La Columna Durruti, Scorpion and Felix. Nouvel Building, Auditorium 400, Museo Reina Sofía, 2020. Photographs: Joaquín Cortés/Román Lores © Museo Reina Sofía
Held on 18 nov 2020
In a collaboration with the Community of Madrid’s Autumn Festival, the Museo Reina Sofía presents the Spanish premiere of Scorpion and Felix, a work by Buenos Aires-based La Columna Durruti, an iconoclastic collective carrying out performance actions and made up of Emilio García Wehbi, Maricel Álvarez, Marcelo Martínez, Julieta Potenze, Martín Antuña, among others.
The session gets under way with a conversation between the collective’s founders, Maricel Álvarez and Emilio García Wehbi, and curator and researcher Isabel de Naverán on Trilogía de La Columna Durruti (2015–2017) and other works by the collective explored through the lens of texts, films, objects, publications and actions. The conversation is followed by the performance Scorpion and Felix (2018), articulated around a reading of the only fictional text written by Karl Marx: Scorpion and Felix. A Humoristic Novel (1837). In line with the non-conformist stance of La Columna Durruti, the piece looks to provoke action-based reflections which interrogate the present.
In the words of Emilio García Wehbi: “We knew Marx the philosopher, Marx the economist, Marx the politician, but we didn’t know Marx the comedian. We’re not talking about Groucho or Harpo but Karl. Aged 19, Karl Marx flirted with poetry and the novel, and Scorpion and Felix is a demonstration that he could have walked down those pathways too. The book is a series of chapters in an unfinished satirical novel in which the young philosopher-to-be, already demonstrating his virtues as a polemicist, humorously discusses the theories of thinkers that came before him. In essence, it chuckles with an outlandish approach that we could venture to call a predecessor to Dada. It constitutes a literary heresy critiquing the customs of the era in the same irreverent manner Duchamp painted a moustache on The Mona Lisa. In some ways, the existence of Scorpion and Felix is a feverish celebration of the death of this scowling, proud and delineated Marx that history books and monuments in countries where Stalinist socialism reigned took it upon themselves to invent. In this instance, La Columna Durruti is guilty of committing the assassination of Julius Caesar, of tearing off Marx’s false beard”.
Curator
Isabel de Naverán
Force line
Contemporary Disturbances
In collaboration with
Community of Madrid’s Autumn Festival
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
With the sponsorship of
In collaboration with
Credits:
Text: Karl Marx
Concept and performance: Maricel Álvarez and Emilio García Wehbi
Artistic support: Martín Antuña
Photography: Andrés Manrique, Gustavo Gorrini
Bust creation in Madrid: Ignacio García
The song Whirlwinds of Danger (Warszawianka, 1883) by Wacław Święcicki and fragments of Marx Brothers films are used
Participants
Maricel Álvarez is an actress, choreographer, curator and teacher whose practice develops at the intersection between theatre, performance, dance and visual arts. She has worked closely with Emilio García Wehbi since 1999, and also collaborated with the theatre group El Periférico de Objetos and directors that include Alejandro González Iñárritu (Biutiful, 2010), Woody Allen (To Rome with Love, 2012), Sophie Calle (Prenez soin de vous, 2015) and William Kentridge (Enough and more than enough. A performative lecture about drawing, 2017). Furthermore, her works have been presented in the most prestigious theatres, galleries, museums and festivals internationally. At the present time she is a professor on the MA in Theatre and Performance at the National University of the Arts, and has worked as a curator on the Performance Biennials BP.17 and BP.19, both in Buenos Aires.
Emilio García Wehbi is a stage director, stage manager, performer, actor, artist, visual artist and teacher. In 1989, he founded El Periférico de Objetos. His shows, operas, performances, installations and urban interventions have been presented on, at and in major stages, festivals and cities in the Americas, Europe and Asia. His poetics attempt to confront disciplines and established aesthetic categories in such a way that his creations cannot be pinned down by any precise definition. In his work he focuses specifically on dialectics with the spectator, considering it an active part of the work, critical, violent or extraordinary situations, and memory. He has also won the Konex Award for artistic excellence, among numerous other distinctions.
Isabel de Naverán conducts research at the crossroads between art, contemporary choreography and performance in projects of curatorship, publishing and writing. She holds a PhD in Art from University of the Basque Country and is part of the research group Artea. In 2010, she founded, with Leire Vergara, Miren Jaio and Beatriz Cavia, Bulegoa z/b - Oficina de arte y conocimiento in Bilbao, a project she was connected to until 2018. Since 2017 she has been in charge of curating live arts (dance-performance) in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Public Activities Department.
![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
Francisco López and Barbara Ellison
Thursday, 11 December - 8pm
The third session in the series brings together two international reference points in sound art in one evening — two independent performances which converse through their proximity here. Barbara Ellison opens proceedings with a piece centred on the perceptively ambiguous and the ghostly, where voices, sounds and materials become spectral manifestations.
This is followed by Francisco López, an internationally renowned Spanish sound artist, who presents one of his radical immersions in deep listening, with his work an invitation to submerge oneself in sound matter as a transformative experience.
This double session sets forth an encounter between two artists who, from different perspectives, share the same search: to open ears to territories where sound becomes a poetic force and space of resistance.
Long Live L’Abo! Celluloid and Activism
4, 5, 6 DIC 2025
L’Abominable is a collective film laboratory founded in La Courneuve (Paris, France) in 1996. It came into being in response to the disappearing infrastructures in artisan film-making and to provide artists and film-makers with a self-managed space from which to produce, develop and screen films in analogue formats such as Super 8, 16mm and 35mm. Anchored in this premise, the community promotes aesthetic and political experimentation in analogue film opposite digital hegemony. Over the years, L’Abominable, better known as L’Abo, has accompanied different generations of film-makers, upholding an international movement of independent film practices.
This third segment is structured in three sessions: a lecture on L’Abo given by Pilar Monsell and Camilo Restrepo; a session of short films in 16mm produced in L’Abo; and the feature-length film Une isle, une nuit, made by the Les Pirates des Lentillères collective.
Estrella de Diego Lecture. Holding Your Brain While You Sleep
Wednesday, 3 December 2025 – 7pm
Framed inside the Museo Reina Sofía’s retrospective exhibition devoted to Maruja Mallo, this lecture delivered by Estrella de Diego draws attention to the impact of the artist’s return to Spain after her three-decade exile in Latin America.
Committed to values of progress and renewal in the Second Republic, Mallo was forced into exile to Argentina with the outbreak of the Civil War and would not go back to Spain to settle definitively until 1965 — a return that was, ultimately, a second exile.
Mallo saw out her prolific artistic trajectory with two impactful series: Moradores del vacío (Dwellers of the Void, 1968–1980) and Viajeros del éter (Ether Travelers, 1982), entering her most esoteric period in which she drew inspiration from her “levitational experiences” of crossing the Andes and sailing the Pacific. Her travels, both real and imaginary, became encounters with superhuman dimensions.
In parallel, her public persona gained traction as she became a popular figure and a key representative of the Generation of ‘27 — the other members of which also started returning to Spain.
This lecture is part of the Art and Exile series, which seeks to explore in greater depth one of the defining aspects of Maruja Mallo’s life and work: her experience of exile. An experience which for Mallo was twofold: the time she spent in the Americas and her complex return to Spain.
Juan Uslé. That Ship on the Mountain
Tuesday, 25 November 2025 – 7pm
Ángel Calvo Ulloa, curator of the exhibition Juan Uslé. That Ship on the Mountain, engages in conversation with artist Juan Uslé (Santander, 1954) in the Museo’s Auditorium 400 to explore in greater depth the exhibition discourse of this anthological show spanning four decades of Uslé’s artistic career.
The show casts light on the close relationship Uslé’s work bears to his life experiences, establishing connections between different stages and series which could ostensibly seem distant. Framed in this context, the conversation looks to explore the artist’s personal and professional journey: his memories, experiences of New York, his creative process, conception of painting, and ties with photography and film, and the cohesiveness and versatility that characterise his art. Key aspects for a more in-depth understanding of his artistic sphere.
The conversation, moreover, spotlights the preparatory research process that has given rise to this exhibition to grant a better understanding of the curatorial criteria and decisions that have guided its development.
These inaugural conversations, part of the main working strands of the Museo ’s Public Programmes Area, aim to explore in greater depth the exhibition narratives of the shows organised by the Museo from the perspective of artists, curators and specialists.
Crossed Vignettes
Friday, 21 November 2025 – Check programme
The Crossed Vignettes conference analyses the authorship of comics created by women from an intergenerational perspective and draws from the Museo Reina Sofía Collections. Across different round-table discussions, the programme features the participation of illustrators Marika, Carla Berrocal, Laura Pérez Vernetti and Bea Lema and researchers Viviane Alary, Virginie Giuliana and Elisa McCausland.
The aim of the encounter is twofold: to explore in greater depth the different forms in which women comic book artists have contributed to developing a counterculture; namely, the appearance of ruptures, reformulations and new genres within the ninth art. And to set up a dialogue which ignites an exploration of genealogies linking different generations of artists.
Moreover, the activity is put forward as a continuation to the exhibition Young Ladies the World Over, Unite! Women Adult Comic Book Writers (1967–1993) and the First International Conference on Feminist Comic Book Genealogies, held in April 2024 at the Complutense University of Madrid.
In redefining the visual narratives of the comic book and questioning gender stereotypes in a male-dominated world, women comic book writers and artists have impelled greater visibility and a more prominent role for women in this sphere. The study of intergenerational dialogue between female artists past and present enables an analysis of the way in which these voices reinterpret and carry the legacy of their predecessors, contributing new perspectives, forms of artistic expression and a gender-based hybridisation which enhances the world of comics.
The conference, organised jointly by the Museo Reina Sofía and Université Clermont Auvergne/CELIS (UR4280), features the participation of the Casa de Velázquez and is framed inside the context of the CALC programme The Spanish Artistic Canon. Between Critical Literature and Popular Culture: Propaganda, Debates, Advertising (1959–1992), co-directed by Virginie Giuliana. It is also the outcome of the projects Horizon Europa COST Actions iCOn-MICs (Comics and Graphic Novels from the Iberian Cultural Area, CA19119) and COS-MICs (Comics and Sciences, CA24160).