Pablo De Miguel
About
Pablo De Miguel is a writer and researcher based in London. Much of Pablo's work concerns abandoned places, and the act of walking through them. That variety of walking is bound up in questions of art theory, and much of it takes on a literary-charged cast. His recent work examines place-making in the art of Louise Bourgeois or equates a derelict bullpen to Marcel Duchamp’s ‘The Large Glass’.
Pablo researches art and architecture in an urban planning firm for a living. Before that, he worked in a small theatre in South London, and earlier still, he read International Relations at the London School of Economics, where he earned the Philip Noel-Baker Prize for best dissertation.
Statement
When I arrived at the abandoned bullpen by the name of El Saler it was a sunny, crisp day, as is usually the case in Valencia in September. I considered how far I had come — I had crossed my front yard into the pine forest, taken the same bus I took every day to the train station, followed the sand trail parallel to the trainline and walked a little further into the wetlands. Maybe two hours or so. It was a clear day and the bullpen looked very peaceful, although this could be because of the long walk which had left me in a calm stupor. I pulled my rucksack sideways and closed it, and put on a hat even though the sun didn’t quite bother me yet. As I half-expected, as soon as I begun moving across the corrals I felt something stirring inside of me. This was the first time in many years in which I saw El Saler Bullpen, available to me until then only in disjointed images that surfaced to mind from time to time. The sun was pleasant, and enduring. It invested the site with gleaming shapes which took the form of a white-washed wall, a tree trunk contorted by the sea wind, and many leaves dotting its branches.
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My final major project The Bride and the Bullpen begins as the record of a journey on foot through an abandoned bullpen in coastal Spain. The description of the site becomes the conduit through which I analyse Marcel Duchamp's artwork The Large Glass (1915–23), and the character of the Bride in it. By taking Duchamp's notion that art is a lens through which to look at the world, I make the bullpen take on some of the qualities of The Large Glass until place and artwork merge into one.
Interview with Hamish Pearch
Interview with Hamish Pearch
In November 2022 I interviewed artist Hamish Pearch. We talked about earthquakes, Timothy Norton and speaking tortoises.
Access the full text in the PDF link below.
Medium: Interview
Interview with Vicente Todolí
Interview with Vicente Todolí
In December 2022, I had the privilege to interview curator Vicente Todolí in Todolí Citrus Fundació, the largest collection of planted citrus trees in the world, about his ongoing mission to preserve a cultural landscape and disseminate knowledge related to citruses.
Access the full text in the PDF link below.
Medium: Interview
'Still', from the publication Extending Family
'Still' from 'Extending Family'
In spring of 2023, the RCA MA Writing cohort collaborated together to produce the publication 'Extending Family', of which my piece 'Still' is part of.
In the words of editor and tutor Sally O'Railly: "Extending Family is a gathering of texts by the 2022-23 cohort of the Royal College of Art Writing programme, and a collective response to the Foundling Museum’s ‘Finding Family’ – an exhibition spanning nearly four centuries and many perspectives on familial relations. Some writers focus the show’s themes through the lens of their own lives; some consider the broader social connotations of a particular artwork or object; others imagine distant pasts or strange futures. Together they become a multitude of voices, moods, and viewpoints – each a personal take on inheritance and allegiance, and a reflection on what it means to relate."
Access the full text of 'Still' in the PDF link below.
Medium: Short story
Cell VII: Catalogue for an Attempt at Repair
Cell VII: Catalogue for an Attempt at Repair
'Cell VII: Catalogue for an Attempt at Repair' is an art review essay about Louise Bourgeois' 'Cell VII' (1998). It employs a list of word definitions to weave a narrative between the visual description of the work, Bourgeois' biography, and the relationship of language to images.
Access the full text in the PDF link below.
Medium: Art review essay
The Bride and the Bullpen
The Bride and the Bullpen
'The Bride and the Bullpen' is my Independent Research Project for the RCA MA Writing program. It begins as the record of a journey on foot through an abandoned bullpen in coastal Spain. The description of the site becomes the conduit through which I analyse Marcel Duchamp's artwork 'The Large Glass' (1915-23), and the character of the Bride in it, drawing extensively from the metaphysics he lays out in 'The Green Box' (1934).
I take Duchamp's notion that art is not so much something represented but a lens through which to look at the world to make the bullpen take on some of the qualities of 'The Large Glass', until the two get confounded into a single artwork.
Access the full text in the following link:
https://indd.adobe.com/view/39d94a5c-5386-4dd1-90cc-1fdc8a64cb79
Medium: Expanded essay