Held on 22, 23 jun 2023
The Museo’s Study Centre organises two public sessions based on the first edition of Connective Tissue, the Museo Reina Sofía’s Programme of Critical Museology, Artistic Research Practices and Cultural Studies. During the encounter, the team of mobilisers — researchers who drive forward and coordinate, from their different fields, the Programme’s different Seminars and Critical Nodes — share the works developed up to this point and reflect on their predictions. Equally, the group of Resident Student Researchers present their work on posters and in installations and talks with people interested.
The aim of the activity is to share knowledge, learning and projects carried out to date in the different Seminars and Critical Nodes, fibres of a shared research fabric which looks to be projected towards different outlying social, academic and cultural places.
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Juan Andrade is a professor of Contemporary History at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
Raquel Arias Careaga is a professor in the Department of Hispano-American Literature at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM).
David Becerra Mayor is a professor of Spanish Literature at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM).
Kira Bermúdez is a cultural mediator, social pedagogue, translator and occasional writer.
Carme Bernat Mateu is a student researcher who is writing her doctoral thesis at the University Institute of Women’s Studies and in the Department of Modern and Contemporary History at Universitat de València (UV).
Alberto Berzosa is a researcher with the “Fossil Aesthetics” group from the Spanish National Research Council.
Rubén Blanco Merlo is a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and a member of the Sociología Ordinaria (Ordinary Sociology) research group.
Jesús Carrillo is a professor in the Art History and Theory Department at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM).
Florencia Claes is the president of the Wikimedia España association.
Claudia Delso is a cultural manager and mediator.
Xavier Domènech is a professor of Contemporary History at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).
Ntone Edjabe is a Cameroonian writer, journalist, DJ and founding editor of the Chimurenga magazine.
Yinka Esi Graves is a dancer and choreographer
José Luis Espejo is a researcher, curator and teacher.
Patricia Esquivias is a storyteller and narrator of events, characters and cultural objects through videos and installations.
Oier Etxeberria is the head of the Contemporary Art Department at the Tabakalera International Centre of Contemporary Culture (Donostia-San Sebastián).
Carolina Fernández Cordero is a professor in the Spanish Literature Department at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM).
Maite Garbayo-Maeztu is a Serra Hunter professor in the Art History Department at the University of Barcelona (UB).
Antonio García García is a professor of Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
Jorge Gaupp is an adviser in the Study Centre from the Public Activities Department at Museo Reina Sofía.
Pablo Jarauta is a professor of Design Theory and Culture at the Instituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Madrid.
Germán Labrador is the director of the Public Activities Department at Museo Reina Sofía.
Matteo Locci is a multimedia artist and architectural researcher.
Luisa Martín Rojo is a linguistics lecturer at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) and the director of the international interdisciplinary research centre MIRCo (Multilingualism, Discourse and Communication).
Javier Maseda works in the design and development of digital products, and is a lecturer at the Instituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Madrid and at the University of Castilla la Mancha.
Pedro Medina Reinón is a curator and contemporary art critic.
Pedro Oliver Olmo is a head professor of Contemporary History at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM).
Jaume Peris Blanes is a professor of Latin American Culture at Universitat de València (UV).
Julia Ramírez-Blanco is a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
María Rosón is a professor of Contemporary Art History at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
María L. Ruido is a film producer, visual artist, researcher and teacher.
Tania Safura Adam is a journalist, cultural critic and the founder of Radio África Magazine.
Mabel Tapia is the deputy artistic director of Museo Reina Sofía.
Ana Teixeira Pinto is a writer, cultural theorist and professor at the Braunschweig University of Art and a Theory tutor at the Dutch Art Institute.
Laura Villa is a contract researcher on the Tomás y Valiente programme at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM).
Jaime Vindel is a head researcher in the “Fossil Aesthetics” and “Energy Humanities” groups at the Spanish National Research Council.
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Thursday, 22 June 2023
9am Presentation
10am First Research Fabric Workshop
12:30pm Second Research Fabric Workshop
4:30pm Activation of Panels and Discussions
Friday, 23 June 2023
9:30am Third Research Fabric Workshop
12:30pm Fourth Research Fabric Workshop
4:30pm Activation of Panels and Discussions
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Inside the framework of
Participants
Participants
![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
Oliver Laxe. HU/هُوَ. Dance as if no one were watching you
Tuesday, 16 December 2025 – 7pm
As a preamble to the opening of the exhibition HU/هُوَ. Dance as if no one were watching you, film-maker Oliver Laxe (Paris, 1982) engages in conversation with the show’s curators, Julia Morandeira and Chema González, touching on the working processes and visual references that articulate this site-specific project for the Museo Reina Sofía. The installation unveils a new programme in Space 1, devoted from this point on to projects by artists and film-makers who conduct investigations into the moving image, sound and other mediums in their exhibition forms.
Oliver Laxe’s film-making is situated in a resilient, cross-border territory, where the material and the political live side by side. In HU/هُوَ. Dance as if no one were watching you, this drift is sculpted into a search for the transcendency that arises between dancing bodies, sacred architectures and landscapes subjected to elemental and cosmological forces. As a result, this conversation seeks to explore the relationship the piece bears to the imagery of ancient monotheisms, the resonance of Persian Sufi literature and the role of abstraction as a resistance to literal meaning, as well as looking to analyse the possibilities of the image and the role of music — made here in collaboration with musician David Letellier, who also works under the pseudonym Kangding Ray — in this project.
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.
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.