El oficio de morir

A lecture that betrays theory and becomes a cathartic outpouring sparked by a love between East and West: an accident.

How can pain be transformed into a mise-en-scène? This is the question that Argentinian director, performer, author and teacher Marina Otero first asked herself in one of her early works in Buenos Aires, a question she now asks again, a decade later, on another continent, in another country: Spain, where she currently lives. To answer it, she has organised a performance on creation, followed by a discussion with the audience, which she has titled El oficio de morir, paraphrasing the title of the diary of Italian writer Cesare Pavese (El oficio de vivir), in which he writes: “Poeticising is a wound that is always open.”

Otero’s performance explores romantic love through the lens of her relationship with an Arab man, placing on the table the process of a forthcoming work which, following the systematic organisation the Argentinian artist has brought to her own creative practice, will become another notch in her own life. This vital project, which she plans to complete on the day of her death, she has called Recordar para vivir. Works from this project have already been seen at the Festival de Otoño: Fuck me (about the death of youth), Love me (about violence), and, at Teatros del Canal, Kill me (about mental health), exercises in “autofiction with performance,” as she describes them.

Her shows have toured the world, appearing in Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, Portugal, Singapore, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Greece, Poland, Israel, Sarajevo, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, Australia, and Argentina.