FLUX SUMMA: Xavier Sabater

Screening of a video with a selection of performances and interviews made by poet Xavier Sabater between 1999 and 2010, and subsequent discussion with Rosa Grau Amorós.

Activity curated by Flux Festival / Habitual Video Team

With the participation of Rosa Grau Amorós

Acknowledgements to Krònia


Xavier Sabater

Xavier Sabater (Barcelona, 1953-2014) was an underground poet, pioneer of polypoetry in Spain: poet, editor and promoter of cultural events related to poetry, polypoetry, avant-garde art and poetic experimentation. Starting in the 1970s, he worked especially on underground, social, oral, sound, phonetic, electronic and visual poetry, polypoetry, video poetry and cyberpoetry.

He recited his poems at all kinds of poetry festivals and exhibitions in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany and Argentina. His work has been compiled in anthologies, cassettes, compact discs and videos in national and international editions, in countries as diverse as Brazil, Portugal, Germany, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Russia and the United States. He published several books: Poesías bajo tierra (1973), Oscuros silencios de bronce (1978), Saba-Sanyo-Casio (1992) and Versos adversos (2014).

He also produced musical poetry and performance with the groups Laboratorio Informal de Actividades Diversas (LIAD), Sección de Investigaciones Sin Sentido (SISS), Poliphonètica Dinàmica and Il·lògic Art Company. He has practised collage, computer graphics and copy art, among other things.

As an editor, he directed the publishing houses EdicionesSinComplejos (1973-1974), La Cloaca (1976-1980) and Sedicions (1991-1998). He was also active in many marginal publications such as Muerte de Narciso, Exóticas nuevas, WarieteeeS and others. He published texts and essays in magazines and cultural publications, spoke at universities, on the radio, in the press, etc., and exhibited his visual poems all over.

As a cultural promoter, in 1990 he became involved with the association La PAPA (Performers, Artists and Associated Poets). He was the director of the Barcelona Polipoesia Festival from 1991 to the end of its run, and, from 2004, of CyberPoem: Digital Poetics Exhibition. In 1994 he promoted the first video poetry exhibition in Spain. In 1998, he was promoter and curator of the interactive CD Ciberpoesia Catalana 1.0 and, in 2002, of Ciberpoesia Catalana 2.1. Again in 1998, he organised the First International Congress of Polypoetry at the CCCB.


Rosa Grau Amorós

Rhapsodist, performer and actress.

www.facebook.com/rosa.grauamoros