With Juan Luis Nicolau - Portraits in Times of Pandemic
Guitarras Alhambra asks Alhambra artists from all over the world what they think and how this pandemic has affected their lives.
Interview with Juan Luis Nicolau
1. How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected your artistic activity?
As far as public artistic activity is concerned, it is clear that everything is paralysed, everything has been cancelled, but as regards artistic activity at home, that one that takes place at home, I would say that it never stops, so much so that sometimes so many ideas come up that you have to control or even rationalise them.
2. Now that we all have to adapt and reprogram ourselves to this situation, in what new projects are you working on?
In fact, since teaching is done online, it requires an adaptation to these systems through the Internet. Therefore it is a dedication, an additional effort to make this adaptation. Certainly you always have a lot of extra time and this has allowed me, for example, to make a harmonization and play some voices to a popular song from my homeland that my 4 year old son sings and that he has learned from his grandparents and that has helped me to learn a little bit more about the production, the learning of the production of audiovisual presentations, obviously always from an amateur point of view but it has helped me to go deeper, as I say, in this learning process and it has also helped me to get closer to my country from a distance.
3.- In what positive way do you think this situation is affecting the society and the planet?
This situation necessarily invites reflection and it invites reflection because right now the planet breathes and it is true that if this anxiety that society feels right now if it is managed to canalise it in a positive way it could help to achieve a more human world. It is certainly true that the human being is the only animal, as the saying goes, "he is the only animal that stumbles twice over the same stone", but at the very least, this should imply a social learning.
4. What hobby or other activity have you started doing that you did not have time for before?
The fact is that my work is my hobby, or to put it another way, my hobby is my work, so what I try to do is look at the prism from different angles in order to try to create and try to innovate and as far as possible make modest contributions to the world of art.
5. What would you advise to artists and art lovers in general to focus and be positive on this global stage that we are going through?
Well, considering that music accompanies a lot and for a long time for those people who have always wanted to learn to play an instrument, this could be a good time, even more so considering the resources available on the Internet. Obviously, I am referring to learning to play an instrument for fun, as I say, with the resources that are there would be totally feasible, totally viable. With respect to artists, in reality, few tips can be given to them because what they try to do all the time is to create, to look for new aspects and sometimes they even require self-confinement so naturally it is something they will be doing trying to do as I say, to create and contribute.
6. After the coronavirus, do you think we will have learned anything and changed our lifestyle?
We hope so and we hope that this will be the case in multiple facets and to give an example at an operational level, at a practical level, we can think that in those industries where teleworking has now been implemented in a general manner, if we look closely that its advantages are greater than its disadvantages, this teleworking could be more than just an option. However, beyond these operational and practical aspects, it is certain that a change in attitude would be relevant, that there will be a change in mentality once this episode passes. It is true that once this episode is over there will have to be good management from the economic point of view but as far as people's attitude is concerned this situation must be seen as a cure for humility, it must be a lesson that humanity must learn and since it is about human beings appreciating life, they must appreciate what they have in general.
