Creating Ambience: Ordinary Ways for Better Atmospheres
Sociología Ordinaria Encounters #13
Held on 29, 30 May 2025
Creating Ambience: Ordinary Ways for Better Atmospheres is the title of a new encounter run by Sociología Ordinaria, a transdisciplinary research group that explores daily knowledge deemed ordinary, superficial or frivolous from a traditional academic and intellectual viewpoint.
This fresh edition seeks to approach daily, ordinary and extraordinary environments and atmospheres. From “achieved environments” to “rarified atmospheres”, the theme here responds to a concern over the lack of air and the dismal atmospheres of an uncertain present, in addition to shining a light on the powers, arrangements and fixes used to clean, care and embellish personal environments — and to let off steam. A question is raised over how to ventilate and air lived-in spaces, avoid the shortness of breath that marks the present and to generate strategies to breathe easier.
Furthermore, it explores ways of naming and thinking in these environments and in the difference between the breathable and the toxic, focusing on how the latter is used to negatively single out aspects that are part of the normal and the ordinary. Thus, different tones and actions are put forward: the outdoor atmosphere, the climate of accompaniment, ecosystems for liveable lives and achieving a vibe or atmosphere of the imagination.
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía and the research group Sociología Ordinaria – Complutense University of Madrid (UCM)
Actividad accesible
Esta actividad cuenta con lazos de inducción magnética (para personas con audífonos) que deben solicitarse previamente mediante correo a centrodeestudios@museoreinasofia.es
Las personas interesadas podrán solicitar con antelación la reserva de un asiento con mayor visibilidad, mediante correo a centrodeestudios@museoreinasofia.es
Participants
Sociología Ordinaria is a research group from the Complutense University of Madrid’s (UCM) Sociology Department. Formed in 2011, its concerns revolve around developing new research and teaching methodologies that enable sociological imagination to be applied to contemporary daily life. The group seeks to highlight the dense socio-political roots of the ordinary, an aspect which is often indiscernible in predominant academic analysis. Under the slogan “learning from the banal, the frivolous and the superficial”, its members look to render an account of the complexity and power relations underlying diverse social and cultural phenomena such as the use of dating apps, language around COVID-19, the world of the cuplé, reality shows, pyjama parties, popstars, TikTokers and club culture.
Programme
Thursday, 29 May 2025
10am Ordinary presentation
Coming Out of Class: Pedagogical Environments and Designs
10:15am Looking, Weaving and Acting for Better Pedagogies
Ez da giro! Hallway Experiments to Enliven Sociology
― Conducted by Jone Allur, Ekain Carrasco, María Céspedes, Naroa Gallues, Paula Gutiérrez-Ponte, Miren Iriarte, Ane Juez, Jone Mendibil, Iñaki Martínez de Albéniz and Asier Amezaga (EHU/UPV)
Restitching Worlds: Textile Artivism and Cultural Practices as Ecosystems of Social Sustainability
― Conducted by Óscar M. Blanco Sierra, Renata Dračková and Miren Edurne Herrán (CSIC-UPV)
AI: Imagination in the Classroom. One Performance, Two Teachers, No Target
― Conducted by Irene Blanco Fuente and Miguel Ángel (Mikel) López Sáez (UCM and URJC)
11:30am Inside/Outside Experimentations
In-person Atmospheres, Virtual Atmospheres. Glasses for What?
― Conducted by Carmen Clara Bravo Torres, Mariana Buenestado-Fernández (UCO), María García-Cano Torrico, Eva F. Hinojosa Pareja, Azahara Jiménez Millán and Elisa Pérez Gracia
The Classroom in the Street and the Street in the Classroom
― Conducted by José Manuel del Barrio Aliste and María Luisa Ibáñez Martínez (USAL)
12pm Coffee and Stuff
12:30pm Interior Design
Producing and Designing Environments, Atmospheres and Experiences Inside the Classroom: The Case of Sociology(ies) of Education(s)
― Conducted by Daniel Muriel (InnoKLab. EHU/UPV)
User Instructions for Designing Socio-productive Environments
― Conducted by Ángeles Fuentes and Kiko Tovar (Escuela Superior de Diseño de Madrid and UCM)
Playing with the Materiality of the Chair: Exploring, with Infrastructures from the Department of Social Sciences through Design, the Chair’s Capacity to Influence Spaces and Bodies
― Conducted by Keio Urkijo Marcos (EHU/UPV)
1:45pm They Had to Be There…
They’ve Made Us a Court and We Must Constitute Ourselves
― Conducted by the Sopa Solida (UCM/USAL) collective
Outdoor Bodies: Climates, Airs and Gusts of Wind
4pm Ventilating (with the gerund)
It’s Stuffy in Here, or How to Air Old Rags and How to Entangle Ourselves to Face Violence from Punto Violeta Somosaguas
― Conducted by Punto Violeta Somosaguas (Paula Martín Peláez, María del Carmen Peñaranda Cólera and Marta Pérez Pérez) (UCM)
Airing the House. Writings of Testimonies on Sexual Violence
― Conducted by Estíbaliz de Miguel Calvo (EHU/UPV)
5pm Body Climates: Desires and Moral Panics
“I have a right to behave badly to have a good time”: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Environment of Sexual Services for Women”
― Conducted by Andrea García-Santesmases Fernández (UNED)
5:45pm In the Wind: Songs and Tales
Gathering in Translucence. For a Politics of the Ambiguous
― Conducted by Candela Crespi
Sing Crying: To Give Some Thought to Places of Utterance
― Conducted by Ana Martínez Pérez
Friday, 30 May 2025
Shacking Up Together: Creating Atmospheres and Good Vibes
10am Homes
Just Like Home in No Apartment: The Construction of “Home-ness” between Young People in Madrid
― Conducted by Santiago Fandos Planelles and Manuel Macías Gómez de Villar (UCM)
SMS and BURR STUDIO: The Experience of a Collective Housing Process
― Conducted by Sato Díaz, María Artigas, Sira Peláez and Ramón Martínez (SMS and BURR STUDIO)
11am Neighbourhoods and Streets
Collective Memory and Self-managed Parties and Culture in Palma
― Conducted by Isa Nadal Amengual (UCM-UIB)
A Mental Map of the Neighbourhood
― Conducted by the BarriLab (Associació de Veïnes de Canamunt) cultural project
GREEN AWNING: Postcards from Another Heritage
― Conducted by Pablo Arboleda and Kike Carbajal (CSIC and independent photographer)
12:15pm Coffee with Posters
Street Air. Breathing, Building and Inhabiting Public Atmospheres
― Conducted by Francisco Javier Rueda Córdoba (UCM)
Memetic Catharsis
― Conducted by María Cecilia Cordero (UPM-UCM)
The Dark Side of Desire
― Conducted by Celia Espada Guerrero, Amanda López Bernad and Celia Roncalés Villa (UCM)
Questioning Masculinities from a Reflection on Paternities. Contributions from a Feminist Approach
― Conducted by Débora Imhoff (CONICET-UNC)
12:45pm We Need to Talk: Collective Care
Al Akhawat Collective. United in Art-Making
― Conducted by Karim Khourrou Gadour, Oumaima Manchit Laroussi, Sanae El Mokaddim Ayadi, Youssef Taki Miloudi and Aicha Josefa Trinidad Gououi (UCLM, UCM, ULL and UB)
1:15pm Escaping Forwards… But in Which Direction?
With So Much Advance I’m Heading for the Forest
― Conducted by Manuel Cabrera de Diego (UCM)
“'Mastodon Is Not Much Fun’, and So Many Other Fictions on the FediVerso”
― Conducted by Rubén Blanco (UCM)
Atmospheres of Feeling: Feelings and Senses
4pm Bad Vibe
Reasoning Together: Self-analytical Conversations for the Revolution to Come
― Conducted by Ane Campaña Blanco and José Llopis Manchón (UCM)
The Room of “Adolescence”: The Domesticity and Culture of Sexist Hate
― Conducted by Alba Mira Roda Ignacio and Moreno Segarra (UCM)
From Meme to Abyss: Generative AI, Viral Aesthetics and the Ordinary Construction of Political Hate in the Extreme Right
― Conducted by Gabriel Bayarri Toscano and Concepción Fernández-Villanueva and (URJC and UCM)
5:30pm The Imperium of the Senses
Heat – Tools of Collective Transformation
― Conducted by Daniel Torrego (UPM-UA)
What Does a “Gym” Smell of? Gender and Sexuality as Olfactory Regulators
― Conducted by Enrico Mora (UAB)
Noise/Ambient, Ambient/Noise: Noise in the Construction of Ordinary Environments
― Conducted by Pablo Santoro (UCM)
6:45pm Ordinary Farewell
![Dara Birnbaum, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman [Tecnología/Transformación: la mujer maravilla], 1978-1979. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/wonder.jpg.webp)
![John Baldessari, Prima Facie (Third State): From Aghast to Upset [Prima Facie (tercer estado): de aterrado a disgustado], 2005. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/so.jpg.webp)
Más actividades
Rethinking Guernica
Monday and Sunday - Check times
This guided tour activates the microsite Rethinking Guernica, a research project developed by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Collections Area, Conservation and Restoration Department and the Digital Projects Area of the Editorial Activities Department, assembling around 2,000 documents, interviews and counter-archives related to Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica (1937).
The visit sets out an in-situ dialogue between the works hung around the painting and a selection of key documents, selected by the Museo’s Education Team and essential to gaining an idea of the picture’s historical background. Therefore, the tour looks to contribute to activating critical thought around this iconic and perpetually represented work and seeks to foster an approach which refreshes our gaze before the painting, thereby establishing a link with the present. Essentially revisiting to rethink Guernica.
Dear Felix:
Saturdays at 6pm
The immediately recognisable art of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, which is on display, from May to October 2026, in the show Sweet Revenge, moves beyond the transmission of messages laden with poetic evocation, vital or biographical reflection, or even a clear political or ethical positioning. Rather, it seeks an active response by visitors to the exhibition. His work invites engagement with these messages so that, whether delighting, moving or challenging, it still prompts viewers to participate in the dialogue and complete the artistic undertaking with their own actions.
Thus, the guided tour Dear Felix: offers a shared, dialogue-inflected tour through the show, with the aim of collectively thinking and feeling the gestures the artist’s work puts forward. Ostensibly simple actions such as crossing through a beaded curtain to take a sweet and eat it, taking a poster from a stack of paper or simply observing a billboard closely, all contain ways of understanding life, loss, love, injustice or the passing — never linear — of time. The tour’s ultimate aim is not to set meanings or create an overload of interpretations of the work, nor does it seek to crystallise an image of the artist and his life in a response to questions which are not there. It looks instead to provide a space to open shared meaning in these apparently simple objects and to attempt a possible correspondence of return from the here and now. A lumbering attempt at responding which starts with a simple Dear Felix:
1926–2026: One Hundred Years of the Lyceum Club Femenino
Thursday, 2 July 2026
The Lyceum Club Femenino (Lyceum Women’s Club) was established in Madrid in 1926, constituting a space which opened new pathways for women to participate in Spain’s intellectual, artistic and political life in the first third of the twentieth century, and for figures such as designer Victorina Durán, pedagogue María de Maeztu, lawyer and politician Victoria Kent and artist Ángeles Santos, to name but a few. To mark the Madrid Club’s one hundredth anniversary, this research symposium examines its role as a key place for studying women’s and feminist culture in Spain’s Silver Age by analysing and vindicating the different agencies, trajectories and cultural projects that structured the space.
By way of three lectures and two round-table discussions, the symposium sets forth a journey through the Lyceum Club Femenino and the cultural context from which it emerged, from its standing as a pioneering institution to the study of cultural material from the period and the process of constructing the figure of the “modern woman”. These talks and discussions look to shed light on how new ways of thinking, creating and occupying public space were shaped, expanding the gaze on cultural, educational and social networks linked to the Lyceum — as much concerning its ties with other intellectual and artistic circles as the continuity and transformation of these networks during Republican exile. Finally, the symposium features three artistic interventions conceived to recover the artistic legacy of this space in Madrid.
The Museo Reina Sofia joins the Ministry of Culture’s cultural programme focused on the centenary of the Lyceum Club Femenino via these sessions, co-organised with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
Robert Capa
Friday, 26 June 2026 – 6pm
This international encounter centred on the figure of Robert Capa (Budapest, 1913 — Thai Binh, Vietnam, 1954), one of photojournalism’s pre-eminent figures, is held within the framework of the government initiative Spain and Freedom. Fifty Years and in conjunction with a cluster of three locations — the building on number 10 Calle Peironcely, the Plaza del Fotógrafo Robert Capa and the San Carlos Borromeo Parish in Vallecas — declared as a Place of Democratic Memory.
The emblematic photo Robert Capa took in 1936 of this area of Republican Madrid, featuring anonymous children talking in front of a bullet-riddled building attacked by Nazi-fascist air forces, has, in recent years, become a catalyst for impassioned collective action vindicating memory and denouncing the horrors and brutality of wars, past and present.
Within this context, representatives from cultural and academic spheres and civil society organisations from Germany, the USA and Spain discuss the legacy of Capa and photojournalism in European democratic memory, exploring in greater depth two citizen initiatives constructed by Europe from its shared memory: #SalvaPeironcely10 (#SavePeironcely10), in Entrevías (Puente de Vallecas), and the Capa Haus Initiative in the Lindenau neighbourhood of Leipzig, both united by the protection and conservation of historical heritage and by the defence of peace.
The round-table discussion features the participation of Cynthia Young, Juan Miguel Sánchez Vigil, Ulf-Dietrich Brumann and José María Uría Fernández and is moderated by Myriam Soto Lucas. Carmina Gustrán Loscos, the commissioner of Spain and Freedom. Fifty Years, will also join the discussion.
equipoMotor
Jueves alternos, 23 de octubre, 2025 - 11 de junio, 2026 - 17:30 h
El programa equipoMotor regresa en su edición 25-26 con un aire espectral y mutante para lanzar la pregunta: ¿y si el Museo fuera «un poco más Frankenstein»? Inspirándose en dicho monstruo y en todas aquellas criaturas que desafían la norma desde los márgenes, el proyecto de mediación cultural Galaxxia diseña y acompaña una edición incisiva, intergeneracional y descentralizadora, donde saberes invisibilizados, cuerpos raros y deseos molestos se entrelazan para generar nuevas formas de imaginación crítica y radical. En los sótanos y corredores del Museo —un particular laboratorio— las dudas no se esconden: son materia prima.
Así, para este curso el equipoMotor convoca a personas de todas las edades que hayan participado en ediciones anteriores de los distintos equipos del Área de Educación a recorrer el Museo como quien manipula un cuerpo abierto: descoyuntando algunas de sus categorías teóricas y artísticas —la necropolítica, lo crip-cuir, la lucha de clases, las políticas del malestar, la decolonialidad, la temporalidad cuir, la descentralización institucional o el feísmo— para articular un relato díscolo, remendado y palpitante.
El programa se estructura en bloques temáticos sobre lo freak como metodología, el trabajo cultural, la intergeneracionalidad y la diversidad territorial. Cada bloque a su vez se despliega en sesiones que combinan disparadores teóricos y estéticos, visitas a exposiciones y espacios liminales del Museo, talleres artísticos con artistas, ejercicios de curaduría audiovisual colectiva y de relatoría radiofónica, así como instancias de activación pública, mediante proyecciones de cine experimental y coloquios compartidos con el público, en complicidad con el archivo Hamaca y el Área de Cine y Nuevos Medios del Museo.
De este modo, la presente edición incorpora una particularidad: el grupo de participantes irá transformándose en un «colectivo curatorial audiovisual temporalmente autónomo», con capacidad de incidir en la programación del Museo y de abrir la conversación de equipoMotor al público general, cuestionando y expandiendo así los límites entre las cabezas que deciden, las manos que producen y los cuerpos y presencias que habitan la institución. Las personas seleccionadas en la modalidad oyente serán invitadas a las proyecciones públicas, así como a otras activaciones y momentos de apertura del equipoMotor.
Frente al relato de un museo homogéneo, pulcro y lineal, apostamos por un Museo disidente, contradictorio y lleno de vida residual. Un Museo que no tema hacerse preguntas incómodas ni mostrar sus cicatrices. equipoMotor. Un poco más Frankenstein no busca repensar el cuerpo de la institución, sino habitarlo en sus desgarros, tal como es: híbrido, inacabado, infecto, fantasmagórico… y cargado de esporas y chispas por venir.