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BLANCHOT IN BUENOS AIRES
(OR THE WRITING TO COME)

2015, Experimental Film, 42 min. National Library, Museum of Language and the Book, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
 
In Blanchot in Buenos Aires (or The Writing to Come), philosophy, poetry, and conceptual art intertwine in a gesture of fictional archaeology. The film begins with the imaginary discovery of “The Blanchot Box,” an unpublished project supposedly commissioned by artist Alberto Greco in a letter to poet Ricardo Carreira. In the hands of a philosophy student, this apocryphal archive unfolds into a speculative space, where the voices of philosophers and poets—often anonymous—trace the possible resonances of Maurice Blanchot’s thought within Argentine theory and poetry.
 
It is not about documenting what was, but about imagining what could have been. The film activates a Blanchotian poetics in Buenos Aires: fragmentary, choral, without thesis or hierarchy, built through the drift of citations, images, and gestures. In this movement, writing becomes an aesthetic experience, and thought is breathed as a sensitive material—whispers, pauses, repetitions, silences.
 
More than representing, the work invokes an unavowable community in the Blanchotian sense: singularities meeting in the shared attention to a thought in flight. Blanchot in Buenos Aires is not a record of the archive, but a writing to come.

In April 2025, cult literary figure Dennis Cooper declared a “Maurice Blanchot Day” on his blog, spotlighting Blanchot in Buenos Aires and sharing it with his global community of readers (denniscooperblog.com). 

The film had earlier premiered at the National Library of Argentina in September 2015. The screening was followed by a roundtable with leading voices in philosophy, literature, and art. Mónica Beatriz Cragnolini—Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires and Senior Researcher at CONICET, known for her work on Nietzsche, Derrida, alterity, and animality—and Alejandro Kaufman, cultural theorist, essayist, and professor at UBA and the National University of Quilmes, placed the film within contemporary debates on community, language, and literature (pagina12.com.ar). 

Also present was Dr. Noelia Billi, then completing her doctoral dissertation on Blanchot. Today, Billi is recognized as the thinker who coined the term plantismo in Argentina: a philosophy that learns from plants—resilient, collaborative, and diverse—to imagine communities beyond capitalism and human-centered logic.

—CULTURA EN CASA

“BLANCHOT IN BUENOS AIRES (OR THE WRITING TO COME), BY SYD KROCHMALNY, DEDICATED TO AN UNPUBLISHED PROJECT THAT ALBERTO GRECO COMMISSIONED BY LETTER TO RICARDO CARREIRA.

EXHIBITIONS

Blanchot in Buenos Aires (or The Writing to Come).

Premiered at the National Library of Argentina as part of the conference “Maurice Blanchot: Fragments for a Philosophy.” 2015.

Blanchot in Buenos Aires (or The Writing to Come).

Cultura en Casa (2020). Featured Blanchot in Buenos Aires in the City of Buenos Aires official cultural streaming platform during the COVID-19 lockdown. 

Press Clipping

Artifactoid (December 30, 2015).

Full Film and Interview with Argentine Conceptual Artist Syd Krochmalny. New York-based cultural magazine featuring a full-length interview and online screening of the film.

Diario5 (2020). Cultura en Casa

Highlights of the Weekend. Online article recommending the film among the weekend’s featured cultural content

La Vereda (April 2020). 

Cultural Recommendations in Quarantine. Listed the film as part of the Buenos Aires digital arts and culture program.

Río Negro (April 2020). 

Ideas for watching, doing, and having fun at home.

SK

© 2025 by Syd Krochmalny

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