Activities

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.  

As part of the performing arts program designed in collaboration with Teatros del Canal, the Museo Reina Sofía presents A Dance Lecture by Toni Jodar, anticipating the organisation of International Dance Day.

Inside the framework of the exhibition The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s (Museo Reina Sofía, 20 February – 27 May 2019), this session of activities seeks to examine relationships between indigenous identity, art, visual culture and the politics of representation on the continent, extending across three chronological landmarks: historical avant-garde movements (1919), neo-avant-garde movements and the crisis of the modern paradigm (1989) and contemporaneity (2019). 

The Museo Reina Sofía organises two round-table discussions, over two sessions held on consecutive days, focusing on the experiences of community healthcare in Madrid and Trieste in relation to the work of Franco Basaglia and anti-psychiatry.

Inside its Library and Documentation Centre, the Museo Reina Sofía presents A Throw of the Dice… a three-way conversation in two parts between dancer Israel Galván, artist Pedro G. Romero and graphic designer Filiep Tacq.

The colonial-capitalist regime’s micropolitical principle is the abuse of vital forces in all elements of the biosphere — including, naturally, the human element.

I diari di Angela. Noi due cineasti (Angela’s Diaries: Two Film-makers) is a posthumous homage from Yervant Gianikian (1942) to his lifelong partner and artistic companion Angela Ricci-Lucchi (1942–2018), in a final elegy and poetic act of love following her sudden death in 2018.

Affection in Re-Existence is a project developed by the research group Situated Feminisms, associated with the Museo Reina Sofía Study Centre and made up of researchers Elisa Fuenzalida and Jeannette Tineo.  

The work of Charles Ray (Chicago, 1953), one of most renowned sculptors in specialised critique, addresses the phantasmagorical quality of reality. The artist sets out from a questioning of sculpture making, translating daily experiences, memories and contemporary subjects into statuary.

On this occasion, the programme shines a light on cases in Spain and the Southern Cone of South America, starting, firstly, with the unveiling of the exhibition Incomplete Times. Chile, the First Neoliberal Laboratory, in the Museo’s Library and Documentation Centre (from 21 March to 24 May 2019), and the guided tour by its curator, Nelly Richard.

Feminisms is a publication by L’Internationale online, with its point of departure from the diverse situated perspectives interwoven into movements such as ecofeminism and xenofeminism.

An analysis of the relationships of feminism across history, its affirmation as a political approach after the 2017 struggles and its impact on current transformations of capitalism form the aim of this lecture.

Across a large part of the planet, the feminist movement is inexorably rising to the fore in the transformation of political action and in the postulate of other, more equal and less patriarchal ways of inhabiting the world.