Lluís Garau: "We have had to claim ourselves so much, that we are obsessed with ourselves"

PalmaA setting, a laptop with a webcam, and an hour of live chat with random people. With these ingredients and the premise of adapting the dramaturgy and choreography based on the conversations, Lluís Garau (La Torre, 1997) created The Meat in 2022, a performance interpreted entirely by him. His obsessions – the internet and identity shaped by algorithms – have led him to this “painful” process of stepping into the shoes of a cybersex addict. After receiving accolades such as the Oscar Wilde Award at the Dublin Theatre Festival, he turned The Meat in film, to go beyond the cybercruising. Directed by Joan Porcel, this thriller documentary has just won two Silver Biznagas in Malaga. It will be screened for the first time in Mallorca at the Atlàntida Film Festival.

Director, actor, dancer, performer... What defines you best?

— The four things equally. In fact, this need not to pigeonhole myself and be a hybrid speaks volumes about our generation. We are multi-taskers, heirs of multitasking, and this is reflected in artistic disciplines. I don't think we can be just one thing: we need to do many.

What was the starting point?

— My background is in dramatic art, but from the beginning I have been very interested in body language. I like to live the characters. Sometimes, it is a painful process. La Carn, in which I have put myself in the shoes of a person obsessed with Chatroulette, has made me lose the perspective of individuals and come to see others as a great mass, a reflection of what you find on the internet.

Why did you decide to make La Carn a film?

— To enter this world and the character. The film wants to explore what many of us have lived, which is searching for our identity on the internet.

How has being born with webcams at home and a mobile phone with a camera conditioned us?

— It has good and bad things. Among the good: we have been able to experience other aspects of our personality and meet people who perhaps understood our needs better than those we had close by. On the internet you have been able to find yourself, but you don't know to what extent the algorithm has led you there.

The internet has also made us build ourselves from the external gaze.

— On social media we want to be our best version. There is a generation before mine that grew up with this and who now no longer have any photos on social media, because overexposure has annihilated them. Regarding the webcam, I have noticed that in front of the camera you always try to modify your image to look more handsome. This ends up disturbing you, you no longer know what the real shape of your face is. The internet is the cruelest mirror.

But La Carn tries to humanize the people who live on the internet.

— I have also been there for a long time and I want it to be understood what is happening there. Chatroulette is part of an addiction, which is cybersex. And there are people who are weaker in front of this. This way of relating is a prison, because you know that you will never touch the person you will meet in the chat. This eternal design makes it addictive.

Besides the internet, what topics obsess you?

— I am obsessed with the fact that our generation has been so instilled that art must be political, that we forget that the first thing is to want to make art. Right now everything has to be politicized, but I don't want my artistic proposal to be reduced to that.

Because it's not the same as activism.

— If art is only political, it is activism. I understand that my will to get on a stage is a political act, but I don't want to have to be constantly claiming my sexuality. I believe we have created codes that allow us not to have to do it.

This forces you to be aware of who your audience is.

— I want my art to reach a generation that doesn't question me about basic things like my sexuality. And I am very sorry that public institutions do not understand me for this reason. I would ask them to bet on new forms of expression. When something is well done, it doesn't matter who it's aimed at. For example, the female audience feels the most represented, because they have lived the same as me and have felt like a piece of meat.

Is there a certain risk in addressing a specific audience?

— I am very aware that we have to earn our living, nothing will be given to me. Even though I talk about the collective, nobody will open the door for me in advance for being gay. They won't give us anything for who we are, but for what we do. We are an overanalyzed generation. We have had to claim and explain ourselves so much that we are obsessed with ourselves.

How do you think the generation of artists you are part of will be remembered?

— With the motto of ‘Support your local artists’. We are neither more nor less than one another, we all know how difficult it is. It is insistence and occupying spaces. Other generations have pushed hard. And now it is true that talent, grace and nerve prevail, but there is room for all of us. Envy and hating someone because they have achieved something you haven't are totally out of fashion.