Special Interview with Antonio Centeno

conducted and translated from Spanish by

Marlene Lahmer

”I am 51 years old. When I think of a superhero, I think of my father. When we went to the mountains, he knew everything: animals, plants, where to find mushrooms, figs, almonds. He was a man who, for me, had superpowers. [...] I think today we have more capacity than ever to create knowledge and to access this knowledge, to distribute it. But the fact that we are destroying the planet is by far the most worrying development.”

How did you first get in touch with activism?

At the end of 2004 I got to know the Independent Living Forum through the internet. It is a virtual community of persons with functional diversity and I was struck by the definition they gave of “independent life“. They explained that it doesn’t mean doing things on your own without support, but having control of the support you get and that you need to handle your everyday life. It’s very fine, very elegant, and puts into words what I had been feeling and thinking for many years in one way or another. And well, from then on I started being part of this forum that offers debates, ideas, but also action. A classic struggle for what is central to activism: human rights. And then over the years an evolution more towards the question of culture.

Because in the end you realise that even when you have the tools to make changes - if you don’t know where you are going, if there is no change in the way you look at values, then in the end, no matter how many tools you use, you will end up making mistakes in the same places.

And that was the beginning of my interest in doing activism in the cultural sphere, always linking it to functional diversity. But that was a bit later, around 2013, when we started working on the documentary.

I don’t think so, it hasn’t reached many people really. The basic objective of the project was, for example, to broadcast the documentary on public television, which means addressing not the people who are already interested in the question and are already thinking about it - about difference and inequality - but people who have never thought about it and suddenly it manifests on the screen in their homes and they would see something they didn’t expect. That is something we haven’t achieved, only the local television of Barcelona has used the documentary, but the other public channels didn’t follow suit. I think that few people have seen it.

Among these few people, the truth is – well, it’s not that few people really, it has circulated a lot in activist spheres, different kinds of activists, connected to culture but also functional diversity, and above all to feminist and queer movements. But the point is that we need to reach other people.

What we have achieved is that the docmentary has been a useful tool in activist environments; I think it has served to established contact between different activisms. Also the process of making the documentary was a process of getting to know each other between the queer world and the world of functional diversity, very interesting and very very powerful. And the documentary is the way it is mainly because of this process of approaching each other from different activisms. In this sense I think it has been a useful and powerful tool.

But we have a way to go in reaching beyond the activist circles, appealing to this broader common sense. This is costing us a lot, because it’s already more controlled, or the filters in the cultural world are very efficient: very efficient at keeping things the way they are, very efficient at posing resistance to change; and, in earnest, the documentary has not worked well enough to get where we wanted to get. It has effected changes but, as I said, in these activist spheres, not much further I think. Also, as far as I know, there hasn’t been much more production, after the documentary, related to the subject matter we addressed, not that I can think of, neither documentaries, nor films, nor novels. We cannot say that the cultural world has continued working on the question, or looked at it from a different angle, or promoted it. That’s why I don’t think we have had enough impact.

Well, I think that audiovisual culture is the most powerful tool to change how we look at things, or at least to construct an image of how things are. That is a complicated undertaking, but yes, it is very powerful, above all to break the preconceived idea you have of an issue. Even if it seemed to you like a part of reality until then, because what you were seeing fit in the box of that preconceived idea. Well, the image has this capacity of putting into crisis, of challenging previous thoughts, prejudices, clichées. And it seemed to us that a book, an article, ends up being read by people who already agree with what you think or who already o are concerned with the issue. Whereas visual culture has this capacity to be distributed in a much more agile way, and to arrive more easily. At least to challenge prejudice, and then, as I said, to construct another imaginary. Well, that is something very very complex, constructing another imaginary, and we regret that our film has not had enough impact to promote more initiatives like that.

It’s very interesting what you just said, that the moving image can “put into crisis“ what we know.

It is very very direct, very immediate. To do the same with other cultural tools is more difficult. It’s necessary but much more difficult. Ah and also it wasn’t so much that I chose filmmaking but rather that filmmaking chose me. In the sense that the proposal for the documentary came from Raúl de la Morena, who is the documentary filmmaker of the project. It was his proposal and from there we went on to making it. And once we had made the documentary, other experiences followed, like the film „De vivir y otras ficciones“ (Living and Other Fictions) or the TV series “Trèvols de 4 fulles” (Four-leafed clovers). All these were possibilities that came from having made the documentary. Well, the opportunity with Raúl came along, and it made it sense to me and the other experiences that followed, too.

I think it’s very powerful when you work from such different points of view.

Raúl is a professional in the field of film. And my participation in the project came from that personal experience and personal contacts, and knowledge of certain stories, certain realities, that made sense to be shown in the documentary. It was definitely very enriching for me, on the personal level as well as on the political, the process of making a documentary. And I think for Raúl it was too, because in the end it opened these windows of great intimacy. The persons show themselves to the camera in situations of great intimacy. Despite the fact that, all their life, they have received negative statements about their body. Like „this body is bad, or ugly, or broken and has to be repaired, has to be rehabilitated“, like „it’s a body that is not supposed to be that way, it is not a desirable body, it’s a disgrace, a problem“. So expecting people who have received that message about their bodies all their lives to be willing to show the most intimate moments of their sexual practices – even just to talk about them – was very difficult. It made sense, Raúl being the cinematographer, for me to participate in the project as co-director, because opening these windows was nothing easy.

Would you call yourself an artist? Why or why not?

No, because I see my relationship with art more as instrumental. I see art as a tool to address political struggles /questions. But it’s not a one way street /a one-sided relationship: I think art is not only a tool in service to activism, they enrich each other. Activism can enrich art too, it can make it more powerful. It can give a truth of lived experience to art.

You have worked quite a lot with artists and curators, such as Urko, Paul Preciado, or Eva Egermann. Which changes would you like to see in the art scene so it becomes more accessible?

Well, something that has accompanied us through all of history is the necessity to have one’s own voice. The necessity for people with function diversity to have access to the circuits of artistic production with their own voice. Without necessarily being mediated by professional artists, as someone who comes to help from outside or wants to use you or in the best case collaborate with you. But it’s necessary, this own voice, this facility, this access to art production for persons with functional diversity as their own persons. Also access to the art circuits as the audience of artistic works. And it is also about facilitating this access, because, even today in 21st century Europe, this access is nor guraranteed. Take for example the theatres of Barcelona - and it’s one of the cities most recognised for its physical accessibility for people with functional diversity - the theatres have one space reserved for a wheelchair, or two, in a specific place, so you cannot just go to the theatre with somebody and sit where you like or choose your seat when you buy your ticket. Something as simple as watching a theatre play when you are moving with aid is just not contemplated, so there isn’t this easy access to the theatre, for example. Or to the cinema or to exhibition venues. Perhaps the museums are a little better, although when they set up the exhibition they don’t take into account how low you are and how high the pieces, the paintings, whichever artworks, are placed. In short, what I would like to see is the access to culture being not only possible but also facilitated, so that it can be a part of life for persons with functional diversity, too.

What would you advise to aspiring culture workers and activists?

Well, that they let it be. (we both laugh, but in the laugh sounds a knowledge of the hardships of dedicating oneself to culture or activism)

That they open up to getting to know each other, the other’s point of view; to share. The outcome will be richer if you let the others contaminate you a little, with their roles and points of view and obsessions. And they will have something very interesting to say about all this.

I would encourage them not to have a very fixed idea of how things have to be, but be open in their approach to art, also to approach social and political movements and whoever there is on the other side to be interested in art - not only as something beautiful and entertaining, not as entertainment, but as a political tool, too. And in the other direction, for art to have social and political movement not only as a topic, but as something that should be taken into account in artistic production itself. Like what sense does art have, or what is your position in the world and how should your art relate to reality. What is its responsibility in the construction of reality? Because in the end, it’s a very interesting sensation to experience in certain projects. A very clear sensation in art doesn’t only represent reality – which is already important, that it represents, that it shows and makes visible – but that it goes further: art creates reality.

My project, let’s say at the political and professional level, is a novel. I am trying to write a novel. And I hope this year I will be able to finish it. This is what I have most clearly in front of me, trying to finish the novel.