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Session 1
6:00 – 6:30 p.m. Juan Cantizzani. MASE – The History and Presence of Sound Art in Spain Introduction to the project
6:30 – 7:30 p.m. José Manuel Berenguer, Adolfo Núñez and José Iges. Radio Art and Electroacoustic Music
7:30 – 8:00 p.m. Carmen Pardo Salgado. Notes on Listening to the Automaton
8:00 – 9:00 p.m. Xoán-Xil, Juanjo Palacios and Kamen Nedev. Phonography and Soundscapes -
Session 2
6:00 - 6:30 p.m. Pedro López and Juan Cantizzani. mase.es – a space for the project’s documentation, archive and web-based repository.
6:30 - 7:30 p.m. José Iges. Process and Concept in Sound Art in Spain.
7:30 - 8:30 p.m. José Manuel Costa and Abraham Rivera. The Presence of Sound Art in Spain. From 1990 to the Present Day.
8:30 - 9:30 p.m. José Luis Espejo. Public and Private Archives in the Spanish State. Archiving Collections and Digitising Archives.
MASE project presentation
Held on 03 abr 2014
The MASE project continues the line of research into sound art in Spain that emanated from the 8th edition of the International Creation Meeting Sensxperiment, in 2006. Setting out from this initiative, a series of materials and references reflected both in a printed publication and a specific website (http://mase.es/old) are disseminated with the aim of setting in motion key lines of work that help to generate a space of critical reflection and a reference point for any future study on sound art in the Spanish State.
MASE provides space for work groups and action networks by activating research processes as a starting point from which to explore, test and activate lines of work linked to art practices within the realm of sound production and its relationship to the public, social and institutional spheres. The project’s new website (http://mase.es) represents a space for documentation, a repository, database, archive and resource bank, establishing a place associated with learning and dissemination.
This encounter comprises two conferences that resolve to communicate the project’s different processes and lines of research, with diverse agents establishing dialogue to address issues considered throughout the work process. The themes addressed are brought together in a face-to-face environment, necessary for the spontaneous exchange of ideas and as an extension of the fledgling repository in the web-based archive.
The project’s coordination and programming group is made up of José Manuel Costa, Xabi Erkizia, José Luis Espejo, José Iges and Xoán-Xil, with web development and administration by Pedro López and participation from contributors such as José Manuel Berenguer, Edu Comelles, Susana López, Kamen Nedev, Adolfo Núñez, Juanjo Palacios, Carmen Pardo, Abraham Rivera and Andrea Zarza.
Organised by
MASE and Museo Reina Sofía
Participants
José Manuel Berenguer. Intermedia artist, organiser of numerous festivals and promoter of sound projects like Côclea and the Orquestra del Caos.
Juan Cantizzani. Cultural manager, promoter of projects such as Sensxperiment and Andalucía Soundscape and coordinator of MASE.
José Manuel Costa. Visual and sound art critic, journalist and exhibition curator.
Xabi Erkizia. Musician, producer, independent curator and journalist. Organiser of the ERTZ Festival and coordinator of AUDIOLAB (Arteleku).
José Luis Espejo. An Independent researcher involved in diverse publications on audiovisual art and aural culture.
José Iges. Composer, sound and intermedia artist, organiser and curator of sound art exhibitions.
Pedro López. Intermedia Artist, promoter of the Modisti netlabel, editor of the magazine Hurly Burly and coordinator of the sound improvisation festival Hurta Cordel.
Xoán-Xil López. A Musicologist and sound artist who carries out research into ethnomusicology and contemporary music.
Kamen Nedev. An Independent Cultural Producer who develops research and production work in phonography and acoustic soundscapes.
Adolfo Núñez. A Composer and Lecturer at the Autonomous University of Madrid who carries out research into music science and technology.
Carmen Pardo Salgado. Head Lecturer at the University of Girona and Lecturer in the Master’s course on sound art, plastic arts, architecture and music at the University of Barcelona.
Juanjo Palacios. Sound Artist and founder of La Escucha Atenta, a platform and record label devoted to phonography.
Abraham Rivera. Audiovisual and music programmer and independent curator.
![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
Aesthetics of Peace and Desertion Tactics
8 October 2025 – 24 June 2026
The study group Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion: Prefiguring New Pacifisms and Forms of Transitional Justice proposes a rethinking—through both a theoretical-critical and historical-artistic lens—of the intricate network of concepts and practices operating under the notion of pacifism. A term not without contestation and critical tension, pacifism gathers under its name a multiplicity of practices—from anti-militarism and anti-war movements to non-violence activism—while simultaneously opening urgent debates around violence, justice, reparation, and desertion. Here, pacifism is not conceived as a moral doctrine, but as an active form of ethical and political resistance capable of generating aesthetic languages and new positions of social imagination.
Through collective study, the group seeks to update critical debates surrounding the use of violence and non-violence, as well as to explore the conflict of their representation at the core of visual cultures. In a present marked by rearmament, war, genocide, and the collapse of the social contract, this group aims to equip itself with tools to, on one hand, map genealogies and aesthetics of peace—within and beyond the Spanish context—and, on the other, analyze strategies of pacification that have served to neutralize the critical power of peace struggles. Transitional and anti-punitive justice proposals will also be addressed, alongside their intersections with artistic, visual, and cinematic practices. This includes examining historical examples of tribunals and paralegal activisms initiated by artists, and projects where gestures, imaginaries, and vocabularies tied to justice, reparation, memory, and mourning are developed.
It is also crucial to note that the study programme is grounded in ongoing reflection around tactics and concepts drawn, among others, from contemporary and radical Black thought—such as flight, exodus, abolitionism, desertion, and refusal. In other words, strategies and ideas that articulate ways of withdrawing from the mandates of institutions or violent paradigms that must be abandoned or dismantled. From feminist, internationalist, and decolonial perspectives, these concepts have nourished cultural coalitions and positions whose recovery today is urgent in order to prefigure a new pacifism: generative, transformative, and radical.
Aesthetics of Peace and Tactics of Desertion, developed and led by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Studies Management, unfolds through biweekly sessions from October to June. These sessions alternate between theoretical discussions, screenings, work with artworks and archival materials from the Museo’s Collection, reading workshops, and public sessions. The group is structured around sustained methodologies of study, close reading, and collective discussion of thinkers such as Judith Butler, Elsa Dorlin, Juan Albarrán, Rita Segato, Sven Lütticken, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Franco “Bifo” Berardi; historical episodes such as the anti-nuclear and anti-arms race movement in Spain; and the work of artists and activists including Rojava Film Commune, Manuel Correa and the Oficina de Investigación Documental (Office for Documentary Investigation), and Jonas Staal, among other initial cases that will expand as the group progresses.
27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference
Wednesday, 4, and Thursday, 5 March 2026
The 27th Contemporary Art Conservation Conference, organised by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation and Restoration, with the sponsorship of the MAPFRE Foundation, is held on 4 and 5 March 2026. This international encounter sets out to share and debate experience and research, open new channels of study and reflect on conservation and the professional practice of restorers.
This edition will be held with in-person and online attendance formats, occurring simultaneously, via twenty-minute interventions followed by a five-minute Q&A.
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.
Rethinking Guernica
Monday and Sunday - Check times
This guided tour activates the microsite Rethinking Guernica, a research project developed by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Collections Area, Conservation and Restoration Department and the Digital Projects Area of the Editorial Activities Department, assembling around 2,000 documents, interviews and counter-archives related to Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica (1937).
The visit sets out an in-situ dialogue between the works hung around the painting and a selection of key documents, selected by the Museo’s Education Team and essential to gaining an idea of the picture’s historical background. Therefore, the tour looks to contribute to activating critical thought around this iconic and perpetually represented work and seeks to foster an approach which refreshes our gaze before the painting, thereby establishing a link with the present. Essentially revisiting to rethink Guernica.
UP/ROOTING
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 NOV 2025
Museo Reina Sofía and MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) invite applications for the 2025 iteration of the School of Common Knowledge, which will take place from November 11th to 16th in Madrid and Barcelona.
The School of Common Knowledge (SCK) draws on the network, knowledge and experience of L’Internationale, a confederation of museums, art organizations and universities that strives to reimagine and practice internationalism, solidarity and communality within the cultural field. This year, the SCK program focuses on the contested and dynamic notions of rooting and uprooting in the framework of present —colonial, migrant, situated, and ecological— complexities.
Building on the legacy of the Glossary of Common Knowledge and the current European program Museum of the Commons, the SCK invites participants to reflect on the power of language to shape our understanding of art and society through a co-learning methodology. Its ambition is to be both nomadic and situated, looking at specific cultural and geopolitical situations while exploring their relations and interdependencies with the rest of the world.
In the current context fraught with war and genocide, the criminalization of migration and hyper-identitarianism, concepts such as un/belonging become unstable and in need of collective rethinking:
How can we reframe the sense and practice of belonging away from reductive nationalist paradigms or the violence of displacement? How to critically hold the entanglement of the colonial routes and the cultural roots we are part of? What do we do with the toxic legacies we inherit? And with the emancipatory genealogies and practices that we choose to align with? Can a renewed practice of belonging and coalition-making through affinity be part of a process of dis/identification? What geographies —cultural, artistic, political— do these practices of de/centering, up/rooting, un/belonging and dis/alignment designate?
Departing from these questions, the program consists of a series of visits to situated initiatives (including Museo Situado, Paisanaje and MACBA's Kitchen, to name a few), engagements with the exhibitions and projects on view (Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture from Panafrica), a keynote lecture by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, as well as daily reading and discussion gatherings, editorial harvest sessions, and conviviality moments.
Ylia and Marta Pang
Thursday, 6 November - 8pm
The encounter between Spanish DJ and producer Ylia and visual artist Marta Pang is presented in the form of a premiere in the Museo Reina Sofía. Both artists converge from divergent trajectories to give form to a new project conceived specifically for this series, which aims to create new stage projects by setting out from the friction between artists and dialogue between disciplines.