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January 16, 18, 23 and 25, 2013 Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Block 1. Doing politics with nothing. Territories of violence
This block presents the creative strategies of the human rights movement in Argentina and Chile, along with actions and productions by activist groups with such marginal materiality that they used resources such as silk-screening, photocopies and the body to process and show the consequences of State terrorism with its correlate of massacres, torture, forced disappearances. In various sessions, it explores how the modes of political action in the 1970s became, due to the impossibility of confrontation, the resource used in artistic tactics aimed at ending the isolation of political practice and provoking viewers by means of body-to-body contact in the streets. This open opposition and occupation of the public space would become, in the 1980s, the key elements that allowed for the creation of new citizenries.
Session 1
January 9, 7:00 p.m.
No me olvides (Don't forget me)
Tatiana Gaviola. Chile, 1988. Production format: U-Matic, 15 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Tatiana Gaviola
Somos+ (We are +)
Pedro Chaskel and Pablo Salas. Chile, 1985. Production format: U-Matic, 16 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Pablo Salas
Por la vida (For Life)
Pedro Chaskel and Pablo Salas. Chile, 1985. Production format: U-Matic, 28 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Pablo Salas
Presentation by Miguel Martínez
Miguel Martínez holds a PhD in Political Science and is a researcher in the department of Sociology II at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He specializes in social movements and urban studies.Session 2
Dates: January 11, 7:00 p.m.
Arete Guasu
Made by: Dea Pompa. Based on an original idea by: Lia Colombino. Paraguay, 2012. Production format: DV-Cam, 37 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Lia Colombino. Short film not previously released, made jointly with Museo Reina Sofía and the network Conceptualismos del Sur.
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January 16, 18, 23 and 25, 2013 Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Block 2. Underspaces
The friction of bodies
This block reflects a series of collective experiences in semi-clandestine places, in certain "official" spaces and on the outskirts of large Latin American cities. New cultural manifestations linked to one another by the crudeness of their forms and by their total negation of official values. Later called the ‘subte’ scene (short for subterránea, underground), in this period creativity reached unknown heights, in contrast with the despondency and the brutality of the armed conflict in Peru, the military dictatorship in Chile and the processes of marginalisation in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. Grouped around libertarian and anarchist discourses, and making use of music, the visual arts and poetry, these groups are characterized by their refusal to remain silent in the face of news about torture and disappearances, but also about the spread of the new market society. This independent scene choose to confront authoritarianism, repression and the social and cultural status quo, and it does so collectively through concerts, posters, scenographies, festivals and multidisciplinary encounters at universities, theatres and other places in the city.
Session 3
January 16, 7 p.m.
Punks
Sarah Yakhni and Alberto Gieco. Chile, 1984. Production format: U-Matic, 35 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Original language: Portuguese, with Spanish subtitles. Distributed by Sarah Yakhni, Brazil.
Grito subterráneo (Underground Scream)
Julio Montero Solís. Peru, 1986. Production format: various, 120 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Julio Montero Solís, Peru.Session 4
January 18, 7 p.m.
Nadie es inocente (Nobody is innocent)
Sarah Minter. Mexico, 1987. Production format: U-Matic, 58 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Sarah Minter, Mexico.
Alma punk (Punk Soul)
Sarah Minter. Mexico, 1991. Production format: U-Matic, 56 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Sarah Minter, Mexico.Session 5
23 January, 7 p.m.
Rodrigo ‘D’. No futuro (Rodrigo 'D'. No future)
Víctor Gaviria. Colombia, 1990. Production format: 35 mm, 90 min. Exhibition copy in DVD.Session 6
25 January, 6 p.m.
Pank. Orígenes del punk en Chile (Pank. The origins of punk in Chile)
Martín Núñez. Chile, 2010. Production format: various, 80 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Martín Núñez, Chile.
Frenesí (Frenzy) - Liliana Maresca - 1984/1994
Adriana Miranda. Argentina, 1994.Production format: various, 35 min.Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Adriana Miranda, Argentina.
Presentation by Miguel Conejeros
Miguel Conejeros is a musician. During his early career he was a member of the band Los Pinochet Boys (1984-1987), which pioneered a new way to conceive of rock/pop/electronic/experimental music in Chile and Latin America.
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January 30 and February 1, 6, 8 and 13, 2013 Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Block 3. Sexual disobediences
The friction of bodies
In the 1980s various artistic experiences involving gender subversion and sexual disobedience put forward a critique of normative heterosexuality, and at the same time questioned the left-wing imaginary, by confronting the naturalized relationships of inequality, authoritarianism and subordination that support these discourses. This situation is addressed in Improper Behaviour, a film in which Cuban refugees are interviewed about the incarceration of homosexuals, political dissidents and Jehovah's Witnesses in labour camps, under the Cuban government's policy of Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP). Many of these art practices were also a response to the HIV/AIDS crisis, as mentioned in Dzi Croquettes, and to the continual stigmatisation of minorities. Through carnivalesque performative interventions, as in Pedro Lemebel: corazón en fuga (Pedro Lemebel: a fleeing heart), images of prosthetic alterations or encounters between non-normative sexualities, such as those seen in Batato's Movie, the artistic insubordination present in this block shatters heterosexuality as a political regime.
Session 7
30 January, 7 p.m.
La peli de Batato (Batato's Movie)
Goyo Anchou y Peter Pank . Argentina, 2011. Production format: various, 150 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Goyo Anchou, Argentina.Session 8
1 February, 7 p.m.
El homosexual o la dificultad de expresarse (The homosexual, or the difficulty of expressing oneself).
Teatro del Sol. Peru, 1990. Production format: VHS, 63 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Giuseppe Campuzano, Peru.
Pedro Lemebel: corazón en fuga (Pedro Lemebel: a fleeing heart)
Verónica Quense. Chile, 2009. Production format: Betacam, 53 min. Exhibition copy in Betacam. Distributed by Verónica Quense, Chile.Session 9
6 February, 7 p.m.
Conducta impropia (Improper Behaviour)
Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal. France, Cuba, 1984. Production format: 35 mm, 93 min. Exhibition copy in Betacam. Original language: Spanish and French, with Spanish subtitles. Distributed by Orlando Jiménez Leal, New York.
Presentation: Andrés Isaac Santana
Andrés Isaac Santana (Matanzas, Cuba, 1979) is an art critic, essayist, editor and exhibition curator. His publications include “Imágenes del desvío. La voz homoerótica en el arte cubano contemporáneo” (Ed. J.C, Sáez, Chile, 2004) and he edited the compilation of texts “Nosotros, los más infieles. Narraciones críticas sobre el arte cubano (1993-2005)”, (Ed. Cendeac, Murcia, 2007).Session 10
8 February, 7 p.m.
108 Cuchillo de palo (108 Wooden Knife)
Renate Costa. Spain, Paraguay, 2010. Production format: Super-8 and digital video, 93 min. Exhibition copy in Betacam. Distributed by: Estudi Playtime, Barcelona.
Reinas
Made by: Dea Pompa. Based on an original idea by: Lia Colombino. Paraguay, 2012. Production format: DV-Cam, 20 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Lia Colombino. Short film not previously released, made jointly with Museo Reina Sofía and the network Conceptualismos del Sur.Session 11
13 February, 7 p.m.
Dzi Croquettes
Tatiana Issa and Raphael Álvarez. Brazil, 2009. Production format: various, 110 min. Exhibition copy in Blu-Ray. Original language: Portuguese, with Spanish subtitles. Distributed by: Tatiana Issa and Raphael Álvarez, Brazil.
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February 15, 2013 Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Block 4. Ongoing delirium and other experiments
The friction of bodies
The Bureau of Surrealist Enquiries, an institution invented by Antonin Artaud in 1924, was conceived as a place where anyone could go to explore madness in order to reinvent life through creative activity. Taking up the idea of this key institution once again, in the 1980s different groups in Argentina decided to refound the international surrealist movement. Among them was TIC - Taller de Investigaciones Cinematográficas, or the Cinematographic Investigation Workshop - which produced a series of videos now being shown for the first time.
Along with these videos by the TIC, other films recover the imaginary of the 1970s and 1980s and put forward poetic and experimental creations. Homem-ave gira deals with the poetic universe of the Brazilian singer Ney Matogrosso, who during the dictatorship of the 1970s broke sexual taboos with his behaviour on stage. Mi Co-Ra-Zón, by the Mexican Pola Weiss, explores the body, with its organs, guts and fluids, through montages linking the eye to the heart. The block ends with Melquíades Herrera, participant in the collective No-Grupo, who, in modifications of daily activities, takes imagination, provocation and collective creation to transform the “normal” conditions of existence.Session 12
February 15, 7 p.m.
Detrás del muro (Behind the wall)
Taller de Investigaciones Cinematográficas (TIC), Adrián Rivero (Adrián Fanjul). Argentina, 1980. Production format: Super-8, 5 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Roberto Barandalla, Argentina.
El Chulu
Taller de Investigaciones Cinematográficas (TIC), Sergio Bellotti. Argentina, 1980.
Production format: Super-8, 20 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Roberto Barandalla, Argentina.
El amor vence (Love wins)
Taller de Investigaciones Cinematográficas (TIC), Beto Sánchez (Roberto Barandalla).
Argentina, 1980. Production format: Super-8, 12 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Roberto Barandalla, Argentina.
El loco de la carretilla (The Madman with a Wheelbarrow)
Taller de Investigaciones Cinematográficas (TIC), Eduardo Nico "Magoo". Argentina, 1979.
Production format: Super-8, 7 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by Roberto Barandalla, Argentina.
Homem-ave
Rafael Saar. Brazil, 2010. Production format: HD, 6 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Original language: Portuguese, with Spanish subtitles. Distributed by Rafael Saar, Brazil.
Mi Co-Ra-Zón (My heart)
Pola Weiss. Mexico, 1986. Production format: U-Matic, 11 min. Exhibition copy in DVD. Distributed by: Documentary Archive of the MUAC, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico.
Venta de peines (Selling combs)
Jorge Prior and Melquíades Herrera. Mexico, 1993. Production format: Betacam, 2 min. Exhibition copy in Blu-Ray. Distributed by Producciones Volcán, Mexico.
Uno por 5, 3 por diez (One for 5, 3 for ten)
Jorge Prior and Melquíades Herrera. Mexico, 1992. Production format: Betacam, 11 min. Exhibition copy in Blu-Ray. Distributed by Producciones Volcán, Mexico.
Presentation: Jaime Vindel and Eduardo Nico “Magoo”.
Jaime Vindel is an art historian, a member of the curatorial team of Losing the Human Form and a participant in the network Conceptualismos del Sur.
Eduardo Nico “Magoo” is the co-founder, with Roberto Barandalla, of the Taller de Investigaciones Cinematográficas (Cinematographic Investigation Workshop) He has also published two books of poetry, "La Polaca" (1995) and "Puros por cruza" (2011).
Held on 09 Jan 2013
The expression the friction of bodies (el roce de los cuerpos) returns to the idea developed by the Argentine art historian Roberto Amigo about how the new forms of artistic activism in the 1980s in different places in Latin America took shape. If in the 1960s and 70s the linking of art and politics arose within traditional moulds related to the legacy of Marxism, in the 1980s that way of operating underwent a radical transformation. Encounters, festivities, the carnavalisation of protest and other forms of direct contact between bodies, whether in the private sphere or in a clandestine manner, would be the way to create a public counter-sphere in opposition to the devastating effects of violence.
Radical and libertarian attitudes thus appear, interweaving sexual dissidence, countercultural production, occupation of the streets, anarchism, social demands and civil disobedience or the demand that the victims of political disappearances come back to life, spaces and rituals that were previously invisible. This experimental wave brought a new way of thinking about and intervening in political happenings, using imaginaries of resistance and activism that favoured the building of new bodies and socialities, and the rebuilding of the emotional ties that had been broken by terror.
These film and video productions were made by documentary makers, artists, researchers, historians and people involved in these episodes. They include: amateur productions arising in underground spaces; works with the visual sophistication of a renewed cinematographic experimentalism; films of limited commercial circulation that draw connections between crisis periods by examining urban violence, music and drugs; and also new productions made especially for this exhibition. Using memory, narrative, recovered documents and images, and also musical production, this living archive of those events attempts to rethink the ways in which film and video have given a different visibility to a multitude of dissident bodies and behaviours.
Itinerary
Itinerary in collaboraction with AECID
Organised by
Conceptualismos del Sur Network and Museo Reina Sofía
Itinerancies
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
9 January, 2013 - 15 February, 2013
Centro Cultural Juan de Salazar. Asunción, Paraguay
2 October, 2013 - 14 October, 2013
MALI. Lima, Perú
11 January, 2014 - 23 February, 2014
Centro Cultural de España en México, México D.F.
19 February, 2014 - 4 April, 2014
Centro Cultural de España en Tegucigalpa
5 March, 2014 - 20 March, 2014
Centro Cultural Parque de España, Rosario, Argentina
9 March, 2014 - 27 April, 2014
CCEBA (Centro Cultural de España) y UNTREF (Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero) Buenos Aires, Argentina
3 April, 2014 - 9 May, 2014
CCE (Centro Cultural de España), Montevideo
23 September, 2014 - 29 November, 2014
CCEG (Centro Cultural de España en Guatemala)
10 February, 2015 - 19 March, 2015
Centro Cultural de España, Santo Domingo, República Dominicana
5 May, 2015 - 30 May, 2015
Centro Cultural de España en Costa Rica
17 February, 2016 - 24 February, 2016
Más actividades
Files of Tropical Revolutions
Sábado 20 y 27 de junio, 2026 - 19:00 H
The Reframing Banana Imagery series concludes with two works that condense the height and twilight of this period in history, epic sagas that cross borders and registers to embody experiences of armed struggle in the region. Cameras mix with firearms, borders between nations blur and patience reaches breaking point. This is where the tipping point lies, where the bloodshed weighs heavy and the murmurings of regional brotherhood are buried in the ground again.
Pan y dignidad (Carta abierta de Nicaragua) [Bread and Dignity (An Open Letter to Nicaragua)] recounts the historical records and process of national reconstruction in Nicaragua via the Sandinista popular uprising. Historias prohibidas de Pulgarcito (Forbidden Tales of Tom Thumb) places the camera at the heart of the El Salvador revolutionary struggle, interspersing testimonies of daily violence with the verses of the poet Roque Dalton.
Both works understand the armed revolution as an open file under construction. The insurgent brotherhood, although dissolved, still resounds in regional history.
Circling Over Exploited Bodies
Friday, 19 and 26 June 2026 - 7pm
When forms of violence are inflicted on society, film responds from urgency. Images become abstract, sounds fade and the register of dissidence comes from the gut. La zona intertidal (The Intertidal Zone) is an essayistic and poetic approach to the repression of teachers in El Salvador in the 1970s — a teacher studies the biodiversity of the El Salvador coast as a boy finds a body on the same beach. A propósito de la mujer (About Women) interweaves testimonies of misery and rage towards patriarchal structures with fictional scenes of a symbolic procession through a harsh desert.
Both films understand the body as a target of violence and a territory of insurrection, a space where the blood shed by militancy and the patriarchal yoke turn pain into denouncement and existence outside the status quo into an act of political dissidence.
Central American Designation of Origin
Thursday, 18 and 25 June 2026 - 7pm
Fertile lands, farmers’ hands, rural faces. This first programme in the series Reframing Banana Imagery understands the foundations of the Central American experience from exploitation, extractivism and displacement, and from the organisation and resistance that emerged as a reaction. The four films within extend from a lyrical documentary on farmers’ solidarity to the playful subversion of the institutional format of the United Fruit Company.
Bananeras (Banana Growers) is a combative portrait of the inhumane conditions of the American banana plantations located in Nicaragua through much of the twentieth century. Costa Rica Banana Republic is a perspicacious satire via an institutional documentary of banana production, spotlighting the extractive nature of this agro-exporting model in the 1970s. Organización Campesina (Farmers’ Organisation) frames rural resistance in Honduras from a direct depiction and lyrical documentary, while Dos veces mujer (Two Times a Woman) dissects the invisibility of the double-shift working day Central American women farmers endure: working in the countryside and working in the home. As a whole, the works here present the earth at once as a wounded body and a space of dignity.
Cinema, for the First Time
7 and 14 June 2026 – 12:00 pm
The final session in this Moon Projector season contemplates the feeling around the first experience of cinema — cinema as revelation, magic, fantasy and mystery from the first gaze, from the first contact with the medium, and imagery etched on the retina of childhood. The programme shows Émile Cohl’s landmark Fantasmagorie (1908), the first ever hand-drawn animation, and Ignacio Agüero’s Cien niños esperando un tren (One Hundred Children Waiting for a Train, 1988), a feature-length film on play and the origins of cinema.
Fantasmagorie (1908)by Émile Cohl (Paris, 1857– Villejuif, 1938) is the first expression in the history of animated drawing. Émile Cohl was an illustrator who belonged to the Parisian art group Arts incohérents (1882–1895), who was bestowed with an absurdist and pre-Surrealist talent. Whereas the Lumière brothers were able get audiences out of their seats as they witnessed a train moving towards them in 1895, Fantasmagorie is a supernatural experience, akin to an apparition yet also innocuous and entertaining — the inanimate comes to life out of nothing and figures seemingly move with little sense. From the outset, animation was related to caricature, fabulation and the comical, a sweet spot for the dreams of the youngest audience.
From the discovery of new imagery arising from the animated line to knowledge of the world through a screen, Cien niños esperando un tren (1988), by Chilean director Ignacio Agüero (Santiago, 1952), narrates a group of young people’s discovery of cinema in a workshop on the origins of the medium in a poverty-stricken town on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile. Play, fun and learning combine with a fascination with images, as viewing Émile Cohl’s Fantasmagorie (1908) in the workshop becomes an act of freedom.
Elisa González and Leah Pattem. Soy Tribulete 7
13 JUN 2026
Framed inside this year’s Neighbourhood Picnic is the screening, in the Museo’s Cinema, of a film related to the life and protests of the Lavapiés neighbourhood, addressing issues of gentrification and the right to housing: Soy Tribulete 7 (I Am Tribulete 7, 2026), directed by Elisa González and Leah Pattem.
As the Spanish housing crisis takes hold in Lavapiés, this story begins in February 2024, when the residents of Calle Tribulete, 7, a block of apartments on a street in this Madrid barrio, receive a letter informing them that their building has been sold to a vulture fund. The news spreads quickly around the neighbourhood and, when it comes to the attention of González and Pattem, they grab their cameras and head straight for the building, where they encounter one hundred or so residents still in shock. The film Soy Tribulete 7 flows into the building and the daily lives of a community united, whose looming eviction occasions the fight of their lives. Ultimately, a path of resistance that will turn the community into a symbol of struggle for the right to housing.
Both film-makers worked closely with a group of tenants — Cris, Nani, Blanca, José, María Jesús and Antonia — to tell the story of how the building became the most creative stage of resistance ever witnessed in the area. The work presents the daily life of these residents in Madrid’s now-iconic “building fighting eviction”, depicting their collective struggle and the violent disruption to their lives. Through personal interviews, observational footage, archive material, music and a narration by eighty-year-old actress Ana Martín García, the film casts light on the human stories behind a community struggle.
The Neighbourhood Picnic is an annual gathering of festivities organised by Museo Situado, a network made up of associations, activists and residents from Lavapiés, a racially diverse, working-class neighbourhood where the Museo Reina Sofía is located.