Held on 10 dic 2020
The closure of schools in 2020 due to COVID-19 illustrated something many teachers already knew: schools only work when they are open. The wishful thinking that many educational processes could be carried out remotely, in the early stages at least, was shattered not only by the digital divide, but also the shortcomings of online environments and their inability to recreate the wealth of diverse interactions offered by in-person education.
Months later, children, young people and teachers returned to the classroom but in a situation clouded by uncertainty, with the threat of fresh closures, either partial or full, like the sword of Damocles. The return has been marked by the use of masks, swarmed by polarising debates and countless restrictions, and also fuelled by the need and desire to come back into contact with and feel the presence of others, and to transmit knowledge between generations and among peers beyond the family unit.
The Listening School — a teacher training programme which seeks to give a voice and prominence to all participants from the Education Community — aims, during this school year, to open up a space of reflection and a series of conversations with myriad agents. The Present School kicks off the series, starting from the current situation, by raising questions around how debates on schools, old and new, have taken on renewed urgency: What is learned at school that is not learned in other places? Why is in-person attendance so important? How can a school be made for everyone in such universally uncertain times? What is so integral that it cannot be lost? What do we need to maintain it?
The conversation will take place in a hybrid format, combining in-person and online participation, and will feature the on-site presence in the Museo of Nelly Alfandari, María Filigrana and Marta Malo, and a virtual connection with Isabel Bueno and Janna Graham.
Programme
The Listening School
Force line
Rethinking the Museum; Contemporary Disturbances
Sponsorship
Education programme developed with the sponsorship of the Banco Santander Foundation
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía
Participants
Nelly Alfandari is a specialist in critical pedagogies, participatory theatre and inclusive classrooms in the United Kingdom and a member of the Radical Education Forum. Currently, she activates and enlivens a children’s club in Barcelona’s Sants neighbourhood.
Isabel Bueno Lara is head of studies at CEIP Manuel Núñez de Arenas, located in Madrid’s Vallecas neighbourhood, and a member of the Popular School Cooperative Movement (MCEP).
María Filigrana García is a psychologist, school mediator and gypsy activist. Co-founder of Amuradi (the Association of Gypsy Female University Students) and vice-president of Fakali (the Federation of Associations for Gypsy Women).
Janna Graham is a researcher, educator and curator. A member of the collectives Ultra-Red and Micropolitics Research Group, she has worked as an initiator and curator of the project The Centre for Possible Studies, associated with the Serpentine Gallery, and is a lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Marta Malo is a translator, researcher and activist. She plays an active role in the education community CEIP Manuel Núñez de Arenas and has been involved in different collective initiatives of militant research that aim to activate communities, combatting inequalities and defending the commons.
![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
Oliver Laxe. HU/هُوَ. Dance as if no one were watching you
Tuesday, 16 December 2025 – 7pm
As a preamble to the opening of the exhibition HU/هُوَ. Dance as if no one were watching you, film-maker Oliver Laxe (Paris, 1982) engages in conversation with the show’s curators, Julia Morandeira and Chema González, touching on the working processes and visual references that articulate this site-specific project for the Museo Reina Sofía. The installation unveils a new programme in Space 1, devoted from this point on to projects by artists and film-makers who conduct investigations into the moving image, sound and other mediums in their exhibition forms.
Oliver Laxe’s film-making is situated in a resilient, cross-border territory, where the material and the political live side by side. In HU/هُوَ. Dance as if no one were watching you, this drift is sculpted into a search for the transcendency that arises between dancing bodies, sacred architectures and landscapes subjected to elemental and cosmological forces. As a result, this conversation seeks to explore the relationship the piece bears to the imagery of ancient monotheisms, the resonance of Persian Sufi literature and the role of abstraction as a resistance to literal meaning, as well as looking to analyse the possibilities of the image and the role of music — made here in collaboration with musician David Letellier, who also works under the pseudonym Kangding Ray — in this project.
These inaugural conversations, part of the main working strands of the Museo’s Public Programmes Area, aim to explore in greater depth the exhibition narratives of the shows organised by the Museo from the perspective of artists, curators and specialists.
Francisco López and Barbara Ellison
Thursday, 11 December - 8pm
The third session in the series brings together two international reference points in sound art in one evening — two independent performances which converse through their proximity here. Barbara Ellison opens proceedings with a piece centred on the perceptively ambiguous and the ghostly, where voices, sounds and materials become spectral manifestations.
This is followed by Francisco López, an internationally renowned Spanish sound artist, who presents one of his radical immersions in deep listening, with his work an invitation to submerge oneself in sound matter as a transformative experience.
This double session sets forth an encounter between two artists who, from different perspectives, share the same search: to open ears to territories where sound becomes a poetic force and space of resistance.
Long Live L’Abo! Celluloid and Activism
4, 5, 6 DIC 2025
L’Abominable is a collective film laboratory founded in La Courneuve (Paris, France) in 1996. It came into being in response to the disappearing infrastructures in artisan film-making and to provide artists and film-makers with a self-managed space from which to produce, develop and screen films in analogue formats such as Super 8, 16mm and 35mm. Anchored in this premise, the community promotes aesthetic and political experimentation in analogue film opposite digital hegemony. Over the years, L’Abominable, better known as L’Abo, has accompanied different generations of film-makers, upholding an international movement of independent film practices.
This third segment is structured in three sessions: a lecture on L’Abo given by Pilar Monsell and Camilo Restrepo; a session of short films in 16mm produced in L’Abo; and the feature-length film Une isle, une nuit, made by the Les Pirates des Lentillères collective.
Estrella de Diego Lecture. Holding Your Brain While You Sleep
Wednesday, 3 December 2025 – 7pm
Framed inside the Museo Reina Sofía’s retrospective exhibition devoted to Maruja Mallo, this lecture delivered by Estrella de Diego draws attention to the impact of the artist’s return to Spain after her three-decade exile in Latin America.
Committed to values of progress and renewal in the Second Republic, Mallo was forced into exile to Argentina with the outbreak of the Civil War and would not go back to Spain to settle definitively until 1965 — a return that was, ultimately, a second exile.
Mallo saw out her prolific artistic trajectory with two impactful series: Moradores del vacío (Dwellers of the Void, 1968–1980) and Viajeros del éter (Ether Travelers, 1982), entering her most esoteric period in which she drew inspiration from her “levitational experiences” of crossing the Andes and sailing the Pacific. Her travels, both real and imaginary, became encounters with superhuman dimensions.
In parallel, her public persona gained traction as she became a popular figure and a key representative of the Generation of ‘27 — the other members of which also started returning to Spain.
This lecture is part of the Art and Exile series, which seeks to explore in greater depth one of the defining aspects of Maruja Mallo’s life and work: her experience of exile. An experience which for Mallo was twofold: the time she spent in the Americas and her complex return to Spain.
Juan Uslé. That Ship on the Mountain
Tuesday, 25 November 2025 – 7pm
Ángel Calvo Ulloa, curator of the exhibition Juan Uslé. That Ship on the Mountain, engages in conversation with artist Juan Uslé (Santander, 1954) in the Museo’s Auditorium 400 to explore in greater depth the exhibition discourse of this anthological show spanning four decades of Uslé’s artistic career.
The show casts light on the close relationship Uslé’s work bears to his life experiences, establishing connections between different stages and series which could ostensibly seem distant. Framed in this context, the conversation looks to explore the artist’s personal and professional journey: his memories, experiences of New York, his creative process, conception of painting, and ties with photography and film, and the cohesiveness and versatility that characterise his art. Key aspects for a more in-depth understanding of his artistic sphere.
The conversation, moreover, spotlights the preparatory research process that has given rise to this exhibition to grant a better understanding of the curatorial criteria and decisions that have guided its development.
These inaugural conversations, part of the main working strands of the Museo’s Public Programmes Area, aim to explore in greater depth the exhibition narratives of the shows organised by the Museo from the perspective of artists, curators and specialists.