Towards a Socialism of Creation
Luis Camnitzer in conversation with María Acaso and Selina Blasco
Held on 17 oct 2018
Inside the framework of the retrospective Luis Camnitzer: Hospice of Failed Utopias (17 October 2018 to 4 March 2019) and the launch of the studies, residencies and cultural productions programme the Perturbable School, this encounter sees the artist touch on his conception of critical artistic pedagogy, not only in schools and universities but also museums, and on where this work of reflection fits into his own artistic career.
Luis Camnitzer (Lübeck, 1937) views conceptual art as a practice of political intervention in a repressed public sphere. This occurs in his art and curation work, demonstrated by the influential landmark exhibition Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s (conceived with Jane Farver and Rachel Weiss at New York’s Queens Museum in 1999). In the same manner, Camnitzer is one of the most incisive thinkers with regard to the relationship between art and education, an issue which has led him to consider the different possibilities in the museum institution, the art object, spectators and even the role of art.
Upon what are his ideas of education and art based? In opposition with predominant ideas, which see learning as being contingent upon an explanation of the art work, Camnitzer endorses the integration of both, thus enabling this traditional dependency to be subverted and seeking alternatives to market logic, where art is conceived to produce the art object and education is viewed as training towards a particular end. According to Camnitzer, in this new relationship “education is art and art is education”. This new idea of art, moreover, entails radically questioning the limits of the museum and the artwork; in the words of the artist, which lend this debate its name, “Liberating the spectator so they think about everything they do artistically, and helping them to create a socialism of creation”.
With the collaboration of
In the framework of
An education programme developed with the patronage of
Educational program developed with the sponsorship of
Participants
María Acaso is head of Education at the Museo Reina Sofía. A teacher and theorist, her reflections include the concept of “educational revolution”, a method of action to develop an alternative teaching practice. Her publications include Art Thinking: un libro que revolucionará la manera de educar (2017) and La educación artística no son manualidades. Nuevas prácticas en la enseñanza de las artes y la cultura visual (2014), and she is the founder of Invisible Pedagogies, a collective of disruptive education.
Selina Blasco is a professor of Art History in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. The collective initiatives she has worked on include “Sin créditos” (Without Credits), a programme based on learning as an experimental process. She is also one of the academic coordinators in the MA on Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture run by the Museo Reina Sofía.
Luis Camnitzer is an artist, educator and theorist who has exhibited his work at the Venice Biennale, the São Paulo Biennial, the Whitney Museum and documenta, Kassel, to name but a few. Moreover, his work belongs to the Collections of MoMA (New York), the Getty Museum (Los Angeles), Tate Modern (London), the Blanton Museum (Austin, Texas), the Cisneros Collection (Caracas/New York) and the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid). His publications most notably include Arte y Enseñanza: La ética del poder (2000) and Didáctica de la liberación. Arte conceptualista latinoamericano (2009), and he was the pedagogical curator at the 6th Mercosul Biennial and the Iberé Camargo Foundation (Porto Alegre) between 2007 and 2010.
![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
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.
Crossed Vignettes
Friday, 21 November 2025 – Check programme
The Crossed Vignettes conference analyses the authorship of comics created by women from an intergenerational perspective and draws from the Museo Reina Sofía Collections. Across different round-table discussions, the programme features the participation of illustrators Marika, Carla Berrocal, Laura Pérez Vernetti and Bea Lema and researchers Viviane Alary, Virginie Giuliana and Elisa McCausland.
The aim of the encounter is twofold: to explore in greater depth the different forms in which women comic book artists have contributed to developing a counterculture; namely, the appearance of ruptures, reformulations and new genres within the ninth art. And to set up a dialogue which ignites an exploration of genealogies linking different generations of artists.
Moreover, the activity is put forward as a continuation to the exhibition Young Ladies the World Over, Unite! Women Adult Comic Book Writers (1967–1993) and the First International Conference on Feminist Comic Book Genealogies, held in April 2024 at the Complutense University of Madrid.
In redefining the visual narratives of the comic book and questioning gender stereotypes in a male-dominated world, women comic book writers and artists have impelled greater visibility and a more prominent role for women in this sphere. The study of intergenerational dialogue between female artists past and present enables an analysis of the way in which these voices reinterpret and carry the legacy of their predecessors, contributing new perspectives, forms of artistic expression and a gender-based hybridisation which enhances the world of comics.
The conference, organised jointly by the Museo Reina Sofía and Université Clermont Auvergne/CELIS (UR4280), features the participation of the Casa de Velázquez and is framed inside the context of the CALC programme The Spanish Artistic Canon. Between Critical Literature and Popular Culture: Propaganda, Debates, Advertising (1959–1992), co-directed by Virginie Giuliana. It is also the outcome of the projects Horizon Europa COST Actions iCOn-MICs (Comics and Graphic Novels from the Iberian Cultural Area, CA19119) and COS-MICs (Comics and Sciences, CA24160).