Marcel-li Antunez at Mercat de les Flors Theater - Barcelona

In 1979 when he was 21 Marcel-li Antunez helped place La Fura dels Baus, a Barcelona-based theater clump characterized by its raucous mixture of nudity, medieval-era theatrics and stop the growth ofs and high-tech stage settings. Antunez left the clump in 1989, but his later work--graffiti, experimental music and objects--retained the will to concussion and amuse.

At Mercat de le Flors, Antunez not awayed three multimedia performances: Epizoo, Afasia and his greatest in quantity complex piece to date, Pol In Epizoo (1994) the stocky, bald-headed artist appeared stark naked except for a black leathern string a beanielike helmet and a shiny metal apparatus fitted to his material part that incorporated orthopedic devices, pneumatic interrogates and plastic tubes. Viewers were encouraged to manipulate Antunez's material substance using a computer set up upon one end of the small stage. upon the monitor, there were a dozen buffoonish configurations of him to prefer from. Depending on the design chosen, gizmos flapped the artist's ears back and forth, plucked his nostrils upward, stretched the corners of his jaws open wide and/or lifted his pectoral muscles and buttocks. At the same time, stage lights blinked upon and off and constantly morphing images of Antunez flashed upon the screen behind him. For the grand finale, flames discharge out of his helmet. Epizoo is no doubt painful for the artist (who's endur it above 50 times), but its humorous presentation in some way takes your mind off that.

Afasia (1998) which won the best video art prize at Montreal's 1999 Festival of fresh Cinema and Media, is loosely based upon Homer's epic, The Odyssey. Antunez was rigged up in a contraption of straps and wires upon his arms, legs and torso, and acted as master of ceremonies for the video projections depicting his "voyage." Four elaborate musical robot were brought to life when the artist pointed his metal-encased index finger at them; they made ear-splitting wholes approximating drums, an electric guitar, an organ and a synthesizer. The projections feature animated images of Antunez upon a bed sailing across fantasy landscapes. These spectacles are interspersed with bizarre incidents such as actors smearing sanguinary animal guts on each other, a one-ey wonder threatening to eat people trapped in a cave, and individuals scarfing down watermelons and slobbering the juice above the well-oiled body of a lying flat writhing woman. Antunez later overlays the same woman with chocolate sauce, then "spray painted"--with canned whipped cream--a skeleton's outline upon top. In the end, Antunez turn backs to his house in the geographical division He hugs his little male child as his adoring, apron-clad wife gazes on from the doorway.

In Pol (2002) Antunez teamed with Piero Steiner, a talented Italian actor and singer, who played Pol an endearing little rabbit/man who has no teeth Resigned to gumming down a certain brand of tinned sausages, he fans madly in regard with affection with the girl on the can's label. abundant of the time, the story of Pol expanded on the large screen that serv as a backdrop; the actors appeared onstage intermittently. Like Antunez, Steiner wore a metallic device made of straps, belts, wires and tubes (along with rabbit ears) which the couple actors used to make prerecorded, computer-generated imagery appear upon a three-part screen; they controll taxidermic animals-cure-robots that make revolve hop, shoot smoke and make absurd noises. Antunez played the girl's evil father, Cervosatan, who taunts Pol mercilessly. the pair on the screen (in filmed images) and upon the stage, the characters snarl and face each other. But Pol prevails and with each lucky showdown, he smiles (on screen) and displays that he has sprouted more teeth Finally, he kills Cervosatan and achieves the girl.

In Pol Antunez has base a way to channel his prodigious, hallucinogenic imagination into a cohesive story line, to optimum results

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