“We have a lot of feelings with them, but some of them are very cold and they don’t even look at us. They don’t know we are there”

After failed attempts at painting and video art, the Barcelona-based duo Lolo & Sosaku eventually began exhibiting as a sound project in 2006. With machines and motors, they produced a sonic world that recalled noise and industrial and Lou Reed’s contentious 1975 album Metal Machine Music. These tracks are rich in timbral diversity: engines hum, instruments are methodically destroyed, tension hangs on taut wire strings. More recently, though, the duo have begun aiming their machines at canvases. In their Barcelona studio, small spinning robots stab away at paintings like brainless elves, scribbling with the wobble of a baby’s motor skills. These are analogue creatures from the era of mechanical industry, made of wood and alloy, wires and pistons, tape and nails.

To create their work, Lolo & Sosaku let the machines go about their business, occasionally adjusting them. One machine waddles to the right until it gets stuck and repeatedly slaps away at a corner, accumulating paint. Another wanders off to the far side of the studio. Still another crawls across the length of a painting, dragging a tenuous line. When the moment is right, Lolo or Sosaku steps in to interrupt, sending the devices off on a new streak of mark making. These motoric instruments are sculptural beings in themselves. Full of character, they thrum away constantly, just as we do: a ticking heart, breathing lungs, the regular tides of the nervous system. They live to work, and work to make art.

On the phone, I spoke to Lolo, but not to Sosaku, whom Lolo describes as “shy” and resistant to interviews. Lolo is used to speaking for Sosaku, whose intentions he understands well after almost two decades of collaborating. In all our exchanges around this interview, Lolo was enthusiastically warm – ‘hugs’ in every email – and he continuously apologised for his poor understanding of English (his first language is Spanish). When we spoke, Lolo had just returned from a vacation to San Sebastián, and, as was apparent from the playful sounds in the background, had recently become a father.

Η συνέχεια εδώ.