Collective residencies / Touched nerves: on feelings in contemporary Catalan culture / Olot
BRYAN CAMERON
From Monday, 20 May 2024 to Friday, 24 May 2024
Bio
Bryan Cameron is Associate Professor of Modern Spanish Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Beyond Dystopia: Reclaiming the Future in (Post)Crisis Cinema from Spain for University of Liverpool Press. Bryan is also currently co-editing a special issue of Journal of Catalan Studies with Ignasi Gozalo-Salellas (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) that is entitled “Emergent Visions in Film and Screen Media from Contemporary Catalonia.”
Project
His project explores a corpus of creative documentaries produced in Barcelona over the last two and a half decades. Inspired by recent scholarship on documentary cinema in Catalonia, he plans to interrogate Jordi Balló’s claim that university training programs (such as the Universitat Pompeu Fabra’s Master’s in Creative Documentary) have given rise to “las caligrafías fílmicas más innovadoras” in all of contemporary European cinema. Blending political critique and aesthetic innovation, these filmmakers have stimulated “spaces of resistance” as Enrique Fibla-Gutiérrez has claimed, fomenting a vibrant ecosystem for audiences and artists alike (28). Much more than “the result of some laboratory-like experiment in cultural politics” (Balló and Jiménez-Morales 180), however, their films sketch emergent visions of an interconnected global society in which collective solidarities are required to combat the brutalities of neoliberal capitalism.
My experience at the Faberllulll Residency in Olot was both inspiring and rewarding on every level. To have been chosen to collaborate with such inspiring colleagues was an honor for which I will always be grateful. Our leader and organizer, Toni Maestre Brotons, selected a brilliant group of scholars who brought a different focus and area of expertise to the workshop. We discussed topics as diverse as nineteenth-century literature, modern fashion and textiles, contemporary poetry and theatre, Catalan cinema, and new directions in narrative production as well as literary analysis. The structure of the event was perfectly coordinated, and we were given the freedom and the time to brainstorm and write both independently and collectively. It was a privilege to share the space with such thoughtful and generous colleagues. For me, this was a life-changing academic experience, and I am so appreciative for the opportunity. Many thanks to everyone involved for their tremendous organizational skills and to Olot for providing a wonderful backdrop for a wonderful workshop.