Marina Otero “Fuck me, love me and kill me is the idea of romantic love”

Marina Otero (Photo: Marco Roa)

On Thursday, October 3rd the new semi-fictional stage work “KILL ME” by Marina Otero opens at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin. Together with four dancers with mental illnesses and an actor who embodies the legendary ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, she presents a play combining her own personal biography (she is diagnosed with a mental illness) with the one go Nijinsky, which is characterised by severe schizophrenia.

Thomas Venker interviewed Marina Otero, the original Spanish version will be published via the German section of Kaput later today.

For „Kill Me“ one actor embodies the legendary ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, who suffered under schizophrenia. What fascinates you so much about Nijinsky that you decided to „reincernate“ / portrait him for your performance?

Marina Otero: To begin with: I have an obsession with time, I am interested in taking a fragment of the past and bringing it into the present. I am also moved by the idea of being reincarnated or being possessed by a dead person so that they speak through my body. These are little rituals that I like to do in my creations. But above all I chose the character of Nijinsky because of his megalomaniac delirium, his schizophrenia, his obsession with God and with dance.
Besides, when I was young, when I first heard about him, I had the idea of doing something with him and his sister Nijisnka. In this case I left his sister aside because he was the madman, and I wanted to work with madness, with our madness. Each madwoman with her own subject.

Is „Kill Me“ the inevitable next step after „Love Me“ and „Fuck Me“?

Yes, fuck me, love me and kill me is the idea of romantic love. It is a trilogy that talks about time, pain, love, violence, madness and death. The idea of “Kill Me” is to want to kill something we no longer want. Often time goes by and we transform some aspects of life, but there are also inner workings that return like a loop. Things are repeated in our lives that don’t do us any good and yet we can’t transform them. With this work I wanted to kill that idea of romantic love that only led me to disappear.

Accepting perhaps our misery is what brings us closer to the possibility of transcending or transforming what we no longer want. “Kill Me” is a step towards the acceptance of vulnerability. In this acceptance, true love appears: to find oneself with the people and things that are close to us, perhaps ‘true love’ is the constant struggle to exist. As Fito Paez said when he came to the premiere of “Kill Me” in Madrid: ‘It is a work that speaks of struggle’.

Since a few years you document your life constantly by film – an ambition that you will keep going till your dead. Simply and directly asked: why so?

I’ve been writing in newspapers since I was a child. Then, when cameras appeared, I felt the desire to film. In my diary when I was 10 years old, for example, I talk to the navy about the future. I’ve always had an obsession with time.
I am interested in how a person’s life can change. How desires mutate and how many of them are sustained and materialise over time.
I will record in every way I can until my death. Videos and photos interest me because they are the only way to have a faithful record of the facts. To then take them to a fictional zone and betray that fidelity. I am very interested in the boundaries of fact and fiction, truth and falsehood, although I almost always lean more towards ‘fidelity’ and ‘truth’, which I put in inverted commas because it is a way of questioning everything.

Are there moments of doubt?

All the time, but I don’t let doubt leave me immobile. I move according to intuition and come out of doubt on impulse.

How did your friends and family react on this artistic decision?

They are already cured of their fears. They already know me and how I live and work. And new friends or lovers have to know that this is the way I live. For me, living and making fiction go hand in hand, so it can be a bit confusing, a bit dangerous because everything can be exposed at some point, but it can also be fun. I’m still very careful and faithful to the people who accompany me, but if you hurt me the revenge will be terrible.

Marina Otero (Photo: Santiago Albanell)

Are there artistic influences for the aesthetics and the narration of your performance? Like specific artists or works?

I have a lot of artistic references. Much of my work is based on the idea of theft, stealing from those who inspire me. To discover my own particularities it is necessary to make a selection of things that we want to steal, then in the treatment of the creation and composition we will move further and further away from the original idea, from the fidelity with the quotation, until we find the particularity that makes it original again.
Some references I could mention from cinema, literature, scenic arts and visual arts are:
Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Agnès Varda, Tracey Emin, Louise Bourgeois, Angelica Liddell, Grupo Krapp, Pablo Rotemberg, Sophie Calle, Pedro Lemebel, Roberto Bolaño, Alejandro Zambra, Eduard Louis, Cesar Gonzalez, Luis Ospina, Lorrie Moore, Piedad Bonet, Leila Guerriero, Emmanuel Carrère, Gabriela Cabezón cámara, Camila Fabri and Selva Almada (among others).

How important is humor for you as a person and your art?

Humour is very important in life and in fiction, it’s what takes me out of the narcissism of tragedy. When I’m going through an uncomfortable, painful or difficult situation, the practice of seeing myself from the outside as if I were a foreigner to myself has given me the possibility of taking the weight off things. In many of these moments, the effect of seeing myself as an outsider has been to laugh. In the act of laughing it causes the muscle tension to loosen and the body to soften. Only a soft body can let in the unknown. Tension provokes repetition. I associate humour with a soft muscle tone. It is important for me to be able to work with different tones and to know when it is time for what. Dissociation is also an important training.

„Kill Me“ is not your first performance at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, you presented your works „Love Me“ and „Fuck Me“ already there.

It’s great to be able to return to HAU Hebbel am Ufer with “Kill Me”. I can’t find a better context to present these works than there.

After „Love Me“ you left Argentina for Spain. Why?

I went to Spain, because for a long time I needed to make a big change, to look at things from a different perspective. I chose Madrid because I was getting a lot of work in Europe, and I go where there is work. Above all, to be able to continue dedicating my time to what I love 100%. I chose Madrid because I love it, because of the climate, the language, the familiarity with Buenos Aires and because when I arrived I felt I had to move there. I believe and practice a lot in intuition. I make almost all my decisions from there and then I make them on impulse, if I think about them too much I don’t make them.

What is the thing you love most about Argentina?

The constant practice of survival. In Argentina artists are not artists, but people who create ways of surviving in completely unusual contexts.

And what do you hate most about the country?

Constant complaining and hatred.

How do you feel about the current developments in the country under the leadership of Milei?

What happened in Argentina with the election of Milei and his team to power was suicide. What is happening now is what he himself had enunciated: to destroy the country.

Is Spain living up to your expectations?

It is too early to draw any conclusions, but for now I am happy with the choice.

Marina Otero (Photo: Santiago Albanell)

Do you feel that living in Europe has an influence on your work? And if so to what extent?

In Europe there are more resources. This is good for my work, which also allows me to teach pro bono in an association with migrants who are in a vulnerable situation. If I were struggling for survival, I would not be able to create the works in the considerable time that I like, nor would I be able to have these experiences that I have wanted for a long time.

What does Marina Otero dream of?

I dream of continuing to do what I do and that with each work I can discover something new. That they take me to an unknown place.
I dream of transcending what I can’t yet. And above all I wish to improve as a person.