“We do not dare to create genuinely”

A drop of coffee on the edge on the table; words written on the awnings of old butchers shops, personal memories, unknown and incomprehensible for those who do not know the author.

That is the audio-visual material that the project “Bread included” has compiled. It is a video blog created as the careers´ final paper of Anna Patricia Martínez, a recent graduate in Fine Arts at Barcelona University.

The videos, no more than 3 minutes long, are short pieces that recreate the author´s mind.

“Each video shows images and sounds that aim to explain moments and things that have caught my attention in my everyday life”, Anna Patricia Martinez explains.

The title of the project is a tribute to all those old bars and restaurant menus which always had that sentence written on them.

”Little by little, I have liked to take my camera with me all the time, and I am not embarrassed while recording in the streets. My videos are part of my everyday life, and they have become a basic food for me, my bread”, she comments.

CREATING BY LOOKING

“Bread included” throws and gets a look to and from the streets and the landscapes where the author goes. It gets the whisperings of people she meets in her journey, aiming to capture what has always been there. It only requires a little effort of panoramic observation.

“Nowadays, we do not allow our thoughts to interrupt our everyday life duties. But what would happen if I stop and pay attention to those thoughts? Recognising and rereading my own environment, helps me to know myself better”, Martínez reflects.

The video blog ends up being a place where the five senses can experience what the author told. “I wonder which would be the final visual result of others, after doing what I do with my videos. It intrigues me to know how others read the simple moments; what they think; if they also make up mental games; if they have any fixation or obsession”, she says.

“Sharing with others, I realised that one of the ways to answer my question, is answering it myself, knowing and celebrating that the video blog is one of the thousands of points of view that coexist in the city of Barcelona.”

CRITICAL THINKING

But Martinez also pursues to have a critical thinking against a culture where the immediacy wins: burgers made in less than 1 minute; news delivered in seconds, busy schedules that make the cities frenetic, etc.

She stops in roads and streets to look around and observe attentively, without pressure or hurry.

“There is a lot that passed unnoticed around us, and that is very sad. I am convinced that there is a physical, sensory and spiritual reality, and it is our privilege to investigate, observe and learn from it”, she affirmed.

Our society is teaching the new generations that only the new matters, and your professionalism depends on the novelties you can offer. On the contrary, “Bread included” shows a special sensibility towards the old things that are rejected by society, and tries to give them a new perspective.

“In our society, everything is already made, and we do not dare to think in creating genuinely. According to the ridiculous pressure that society puts on us, every time someone starts a creative project it has to be innovative for the world. But, of course, 'everything is invented'. So, at the end, people stop experimenting”, argues Martínez.

“In my personal experience, I learned that the process is worthy by itself. There were things that I took for granted, and it was not until I learned them from scratch that it had an important impact in my life”, she added.

“When I understood that, I started a new journey, at my rhythm, where what it really matters is to delve into what I do, not matter if it is something obvious or the last trend”, she concludes.