Roc Blackblock and Memory at the Heart of the Territory at KROMATIC

Roc BlackblockHello, good morning. I'm Roc Blackblock and I'm a muralist from Barcelona.

How did this mural you have painted here in Sant Andreu de la Barca come about, with such a characteristic, historic element as la palanca, the old footbridge?

Roc BlackblockThis mural came about through the Kromatic Festival, organised by the town council and managed by Rebobinart. Several themes are covered, and one of them was memory: that is how I was selected as the artist to work on that theme. I immersed myself in what memory was and what its elements were, and I quickly arrived at la palanca.

We have seen people moved by your mural. That is what street art does: that direct connection with the viewer.

Roc BlackblockThat is one of the lovely things about working in small settings: you have a very direct sense of how the work is landing with local people. And I would also like to give credit to the preparatory work, which nobody sees: not just researching and gathering information, but checking it with residents and, in this case, with the council team.

As a Barcelona resident, I know little about the history of Sant Andreu de la Barca. Only by setting up a dialogue can you come to understand what the cornerstone of memory is. Otherwise I might have taken a more aesthetically beautiful image, but one without that emotional weight. And being out here in the street I have confirmed it was the right choice.

You come from graphic design, illustration and even tattooing. What made you move to walls?

Roc BlackblockGraphic design is my training, something I think has greatly influenced my work, but which I have never actually worked in. What it did do was make me understand muralism as a communication tool. Some artists position themselves as artists and make personal work; I treat muralism as a large-format illustration, with the same criteria as graphic design: I position myself as a communicator, take a concept and try to be the vehicle, the loudspeaker that spreads that image and takes it into public space so that the whole neighbourhood is the recipient.

Should art stay in museums or come out into the street more?

Roc BlackblockI think there is art for every setting, but where I feel comfortable is in this community, popular setting. I see it as something that can fill the streets and public spaces with memory, with values and with creativity; and also that public spaces should be able to be somewhere people have their testing ground. It is like an extension of our home, the space we all share: so we have to be able to see ourselves reflected in it.

Mural art is ephemeral. Is that part of the appeal of these projects?

Roc BlackblockThat is a whole debate, or rather than a debate it is something of a lottery. Sometimes something gets built in front of it and the mural disappears, or the weather wears it down. When you paint you may have an intuition, but sometimes you have no idea.

Not long ago we painted over the oldest mural I had in Barcelona, from 2001. You paint and you leave; you are left with the photograph. And in this case it was when the mural was erased, through social media, that I saw the impact it had had: how many people were saying «they have erased the lizards on Carrer d'Entença, we used to go there, it was a landmark, what a shame». I ended up concluding that they had had a long life, that they had been very well preserved and that they had been much loved: they had exceeded every expectation.

On your Instagram there is a series of socially critical murals, above all activist ones.

Roc BlackblockI started painting murals 25 years ago and I have been doing it professionally for some years now. My professional proposal involves working on themes of memory, and there I can touch on everything from local custom —like olive growing— to anti-Franco memory, exile or migration. Always with a political ingredient, because I think talking about memory in this country leads inevitably to political subjects.

All the same, I also have my personal side, in which I use murals as a tool for taking part: it is my way of being active in social movements. The latest in that vein, which I did these past two weeks, read «Netanyahu, genocida». Just as I have painted murals in solidarity with Palestine, I have painted them against touristification. I do that in a personal capacity, but knowing that there are many people behind it: it is not my own particular story, but that of the social movements I owe myself to.

You have said that walls can write what official history erases.

Roc BlackblockYes, because there is that side of popular, community memory. The professional project I am pursuing has as its leitmotif telling the episodes of history in the places where they happened. Because history is not only the viceroy's visit or the bishop of wherever: it is the small stories that happen at the village washing place, those of the anonymous militants who fought fascism or lived as maquis. Memory is like a jigsaw and every piece is vital: when one is missing, we don't have the whole map.

How does local people's perception change when they walk past and see a mural like yours?

Roc BlackblockThere are several strands. On one hand, a dignifying of the space: often the before and after of that same space is indisputably an improvement, if only because it is paint. The other thing is that it is impossible for everyone to like it —and when someone says everyone likes it, they are lying.

But it is true that, with this kind of intervention and with themes of memory, many people's perspective shifts on the possibility of using public space for artistic creation. That gives us the chance not to see public space as if we were in a shop, or as if we were guests in a hotel room where all the decor is antiseptic: it is a place where we can see ourselves reflected.

And one of the lovely things happening to me working on memory is that I use a more contemporary language —even though muralism goes back as far as human history— and older people see it as very modern. But when they start to look and to understand what is being done, a bond and an emotion suddenly form: it is as if you opened Pandora's box or the chest of memories. And you start to see very old people applauding and congratulating you. That is very moving.

You have painted in Portugal, in France and practically all over Catalonia.

Roc BlackblockI have worked mainly across the Catalan-speaking lands, then more widely in Spain and occasionally beyond. I am nowhere near being one of those with a long international career: among the artists taking part in this festival there are many with a far longer one than mine.

But for me it is a privilege to work locally, in small towns. As someone from Barcelona —where we are always gazing at our own navel and it seems everything begins and ends in Barcelona— I have discovered the richness and plurality of the territory we have, which is exceptional. I have been able to paint in Extremadura, in a village where half the population has family here, with a whole web of connections. You come to understand how good this is: there is no need to go off to the United States, because we have exceptional things here.

The mural carries a phrase: «La memòria és el pont que uneix el passat amb el present» — memory is the bridge joining past and present.

Roc BlackblockIt is that wish to take memory into the streets. We live in an age when young people consume an enormous number of images, scrolling up and down: you paint them an old image and they read it as a «hashtag retro» or «hashtag vintage» photo. What this does is challenge them and try to build a bridge between generations.

In a few days' time I hope there will be a grandfather out walking with his grandchild, able to explain how he used to play on la palanca, and that the grandchild can deepen their roots in their own area. And not only that: also to create the possibility that newcomers have within reach, in public space, tools to learn and to understand, and therefore to join society with more knowledge.

Video by Ràdio Sant Andreu. Abridged version: direct quotes are kept; repetitions, overlapping speech and passages unrelated to the project are left out.