Pedro Soler (Singapore, 1967) has been the director of Barcelona's arts production centre Hangar since December 2005. The centre's objective is to provide means and resources to visual artists. Hangar offers specialized editing suites, two film sets, equipment hire, production consultancy, workshops and grants for artists. The centre is financed with public money (The regional government of Catalonia, Barcelona’s local council, Ministry of Culture, Barcelona’s provincial council) and the Foundation Banc de Sabadell. So the director has to hold meetings with high ranking people in the administration world. And, Mr Pedro Soler, the director of Hangar, has been seen at the end of many meetings sitting not on the chair, but on the long table, with his legs crossed like a Hindu, addressing the rest of the people in an informal way. No one bats an eyelid, no one is surprised by his behaviour, he is totally natural, and they respect him.

On other occasions, if the meeting is not formal and the people know each other, he has been known to end up sitting on he floor.

In Hangar’s annual report of 2007, Mr Pedro Soler wrote the introduction as usual. The unusual thing about it was that the introduction was accompanied with a photo of the demolition that the local council, one of Hangar's financiers, carried out of some of the installations within the industrial area, Can Ricart, Barcelona, where Hangar is situated. The demolition order meant that many artists had to leave their studios. That day, artistic centres such as La Makabra were stripped of their space, they had to leave, surrender. Mr Soler said that ‘in the neighbourhood Poblenou, we have lost about 100 artists and 18 spaces. Hangar is the only one that remains here in Can Ricart.’ Mr Pedro Soler can’t have approved as he included the photo of the demolition that the local government itself had provoked in the report that they, as a financier of Hangar, had to read. Everyone respected his gesture once again.   

Soler is respected because he knows what he is talking about. His job is not only to know the already acclaimed artists but also those in the pipeline, the young ones. That is why the director of Hangar, who is pushing 40, can be seen both at punk parties where the short film of a new director is being projected and at raves where an unknown and up and coming sound artist is on the decks, as well as at art galleries and museums all over the world. Mr Pedro Soler is respected because he does his work: he feels the pulse of the city and he tries to get everything he can out of it. When journalists ask him what he does, he replies in a straight forward and direct manner: ‘Provide free and democratic access of means for art production (...).  Folk are brimming with creativity. The question is... how to find an outlet for all this? We have to professionalize artists.’

His curriculum shows that his role is that of a catalyst. Before he was director of Hangar, Pedro Soler founded the distributor of multimedia art Fiftyfifty, gave workshops in theatre with audio and interactive video in Paris, Strasbourg, Mulhouse and Poitiers, and was the curator of Sonarama, the real-time audiovisual production programme in the festival Sónar. His role is to build stepping stones so others can create. His obsession, however, is real-time video, and when he was a member of Dadata – specialized group in audiovisual production – he created new software so that computers allowed the images of a performance to be seen live.

Another obsession of Pedro Soler, graduate of Digital Arts in the Audiovisual Institute from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, is theoretical discussion, that once again focuses on the transmission of video in real-time. He is interested in finding out more about the effect it has on people living in one room with computers that broadcast images in real-time from other spaces and therefore other times. How capable are we of living in different times and spaces? asks Mr Soler, born in Singapore, educated in France, resident in Barcelona and travelling half the world.