OBSCENITY
“To forge a bond with the other that transcends the standard rules of courtesy. Instead of relying on supposedly civilised values of respect for the other and mere postcolonial condescension, the real challenge is to establish a bond of shared sordid obscenity” — Žižek.
Credits:
Soprano | Sandra Lanuza
Mezzosoprano | Ángela Abraham
Tenor | Marcos Castrillo
Percussion 1 | Daniel Caballero
Percussion 2 | Adrià Fort
Live electronics | Alejandro Álvarez
OBSCENITY approaches obscenity not only as excess, provocation or transgression, but as a space from which to think about forms of bonding with the other. Against the fictions of correctness, neutrality or decorum, the work explores how black humour, discomfort, sexuality, symbolic violence, drugs and different forms of oppression can operate as materials of friction and contact, revealing what civilised culture attempts to expel or keep out of sight.
The piece is constructed as a saturated pastiche of cultural residues, drives, contradictions and layers of meaning that are difficult to reconcile with one another. In this sense, obscenity appears here as that which emerges from the reverse side of culture: from its rubbish, its remains and its symbolic dump. The work does not seek to purify this material, but rather to expose it in all its rawness, constantly tensioning the relationship between the grotesque, the laughable and the violent.
The vocal text incorporates, among other materials, Catullus’ famous invective —“Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo”—, often read as one of the major examples of obscenity in the Western literary tradition. Its presence does not function as a merely provocative quotation, but as an index of a genealogy in which obscene language condenses aggression, desire, power, humour and violence. OBSCENITY thus situates itself on that uncomfortable threshold where laughter, rejection and recognition become entangled, proposing obscenity as a negative, conflictive and ambiguous form of community.
