EMOTIVE INTERFACE. The Films of Metahaven
![Metahaven, The Sprawl: Propaganda about Propaganda [La diseminación: propaganda sobre propaganda], 2015, película](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/interfaz_emotiva_0.jpeg.webp)
Metahaven, The Sprawl: Propaganda about Propaganda [La diseminación: propaganda sobre propaganda], 2015, película
Held on 27, 28, 29 Nov 2025; 08, 09, 10 Jan 2026
The Museo Reina Sofía and the Márgenes International Film Festival in Madrid, here in its fifteenth edition, present this series devoted to the artist collective Metahaven. The programme is framed inside the working strand both institutions started in 2024, focusing on an exploration of contemporary audiovisual narratives, a hybridisation of languages and the moving image as a tool for practising critical gazes on the present. Emotive Interface. The Films of Metahaven comprises two sessions of screenings and a masterclass delivered by the collective, centring on the relationship between the internet, technology, time and the moving image. All sessions will be presented by the artists.
The work of Metahaven — Dutch artist duo Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden — encompasses graphic art, video, installations, writing and design around urgent issues related to governance, identity, power and transparency in the digital age. Thus, their practice stands at the crossroads of art, film and critical thought, as they employ visual language as a tool to explore the tensions between technology, politics and perception, their practice combining the rigour of the visual essay and a strong poetic component, where graphic design, digital animation and documentary material fuse into dense, emotionally ambiguous compositions that speak of post-digital romanticism through an allegorical formulation. The spotlight of this series shines brightly on some of Metahaven’s recent works, for instance The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object) (2024), in which they examine language, poetry and digital time, and on The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) (2015), an essay which explores how the internet and social media have radically altered the relationship between truth, power and perception. Finally, the duo’s masterclass is set forth here as a survey of the main themes explored by both artists.
Collaboration
Embassy of the Netherlands in Spain
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía and the Márgenes International Film Festival
Accessible activity
This activity has two spaces reserved for people with reduced mobility
Agenda
jueves 27 nov 2025 a las 19:00
Session 1. Metahaven. Home, The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) and Information Skies
— With a presentation by Metahaven
Metahaven. Home
Netherlands, 2014, digital archive, colour, sound, original version in English, 6' 12”
Metahaven. The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda)
Netherlands, 2015, digital archive, colour, sound, original version in English, Russian and Arab, with English subtitles, 70'
Metahaven. Information Skies
Netherlands, 2016, digital archive, colour, sound, original version in Hungarian, with English and Korean subtitles, 24'
This session gets under way with Home, one of the music videos the collective has made with Holly Herndon, a composer and soloist who explores the intersections between electronic music, AI and the human voice.
The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) is an audiovisual essay which explores the transformation of information and propaganda in the digital age. The film, straddling documentary, the visual arts and critical theory, analyses how propaganda is a decentralised and viral flow that infiltrates digital spaces, spreading via memes, videos, algorithms and shared emotions. Beginning at the origins of the Ukraine conflict, archive images, digital animations, internet interfaces and abstract landscapes create a hypnotic atmosphere that reproduces the net browsing experience and prompts the spectator to experience the confusion and ambiguity particular to the digital environment.
Information Skies continues the exploration of digital-age truth, perception and subjectivity, setting out a fragmented narrative in which a voice-over interweaves with images of natural landscapes, visual environments and digitised human faces, a composite that Metahaven uses to consider how we live in an “informational reality”, where emotions, beliefs and algorithms are all muddled.
viernes 28 nov 2025 a las 19:00
Session 2. Metahaven. Interference, Chaos Theory and The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object)
— With a presentation by Metahaven
Metahaven. Interference
Netherlands, 2015, digital archive, colour, sound, original version in English, 4'
Metahaven. Chaos Theory
Netherlands, 2021–2024, digital archive, colour, sound, Hungarian, French, Basque and English, with English subtitles, 25’
Metahaven. The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object)
Netherlands, 2024, digital archive, colour, sound, Dutch, English, and French, with English subtitles, 32'
This session starts with Interference, the second music video the collective made with composer and soloist Holly Herndon, exploring the intersections between electronic music, AI and the human voice.
Chaos Theory and The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object) are both poetic and abstract allegories on the emotional states of technology. In Chaos Theory, the digressions of two characters, X and Y/Z, in the contemporary world lead to reflections on the emotional and cognitive frailty of the individual opposite the information overload and social and environmental crises characterising the present. Through a meditative atmosphere, digital landscapes, moving skies and blurred faces, the human experience seems to be measured by screens and data, but is still traversed by sensibility and the desire for connection.
The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object) continues this existential introspection by examining how poetic language resists the instrumental logic of digital information. Based on a book of poetry by writer Eugene Ostashevsky (Leningrad, 1968), the video follows the protagonist, ONE, a descendent of refuse collector poets who discovers “the sonnets of feeling”, poems in which words, expressions, phrases and poetic conventions are uprooted and defamiliarized to transmit the experience of living on an alienating earth with a strange language. Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object) explores feeling and belonging in a saturated media landscape.
sábado 29 nov 2025 a las 12:00
Session 3. Emotive Interface: A Masterclass by Metahaven and the screening of Capture
Metahaven. Capture
Netherlands, 2022, digital archive, colour, sound, Italian and French, with English subtitles, 40’
The final session begins with Capture, a fictional documentary on the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) and on the limits between science, technology and forms of speculative knowledge, such as those found in the natural world.
The film screening is followed by a masterclass delivered by Metahaven on their artistic practice as a form of visual and political thought. Taking fragments of their works — The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda), Information Skies, Chaos Theory, The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object) — they explore how images, data and emotions configure contemporary reality, and share their main frames of reference, which range from critical theory and contemporary poetry to graphic design, the essay film and digital culture. The session also shines a light on their working method, based on the combination of theoretical research, aesthetic experimentation and fragmentary narratives, to show past and future works.
jueves 08 ene 2026 a las 19:00
Session 3 (Second screening). Emotive Interface: A Masterclass by Metahaven and the screening of Capture
Metahaven. Capture
Netherlands, 2022, digital archive, colour, sound, Italian and French, with English subtitles, 40’
viernes 09 ene 2026 a las 19:00
Session 2 (Second screening). Metahaven. Interference, Chaos Theory and The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object)
Metahaven. Interference
Netherlands, 2015, digital archive, colour, sound, original version in English, 4'
Metahaven. Chaos Theory
Netherlands, 2021–2024, digital archive, colour, sound, Hungarian, French, Basque and English, with English subtitles, 25’
Metahaven. The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object)
Netherlands, 2024, digital archive, colour, sound, Dutch, English, and French, with English subtitles, 32'
sábado 10 ene 2026 a las 19:00
Session 1. (Second screening). Metahaven. Home, The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) and Information Skies
Metahaven. Home
Netherlands, 2014, digital archive, colour, sound, original version in English, 6' 12”
Metahaven. The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda)
Netherlands, 2015, digital archive, colour, sound, original version in English, Russian and Arab, with English subtitles, 70'
Metahaven. Information Skies
Netherlands, 2016, digital archive, colour, sound, original version in Hungarian, with English and Korean subtitles, 24'
Participants
Metahaven
is an Amsterdam-based artistic collective which was founded in 2007 by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden. Their work forms an approach to sensorial and intellectual experiences, whereby information becomes visual matter and viewers become immersed in a hypnotic flow of images, sounds and text. Their aesthetic, frequently characterised by chromatic saturation, floating typographies and digital textures, doesn’t seek to illustrate concepts, but rather to spark a reflection on the beauty and violence inherent in contemporary communication. The screen transforms in their work into a critical and meditative space, where the politics of information becomes an aesthetic experience. Metahaven have exhibited their work at MoMA PS1, ICA in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Guggenheim Bilbao and Matadero Madrid, among others, while their films have been screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and CPH:DOX in Copenhagen. Furthermore, they have produced designs for Wikileaks and Sealand, a sovereign State founded on an offshore platform in the North Sea.
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