Knowledge through Commotions
Encounter with Georges Didi-Huberman and Manuel Borja-Villeland and a Stage Intervention by Luz Arcas and Inés Bacán
Henri Michaux, untitled, 1950-1951
Held on 06 nov 2024
Georges Didi-Huberman (Saint-Étienne, 1953), one the pre-eminent art historians of the present time, has curated two exhibitions in the Museo Reina Sofía: ATLAS. How to Carry the World on One’s Back? (2010–2011) and “In the Troubled Air…” (2024), both of which form a diptych on the knowledge and experience of images. In this lecture and talk, Didi-Huberman, with Manuel Borja-Villel, director of the Museo from 2008 to 2023, will expand upon the underpinnings of this diptych.
The ATLAS. How to Carry the World on One’s Back? show, a journey through the history of images, from 1914 to the present day from the framework of Warburgian thought, brought together Aby Warburg and figures such as Jean-Luc Godard, among others, to discuss accumulation, disruption, and the jump between different temporalities from a knowledge model based on the editing table, where our own hands can be used to order images. The exhibition “In the Troubled Air…”, meanwhile, articulates a political anthropology of emotion understood as a movement which transmits collectiveness through a unique body; emotion that is subject to turning into a mass action, as well as vehicular forms of expression and critical resistance that broaden our perception of the world. Therefore, Didi-Huberman takes as a point of departure Federico García Lorca’s notion of “duende” (a state of heightened emotion or expression), a category in which overwhelming emotion happens in a moment of ecstasy and drama, life and death alike.
The activity concludes with a stage performance by flamenco singer Inés Bacán and dancer Luz Arcas under the artistic direction of Pedro G. Romero: a collision between the atavistic singing of Inés Bacán — a lauded gypsy singer from Lebrija — and the forms that the body of Luz Arcas, winner of Spain’s 2024 National Dance Award, takes on in her dancing. The third protagonist on stage is a table, a real object from nineteenth-century spiritist sessions. Thus, under the title Nana para Emmy Hennings (a writer and founder of Cabaret Voltaire), contemporary dance, flamenco and occultist incantation come together in the work. Convulsion! As the air shakes!
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Collaboration
illycaffèParticipants
Luz Arcas is a choreographer and dancer, and the founder of the company La Phármaco, where she works as an artistic director, choreographer and performer. Notable among her stage creations are Kaspar Hauser. El huérfano de Europa (Teatros del Canal, Festival Otoño a Primavera, 2016), Miserere. Cuando la noche llegue se cubrirán con ella (Teatros del Canal, 2017) and Una gran emoción política (2018, Teatro Valle Inclán de Madrid), co-produced by the Centro Dramático Nacional.
Inés Bacán is a flamenco singer whose work is rooted in the strictest gypsy orthodoxy. Born as Inés Peña Peña, she began to focus on flamenco professionally in the 1990s alongside her brother, the guitarist Pedro Bacán, within the show El Clan de los Pininis. After mythical performances at the Paris Opera and the Arles and Aviñón Festivals, in addition to tours in Canada, Switzerland, Hungary and Spain, she started on her solo path following the death of her brother in 1997. She has performed at festivals such as the Mont de Marsans Flamenco Festival (2003), the Jerez Flamenco Festival (2010), the Nimes Flamenco Festival (2012) and the Flamenco Biennial of Seville (2010 and 2014).
Manuel Borja-Villel is an art historian and curator who has served as the director of Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, from its opening in 1990 to 1998, MACBA from 1998 to 2008 and the Museo Reina Sofía from 2008 to 2023. In 1989, he obtained a PhD from City University, in New York, with his thesis on Antoni Tàpies. In addition to curating over a hundred exhibitions, he has participated in numerous lectures, seminars, workshops and courses. Notable among his publications are Campos magnéticos. Escritos sobre arte y política (Arcadia, 2020) and Conversación con Manuel Borja-Villel, with Marcelo Expósito (Ediciones Turpial, 2015).
Georges Didi-Huberman is a philosopher, art historian and lecturer at École des hautes études en sciences sociales, in Paris. He is the author of numerous key publications on the history and theory of images, most notably Imaginar recomenzar. Lo que nos levanta (Abada Editores, 2023), The Surviving Image. Phantoms of Time and Time of Phantoms: Aby Warburg's History of Art (Penn State University Press, 2016) and The Eye of History. When Images Take Positions (MIT Press, 2018). He has also curated, in addition to those mentioned, the show Uprisings (Jeu de Paume, Paris, and MNAC, Barcelona, 2016–2017).
![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)
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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.
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