El Viatge Frustrat is an artistic project by Enric Farrés Duran, produced by Cal Cego, in which the artist and the collector embark on a sea adventure with the intention of retracing the journey to France made by the writer Josep Pla and his friend Sebastià Puig i Barceló, better known as Hermós, in 1918. In the story “Un viatge frustat” (first published in “Un bodegó amb peixos”, Selecta, 1950), Pla explains in great detail the journey, made by sail, by rowing and without papers, as well as the main reason: to visit some relatives of Hermós in the French Roussillon, although during the course of the journey the main motivation is revealed, to return in order to be able to explain it. It is well known that Pla’s frustrated trip never took place and that it fits into the idea of creating fictions built from numerous real details (characters, types of fish, weather conditions, moods, etc.) to give them veracity.
Unlike Pla, Farrés does make the frustrated trip, which takes place on the Costa Brava, in the middle of August 2015. His intention is not to create a realistic fiction but a fictional reality based on specific documentation closer to photos and videos of holidays than to the epic-tragic tradition that often accompanies the projects of artists and filmmakers related to the sea (we remember, In search of the miraculous by Bas Jan Ader or Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog, to name just a few).
Enric Farrés’ El viatge frustrat is the antipodes of the heroic: an artist is towed in his tiny boat (a 2-metre wooden barge, without an engine due to a mysterious theft) by another boat in perfect condition (a replica of the boat of the poet and editor Carlos Barral, called “Capitán Argüello”, popularly known as La Barrala), captained by a collector, Josep Inglada, one of the creators of Cal Cego. During the journey there are moments of difficulties, leisure, waiting and encounters.
In El Viatge Frustrat, everyday life occupies almost the entire film, it is populated by moments of waiting in which nothing extraordinary happens. There are no stories of love, hate, robbery or murder, there is no mystery or extraordinary coincidences, however the fact that nothing happens, even though expectations are created, also deserves to be explained, and as the voice-over narrates at one point in the video, “appearances do not deceive, they are appearances.” And, in that sense, we find Farrés’ references in writers such as W. G. Sebald and Enrique Vila-Matas or in artists such as Ignasi Aballí and a whole genealogy of “artists of No” who, like Bartleby, disappear, stop writing, stop making nothing the object of the work, approaching reality from new perspectives.
Time is another key issue, since vacation time and production time are mixed and confused, as is the time on land in which nothing happens, waiting for better weather conditions to be able to continue the journey.
In a close and very everyday way, the video deals with some of the great themes of art, such as the relationship between artist and collector, between letting go and taking the helm and, in a certain way, the demystification and revision of roles (the artist is no longer heroic and spends part of his working time lying on the small boat while writing on Facebook; the collector is no longer the one who buys the work, or produces it by providing the necessary funds for its realization, but rather the one who steers the boat, cooks or buys supplies). Another aspect is the journey towards internationalization (here certainly shown as a naive position) so important for the work of an artist to be recognized and legitimized.
In El Viatge Frustrat the script is being written as it happens. The video, a format that Enric Farrés explores for the first time with this work and that has been edited by Telma Llos Martí, uses resources that are reminiscent of YouTube tutorials or a Skype conference, including Google Maps, the use of archive material or the artist’s own computer desktop. In this way, using videographic solutions and current communication formats, Farrés Duran is able to translate into video the use of first-person narration that in other projects he has formalized in books or guided and commented tours.
