Inhabiting Dispersion

Seminars and Lectures

Maia Villot. After talk the "Blue". Encuentro, 2011 — Maia Villot. *After talk the "Blue"*. Encounter, 2011

Held on 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 may 2014

Theatricality, which at one time could have been considered an exclusive condition of the public, has spread into traditionally private spheres: the home, friendship and in relationships of coexistence and. In parallel, privacy has flowed into these spheres, and it is from here that a theatricality of affection, even a theatricality of love, can be critically activated to serve life.

This seminar forms part of a tri-annual project that explores the expanded action in new areas: the public sphere, the city, the home, networks of affection, schools and educational spaces. Inhabiting Dispersion is held in collaboration with the project Archives of Affection, in which different artistic proposals approach the archive as a living space of relationships. It culminates als with a programme of critical practices devoted to an investigation into “networks of affection” as a space of theatricality.

In collaboration with

Embajada de Brasil and Fundación Cultural Hispano Brasileña

Framework

Imaginarios sociales II: la idea de acción en la sociedad posindustrial. Documentación, teoría y análisis de las artes escénicas contemporáneas (HAR 2011-28767). Plan Nacional de I+D del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas

Teatralidades disidentes (HAR2012-34075). Plan Nacional de I+D del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

Organised by

ARTEA and Museo Reina Sofía

Educational program developed with the sponsorship of

Participants

Esther Belvis. A member of ARTEA, researcher, writer and educator with an MA in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Warwick and the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Óscar Cornago. A member of ARTEA. Researcher at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid CSIC. In recent years he has coordinated the volumes Utopías de la proximidad en el contexto de la globalización. La creación escénica en Iberoamérica (2010), A veces me pregunto por qué sigo bailando. Prácticas de la intimidad (2012) and Manual de emergencia en prácticas escénicas. Comunidad y economías de la precariedad (2014).

Quim Pujol. Writer, artist and curator. He has participated in research projects such as “Autonomía y complejidad” or "Arte y ciencia ficción" and has collaborated in publications like Artributos, Efímera, Maska or Repensar la dramaturgia. He is co-curator of La estrategia doméstica and the Secció Irregular at the Mercat de les Flors and professor in the Independent Studies Programme at the MACBA.

Fernando Quesada. A member of ARTEA, architect and senior lecturer of architectural projects at the University of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). Participates at the MA in Arts Practice and Visual Culture at the University. He is author of the books La Caja Mágica. Cuerpo y Escena (2005) and Del cuerpo a la red (2014).

Suely Rolnik. A senior lecturer at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, where she runs the Core interdisciplinary studies on subjectivity in the Clinical Psychology Postgraduate course, and honorary professor in the Independent Studies Programme at the MACBA. She is author of Micropolítica. Cartografías del deseo (in collaboration with Félix Guattari, 2006).

José Antonio Sánchez. A lecturer of the History of Art at the University of Castilla La Mancha (UCLM) and director of the MA in Arts Practice and Visual Culture. A member of ARTEA (Madrid). Noteworthy publications include Dramaturgias de la imagen (2002) and Prácticas de lo real en la escena contemporánea (2007).

Students and artists invited to the presentations of projects:
Tamara Ascanio, Marta Battistella, Mike Brookes, Ana Salomé Branco, Paloma Calle, Marie Capesius, Rosa Casado, Joan Casellas, Nieves Correa, Belén Cueto, María José Cifuentes, Circo Interior Bruto, Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski, Óscar G. Villegas, Ana Harcha, Lila Insúa, María Jerez, Bruno Leitao, Rosell Meseguer, Javier Núñez Gasco, Mariona Naudin, Joseph Patricio, Luciana Pereyra Agoff, Huemulita Pitrufkén, Germán de la Riva, Anto Rodríguez and Catarina Simao.

16 May, 2014 Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200

Suely Rolnik. For the Ethics of Thought

Admission: Free entry, until full capacity is reached
Walking around the Möbius strip with Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, this conference sees Suely Rolnik develop the idea of life as a topological surface on which strength and form are inseparable. The paradoxical relationship that exists between the aesthetic-clinical relationship of strengths (knowing body), on one side, and the cultural-sensitive evaluation of form, on the other, triggers desire as an action of thought capable of reshaping reality at its points of asphyxiation, in the words of the Brazilian psychoanalyst. Rolnik questions different politics in the production of thoughts, based on the notions of subjectivity when faced with this inescapable paradox. The focus reverts back to the notion that Rolnik renders on the colonial unconsciousness marked by the subconscious repression of the knowing body in the production of thought, desire and subjectivity. According to the author, such repression forms the basis of modern Western culture and represents an essential part of its colonising enterprise from a micropolitical perspective as it is imposed on suppressed societies. Thus, the return of the repressed body in the exercise of thought depends on the necessary strength and guile to mock the colonial subconscious, which today still structures subjectivity and orients desires at play. These outbreaks happen in the current world as injections of the knowing body in the dying anthrophallecentric arteries of Western modernity in crisis.
17 May, 2014 Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200

José Antonio Sánchez, Fernando Quesada, Óscar Cornago, Ixiar Rozas, Quim Pujol, Esther Belvis. Round Table

Admission: Free entry, until full capacity is reached
Dispersion has affected all possible spheres, diluting the borders between the public and private, work and occupation, intimacy and publicity, in which theatricality from affection plays a key role after having jumped from traditional spheres to others that previously lacked full validity. Faced with this situation, at certain points the discourse moves towards future nostalgia when it comes to repositioning limits erased by the totalising effect of dispersion. This table, comprised of course directors and members of the ARTEA research group, offers an idea-sharing session involving the materials reviewed over the course of the year on the networks of affection and certain hypotheses, such as the space for collaborations, artistic practice from the care for or defence of the independence of life, not art.
15, 16, 17 and 18 May, 2014 Nouvel Building, Protocol Room

Presentation of projects, stage interventions and encounters

The project presentations, as well as the encounters and stage interventions, belong to the following lines of investigation:

Archives of Affection

Why archive? What is there beyond the inventory, and can experience be collected? With participation from Ana Salomé Branco, Paloma Calle, Rosa Casado, Joan Casellas, Nieves Correa, Belén Cueto, Bruno Leitão, Rosell Meseguer, Javier Núñez, Joseph Patricio and Catarina Simão, Archives of Affection, coordinated by Óscar Cornago and Zara Rodríguez, is the continuation of an investigation space for stage practices about the ways of finding and identifying ourselves socially, the place of affection and the culture of work. The exchange of the relation, the immediacy of the present, the changing experience of the other and living memory are some of the places from which to reconsider the sense of archive, the relationship with history and profitability as a principle of social organisation.

Expanded Theatricalities

This year’s course is devoted to an investigation into networks of affection as a space for theatricality. The range of practices this seminar will address from these diverse perspectives is broad, and comprises small-format experiences, intimate work laboratories that create personal spaces based on affection, which are not penetrated by the colonisation of the dramatic (or if it occurs it is managed as another form of theatricality with which to experiment), workshops in which the emphasis on the creation of an ‘us’ based on emotion that can be found on the edges of the stage circuit.