transform the aesthetics, but they are not an aim. In my work, technology is what I think I need to express a particular idea.
already too late.” When I read this sentence I thought it expressed exactly my own opinion. When teaching your students you have to leave messages which seem to fall silent and which decrease gradually. It takes many years, a lot of patience and a lot of self-confidence. Barbara Sansone: Where do you like to exhibit the most? Perhaps in public spaces? Jaume Plensa: Public spaces are the ones that allowed me to become well-known, but the reason why is simply because normally nobody assigns to them the value of a first category place. They are considered substitutes, as the typical “roundabout”. But round-abouts are neither good nor bad: it depends on what we do with them, like everything in life. For me public spaces are very interesting for sculpture and art in general. In public spaces a kind of direct relationship between people, who have not sought it, and the artist comes to life. It is a relevant artistic issue. It represents the artist among
Barbara Sansone: You haven’t worked for the theater, the opera for a while… Jaume Plensa: I am not a specialist in the opera and I think at that time this was the key that allowed me to transform the scenic concept. But for consistency, I had to stop. For the same reason I do not want to continue to teach if I do not want to become a professor. This year I taught in Chicago and I have been asked to stay. So, instead of teaching for six months as I did this year, I decided to hold a seminar of three weeks, which is a different theoretical concept.
other people and thus the piece of art must be very respectful. Public spaces do not belong to artists: they belong to everybody, to people as citizens and as individuals as well. The artist thus needs a lot of humility.
My success as a teacher is due to the fact that I am not a teacher. A wonderful photographer from the MTI, who died recently, used to say: “try to teach without realizing that you’re doing it. When you realize it, it’s 11