Josep Pedrals and Marcelo Expósito: "On és el tot?"

Wednesday, 18 December at 19.00
La Tribu bookshop (carrer Pons i Gallarza, 30)

On és el tot?
Josep Pedrals and Marcelo Expósito 
Talk

Sala Beckett commissioned Josep Pedrals with a new translation into Catalan of Waiting for Godot, which he did by comparing three versions: the French original (En attendant Godot, 1952), the English translation by Beckett himself (Waiting for Godot, 1955) and the only existing translation into Catalan, by Joan Oliver (Tot esperant Godot, 1960). Pedrals has followed the words of the author but he has also taken a few licenses, recreating the changes of each text to adapt them to the context of each language (cultural, territorial, etc.). The first difference in comparison to the previous Catalan version is the title.

Where is everything that was in the Catalan version? By removing tot, the everything, from a play where very little happens, means playing with this paradox. A small gesture that, at the same time, distracts and exposes a whole world of possibilities, just as Beckett did. Because Godot represents the act of waiting and its effect, that very slight action that turns nothing into everything: whilst we wait time passes, so much so that we call it living. In everyday repetition and waiting there is tedium, frustration, but also the prodigy of variations, small changes that renew the augury of what is to come. Waiting is also desiring and it is precisely this impossibility of exhausting doubt and diluting yearning that allows us to continue desiring.

With Josep Pedrals and Marcelo Expósito we will discuss the complexity of translating Beckett, of everything lost and gained with each translation, and how the authorship is blurred in the shared drift of common desire.

Josep Pedrals (Barcelona, ​​1979) is a poet, translator and rhapsodist. Seasoned in the world of poetic recital in the Catalan-speaking world, he has collaborated with various media outlets, including the newspapers Avui and ARA and also Catalunya Ràdio. In the musical field, in 2007, he performed the hip-hop song Endoll, with Guillamino. He previously performed with Explosión Bikini and is currently working with the band Els Nens Eutròfics. 

Marcelo Expósito (Puertollano, 1966) is an artist, teacher, essayist, activist and politician. Trained in the schools of institutional critique, conceptual art, public art critic, feminist critique of visual representations and modern political documentary, he develops his work as an artist producing a broad videography and extensive work of an interdisciplinary character, mainly combining video, photography and writing.