Archipelago 2020
Concert series
- Live Arts
Archipielago 2020
Held on 18 sep 2020
For a fourth consecutive year, the concert series Archipelago invites the audience to delve into the complex nature of the contemporary world through listening and explores the relationship between experimental music and popular culture by way of sounds from different narratives and geographies. The present edition continues to conduct research into that popular repertory as a form transmitting knowledge, questioning the globalising principles associated with notions such as experimentation and avant-garde.
Mix, transmission and mutation are terms which, musically, can have a positive meaning, and are aspects this concert series has always embraced. Yet today these words have become imbued with a negative connotation, reflecting the shift towards the hermeticism of nation states and their borders: How will contemporary music genres be affected? What about the different sound communities scattered around the world? To what degree will it impact the practices of an entire generation of musicians? And the live music experience? How will local aspects be re-signified in this new setting? How will networks be re-built in a world where the freedom of movement and contact of bodies are limited?
In dealing with these enquiries, the latest edition of Archipelago assumes a novel format: all acts will take place outdoors in the Sabatini Building Garden via a quadrophonic arrangement of sound, placing the stress on the physicality of sound and offering DJ-led listening sessions, whilst drawing inspiration from the experience of diaspora. Concerts which look to reinvent popular culture and speculate on what is in store and on constructing in a particularly unpredictable future.
Programme
Friday, 18 September – from 7pm to 9pm
Doors open at 6:30pm
7pm - Cher-ee-lee
Cher-ee-lee is the moniker Jerilyn Gonçalves uses for her sessions and podcasts, some of which have featured on digital platforms such as Radio Relativa and KRAAK. Of note is her radio show Música para Camaleones (Music for Chameleons), in which she traces the plurality of directions taken by Venezuela’s sound heritage, within and beyond its borders, with the project leading Gonçalves to study her country’s music with the aim of, as she puts it, “building a home away from home”. Cher-ee-lee is a native from Caracas who had to move to Madrid, integrating into the community of Venezuelan expatriates settled in Spain, the largest in Europe. For Archipelago she leads a session around the captivating musical syncretism of Venezuela and its subsequent influence on manifestations of contemporary experimentation. In short, an invitation to discover an uncommon narrative on Venezuela’s fertile culture and history.
8pm - Jessica Ekomane
Rhythm, tone, time and space are probably the four variables that define the compositions of this French artist, residing in Berlin, who is a great admirer of Györgi Ligeti and Maryanne Amacher. In Archipelago, she performs a concert which, through the use of a quadrophonic system and the immersive nature of her sonic landscapes, seeks to trigger a cathartic effect among the audience as she employs her experience of making installations in which psychoacoustics are at the core. Ekomane’s pieces, moreover, depart from an investigation into the relationships between individual perception and collective dynamics, between listening and its social determinants. Multivocal (2019), her debut album, aptly demonstrates her rigorous aesthetics and working methodology — seemingly static, but ever-changing, to the point of inducing a kind of trance in the listener.
Saturday, 19 September – from 1pm to 2pm
Doors open at 12:30pm
1pm - Lucrecia Dalt
In recent years, this Berlin-based Colombian artist has developed a prolific career at the intersection of electroacoustic music, vocal experimentation and installation. Dalt’s work perpetually draws from myriad musical, literary and artistic references, moving between territories as far-reaching as science fiction, geology and animism. In this vein, it is worth highlighting the installation made in 2019, with Maria Thereza Alves, in the German capital’s botanical garden during the CTM festival, in which both gave a voice to tropical plants renamed under Western classifications. Her appearance at the festival also served to present No Era Sólida (2020) in a quadrophonic format, a record which delves into the strands already opened in Anticlines (2018). This latest work unfolds through Lia, a kind of projection of the artist that materialises vocally in an act which draws parallels with Interface, a poem by Chicana poet Gloria Anzaldúa in which she narrates her affaire with an extraterrestrial being; a queer and mestizo text, from which the title of the album originates.
Saturday, 19 September – from 6pm to 9pm
Doors open at 5:30pm
6pm - Jokkoo (Baba Sy & Mbodj)
The Jokkoo collective came into being in Barcelona in 2017 to disseminate music and sound narratives from the African continent and its diasporas. Despite a markedly electronic identity, their sounds did not find a place on the dance floors of the Catalan city. Thus, Baba Sy and Mbodj (Maguette Dieng) — joined by Opoku, Mookie and B4mba over the past year — decided to bring this musical ebullience to the fore at parties, events and a programme on the radio station Dublab, with reference points most notably including genres which, with a cosmic and futurist spirit, seek to transform the analysis of the past and foreground the present. This guided listening session focuses on the inheritance and echoes of the black Atlantic, a sound journey that is also an account of certain histories that closely run through this duo.
7pm - Tarta Relena
Tarta Relena is a Catalan duo, made up of Marta Torrella (contralto) and Helena Ros (soprano), that explores, a cappella, the sonorities of different oral tradition music and singer-songwriters related to the Mediterranean. Both came into contact with polyphony via choral music, leading them to explore renaissance and baroque repertoires, in addition to their background in musicology (Marta) and linguistics (Helena), which goes some way towards explaining their performances of ancient Sephardic, Greek, Corsican and Menorcan songs. Whilst respecting tradition, their aim is not to perpetuate it and both are quick to avoid any glimmer of purism — thus, they accept with humour the tag “progressive Gregorian” in defining their music. For Archipelago they put forward a concert that reflects the achievements of their outstanding debut, Ora pro nobis (2019), and more recently Intercede pro nobis (2020), a work which welcomes the introduction of subtle electronic arrangements.
8pm - Lucrecia Dalt
In recent years, this Berlin-based Colombian artist has developed a prolific career at the intersection of electroacoustic music, vocal experimentation and installation. Dalt’s work perpetually draws from myriad musical, literary and artistic references, moving between territories as far-reaching as science fiction, geology and animism. In this vein, it is worth highlighting the installation made in 2019, with Maria Thereza Alves, in the German capital’s botanical garden during the CTM festival, in which both gave a voice to tropical plants renamed under Western classifications. Her appearance at the festival also served to present No Era Sólida (2020) in a quadrophonic format, a record which delves into the strands already opened in Anticlines (2018). This latest work unfolds through Lia, a kind of projection of the artist that materialises vocally in an act which draws parallels with Interface, a poem by Chicana poet Gloria Anzaldúa in which she narrates her affaire with an extraterrestrial being; a queer and mestizo text, from which the title of the album originates.
With the sponsorship of:
Curators:
Rubén Coll and José Luis Espejo
Collaboration:
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Sponsorship:
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
Más actividades
Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics
8, 22 OCT, 5, 19 NOV, 3, 17, 31 DIC 2025,14, 28 ENE, 11, 25 FEB, 11, 25 MAR, 8, 22 ABR, 6, 20 MAY, 3, 17 JUN 2026
The study group Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion: Prefiguring New Pacifisms and Forms of Transitional Justice proposes a rethinking—through both a theoretical-critical and historical-artistic lens—of the intricate network of concepts and practices operating under the notion of pacifism. A term not without contestation and critical tension, pacifism gathers under its name a multiplicity of practices—from anti-militarism and anti-war movements to non-violence activism—while simultaneously opening urgent debates around violence, justice, reparation, and desertion. Here, pacifism is not conceived as a moral doctrine, but as an active form of ethical and political resistance capable of generating aesthetic languages and new positions of social imagination.
Through collective study, the group seeks to update critical debates surrounding the use of violence and non-violence, as well as to explore the conflict of their representation at the core of visual cultures. In a present marked by rearmament, war, genocide, and the collapse of the social contract, this group aims to equip itself with tools to, on one hand, map genealogies and aesthetics of peace—within and beyond the Spanish context—and, on the other, analyze strategies of pacification that have served to neutralize the critical power of peace struggles. Transitional and anti-punitive justice proposals will also be addressed, alongside their intersections with artistic, visual, and cinematic practices. This includes examining historical examples of tribunals and paralegal activisms initiated by artists, and projects where gestures, imaginaries, and vocabularies tied to justice, reparation, memory, and mourning are developed.
It is also crucial to note that the study programme is grounded in ongoing reflection around tactics and concepts drawn, among others, from contemporary and radical Black thought—such as flight, exodus, abolitionism, desertion, and refusal. In other words, strategies and ideas that articulate ways of withdrawing from the mandates of institutions or violent paradigms that must be abandoned or dismantled. From feminist, internationalist, and decolonial perspectives, these concepts have nourished cultural coalitions and positions whose recovery today is urgent in order to prefigure a new pacifism: generative, transformative, and radical.
Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion, developed and led by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Studies Management, unfolds through biweekly sessions from October to June. These sessions alternate between theoretical discussions, screenings, work with artworks and archival materials from the Museo’s Collection, reading workshops, and public sessions. The group is structured around sustained methodologies of study, close reading, and collective discussion of thinkers such as Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Juan Albarrán, Rita Segato, Sven Lütticken, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Franco “Bifo” Berardi; historical episodes such as the anti-nuclear and anti-arms race movement in Spain; and the work of artists and activists including Rojava Film Commune, Manuel Correa and the Oficina de Investigación Documental (Office for Documentary Investigation), and Jonas Staal, among other initial cases that will expand as the group progresses.
UP/ROOTING
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 NOV 2025
Museo Reina Sofía and MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) invite applications for the 2025 iteration of the School of Common Knowledge, which will take place from November 11th to 16th in Madrid and Barcelona.
The School of Common Knowledge (SCK) draws on the network, knowledge and experience of L ’Internationale, a confederation of museums, art organizations and universities that strives to reimagine and practice internationalism, solidarity and communality within the cultural field. This year, the SCK program focuses on the contested and dynamic notions of rooting and uprooting in the framework of present —colonial, migrant, situated, and ecological— complexities.
Building on the legacy of the Glossary of Common Knowledge and the current European program Museum of the Commons, the SCK invites participants to reflect on the power of language to shape our understanding of art and society through a co-learning methodology. Its ambition is to be both nomadic and situated, looking at specific cultural and geopolitical situations while exploring their relations and interdependencies with the rest of the world.
In the current context fraught with war and genocide, the criminalization of migration and hyper-identitarianism, concepts such as un/belonging become unstable and in need of collective rethinking:
How can we reframe the sense and practice of belonging away from reductive nationalist paradigms or the violence of displacement? How to critically hold the entanglement of the colonial routes and the cultural roots we are part of? What do we do with the toxic legacies we inherit? And with the emancipatory genealogies and practices that we choose to align with? Can a renewed practice of belonging and coalition-making through affinity be part of a process of dis/identification? What geographies —cultural, artistic, political— do these practices of de/centering, up/rooting, un/belonging and dis/alignment designate?
Departing from these questions, the program consists of a series of visits to situated initiatives (including Museo Situado, Paisanaje and MACBA's Kitchen, to name a few), engagements with the exhibitions and projects on view (Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture from Panafrica), a keynote lecture by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, as well as daily reading and discussion gatherings, editorial harvest sessions, and conviviality moments.
Rethinking Guernica
21, 23, 28, 30, 20, 26, 27 SEP, 5, 7, 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 28, 3, 4, 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25, 31 OCT, 2, 4, 9, 11, 16, 18, 23, 25, 30, 1, 7, 8, 14, 15, 21, 22, 28, 29 NOV, 2, 7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 23, 28, 30, 5, 6, 12, 13, 19, 20, 26, 27 DIC 2024,4, 6, 11, 13, 18, 20, 25, 27, 2, 3, 9, 10, 16, 17, 23, 24, 30, 31 ENE, 1, 3, 8, 10, 15, 17, 22, 24, 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, 21, 27, 28 FEB, 1, 3, 8, 10, 15, 17, 22, 24, 29, 31, 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, 21, 27, 28 MAR, 5, 7, 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 28, 3, 4, 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25 ABR, 3, 5, 10, 12, 17, 19, 24, 26, 31, 1, 2, 8, 9, 15, 16, 22, 23, 29, 30 MAY, 2, 7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 23, 28, 30, 5, 6, 12, 13, 19, 20, 26, 27 JUN, 5, 7, 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 28, 3, 4, 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25, 31 JUL, 2, 4, 9, 11, 16, 18, 23, 25, 30, 1, 7, 8, 14, 15, 21, 22, 28, 29 AGO, 1, 6, 8, 13, 15, 20, 22, 27, 29, 4, 5, 11, 12, 18, 19, 25, 26 SEP, 4, 6, 11, 13, 18, 20, 25, 27, 2, 3, 9, 10, 16, 17, 23, 24, 30 OCT 2025
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.
![Francesc Abad, Procés transformació [Proceso transformación, 1972]. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/AD05219-009-actividad.jpg.webp)
The (legal) person and the legal form. Chapter I
29 SEP, 2, 6, 9 OCT 2025
As part of the Studies Constellation, the Study Directoship’s annual fellowship, art historian and theorist Sven Lütticken leads the seminar The (Legal) Person and the Legal Form: Theoretical, Artistic, and Activist Commitments to foster dialogue and deepen the hypotheses and questions driving his research project.
This project, titled Unacting Personhood, Deforming Legal Abstraction, explores the dominance of real abstractions—such as exchange value and legal form—over our processes of subjectivation, and asks how artistic practices can open up alternative ways of representing or performing the subject and their legal condition in the contemporary world.
The seminar consists of eight two-hour sessions, divided into three chapters throughout the academic year. While conceived as non-public spaces for discussion and collective work, these sessions complement, nourish, and amplify the public program of the Studies Constellation.
This first chapter of the seminar, composed of four sessions, serves as an introduction to the fundamental issues of the research concerning theoretical, artistic, and activist engagements with the legal form. It includes four sessions dedicated respectively to: the legal form, through the work of French jurist, philosopher, and lawyer Bernard Edelman, with particular attention to his Marxist theory of photography (translated into German by Harun Farocki); the (legal) person, via contributions from Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito, academic, social justice activist, and writer Radha D’Souza, and visual artist Jonas Staal; land, through the work of researcher Brenna Bhandar—specialist in the colonial foundations of modern law and the notion of property—and artist, filmmaker, and researcher Marwa Arsanios; and international law, through the work of British writer China Miéville.
Through these and other readings, case study analyses, and collective discussions, the seminar aims to open a space for critical reflection on the ways in which the law—both juridical form and legal form—is performed and exceeded by artistic and activist practices, as well as by theoretical and political approaches that challenge its foundations and contemporary projections.