Film and Video

O que arde (Fire Will Come, 2019) takes centre stage in this edition of Intervals, a series devoted to screening recent film productions. The film, a story of containment and the wish for destruction based on the life of an arsonist, won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes 2019. Its director, Oliver Laxe, will present the first session and hold a talk after the screening.

Inside the framework of Museo Situado, a network of collaboration with different migrant collectives and associations from Madrid’s Lavapiés neighbourhood and the Museo Reina Sofía, this new edition of Situated Voices explores the different artistic and feminist approaches to the notion of debt, understood as an instrument of economic, political and cultural domination.

The Museo Reina Sofía’s alignment with the celebration of LGTBIQ+ Pride is based on the archive, tracing the footsteps of experiences which have been systematically banished from collective memory.

In conjunction with the Transgender Day of Remembrance, held annually to remember those who have been killed through transphobia, hate and fear, the Museo Reina Sofía will organise an encounter to present the Archivo de la Memoria Trans (Archive of Trans Memory, AMT).

As part of the performing arts series staged in collaboration with the Community of Madrid’s Teatros del Canal, the Museo Reina Sofía presents An Evening of Solo Works by choreographer Meg Stuart. Upon the conclusion of the performance, the artist will participate in a conversation, presented and moderated by Isabel de Naverán.

The Documents programme explores the relationships between art and publishing, and other subjects that include the effects of archive on narratives of art history, the artist’s book and publishing as an artistic practice. On this occasion, artist Azucena Vieites will conduct a workshop on collective practices related to the feminist and queer fanzine.

As part of her European tour, trans sudaca activist Susy Shock and her group Bandada de Colibríes (Flock of Hummingbirds) will perform a concert in the Museo Reina Sofía, coinciding with the release of their latest album Traviarca. Traviarca is a neologism alluding to that transvestite which, due to their experience and wisdom, is respected by their equals and community..

This new edition of Intervals, a screening series centred on recent film work, presents the latest film by J.P. Sniadecki (USA, 1979), made in collaboration with Joshua Bonnetta (Canada, 1979). As a member of the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab, J.P. Sniadecki melds experimental film with ethnographic research, analyses of the film medium and immersive experiences.

As part of the series of performing arts staged in collaboration with the Community of Madrid’s Teatros del Canal, the Museo Reina Sofía presents #LOSMICRÓFONOS (#THEMICROPHONES) by Jorge Dutor and Guillem Mont de Palol.

This encounter, organised by the Museo Reina Sofía, welcomes poets Charles Bernstein and Ron Silliman and artist Susan Bee, all with close ties to the Language poetry movement, to perform readings and present their past and present work, as well as engage in conversation with the attending audience.

The second edition of the Aníbal Quijano Chair sets up a dialogue between two experiences of communal feminisms, understood as the grounds from which to build other ways of life: the farms and gyneceum’s of the Kurdish Confederation, a democratic organisation that questions the state logic of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria; and the movement of public Afro-Latin American self-organisation in Colombia.

The 1936 coup d’état and the ensuing civil war splintered reality, the pieces scattering across complex [in]exiles, disappearances, silences… faltering and inconclusive narratives, fertile, multifocal and widespread memories that pulse and throb today, cross-examining the present and managing to distort a univocal, hegemonic gaze.

Coinciding with the start of the 2019–2020 academic year, the Museo Reina Sofía’s Juan Antonio Ramírez Chair invites intellectual Stephen Eisenman (New York, USA, 1956) to take part in its programme of master lectures.

Actress Delphine Seyrig (1932–1990) and artist and film-maker Carole Roussopoulos (1945–2009) revitalised the post-1968 feminist movement in France by way of their intensive and pioneering work in video, tearing down, with joy and caustic incision in equal measure, the passive roles attached to women in the 1960s and 1970s. This documentary, with two screenings in different sessions, reconstructs their story.

The Documents programme explores the relationships between art and publishing, and other subjects that include the effects of archive on narratives of art history, the artist’s book and publishing as an artistic practice. This edition, therefore, presents the Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir, an audiovisual archive that comprises the first feminist video in France and representations of women in the mass media. 

The third edition of the seminar Archives of the Commons, co-organised by the Red Conceptualismos del Sur (Southern Conceptualisms Network) and the Museo Reina Sofía, takes as its point of departure a question that seeks to operate as a concept: Is it possible to put in place an archive as non-appropriable?

The Museo Reina Sofía opens a call to register for the performance piece Udlot Udlot, by José Maceda, in the areas surrounding the Palacio de Cristal. The call is aimed at anyone interested in music and does not require knowledge of music theory.

For the third year running, the programme Archipelago encourages an understanding of the complexity of the contemporary world through listening, exploring what is understood by experimental music and the relation it bears to popular culture by way of different narratives and geographies.

The Intervals series, which screens recent film work, welcomes one of the most arresting and poetic feature-length films in recent years, The Portuguese Woman by Rita Azevedo Gomes (Lisbon, 1952), a director who prolongs that constant tension between experimentation and narrative film-making in her work. 

This year sees the Museo Reina Sofía devote its summer cinema series to ways of appropriating, resisting and imagining the city from the neighbourhood understood as a community with class identity and a shared common history. Taking this main premise as its point of departure, the programme is organised into thematic weeks, in which every Friday and Saturday different films converse.

In conjunction with the solo exhibition David Wojnarowicz. History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Marion Scemama’s film Self-Portrait in 23 Rounds: a Chapter in David Wojnarowicz’s Life, 1989–1991 will be shown for the first time in Spain.

As part of the performing arts series staged in collaboration with the Community of Madrid’s Teatros del Canal, the Museo Reina Sofía presents, over two sessions, Corbeaux (Crows), by choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen. Upon the conclusion of the session on Tuesday 2 July, the artist and some of the dancers from the company Compagnie O will engage in an open conversation, presented and moderated by Isabel de Naverán, with the audience. 

From a trans-hack-feminist perspective, researchers Laura Benítez and Paula Pin set forth this co-laboratory based on Do It Yourself and Do It Together bio(info)technology — namely, self-managed and collective forms of organisation, work, care, learning, and so on — with which to consider a critical review of gynaecology through tools and technology of biological exploration.

This eighth edition of Situated Voices, promoted by the Museo Situado network, an initiative in which different migrant collectives and neighbourhood associations from Madrid’s Lavapiés neighbourhood collaborate with the Museo Reina Sofía, reflects on the borders which obstruct crossings and refuge for people in the contemporary world.

The Museo Reina Sofía presents the first retrospective on the film work of Josep Renau during his time in exile. This output, chiefly shown for the first time on this occasion, has been recovered by Luis E. Parés after his research into German and Mexican audiovisual archives. 

The film Estado de malestar (State of Malaise, 2019) by artist María Ruido sets forth an analysis of the malaise and illnesses stemming from capitalism in the information age. 

As part of the performing arts series held in collaboration with the Community of Madrid’s Teatros del Canal, the Museo Reina Sofía presents Mix-en-scene (2015), by choreographer and dancer Amaranta Velarde and artist and creative technologist Alba G. Corral.

This activity constitutes the second edition of the annual series Art and Tourism Imaginaries, which explores the relationship between tourism imaginaries and visual arts in Spain from the 1960s onwards.

This new session inside Intervals, a programme which screens recent film work, presents Oscuro y lucientes (Dark and Lucientes), the fourth feature by Samuel Alarcón (Madrid, 1980). The film is one of the most fascinating and original works on Francisco de Goya.

As part of a performing arts series, in collaboration with the Community of Madrid’s Teatros del Canal, the Museo Reina Sofía presents Le tour du monde des danses urbaines en dix villes (A World Tour of Urban Dance in Ten Cities), by choreographer and dancer Ana Pi.

Japanese artist and musician Tomoko Sauvage presents Hydromancy, a concert in which a set of her own instruments played in the darkness of the Museo’s Vaults Gallery and the use of water as sound material create, quite literally, an immersive experience.

The latest edition of Intervals, a programme which screens recent film work, presents An Opera of the World by film-maker and cultural theorist Manthia Diawara (Bamako, Mali, 1953). The film melds opera and documentary genres, reflecting on the historical relationship of migration and displacement between Africa and Europe in successive refugee crises.

The Museo Reina Sofía welcomes Kenyan novelist and essayist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938), one of the strongest voices in international and African literature and in the critical analysis of systems of thought tied to neocolonialism.

The Museo Reina Sofía presents a performance lecture and poetry recital on gaucho poetry and its relationship to contemporary music, conducted by Argentinian musician Martín Bauer.

The first retrospective on Sarah Maldoror (Gers, France, 1929) in Spain rediscovers a vital film-maker whose work remains obscure, despite her huge commitment to the decolonial movement and the struggles for social diversity from 1960 onwards. 

Perceptual Geography is a project by Dutch artist and musician Thomas Ankersmit and is based on the research conducted by American composer Maryanne Amacher (Kane, Pennsylvania, USA, 1938 — Rhinebeck, New York, USA, 2009) and the search to make sonic phenomena three-dimensional via the distribution of space.

This latest instalment of the Intervals programme, which screens recent film work, welcomes the first feature-length film by artist and film-maker Filipa César (Porto, Portugal, 1975). Spell Reel (2017) constitutes a reflection on the political history of West Africa, made from precarious film archives of the colonial emancipation of Guinea-Bissau, giving rise to an open question raised on how to write the history of those who have been driven out of the present and the role bygone remnants can play in shaking up our contemporaneity.