Sharing and circulating the work and thought of our friend and fellow traveller in OVNI, Toni Serra* ) Abu Ali, is a way of sustaining the questions, connections and spaces for reflection that we continue to share.
We are deeply grateful to everyone who, throughout the years, has contributed to creating, nurturing and sustaining this space—this crack—that we at OVNI continue to keep alive, despite everything.
At the heart of the texts gathered here, as well as the videos and projects, are open-ended investigations: questions that deepen, intertwine and open new paths.
This book is the result of a collective effort, coordinated by Palmar Álvarez-Blanco and Gabriel Villota-Toyos, friends, fellow researchers and long-time collaborators of OVNI. May these pages continue to travel from hand to hand, opening new questions, bringing people together and nurturing the complicities that make other ways of seeing and inhabiting the world possible.
Toni Serra *) Abu Ali was not only one of the most relevant authors and video artists of his generation, but also a co-founder of the Observatory of Unidentified Video. Above all, he was an explorer and seeker of light within a contemporary mysticism, accustomed to diving into the waters of audiovisual and poetic peripheries. His work and life bear witness to an attitude of honest commitment to our time.
The book Abrir la Visión brings together a collection of writings by collaborators, accomplices, and various friends from a rich and heterogeneous community. The intention was to weave voices together to trace a journey that crosses all kinds of spiritual and aesthetic landscapes: from Barcelona in the late eighties, we travel to New York in the nineties, and from there we walk toward Marrakech in the early two-thousands. Through his illustrations, Miguel Brieva gives form to this vital and artistic journey, endowing it with the tone of a legend that, paradoxically, feels very close.
The book has been published by La Vorágine and is now available for online purchase.