Hospitality, guests and rules

We consolidate the experience of a more democratic dialogue with the third programme of La Taula [The Long Table]. This time round, we offer you seven events with a line-up featuring conversation with the hosts Quim Bigas, Denise Duncan, Isabel Sucunza and Oriol Puig Taulé. The latter three artists will be responsible for two sessions each, but will be covering different topics in each one. In this original project by the Split Britches company, anyone can talk about what they want, starting from an initial topic while always following the etiquette of listening to each other.


I want to talk about the hospitality and the roles that are exercised around it.
What does an invitation involve?
What does it mean to open the doors of a theater for people to share experiences?
How do I remove the inherent roles that exist in any invitation?
How does the hostess become a stranger in her own home?
What exactly are we inviting?

And I would like to share two interesting excerpts from the book Of Hospitality by Anne Dufourmantelle and Jacques Derrida, in which she invites him to answer her questions:

"So it is indeed the master, the one who invites, the inviting host, who becomes the hostage—and who really always has been. And the guest, the invited hostage, becomes the one who invites the one who invites, the master of the host. The guest becomes the host’s host. The guest (hôte) becomes the host (hôte) of the host (hôte). These substitutions make everyone into everyone else’s hostage. Such are the laws of hospitality."

"Does hospitality consist in interrogating the new arrival? Does it begin with the question addressed to the newcomer (which seems very human and sometimes loving, assuming that hospitality should be linked to love-an enigma that we will leave in reserve for the moment): what is your name? tell me your name, what should I call you, I who am calling on you, I who want to call you by your name? What am I going to call you? It is also what we sometimes tenderly ask children and those we love. Or else does hospitality begin with the unquestioning welcome, in a double effacement, the effacement of the question and the name? Is it more just and more loving to question or not to question?"