Trailer by the Ever Given ship jammed on the Suez Canal, Middle East Eye, 29 March 2021
Date and time
Held on 16 sep 2017
Archipiélago is a concert series and research project that unfolded in the Museo Reina Sofía from 2017 to 2023 with the aim of questioning the universality of the term “experimentation” within the sphere of Western music. The term, which originated as a concept in the USA, has been replicated to the extent that it has created a canon and even a genre. Across its different editions, the series brought together different musicians, performers and researchers from around the world in an attempt to rethink other forms of experimentation beyond the frameworks of hegemonic thought. In collaboration with music groups and artists from different geographical areas, Archipelago approached this concept of “experimentation” from different perspectives.
Following a first edition in 2017, in which pioneering figures of minimalism encountered music and genres from non-European zones and new generations of artists, in 2018 it sought to resituate and question the term “experimental” with texts hailing from Central and South America and the Middle East, where the idea of experimentation as an avant-garde rupture lacks meaning opposite that of tradition as a living form of knowledge constantly mutating and spreading. Thus, in 2019 the programme introduced the act of listening to sound compositions and experimentations without applying any historical or geographical order, letting, by contrast, connections materialize between heterogenous languages and contexts. Despite the difficult circumstances brought about by COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, a decision was made to back the physicality of live music and, therefore, strengthen local fabrics. In 2022, the project embarked upon a deep-time study of certain musical mutations that had not been addressed to an adequate degree from the previously investigated English-speaking narrative. Through a study of ocean currents, winds, trade routes and submarine cabling, a themed journey was put forward, one in which there is little to no difference between experimentation and tradition. Finally, for the closing edition in 2023, Archipelago set forth an account of fictional archaeology to re-consider the discourse of Western modernity by listening to an “impossible past” from which to imagine other futures for music.
Curators
Rubén Coll y José Luis Espejo
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Sponsor
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September 16, 23 and 30, 2017 Sabatini Building
Archipelago 2017
Concert series
This first edition of Archipelago was enveloped in drone music and minimalism, exploring its influences and unexpected offshoots. The programme included key figures of experimentalism such as the French composer Éliane Radigue and the New York-based Japanese sound artist Yoshi Wada — both linked to minimalism and Fluxus, respectively. These “pioneering” figures were also joined by younger artists who, despite sharing certain compositional roots with Eastern music, adopt different formal approaches. For this particular edition, the artists presented commissioned and unreleased works, with the exception of Éliane Radigue’s Trilogie de la mort (Trilogy of Death), performed in its entirety by Emmanuel Holterbach for the first time in Spain.
Participants: Severine Beata and Javi Álvarez, Emmanuel Holterbach, iNSANLAR, Agnès Pe, Damián Schwartz, and Yoshi and Tashi Wada
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Friday 21 and Saturday 22 September, 2018 (check programme) / Sabatini Building, Vaults Gallery, Garden and Auditorium, and Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid, Manuel de Falla Auditorium
Archipelago 2018
Concert series
In its second edition, Archipelago reasserted its intention to present listening as a form of both knowledge and aesthetic pleasure. This edition saw Rubén Coll join the curatorial project, which set forth more comprehensive research into the feeling of exhaustion that can be perceived in the West’s experimental scene, whereby the relationship between formal rupture and progress often proves unconvincing. The participating artists questioned the universality of experimentation precisely as it had been expounded in some of Europe’s and the USA’s major cities, often looking to vindicate the non-Western roots of their music.
Participants: AMMAR 808, Clara de Asís, DJ LAG, Errorsmith, Cedrick Fermont, Hashigakari, Áine O’Dwyer, Janneke van der Putten, Nadah El Shazly, Tarawangsawelas & Rabih Beaini, Toukadime and TUTU.
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From 18 to 21 September 2019 Museo Reina Sofía (Sabatini Building, Vaults Gallery, Auditorium, Nouvel Building Auditorium, 400 Hall and Palacio de Cristal); Iglesia de San Millán y San Cayetano; Municipal School of Music and Dance, Distrito Centro María Dolores Pradera
Archipelago 2019
Concert Series
The 2019 edition explored the concept of tradition: a term associated with conservatism and regression in the face of change, but with a meaning that implies the transfer of knowledge from one person to another, from one generation to the next. Thus, the programme featured not only artists that experiment with non-Western roots, but also shone a light on noise, singeli and dance music, genres which subvert any attempt at classification via traditional forms such as electroacoustic, gnawa and traditional Kurpie music, as well as music from the nearby Madrid mountain range and the Galician bagpipes.
Participants: Saba Alizadeh, Asmâa, Kolida Babo, Rashad Becker, Lea Bertucci, Chulapeiras, Hamzaoui and Bnat Timbouktou, Gaba, Nina García, Ipek Gorgun, Miguel Nava and Rafa Martín, Bamba Pana & Makaveli, Psicolabio, Síria, R. Vincenzo, Lechuga Zafiro and Żywizna (Raphael Rogiński + Genowefa Lenarcik).
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Friday, 18 and Saturday, 19 September 2020 (check programme) Nouvel Building, Auditorium 400
Archipelago 2020
Concert series
Organised at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, this edition of Archipelago adopted an unusual format: all performances took place in the Nouvel Building’s Auditorium 400 with a quadrophonic arrangement of sound. Placing the stress on the physicality of sound and physical presence opposite streaming, DJ-led listening sessions were put forward and drew inspiration from the experience of diaspora, in addition to concerts that sought to reinvent the popular and speculate on what will come and be built in a highly unpredictable future.
Participants: Cher-ee-lee, Lucrecia Dalt and Jokkoo (Baba Sy & Mbodj), Jessica Ekomane and Tarta Relena.
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December 2021 Nouvel Building, Auditorium 400, Lobby
Archipelago 2021
Concert Series
TicketsThis fifth edition tackled the complexity of the post-traumatic effects of lockdown and crisis, responding to this situation by focusing on the local scene, realised with Atomizador and his approach to psychodelia from the instrumentation that characterises historical Western music. Marta De Pascalis, a Berlin-based composer from Rome, explored the complex ramifications of contemporary electronic music through the filter of southern European tradition, while non-hegemonic rhythmic innovations — one of the festival’s core areas of interest — found a space in the session of De Schuurman, a key figure in the evolution of bubbling, a music genre originating from Afro-Dutch postcolonial diaspora and highly influential, despite its limited exposure.
Participants: Atomizador, Marta De Pascalis and De Schuurman
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Saturday, 18 June 2022 Sabatini Building, Auditorium and Garden
Archipelago 2022
The Material Conditions of Our Music
TicketsStarting from the image of the ship Ever Given stranded on the Suez Canal in 2021, the sixth edition of Archipelago reflected on the material questions that influence music, for instance the transportation of raw materials and goods and the importance of ports, colonial routes and ocean currents, in addition to forced migrations. Through a string of concerts fusing traditional music and experimentation, Archipelago recapitulated, reinterpreted and overhauled learning related to the common history of traditional music to date.
Participants: Erkizia + Cantizano, Edna Martinez, Pujllay Masis, Mazaher and Mohammad Reza Mortazavi.
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Friday, 16 and Saturday, 17 June 2023 Sabatini Building, Auditorium, southwest Stairwell and Garden
Archipelago 2023
El Hierro Will Once Again Be the Centre of the World
Tickets (16 June)The 2023 edition brought down the curtain on a theoretical and geopolitical journey through the musical mutations of our times which was set in motion in 2017 by José Luis Espejo and then jointly with Rubén Coll from 2018 onwards. The island of El Hierro, halfway between Africa, Europe and South America, is a metaphor for music that circumvents the Western media’s powerful grid, which in turn rules the taste, presence and even fees of musicians from the experimental scene. In this final edition, El Hierro will once again be the centre of the world.
Participants: The Folkloric Ensemble of Sabinosa, DJ Travella and DJ Diaki, Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado, and Tenores di Bitti "Mialinu Pira".
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Multimedia
Archipelago 2017. Severine Beata and Javi Álvarez + iNSANLAR
Watch videoThis series of videos, made by Machines Desirantes Buro, documents the concerts performed in the first edition of Archipelago, in 2017, and is complemented with extensive interviews with the participants. This particular video features the concerts of Severine Beata and Javi Álvarez + iNSANLAR.
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Multimedia
Archipelago 2017. Yoshi and Tashi Wada + Damián Schwartz
Watch videoThis series of videos, made by Machines Desirantes Buro, documents the concerts performed in the first edition of Archipelago, in 2017, and is complemented with extensive interviews with the participants. This particular video features the concerts of Yoshi and Tashi Wada + Damián Schwartz.
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Multimedia
Archipelago 2017. Éliane Radigue by Emmanuel Holterbach + Agnès Pe
Watch videoThis series of videos, made by Machines Desirantes Buro, documents the concerts performed in the first edition of Archipelago, in 2017, and is complemented with extensive interviews with the participants. This particular video features the concerts of Emmanuel Holterbach and Agnès Pe.
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Multimedia
Archipelago 2018
Watch videoThis video, made by Banda Negra, assembles the interventions from the second edition of Archipelago and includes interviews with some of its participants, exploring the possibility of new forms of listening from different twentieth-century sound recordings with a desire to unearth alternatives to the restraints of a canon built from now-exhausted genealogies and narratives.
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Multimedia
Archipelago 2019
Watch videoThis video, made by Banda Negra, documents the third edition of Archipelago, exploring the concept of tradition: a term associated with conservatism and regression opposite change, but with a meaning that implies the transfer of knowledge, from one person to another, from one generation to the next.
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Multimedia
Udlot, Udlot by José Maceda
Concert
Watch videoThis video, made by Banda Negra, documents and contextualises the process of mediation, learning and performance of Udlot Udlot (1975), by Philippine composer José Maceda.
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Multimedia
Archipelago 2022
The Material Conditions of Our Music
Watch videoThis video, made by Javi Álvarez and Irene de Andrés, reflects the narrative of the 2022 edition of Archipelago. The narration takes us through centuries-old colonial routes for the transportation of goods and cargo, routes which remain today and brought about cultural exchanges that impacted music.
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Multimedia
Archipelago 2023
El Hierro Will Once Again Be the Centre of the World
Watch videoFrom 2018 onwards, the Archipelago concert series invited the audience to delve deeper into the complexity of the contemporary world through listening, seeking to foreground music genres and modes of listening which provide an alternative to European and US cultural centres. This video, made by Javi Alvárez and Irene de Andrés, documents the seventh, and final, instalment of Archipelago, which was centred on El Hierro, a volcanic island which was considered prime meridian for centuries. Located halfway between Africa, Europe and South America, the island is also a metaphor for all music that circumvents the Western media’s powerful grid.
This edition featured the screening of the film Eles transportan a morte (2021), by film-maker’s Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado, from Galicia and Tenerife, respectively; a performance by the Folkloric Ensemble of Sabinosa; music by DJ Travella from Tanzania and Malian DJ Diaki; and a concert by the Sardinian ensemble Tenores di Bitti “Mialinu Pira”.
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Podcast
Archipelago 2020
How to Listen to Live Music Amid a Pandemic
Listen to podcastThis podcast, written and hosted by Rubén Coll and José Luis Espejo, presents the testimony of artists who participated in the 2020 edition of Archipelago, reflecting on how a cultural event is assembled by considering, for instance, the political and commercial structures that underpin our precarious music communities.
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Pódcast
Archipelago 2021
Concert Series
Listen to podcastThe series shares, for the first time, the recordings of three concerts which comprised the 2021 edition.
![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 October 2025 – 24 June 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.
27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference
Wednesday, 4, and Thursday, 5 March 2026
The 27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference, organised by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation and Restoration, with the sponsorship of the MAPFRE Foundation, is held on 4 and 5 March 2026. This international encounter sets out to share and debate experience and research, open new channels of study and reflect on conservation and the professional practice of restorers.
This edition will be held with in-person and online attendance formats, occurring simultaneously, via twenty-minute interventions followed by a five-minute Q&A.
Submitting Proposals
The deadline for presenting proposals ends on 28 September 2025. Those interested must send an email to jornada.conservacion@museoreinasofia.es, submitting the following documents:
- An unpublished proposal related to the conservation or restoration of contemporary art.
- A 1,700-word summary, written in Word, on the theme addressed. Please indicate the topic at the top of the document with five keywords and the presentation format (in-person or virtual). Preference will be given to the in-person format.
- CV and contact details.
- Only one proposal per person will be accepted.
- Proposals related to talks given in the last three conferences will not be accepted.
Proposals may be submitted in Spanish, French or English and will be evaluated by a Scientific Committee, which will select the submissions to be presented during these conference days and will determine their possible participation in a subsequent publication, the inclusion of which will undergo a second and definitive evaluation by the Editorial Committee.
For submissions in a virtual format, participants must send a recording following certain technical requirements they will receive once participation is confirmed.
The programme of sessions will be published in the coming days.
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.
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.
Ylia and Marta Pang
Thursday, 6 November - 8pm
The encounter between Spanish DJ and producer Ylia and visual artist Marta Pang is presented in the form of a premiere in the Museo Reina Sofía. Both artists converge from divergent trajectories to give form to a new project conceived specifically for this series, which aims to create new stage projects by setting out from the friction between artists and dialogue between disciplines.