These sessions explore different formats with which artistic tools enable other possible worlds to be imagined: mapping networks of activism, drawing up manifestos, creating spaces of assembly in the framework of art and developing collective dramaturgies as modes of investigating the present. Researchers, artists and activists from the Institute of Radical Imagination will share their experiences on artistic platforms as strategies of subjectivation and political action in the projects Art for UBI (Universal Basic Income) and Art for Radical Ecologies, in addition to studying the approach to radical pedagogies via projects such as The School of Emergencies, Kirik and Raising Care. Finally, the Centro Revolucionario de Arqueología Social (Revolutionary Centre of Social Archaeology, CRAS), alongside the Institute of Radical Imagination (IRI), will raise issues around the situation of CSA La Tabacalera in Lavapiés after thirteen years of free culture and self-management.
![Maja Bajevic, Arts, Crafts and Facts (Top 10%, 90%) [Artes, artesanías y datos (Ricos 10%, 90%)], 1967. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/nim.jpg.webp)
Held on 20, 21 Apr, 25, 26 May, 05, 06 Jul 2023
Inside the framework of the Critical Node Militant Research, from the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme Connective Tissue, the Foundation of the Commons, the Institute of Radical Imagination and La Laboratoria, in collaboration with the Museo en Red team, put forward a space of training and study on the specificity of forms of militant research. Situated outside academic frameworks, these investigations pick up the legacy of workers’ co-research from the 1960s, feminist epistemologies and theories of research-action. Therefore, more than establishing a method, they seek to generate devices in order for social struggles to read each other and find causes that lead to action.
This Critical Node looks to reflect on (and from) tools and learnings from networks with which the Museo has been collaborating over the past fifteen years, in relation to those processes of knowledge production which ultimately aim not to interpret the world but to organise its transformation.
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The Institute of Radical Imagination (IRI) is a Mediterranean-wide network founded in 2017 by artists, activists, academics and cultural producers with a shared interest in co-producing knowledge, artistic and political research and interventions aimed at implementing post-capitalist ways of life. With the vocation of joining art, activism and pedagogy, the IRI emerges as a post-capitalist institution — a "quasi-institution" — which operates as an interface between diverse spaces and agents, causing mutual contamination between academic institutions, museums and self-managed social centres.
La Laboratoria. Spaces of Feminist Research is a transnational device of feminist activist research, that which is developed by those involved in different territories, involved in specific conflicts and struggles, with different yet common languages and questions. The research applies the lens of feminist contempt to diverse processes, flowing beyond any drawer or pigeonhole of so-called "women’s" issues. With participation from four cities — Buenos Aires, Quito, New York and Madrid — La Laboratoria promotes activist research inside the feminist tide as situated theoretical practice allowing maps of position and analysis to be constructed collectively.
Foundation of the Commons is a laboratory of discourse and political action, entangling a series of research, publishing, training and bookshop groups that pool resources to drive the development of critical culture and social democratisation. The structure of the network is made up of social and research spaces (La Casa Invisible, Ateneo La Maliciosa, Traficantes de Sueños, IDRA, Ateneu Candela, Synusia and Katakrak) from different corners of the Iberian Peninsula (Málaga, Madrid, Barcelona, Terrassa, Iruñea-Pamplona).
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Organised by
Inside the framework of
Connective Tissue. The Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme: Critical Node, Militant Research
Participants
Participants
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Thursday, 20 April 2023 Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
Session 1
6pm Approach to Radical Pedagogies: The School of Emergencies and Kirik
— With the participation of Dimitry Vilensky and Zeyno Pekünlü (Institute of Radical Imagination)7:30pm Artistic Platforms as Strategies of Subjectivation and Political Action: Art for UBI and Art for Radical Ecologies
— With the participation of Marco Baravalle, Gabriella Riccio and Emanuele Braga (Institute of Radical Imagination) -
Friday, 21 April 2023 CSA La Tabacalera (calle de Embajadores 51, Madrid)
Session 2
11am Research and Artistic Practices from Self-management
— With the participation of Pablo García Bachiller, Gabriella Riccio and Marco Baravalle (Institute of Radical Imagination) -
Friday, 21 April 2023 Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
Session 3
Tickets6pm Approach to Radical Pedagogies: Raising Care
— With the participation of Maddalena Fragnito, Elena Blesa Cábez and Theo Prodromidis (Institute of Radical Imagination)7:30pm The Common and the Legal: Tools and Strategies
— With the participation of Giuseppe Micciarelli, Gabriella Riccio and Pablo García Bachiller (Institute of Radical Imagination)
Can a summer camp be considered a militant research practice? And the list of organic suppliers who stock a social centre’s canteen? In the following sessions, the Foundation of the Commons explores how spaces of knowledge production forged in the heat of social movements’ political and organisational practices are shaped. To this end, keys to two research devices are shared: Encuesta Inquilina (The Tenant Survey) — propelled with Sindicat de Llogaters from Barcelona — and the line of work around the eco-social crisis, articulated through the series of self-training and encounters The Future Is Unwritten. Organising in the Capitalocene Crisis. Drawing from these experiences, the aim is to put into practice possible militant research.
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Thursday, 25 May 2023 Nouvel Building, Protocol Room and Online platform
Session 4
Online platform6:30pm La Encuesta Inquilina (The Tenant Survey)
— With the participation of IDRA (The Urban Research Institute of Barcelona) (Foundation of the Commons)7:45pm The Future Is Unwritten
— With the participation of Synusia, Katakrak and Traficantes de Sueños (Foundation of the Commons) -
Friday, 26 May 2023 Ateneo La Maliciosa (calle de las Peñuelas 14, Madrid)
Session 5
Online platform11am How Do We Conduct Militant Research?
— With the participation of IDRA, Synusia, Katakrak and Traficantes de Sueños (Foundation of the Commons)
This session sees La Laboratoria look to apply situated research to the systemic dimension and the interconnection between different forms of violence: social, sexual, economic, judicial. It looks to explore the potential of the situated epistemological perspective to deploy a radical critique of hegemonic discourses on violence or the role of States in legitimising and concealing some forms of violence and criminalising others, raising, from collective practices, the possibilities of transformative feminist justice. Alongside feminist researchers and collectives from Quito, Porto Alegre, Buenos Aires, New York and Madrid, and at the crossroads of movements for prison abolition, against the criminalisation of poverty, and dissident street feminisms, a space is opened from which to reflect on the possibilities of thinking about justice as a collective practice, where mutual protection, support, accountability and remediation go hand in hand with a critique of patriarchal, racist and class-biased logics.
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Wednesday, 5 July 2023 Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200 and online platform
Session 6
Tickets5pm Introduction. What Does Investigating Violence from a Situated Perspective Mean?
— With the participation of Susana Draper (Madres Protectoras) and Itzell Sánchez (Técnicas Rudas / Colectiva Acción Directa Autogestiva). Supported by Débora Ávila7pm All that Crushes Us. Intersecting Violence
— With the participation of María José Barrera (Colectivo de Prostitutas de Sevilla), Luci Cavallero (Ni Una Menos) and Ana Pinto (Jornaleras de Huelva en lucha). Supported by Constanza CisnerosThis activity offers a play centre for children to help parents with childcare. The registration form can be found at this link.
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Thursday, 6 July 2023 Nouvel Building, Protocol Room and online platform
Session 7
Tickets5pm Debates around (Anti)Punitivism from Situated Feminist Struggles
— With the participation of Vicky García (La Laboratoria Nodo Europa Sur), Fernanda Martins and Laia Serra. Supported by Justa Montero7pm Beyond Victimisation. Feminist Self-defence and Strategies of Community Responsibility
— With the participation of Jazmin Sofia Escuntar Chavez (Mujeres de Frente), Martha Cecilia Collaguazo Velasco (Mujeres de Frente), Maria Jose "Guru" Jiménez Cortiñas (Asociación Gitanas Feministas por la Diversidad), Aida Elizabeth Pino Naranjo (Mujeres de Frente) and Helena Silvestre (Escola Feminista Abya Yala). Supported by Tatiana RomeroThis activity offers a play centre for children to help parents with childcare. The registration form can be found at this link.
Más actividades
Economy of Hate
18 ABR, 9 MAY 2026
Economy of Hate features one sole work, Oído Odio (2021) by artist Diego del Pozo Barriuso. The piece combines television and media archive materials, recordings with performers with explicitly queer corporalities and 3D animations, combining in a strikingly fluid dialogue. The title alludes to a notion developed by the artist concerning the materiality with which hate circulates and the way it escalates. Setting out from the idea that hate is an affect which gains more value the more it circulates, the video shows the evolution from television to mobiles, expounding how the change of technological paradigm has made viral the fact of being in contact more than ever with explicitly violent images.
Inside the framework of The Collection Screened, a programme rooted in the institution’s film, video and moving image holdings, the Museo invites Laura Baigorri, one of the leading specialists in video art, to approach specific aspects related to identity, self-representation and the body within the Museo’s audiovisual collection since the 1990s.
![Dias & Riedweg, Casulo [Crisálida], 2019, película](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/desafios-cine-2.png.webp)
Other Voices in Us All
17 ABR, 8 MAY 2026
A session which starts from a subtle corporeal challenge that prompts a confrontation with reason from sensibility and emotion, both of which are linked to a difference in mental health or spiritualism. It opens with a beautiful and strange short film entitled A família do Capitao Gervásio (2013), by Tamar Guimarães and Kasper Akhøj, set in a small town in inland Brazil, where around half the inhabitants are psychic mediums whose work centres on community healing. The second piece, Dias & Riedweg’s Casulo, is the outcome of a participatory project with a group of patients from the Institute of Psychiatry at the Universidad Federal de Río de Janeiro. The video bears witness to the development of their routines after hospitalisation and captures their ideas and impressions about different aspects of life, revealing the division between territories of reason and madness in their daily existence.
Inside the framework of The Collection Screened, a programme rooted in the institution’s film, video and moving image holdings, the Museo invites Laura Baigorri, one of the leading specialists in video art, to approach specific aspects related to identity, self-representation and the body within the Museo’s audiovisual collection since the 1990s.
We Go On from Here… And Will Not Move
Thursday, 16 April and Thursday, 7 May 2026 — 19:00
This session advances a programme focused on the most elemental side of performance: a simple, direct act that starts from the self-exhibition of the body. At certain points, from the calculated serenity of Miguel Benlloch’s Tengo tiempo (I Have Time, 1994); at other times, from the challenging and visceral impulse of Bollos (Buns, 1996), by Cabello y Carceller, or the rage of Habla (Talk, 2008), by Cristina Lucas; and, finally, from video-graphic experimentation, disconcerting and sustained in the dance culture of Moving Backwards (2019), by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, whose mise en scène reminds us that it is not actually déjà vu but the present, unfortunately, that moves through a reactionary period.
Inside the framework of The Collection Screened, a programme rooted in the institution’s film, video and moving image holdings, the Museo invites Laura Baigorri, one of the leading specialists in video art, to approach specific aspects related to identity, self-representation and the body within the Museo’s audiovisual collection since the 1990s. The session recovers paradigmatic performances, from three successive decades, crossed by the indisputable expression of gender; that is, mediated by the confronted acts of feminisms and the queer paradigms of culture.
READ Madrid. Festival of Books and Ideas
Friday 17 and Saturday 18 April, 2026 – Check Programme
READ Madrid. Festival of Books and Ideas emerges as a meeting space for critical and experimental voices in the fields of literature, theory, and publishing. With particular attention to artistic production practices and independent publishing, and seeking to build a transatlantic cultural bridge with Latin America, the program aims to decenter hegemonic frameworks of knowledge production and open up new communities of interpretation and horizons for political imagination. To this end, it takes writing and reading—understood in broad and plural ways across their modes, forms, and registers—as constitutive of a public laboratory of what we call study: a space for thinking collectively, debating and coining ideas, making and unmaking arguments, as well as articulating new imaginaries and forms of enunciation.
In a context of ecological, political, and epistemological crisis, the festival proposes modes of gathering that make it possible to sustain shared time and space for collective reflection, thereby contributing to the reconfiguration of the terms of cultural debate. In this sense, the program is conceived as an intervention into the contemporary conditions of circulation and legitimation of thought and creation, expanding the traditional boundaries of the book and connecting literature, visual arts, performance, and critical thought. These formats are organized around three thematic axes led by key voices in contemporary writing, artistic practice, and critical thinking.
The thematic axes of READ Madrid. Festival of Books and Ideas are: a popular minoritarian, or how to activate an emancipatory practice of the popular; raging peace, or how to sustain justice, mourning, and repair without resorting to pacifying imaginaries devoid of conflict; and fiction against oblivion, which explores the role of science fiction, horror, and speculative narratives as forms of resistance against the liberalism of forgetting. Ultimately, the aim is to interrogate our present through the potential that ideas and books can mobilize within a shared space of study, debate, and enjoyment.
Juan Uslé and the New York Experience
15 ABR 2026
Framed inside the exhibition Juan Uslé. That Ship on the Mountain, this round-table discussion puts forward a journey towards a decisive time and place: New York in the 1980s and 1990s, the setting for an artistic vibrancy whose influence would run deep among an entire generation of artists from Spain who in the US city encountered fertile, chaotic anddemanding ground full of possibility. Such was the case with Juan Uslé, who in January 1987 crossed the Atlantic in the opposite direction to the Elorrio Ship — the sinking of which in 1960 off the coast of Langre (Cantabria) remained etched in the artist’s mind — to take up residence in New York.
The conversation, moderated by the show’s curator, Ángel Calvo Ulloa, brings together Juan Uslé, Vicky Civera, Txomin Badiola and Octavio Zaya, four voices who experienced this time from different yet complementary perspectives. Their dialogue reconstructs the experience of arriving in an alien context and explores the ways in which these artistic figures created ties and communities in an environment crossed by creative intensity and tensions of cultural change.
Furthermore, it approaches the relationship with the Museo Reina Sofía, which in those years was beginning to redefine its role within the international artistic ecosystem. The round-table prompts reflection on how the Spanish scene and Spain’s museum institutions were perceived from the distance of New York, recovering, through orality, a key episode in the history of Spanish art.