Fernando Arrabal: About Alfred Jarry and Pataphysique

Screenings will include Arrabal’s films ‘Viva la muerte,’ and ‘L’Arbre de Guernica’ as part of Performa 13.

Fernando Arrabal (born 1932) is a legendary Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet. Arrabal, a self-described “desterrado,” “half-expatriate, half-exiled,” was born in Melilla, Spain, but settled in Paris in 1955.

He was a friend of Andy Warhol and Tristan Tzara and spent three years as a member of André Breton’s surrealists group. In 1962, Arrabal co-founded the Panic Movement with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor, and was elected Transcendent Satrap of the Collège de Pataphysique in 1990.

Forty other Transcendent Satraps have been elected over the past half-century, including Marcel Duchamp, Eugène Ionesco, Man Ray, Boris Vian, Dario Fo, Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard.

Arrabal has directed seven full-length feature films; he has published over 100 plays, 14 novels, 800 poetry collections, chapbooks, and artist’s books; several essays, and his notorious Letter to General Franco during the dictator’s lifetime.

Free. The screenings will be followed by an evening conversation moderated by Frank Hentschker at 6:30 pm.