Indescribable artist, executioner, experimental designer… Keeping up with Mau Morgó can be quite difficult. His feet are always one inch up in the air, as is his imagination. He even planned his own public execution during Offf festival as a metaphor of the ephimeral nature of ideas. 

Mau Morgó started his career in the world of graphic design. Now he’s more focused on the visual arts and sensorial experiences through spaces and interactivity with technology. He has undertaken projects that range from publishing to music videos with 3D printing, virtual reality experiences, concerts with smartphones as instruments or multidimensional bars. He has worked for brands such as Samsung, Acer, Intel, Converse or Bombay Sapphire, and musicians like Spoon, Little Dragon or Cut Copy.

What do you think you can contribute to O with? Or what do you expect O to do for you?
I hope to bring to O the same that O will bring to me: experiences, concepts, feelings and challenges.

What are you working on now (if you can talk about it)?
My last project is my cover letter for O: a homage to Joan Miró, co-directed with Maria Sosa for Turespaña. We built a sculpture the shadows of which, projected on the sand at 1PM on March 1st 2016, created the logotype that Joan Miró designed to promote Spain abroad. But one of the ones I’m certainly prouder of is the one I presented a couple of months ago at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris: it’s an experience centred on digital meditation through virtual reality.

Why do we find so difficult to pin down and classify your work? How would you define what you do?
Most of the time I don’t have a clue about what I’m doing, so it’s not something that happens to you only! It’s something personal. I haven’t found a label to define my work, and the more I ask myself or get asked, I see more clearly that I should keep on asking. I think that I should keep that question mark open about myself in order to be able to create concepts in new formats and keep on evolving. I know that if I get typecast, people will ask me for more projects like the one I did a while ago, and I don’t want that to happen. It’s complicated, because I always want to change my way of doing things, mixing techniques, making mistakes, decontextualizing tools… The result of this equation is always different, but it exudes the same scent, you can tell it’s the same person behind each work.

Do you think that image possibilities (the possibilities of creating through images) aren’t explored thoroughly enough?
I think there are far too many rules in the creative game. I like skipping as many as I can, doing things I shouldn’t do. But that ends up being a new rule… I’ve discovered that when I make mistakes I learn a lot more than doing things well the first time round. Very often, it’s during that process towards the solving of a problem when I find new paths equally or even more interesting than the first; and I always decide to follow that path created by serendipity. I think people should mix disciplines more fearlessly. I don’t know, maybe one of those mixtures we made with oil, vinegar, water and salt and the rest of glasses on the table of a restaurant was good! 

What would the perfect photograph or ideal project be like for you?
I’m not so much interested in the ideal project, as in the ideal client. I don’t care about timings or budgets. When there’s respect and the will to do something conceptually powerful, the rest doesn’t matter. But it needs to be someone prepared to take risks.