Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Damián Comas. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Damián, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. Can you talk to us about what pushes you to start every new artistic project?

Throughout my artistic life I have tried to make my work meaningful. That is my starting point; to say or create or command something that has a profound value; that contributes from the sharpness of a different perception. Works that help us to look at or understand a certain aspect from a new angle. Obviously, I have failed countless times and, for the same reason, I have been right a few times. I am a filmmaker and a writer who was trained in the visual arts, specifically in stone sculpture and, many times, I still understand my work from the stone, as strange as it may seem.

First of all, I like to think of each of my works as a pebble. Being then the “thug” who throws a pebble in a certain direction and with it, manages to alter or stop reality for an instant. Like the stone that breaks the glass of a window that no one had cleaned in years and with it, a new landscape, a new horizon, that had been completely forgotten, appears. Or the small stone that falls into the engine of an immense machine and causes an entire factory to stop working; so that each worker begins to ask himself, what is his function if the machine of the world stops for a day? Or the pebble that simply throws to the ground a porcelain vase that had always been there and, suddenly, its emptiness or absence detonates an infinity of questions about what we accept as absolute norms, rules, laws, values or customs.

I believe that only in this way, when we affect reality, a new reading of it begins, where without knowing why or how, almost suddenly, a work has opened our eyes and the world is presented in a different way.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce the way you work, and your books and your movies to our readers?

As stone that had to be sculpted, I work too many hours on every project to “build by removing” so that more than 15 hours of recording can become an hour that presents a profound reflection. For example, my film “Malos Aires” is a continuous photograph that portrays a couple of Argentineans who meet again during one night in lockdown, during the pandemic, in Madrid, it shows and reflects on a specific relationship, a problem that was affecting most of society and focus in the nostalgia of the decisions we take during our lives. My documentary “Lacanianos” rescues the essence of Jaques Lacan school and it creates an analysis of the current world, as well as the essence of each of the interviewees, to build a thread between their dialogues so neat and with the right pauses to talk about 3 specific topics that are too uncomfortable for society: the repetition that lives in or unconscious, the death drive that plays in our minds everyday and the historic hate of feminine. Most of my work is very intimate, but sometimes I do things more massive, like my novel “Chaos”, in which Mexico City is seen without water. Or “Cenizas” (Ashes), a novel in which the main character goes down hidden under the seat of a car to escape from his country during the argentinian dictatorship and a good part of the novel consists in a space without characters, a presentation of life in which the ashes of the disappeared present us the emptiness of humans mistakes, hate and stupidity. My last movie is called “Against beauty”, and basically is the story of two young adults in Rome, he is Italian and she is Russian. Both are full of passion and desire, and their bodies are so connected but the more they talk or know about each other the more the emptiness grows between them.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

That’s a great question! I still wonder how so many people can read a book and never feel the necessity of writing one. For me it’s always been the opposite, I love reading other authors, looking at their works, their movies or their paintings but… I always feel the necessity of telling a new story in a different way, creating an image that hasn’t been seen and that it crosses my brain. Doing it, creating it, brings a lot of satisfaction and, specially, when you actually create something that becomes meaningful to yourself and for others; that way I have always found an equation of happiness.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

With each project I try to create an entity that knows how to defend itself. In so many ways, an artist always starts a new work from scratch. If one day you made a great film or a great novel, it doesn’t mean that the next one will be better. So we have to be extremely severe and critical of ourselves, hoping that each work will open its own path and that it will keep rolling independently. I think that’s the only way art should stand up for itself. Because if anything is my work as a director or writer, it is the intention to give it a solid integrity that time and the external factors erode so slowly that it can move and move forward.

Contact Info:

• Website: damiancomas.com
• Instagram: @comasdamian