Catastrophe & Utopia in Rafael Spregelburd´s theatre. A reading of an intermedial landscape

Abstract

Rafael Spregelburd is undoubtedly one of the most outstanding Argentine playwrights on the international scene, as well as one of the most productive of his generation. His work has steadily investigated the theories of the complexity and philosophy of language. It is a theatre that also concerned with experimenting on different intermediate relations (combination, referentiality, among other operations) with the visual arts, cinema, literature, music and television. This is the case of Spam (2013): A man wakes up in a hotel without memory. Surrounded by boxes of speakers dolls and dress with the tuxedo, Mario Monti plans to reconstruct his identity from the e-mail. Borrowing some procedures and motives of police genre, the plot not only develops Monti´s odyssey and his contact with the criminal underworld, but also an interesting reflection about junk environments in contemporary capitalism and, at the same time, the symptomatic and strategic use of the cultural archive. The present work seeks to articulate the intermediate perspective and theatrical studies (Rajewsky, 2015; Sarrazac, 2009) with an eye on the specific characteristics of Rafael Spregelburd’s artistic work (Rodriguez Carranza, 2016; Dubatti, 2012). The purpose is to analyze the dialogue of the theatre with other means as an effective (artistic and critical) way to reflect on the contours of contemporary art and, above all, to inquire about the possibilities of representing the recent history and the world of today (Bal, 2016; Pardo, 2006).