User:TSCJ/Ruth Baza

Baza's literary style, which leans into aesthetics of rock, audiovisial, and commercial culture, places her squarely within Generation X. Her contributions to Spanish literature in 90s and early 2000s share Anglo-Saxon aesthetics, pessimism, and existential angst with authors such as  Gabriela Bustelo,  Roger Wolfe and Nicolás Casariego. Her language ranges from lyrical to critical and direct.

Biography
Ruth Baza was born in Madrid on February 29th, 1972. Her parents separated when she was young, and, due to her father's work, she spent a good part of your girlhood outside of Spain. Based an extended interview with Baza, Alina Fernándezsummarized in Una hoja de lechuga (A Leaf of Lettuce), that "“Because of the separation, Ruth moved from one place to the next, like a migratory bird. She also lived with her grandparents and mother for long periods. Her Jewish grandfather was her friend, accomplice, and teacher. Suddenly she found herself with her father, who led a different life in various countries. Her grandfather introduced her to music and literature. Baza devoted herself to her studies dance. In Europe she enjoyed a happy childhood, even though it was a world of adults”. ​"In 1990 Baza enrolled at NYU, majoring in Media, Culture and Communications. At the same time she worked as a correspondent for the magazine  Interfilms and the Spanish daily El Mundo. After one semester she abandoned her studies in favor of full-time work, maintaining homes in New York and Madrid until 1997.

In 1998 Baza moved to Tokyo, where she continued writing for various outlets while embarking on literary and artistic adventures

In 1999 Baza acknowledged publicly that she had suffered from anorexia and depression from the age of 11. ​​

Journalist
Since beginning as a correspondent and a journalist at age 17, Baza has developed the greater part of her professional life in the United States. She was written for a wide variety of print media such as Cosmopolitan, GQ, The Guardian, Interviú, Cambio 16, El Semanal, El Correo, Cinemanía, Zero and Primera Línea. She specializes in an interview form that departs from the usual question and answer format in favor of a literary approach more closely resembling a transcribed conversation, which she has deployed in Sunday supplements to daily papers such as  El Mundo Magazine, La Esfera, Metrópoli, 7 Días, Crónica y La Revista- between  1990 y 1998. Her interviews featured luminaries such as  Anjelica Huston, Iggy Pop, Isabella Rosellini, Kathy Bates, Slash o K.D. Lang among many others. ​

Between 1994 and 2003, she published celebrated interviews with figures such as maligned French actor Gerard Depardieu in Cinemanía​; the American shock-jock Howard Stern, and the eccentric Dennis Rodman for the April-May 1997 Spanish edition of  GQ, which dared to put the former  NBA player on the cover posing with model and actor Rebecca Romijn. The cover was so controversial that it was censored in the United States because it was considered too racy, as much for its erotic implications as its racial elements. The 15-year-old  Ivanka Trump gave Baza her first and only interview to a European outlet for the September 21st 1997 issue of the Sunday supplement of El Semanal. The cover story, which included an extensive fashion modeling section, appeared under the title,  Ivanka Trump: or how to rule the world at 15. Ruth Baza ended her reporting prophetically, "Ivanka Trump has everything a person needs to become the new princess of America:  looks, personality and money."

In addition to an opinion column in the weekly supplement Evasión, she published interviews with Yoko Ono​ y Candida Royalle​in the daily El Correo.

Over the course of her career, she has written about critical social issues (analysis of fascist boom among youth in recent decades; ​ progressivism, violations and vindications of women in the 21st Century and ​ and "girl power" ​), as well as issues surrounding the counterculture, American society, and 21st-century art and architecture.

Baza hosted Radio Minuto's En el Calor de la Noche and Onda Cero's Caliente y Frío in 1999 and 2000 From 1999 to 2002 she was widely known for her weekly appearance on the morning program Día a la vista on Ràdio 4 (RNE), presented by Jordi González, with a section devoted to the world of culture.​

Writer
In 1999 Baza published her debut novel, La vida intermitente (The Intermittent Life), which departs from conventional narrative with a documentary style that combines interview format with the road movie genre. The novel exposes the aesthetic of rock music and cinema at it's most morbid and perverse. Critics lauded it as a perfect portrait of the spirit or lack of spirit of a petulant, nihilist, consumerist generation that devolves perfectly into chaos, walking up to the edge of the abyss, intending to fill its own emptiness with more emptiness.​ Juan Gómez-Jurado of ABC includes it among the most radical works of the moment, together with American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis,  Green River Rising and Bad City Blues by Tim Willocks, Cannibal Youth: an anthology of extreme horror  (various authors), Stockholm de Gustavo Escanlar and Patient: the True Story of a Rare Illness by Ben Watt.​

The Intermittent Life was adapted for the theater by Pedro Pením, celebrated Portuguese actor, director, dramaturge, and founding member of Teatro Praga company.​  The work was awarded the Teatro Amador Prize in Lisbon for the best work of the year 2000.

Baza's short story,  La luna falsita appeared in After hours: una muestra de "cult fiction". The collection brought together a group of authors who, as Javier Calvo explains in the introduction, "do not follow the mainstream but rather have pursued independent paths, staying true to themselves."​​

Soon after, she published La dolce vita, the unauthorized biography of Alessandro Lecquio, ,​ which was endorced by the writer Leopoldo Alas, who also wrote the prologue. Lecquio tried to have the book seized and sued the publisher and the author for "alleged" emotional distress because, among other reasons, the author revealed and condemned repeated occasions on which Lecquio abused various women, events that he minimized and even bragged about. The examining magistrate found against Lecquio conclusively and in 2004 she closed the case after the judgement of the Spanish Supreme Court to which Lecquio had appealed after having also lost in the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid. The criminal investigative judge found against Lecquio. After the Superior Court of Justice in Madrid and then the Spanish Supreme Court also ruled against his appeals, she closed the case in 2004.

In 2000 Baza returned to the interview and biographical essay format in  The First Time: an Elías Querejeta Production. She juxtaposes each interview with others to share with her reader a sense of intimate conversation as much with the producer himself as with a number of the producers who worked with him.

Ese mismo año, la editorial Manuscritos publica su poemario, Laponia, una de las primeras obras creadas únicamente para la Red.​ En noviembre suscribió un escrito junto a Fernando Arrabal, Fernando Maestre, Daniel Múgica, Antonio Dyaz, Joaquín Albaicín, Andrés Sorel, Isabel Vaquerizo y Fernando Claudín, rechazando la afirmación de Arturo Pérez-Reverte según la cual la última entrega del Capitán Alatriste era la primera novela española publicada en la Red.​

Accusation against Depardieu
On December 19th, 2023, the Barcelona-based daily,  La Vanguardia published an extended report​ in which Baza accused the French actor  Gérard Depardieu of raping her in Paris on October 12th of 1995 when she was 23. The alleged rape occurred on the premises of Roissy Films production company, where she had gone to interview him for the magazine Cinemanía.

She reported the incident to the police in Málaga on December 14th, 2023. The author explained how the incident remained buried in her memory until reading the April 2023 investigative report by Marine Turchi in the French digital daily Mediapart, which revealed alleged sexual abuse by the actor against 13 women in France. Baza reported that the news report provoked "an internal explosion" that led her to rediscover a description of the assault in nine pages of her personal diary from 1995. Baza reports that re-reading her own account of the traumatic episode recalled to mind events that her memory had suppressed. ​ ​ ​

In a statement to the Spanish wire service Agencia EFE, Javier Angulo, then the director of ‘Cinemanía’, confirmed that Baza told him upon her return from Paris that the interview had been "very unpleasant." and the actor had thrown a motorcycle helmet at her head. "She was traumatized," but did not reveal what had transpired during the interview. ​

Her accusation lands on top of the four investigations in Paris related to alleged sexual abuse and rape. Prosecutors in Paris are also investigating the apparent suicide by the actor Emmanuelle Debever in early December. At age 60 Ms. Debever confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted by Depardieu decades earlier.

Novel
· 1999 - La vida intermitente (The Intermittent Life)

Biography and Essay
·1999 - La dolce vita: The Unauthorized Biography of Alessandro Lecquio. Prologue by Leopoldo Alas Mínguez

· 2000 - La primera vez: una producción de Elías Querejeta (The First Time: An Elías Querejeta Production)

· 2002 - El imperio de los sentidos (The Empire of the Senses) Special edition of Cáñamo magazine.

Contributions to collective works or works of other artists
· 1993 - Beatlemania (opinion)''. One year of Rock `93 [5]''

· 1999 - The Fake Moon (story)''. After Hours: A Sample of Cult Fiction''

· 2001 - Vaginometría (story). Evophat: The carrot, 58 visions.

· 2002 - Rewind (story). VANIDAD The Skin I Lived  [6]

· 2002 - The Psychoactive Kosher Kitchen (recipe book)''. On Marijuana: An Apology''

· ''2021 - Tori Amos (Entrevista y Fotos: Ruth Baza) "Masturbarse es como crear música". Popular 1 Archivos. Vol.1''

Stories
·1996 - Pavana for the deceased Ravel. Downtown Magazine

·1996 - Sunday's Children. Downtown Magazine

·1999 - Aurora, an Impressionist History of Prostitution over Three Lunch Dates. Vanidad [7]

· 2000 - Kousurata. Vanidad [8]

Poetry
· 2000 - In2 Japan

· 2000 - Laponia

2000 - Santa Águeda / H2O Fiftyeasy

Catalogs
Baza has contributed to the text for various authors' catalogues. También con el pintor valenciano Antonio de Felipe, con Petit, Norit, Yoplait, y otras Meninas del montón en su catálogo/libro Antonio de Felipe, editado por Fundación Bilbao Bizkaia Kutxa, 1996, junto con textos de Laura Revuelta, para la exposición en la Sala de Exposiciones de la Fundación Bilbao Bizkaia Kutxa, Bilbao, en 1996.​

In 2000 she took part in Levi Strauss Brand's  international On the Road project. Together with four other Spanish creators, she paid homage to the Beat Generacion with language and customizations of the legendary jeans from its catalogues. En octubre de ese mismo año también participó en la exposición Design Expressions by Lucky Strike, dentro de la 2.ª edición de muestras artísticas itinerantes de Circuit, Barcelona.​

En 2007 expuso una habitación Victoriana con antigüedades y taxidermia antropomórfica en la 7.ª edición de FEM, Festival Edición Madrid de Jóvenes Creadores.​