Character

Ester Xargay i Melero

Sant Feliu de Guíxols 12-04-1960 ‖ Palamós 19-01-2024

Period of activity: From 1990 until 2024

Geographical classification: Europe > Spain

Socio-cultural movements

Late modern period / Contemporary period > Literary and cultural movements since the end of the 19th century > Literature since the last third of the 20th century

Late modern period / Contemporary period > Musical movements since the end of the 19th century > Classical music > Electroacoustic music

Late modern period / Contemporary period > Artistic movements since the end of the 19th century > Art from the first third of the 20th century

Late modern period / Contemporary period > Musical movements since the end of the 19th century > Popular music > Electronic music

Late modern period / Contemporary period > Literary and cultural movements since the end of the 19th century > Post-war literature > Experimental literature

Groups by dedication

Writers > in > Catalan

Writers > Poets

Writers > Translators

Plastic, visual and performing artists

Popularisers / Cultural promoters > Publishers

Context of feminine creation

Influenced by electronic and random music, the theatre of the absurd and the Fluxus movement, the contributions of Yoko Ono, Shigeko Kubota, Alison Knowles and Daniela Palazzoli, among others, are noted.
She made numerous artistic collaborations: actions, magazines, books, translations, etc., with Carles Hac Mor, her partner for many years, until he died. She has often worked with creators in other fields, such as composer Mercè Capdevila, artists Marta Darder and Maria Duran, photographer Gemma Nogueroles, illustrator Mariona Millà, filmmaker Isaki Lacuesta and screenwriter Isa Campo.

Xargay is part of a tradition of multidisciplinary artists such as Carme Montoriol (poet, narrator, playwright and music) or Felícia Fuster, who, from experimentation, has dialogued with the plastic arts and literature. For her audiovisual creation, she sided with Eugenia Balcells (1943) or the first Spanish filmmakers, Elena Jordi and Helena Cortesina. She also has affinities with artists such as Àngels Ribé (1943) one of the most important representatives of conceptual art of the 1970s or Mercè Capdevila, a collaborator of Xargay and one of the first Catalan women to work with electroacoustic music.

Review

Ester Xargay is a multifaceted author and a cultural agitator who has organized all kinds of happenings and demonstrations in the public space. In her work, based on provocation, play and experimentation, the various forms of expression dialogue and create new spaces.

In addition to nearly twenty books, some of which she has done solo and others signed with Carles Hac Mor, she is an action artist and video maker. She has made numerous collaborations with personalities in the fields of art, music and cinema.

Her work merges diverse techniques with which she explores the potential of language and forces limits. One of the characteristics of her work is the use of humor as a tool for distancing and as an area of freedom.

Justifications

A multifaceted artist: poet, performer, video artist and translator from French to Catalan.
Game, experimentation and sense of humour are fundamental features of her work. It is in the antipodes of the literature of the self and of feelings.
She conceives creation in an interdisciplinary manner and merges in her work various techniques (a collection of poems written in infinitive to erase the poetic 'self', a reversible book, grafts of different metrical forms, etc.) with which she explores the potential of language and forces boundaries. She also integrates poems in audiovisual format.
She has dedicated to cultural management and she is also a cultural agitator. who has organised all kinds of public space actions with the aim of shakening the arts and making new proposals.
She was awarded with the Rosa Leveroni Prize for Poetry (2018), the Espais Award for Art Critics (2000) and the Navarra Prize for Audiovisual Creation (1999).

Biography

Ester Xargay was born in Sant Feliu de Guíxols but lived in France until the age of eighteen. At home, she alternated between Catalan and French. She became acquainted with the avant-garde movements as a child, as her school was part of a pilot project in Bourges, the city where she lived. There, she often went to the Maison de la Culture, an artistic and musical research center where she entered in contact with electroacoustic music and experimental cinema. Her initial literary attempts, during her early youth, were made in French.
Once installed in Catalonia, she started a bookstore, which, however, had to close soon. After a few months in Paris, where she began to relate to artistic circles, she converted the bookstore into an art gallery and subsequently worked in other galleries.

She was interested in initiatives such as Tarotdequinze, the Arctic magazine, or exhibitions such as Extra or Beast. She met Carles Hac Mor in 1986 in a lecture cycle and soon afterwards they established themselves as a creative couple and tandem, without neglecting her solo projects. In 1992, they co-ordinated an homage to Arthur Cravan and until the beginning of 2000 they organized actions, workshops, meetings and magazines such as De viva veu, a talking magazine, or the Undisciplinary Agora, among others.
During this period, she studied Art History at the University of Barcelona. She had started attending courses as a listener, but, spurred on by Lourdes Cirlot, she passed the exam to be admitted at the university at the age of 25 and ended up earning a degree in 1995.

Xargay published her first poetic collection, The Mother Angels, in 1990, but combined the cultivation of poetry with video art and four-handed translations with Carles Hac Mor. Her interdisciplinarity has led her to constantly collaborate with artists, music professionals and filmmakers. Literarily, she is characterized by straining language and constantly experimenting with form, often valuing a sense of humour.
She also writes regularly in various publications such as Papers d'Art, Transversal, Reductions, The Time of the Arts or Marges, among others.
In 1999 she was awarded the Navarra audiovisual creation prize; in 2000, the Espais award to the Critica d'art and in 2018 she won the Rosa Leveroni Prize with the collection Desintegrar-se.

Her poetry is essentially a reflection on the possibilities of language, on tradition and on the sense of art and existence, but she has some poems that engaves on themes such as the national hydrological plan or the Catalan process. Narrative and theatre drink from surrealism and absurd theatre. Un pedrís de mil estones deals with two murderers who threw together the cadavre exquisit of the surrealists and Amor lliure, ús i abús recast the pink novel genre, in a chaotic and uncontrolled lattice. The play is an experimental opera, danced with recites, with projected images. The claca and the director are part of the show. She appears in the Enciclopèdia catalana and some of her poems, including some read aloud and translated by herself, are in Lyrikline.

Works

POETRY

(1990). Els àngels soterrats, Barcelona: Cafè Central.

(1993). Les flaires del galliner, a poem on a collage by Pere Noguera. magazine/plaquette L'Avioneta, Albert Ferrer Editor (republished in the book Trenca-sons).

(1995). A fum de sabatots, Barcelona: Cafè Central.

(1997). Volts en el temps, La Cèl·lula,(republished in the book Trenca-sons).

(1997). Epítom infranu o no (Ombres de poemes de Marcel Duchamp), co-written with Carles Hac Mor, Lleida: Pagès Editors.

(2000). Darrere les tanques, with two prologues by Annie Bats, one of which in verse, and drawings by Humberto Rivas /Andrés Hispano. Palma: El Tall Editorial.

(2022). Trenca-sons, with photographs by Gemma Nogueroles, digital images by Eugenio Tisselli and collage by Pere Noguera. Gaüses: Llibres del Segle.

(2005). Ainalar, Els Ulls de Tirèsies 18, Barcelona: Cafè Central.

(2005). Éssera ponent, plaquette, Lleida: Morphosi.

(2006). Salflorvatge, with drawings by Mariona Millà. Barcelona: March Editor.

(2007). Zooflèxia, co-written with Carles Hac Mor, with drawings by Mariona Millà. Barcelona: March Editor.

(2008). Fissura,’split’ book: half a book with poems by Xargay, and half by Carles Hac Mor, with videos by Nora Ancarola and images by Marga Ximénez. Barcelona: Edicions 1010.

(2009). Aürt, Lleida: Pagès Editors.

(2009). Eixida al sostre,poetry by Ester Xargay and images by Vicenç Viaplana, Tarragona: Arola Editors.

(2017). Infinitius, Palma: Lleonard Muntaner.

(2019). Desintegrar-se, Barcelona: Meteora.

Lirykline, selection of poems written and recited by the author, 07-05-2023, https://www.lyrikline.org/es/autores/ester-xargay

NARRATIVE

(1992). Un pedrís de mil estones, co-written with Carles Hac Mor, Tarragona: Edicions El Mèdol.

(2001). Amor lliure, ús i abús, experimental novel of a chaotic-rocambolesque philosophal character, co-written with Carles Hac Mor. Lleida: Pagès Editors.

THEATRE

Tirant lo Blanc la, o La perfecció és feixista, o La construcció del socialisme, co-written with Carles Hac Mor, Entreacte, Editorial AADPC, 2000.

TRANSLATIONS

Todorov, Tzvetan (1996). La vida en comú, Transl. by Ester Xargay and Carles Hac Mor, from French into Catalan. València: Editorial 3 i 4.

Lascault, Gilbert (1995). L'avidesa de llurs ulls, Transl. by Ester Xargay andi Carles Hac Mor, from French into Catalan. Barcelona: Edicions Cafè Central.

Pascal, Blaise (1998). Pensaments, Transl. by Ester Xargay and Carles Hac Mor, from French into Catalan. Barcelona: Institució de les Lletres Catalanes..

Adrian, Pic (1999). Nucli de l'infinit. L'illa invisible, Transl. by Ester Xargay and Carles Hac Mor. Edicions Cafè Central/Eumo editorial, Barcelona, 1999.

Queneau, Raymond (inèdit). Cent bilions de poemes de Raymond Queneau. Translation by Ester Xargay for Eugenio Tisselli's computer program specially conceived for this poem.

Videos of the author posted on vimeo and youtube (25-5-2023):

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user3412517

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/esterxargay/videos

Self-Portrait. Flux_Festival de Vídeo d'Autor 2008 (25-5-2023):

https://vimeo.com/207684972

Sostres. Group exhibition at Bonnemaison. 2007. Video installation with a zenith projection on the floor of the room. It includes a series of high – carved ceilings with travellings from the ground – of the different floors of a building. Accompanying the images there is a musical composition by Mercè Capdevila (25-5-2023):

https://vimeo.com/207857573

Licantropia. Feminist Acts of the Fòrum de les Cultures 2004. Amb Mercè Capdevila (25-5-2023):

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=licantropia+ester+xargay#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:e875306c,vid:ZlZkxP36Yek

Bibliography

Altaió, Vicenç (2017). “La poesia performativa d'Ester Xargay”, in Ester Xargay. Infinitius. Palma: Lleonard Muntaner, pp. 109-144.

Bats, Annie, (2000). “Pròleg”, in Ester Xargay. Darrere les tanques. Palma: El Tall Editorial, pp. 12-14.

Marrugat, Jordi (2019). “Ester Xargay, escriure com riure com cantar com viure”, in Ester Xargay. Dilluns de poesia a l'Arts de Santa Mònica. Barcelona: Arts Santa Mònica.

Marrugat, Jordi (2017). “Cançó del gosar poder jugar a viure i fracassar”, in Ester Xargay. Infinitius. Palma: Lleonard Muntaner, pp. 7-17.

Parcerisas, Pilar (2009). “La poesia que colpeja”, in Ester Xargay. Aürt, Lleida: Pagès, pp. 7-9.

Riba, Caterina i Coll Mariné, Jaume (2021). A un revolt de la sendera. 5 poetes. Juneda: Fonoll.

Pons, Margalida (2019). “Sospitar que tot és llavor”, in Ester Xargay. Desintegrar-se, Barcelona: Meteora, pp. 89-102.

Enciclopèdia Catalana, 07-05-2023, https://www.enciclopedia.cat/gran-enciclopedia-catalana/ester-xargay-i-melero

Didactic approach

The author can be dealt with in Catalan and Universal Literature in both ESO and High School.
Thanks to its interdisciplinary nature, one could work from subjects linked to art or music.

She has audiovisual material (video-poemes, documentaries for Barcelona TV, etc.).

The question of technology and computer programming can also be explored in some works (such as One hundred billion poems by Raymond Queneau).
Finally, it could be linked to the French subject because she made several translations from French to Catalan.