Full of Honesty and Simplicity

The Barrelhouse looks over the top end fork of the High Street, just where it branches off that way to the castle and this way into the Narrows, where pedestrians take their lives into their own hands. Weather abiding, a busker or two usually inhabits this public stage as do usual characters sitting around the sidewalk cafe tables, rolling and chatting, drinking their coffees. It’s a lively intersection of Totnesian life and the Barrelhouse is the anchor that holds this scene together. By night it fills up with earnest talks and meetings, except weekends when it comes alive showcasing some of the best musicians in Devon. Daytimes, creative sorts come to hang, laptops flipped open, co-conspiring over Americanos about this or that design project or play or music project their intentions are set on manifesting into the world.

This is where Emilio and I often meet for morning coffees, and today we talk about film and media in Transition. You might have already heard of Mr. Mula because of his beautiful animation work in new Transition 2.0 film and Rob Hopkins’ “5 Questions” piece in his Transition Culture blog. Since he and his partner arrived here from Spain a couple of years ago, he’s produced about thirty Transition related films, from documenting talks and events, to producing the “Story of Transition in 10 Objects” series.

You might think that this filmmaking bonanza is what drew him and Sara to Totnes in the first place, but you’d only be half right. “We originally came to Totnes with a plan to stay for six months to complete our own film, ‘Words from the Edge’. Ah, and we are almost finished. When we were in Malaga a few weeks ago and saw what my editor had done, it was a good lesson for us. It was not exactly what we were expecting, but you know, there are many ways to tell a story. It was not wrong, just...different. And I like that, you know, there must be diversity in the way we tell our stories, that’s the way it should be with Transition.”

And that’s the way our conversations typically go as we follow the flow, not linear like a string of symbols, but rather more like experience, noticing. He tells me as much, as our chat goes from relating the facts of how ‘everything has led up to this moment’, to realisations about how transition communications and story telling could be, or how it should be, as we all co-create a cultural refresh.

But this is a problem, I say, in my analytically linear way. While that sort of holistic, pre-language consciousness may still be accessible, language is as an essential aspect of our human-ness. How do we get past that?

“There is another language, it is art,” he says. “Somehow we must make the language of Transition a holistic language full of honesty and simplicity. And so, the role of the artist must become more like a facilitator, so that art can become a natural language for us to use.” At this moment, we both think of Ruth Ben Tovim, who embodies this in her work with Encounters.

Before coming to Totnes, Emilio spent several years focused intensely on permaculture, after doing a course in Extremadura, then spending several months helping to teach a course on the Canary Islands. This was also during a period when he was a well-known VJ, creating video art for galleries, raves, and so on. Somewhere in there, he and a collaborator created an animated film, winning awards from several film festivals. “Two and half years of work for five minutes. That’s not sustainable!” Before that, he worked for a variety of interactive studios. He also published a Manga series in Japan.

You started out as comic book illustrator, I ask? “I was always drawing when I was a kid, and then one day I decided that’s what I wanted to do. So, I put together my portfolio and went London, although my English wasn’t very good.” For three years, he was a sought after illustrator working on graphic novels, and was published in Deadline Magazine.

And then he drops this bomb: “I actually studied to be an accountant and worked in a big firm for a couple of years until I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

That kind of sums him up – following his heart, taking risks, and with honesty. It inspires me. It’s what eventually led him to make his own film, land in Totnes, and get involved with Transition. And it will lead him back to Spain, following his vision as it evolves. He’s involved in the first “transition” conference there, taking place this April, but it will have its own identity since “transición” carries a lot of historical baggage. He’s also pondering ideas on how to forge links between Malaga and Totnes.

We talk awhile longer about interactivity and multimedia, Digital Be-Ins, animating objects and people instead of charts and graphs, how social media can be really “transitiony”, OK GO, jazz – it all fits together into a wonderful web of threads.

And then it’s time to pause, until our next morning coffee at the Barrelhouse.

Images: Self portrait, Emilio Mula; Title from Acendente, Award-winning animation by Emilio Mula