember that? Or Up and Down, the TV series (Kenny shakes his head), oh man! Or that one with Marco and the monkey, Apennines to the Andes? Loved that monkey. Paris-Texas, too, the film, Kenny – Kenny it’s such a wonderful thing, this, connecting cities. Well (says Kenny), I don’t know if you know, but Paris-Texas isn’t about going from Paris in France to Texas in the USA, it’s ‘Paris, Texas’, like you say ‘Berlin, Germany’. See? Paris is a city in Texas. Yeah well anyway (says Josep), you know what I mean, by the way, on Texas, I’m gonna tell you this thing that happened in the U.S., such a good story; my colleague and good friend R. S. Lloyd, great designer, lives in the States, well he asked me if I could do a job for him, he’d said yes but then had too much work on his hands, and since I was just starting out, and we help people in this line of work, we help our fellow manhole cover maker, and he asked me, and of course I said yes, I’m getting another Coke, what about you? (Kenny asks for another Coke too), so it was for the manhole covers for a city called Carson City, in the State of Nevada I’m pretty sure, could’ve been New Mexico, anyway, who cares, they’re basically the same, and when I showed up there, your typical shithole, nothing going for it but the amazing brothels, they already knew exactly what they were after, 50 per cent cast iron, 35 per cent steel, 15 per cent American nickel, it was going to be circular and in the middle they wanted an embossed poplar, yes sirree, a simple American poplar, but get this, it was supposed to have two pairs of shoes hanging from it, strangely, the shoes had appeared one day, I was told, years back, no one knew why, and they’d become like a symbol for the town, something like that, and since it isn’t my job to poke my nose where it isn’t wanted, I got to work, no PCs or 3D programming in those days, right, proper work it was, proper work, so the designs took me a little while, axial planes, sagittal planes –...
