Dialogue-digression between Pablo Gisbert (El Conde de Torrefiel) and David Aguilar Sanjosé.
The overabundance of narratives that defines the contemporary world seems to have triggered, following the logics of economic inflation, to a devaluation of fiction as a tool of critical intervention. Documented facts and subjective experiences often tend to replace the (hyper) metafictional awareness or the suspicion of an unavoidably opaque language. Simultaneously, that raises some questions regarding the future of performing arts, or the performing arts as a future: are we pleading for a certain degree of innocence in the arts? Can we envisage alternative futures without fiction? Which role should writing play, then? How do we relate to History? Are we at the end of something? And if so, what shall we do with the ruins?
This dialogue is part of a program inspired by the exhibition The Mask Never Lies at the CCCB, in a dialogue between the Center for Contemporary Culture and the Sâlmon Festival.
David Aguilar: I graduated in Dramatic Arts by Institut del Teatre (Barcelona) and in Literary Studies by the University of Barcelona. As a research intern from the Department of Theory of the Literature and Comparative Literature at the University of Barcelona, I carry out a research project about metatheatrical strategies as a political vector in contemporary playwrighting. Being part of Sâlmon BETWEEN 2021, I organized a seminar on the role that theory and critical thinking play in the current performing arts.
El Conde de Torrefiel: From 2010, Tanya Beyeler and Pablo Gisbert lead the artistic project El Conde de Torrefiel. Our stage works shape a visual and textual aesthetics that arises from the oscillation between literature, visuals arts and choreographed movement. The project El Conde de Torrefiel has achieved its own distinctive stage language, mostly thanks to the support and visibility granted to us by European theatre venues and festivals.
We are currently undergoing a research project called ULTRAFICTION that will end up with the premiere of a staged work in May 2022. During 2021 and with a clearly experimental attitude, we have activated a series of public presentation of stage apparatuses willing to challenge the forms and inherent tensions currently contained in the concept of “fiction”. Sâlmon< 2022 is hosting the fourth take on this project.
