Artist Pedro G. Romero will analyze the paradox of Carmen in an in-depth lecture tracing its roots from Pushkin’s poem The Gypsies – one of the sources of the Carmen myth – to an exploration of language and jargon within Carmen’s narrative.
The myth of Carmen – the famous fictional character from literature and opera – has been rejected by Sevillians, Spaniards, and the Romani as a stereotype, a folkloric reduction, and a tourism-friendly cliché. Carmen is critiqued in postcolonial studies as an exoticized piece within a system of dominance and marginalization of the Romani, a community seeking to reclaim itself as a political subject. For these same reasons, Carmen is also an example of the liberation and emancipation of new, late-modern subjectivities, of individuals striving to define themselves beyond inherited markers: those of nationality, race, class, culture, or gender.
Read more about the talk
The aim, then, is to resituate this paradoxical functioning that reveals the lumpen origins of the myth, its significant journey through the different phases of the construction of cultural capitalism, its fetishist character – Carmen is also the table that dances in Marx’s famous text – and at the same time its performative character; in short, it is these contradictions that allow the myth to continue to be productive. In particular, it explores the use of jargon and languages – French, Spanish, Basque, Caló – and cultural misunderstandings – French, Russian gypsies, Europeans, Spaniards, Andalusians – in the construction of the myth. Puskin was a Russian poet of African descent, conveniently whitewashed as the father of Russian literature, and this original sin extends throughout Carmen, not only for its racialising effect in situating the story among gypsies, but also as an original paradox that makes all kinds of meanings and signifiers collide: the knives with which Carmen dies over and over again are nothing else. The same Carmen that Nietzsche invokes in his texts against Wagner, against the totalitarian aesthetic project, against the subjection of life to the total Social Fact of any anthropology. A Carmen who sacrifices her own life in the face of the dominant biopolitical regime, in the face of money, in the face of art, even in the face of love.
As part of this programme we screen the film Carmen y la libertad in our film hall. You can buy a combi ticket to visit both the talk and the film.
Language: Spanish with live translation into English
Carmen and Carmen
From 20 December to 12 January, award-winning filmmaker and multimedia artist Wu Tsang presents Carmen and Carmen: a film installation, along with a program of films, talks and performances, that together explore the myth of Carmen in conversation with her collaborators.
About Pedro G. Romero
Since 1985, Pedro G. Romero has been active as an artist. He was involved with UNIA arteypensamiento project at the The International University of Andalucía (UNIA) and served on the Platform for Reflection on Cultural Policies (PRPC) in Seville. He is part of the pie.fmc team (an independent platform for modern and contemporary flamenco studies) and collaborated in Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel alongside Israel Galván and Niño de Elche. Romero directs the “Flamenco and Popular Culture” series at Athenaica publishing. Between 2020 and 2022, he directed the films Nueve Sevillas and Siete Jereles, and in 2021, he released Wittgenstein, los flamencos y los gitanos with Àrcadia publishing. In 2022, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía showcased a retrospective of his work titled Máquinas de trovar. As a curator, he presented Popular at the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern in 2023, and in 2024, he completed his film De caballos y guitarras.
(c) Photo: Jaime Tuñón García
Speakers
Wu Tsang has curated several films that have inspired her work on Carmen. Today we screen the television episode Carmen y la libertad (1996).
A project by filmmaker and performance artist Wu Tsang
In Carmen and Carmen award winning filmmaker and performance artist Wu Tsang explores the myth of one of the most portrayed characters in Western culture. The story of Carmen, the title character from the iconic opera by Georges Bizet, has been told and retold over the past 150 years. Habanera, the aria in which she
