Manuel Correa, The Shape of Now, 2018, film
Held on 13 Dec 2025
The Shape of Now is a documentary that explores the challenges and paradoxes of memory, reparation and post-conflict justice, extending a defiant and questioning gaze towards the six-decade armed conflict in which the Colombian State, guerrillas and paramilitary groups clashed to leave millions of victims in the country. The screening is conducted by the Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics study group and includes a presentation by and discussion with the film’s director, Manuel Correa.
The film surveys the consequences of the peace agreements signed in 2016 between the Colombian State and the FARC guerrilla organisation through the optics of different victims. It was recorded shortly after this signing, a time in which doubts lingered over the country’s future, with many groups speculating in the narration. Correa harnesses the power of images, visual and bodily memory, fiction and re-staging as tools for understanding the conflict, memory and healing, as well as for the achievement of a just peace that acknowledges and remembers all victims.
The activity is framed inside the research propelled by Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics, a study group developed by the Museo’s Study Directorship and Study Centre. This annual group seeks to rethink, from a theoretical-critical and historical-artistic perspective, the complex framework of concepts and exercises which operate under the notion of pacifism. A term that calls on not only myriad practices ranging from anti-militarism and anti-war movements to activism for non-violence, but also opens topical debates around violence, justice, reparation and desertion.
Framed in this context, the screening seeks to reflect on propositions of transitional and anti-punitive justice, and on an overlapping with artistic and audiovisual practices, particularly in conflicts that have engendered serious human rights violations. In such conflicts, the role played by audiovisual productions encompasses numerous challenges and ethical, aesthetic and political debates, among them those related to the limits of representation, the issue of revictimisation and the risks involved in the artistic commitment to justice. These themes will be addressed in a discussion held after the session.
Inside the framework of
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Accessibility
This activity has two spaces reserved for people with reduced mobility
Agenda
sábado 13 dic 2025 a las 19:00
Manuel Correa. La forma del presente (The Shape of Now)
Colombia, 2018, colour, sound, original version in Spanish, 72’
—With a presentation and discussion conducted by the film’s director Manuel Correa and researcher Bea Abbott.
Participants
Manuel Correa
(Medellín, 1991) is a Colombian artist and film-maker who lives in Madrid. His work explores memory and processes of reconstruction in contemporary societies scarred by conflict, addressing the fragile social relations that surface after traumatic experiences and using documentary film as a tool to create spaces of encounter between victims, survivors, activists and scientists. Correa was part of the interdisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture and in 2024 received an Afield Transitional Justice grant. His work has been shown at the 2023 and 2025 editions of Biennale Architettura in Venice (Italy), Kunsthaus Graz (Austria), the IFFR International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands), DOK Leipzig (Germany), Medialab Matadero, Madrid (Spain) and the MAMM Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (Colombia), among others.
Bea Abbott
(USA, 1992) is a geographer and researcher. Her work focuses on themes of visual and spatial culture, from forced disappearance and critical border studies. Throughout her trajectory she has devoted her work to independent forensic research and has been involved with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) in Mexico, the National Security Archive in the USA and the Last Right Project in the UK. Her cartographic research work has been shown in spaces such as the Roy and Edna Disney Calarts Theater (REDCAT) [USA], the Istanbul Biennial (Turkey) and Medialab Matadero (Spain). She is currently part of the Documentary Research Office interdisciplinary collective and is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of Kentucky (USA).
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