Activities

The latest edition of Intervals, a programme which screens recent film work, presents An Opera of the World by film-maker and cultural theorist Manthia Diawara (Bamako, Mali, 1953). The film melds opera and documentary genres, reflecting on the historical relationship of migration and displacement between Africa and Europe in successive refugee crises.

The Museo Reina Sofía welcomes Kenyan novelist and essayist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938), one of the strongest voices in international and African literature and in the critical analysis of systems of thought tied to neocolonialism.

This latest instalment of the Intervals programme, which screens recent film work, welcomes the first feature-length film by artist and film-maker Filipa César (Porto, Portugal, 1975). Spell Reel (2017) constitutes a reflection on the political history of West Africa, made from precarious film archives of the colonial emancipation of Guinea-Bissau, giving rise to an open question raised on how to write the history of those who have been driven out of the present and the role bygone remnants can play in shaking up our contemporaneity.  

As part of the performing arts program designed in collaboration with Teatros del Canal, the Museo Reina Sofía presents A Dance Lecture by Toni Jodar, anticipating the organisation of International Dance Day.

Inside the framework of the exhibition The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s (Museo Reina Sofía, 20 February – 27 May 2019), this session of activities seeks to examine relationships between indigenous identity, art, visual culture and the politics of representation on the continent, extending across three chronological landmarks: historical avant-garde movements (1919), neo-avant-garde movements and the crisis of the modern paradigm (1989) and contemporaneity (2019). 

The Museo Reina Sofía organises two round-table discussions, over two sessions held on consecutive days, focusing on the experiences of community healthcare in Madrid and Trieste in relation to the work of Franco Basaglia and anti-psychiatry.

Inside its Library and Documentation Centre, the Museo Reina Sofía presents A Throw of the Dice… a three-way conversation in two parts between dancer Israel Galván, artist Pedro G. Romero and graphic designer Filiep Tacq.

I diari di Angela. Noi due cineasti (Angela’s Diaries: Two Film-makers) is a posthumous homage from Yervant Gianikian (1942) to his lifelong partner and artistic companion Angela Ricci-Lucchi (1942–2018), in a final elegy and poetic act of love following her sudden death in 2018.

The work of Charles Ray (Chicago, 1953), one of most renowned sculptors in specialised critique, addresses the phantasmagorical quality of reality. The artist sets out from a questioning of sculpture making, translating daily experiences, memories and contemporary subjects into statuary.

On this occasion, the programme shines a light on cases in Spain and the Southern Cone of South America, starting, firstly, with the unveiling of the exhibition Incomplete Times. Chile, the First Neoliberal Laboratory, in the Museo’s Library and Documentation Centre (from 21 March to 24 May 2019), and the guided tour by its curator, Nelly Richard.

An analysis of the relationships of feminism across history, its affirmation as a political approach after the 2017 struggles and its impact on current transformations of capitalism form the aim of this lecture.

Across a large part of the planet, the feminist movement is inexorably rising to the fore in the transformation of political action and in the postulate of other, more equal and less patriarchal ways of inhabiting the world.  

Created in 1982, the Prelinger Archives form the largest collection of international ephemeral cinema, with over 60,000 advertising, propaganda, educational, and amateur films, as well as home movies and American landscape films shot across the length and breadth of the 20^th century.

Caja de resonancia (Sound Box), an archive of texts, voices, video and performances that searches for the multiple forms radiating contemporary Latin American poetics, is the focal point of the eighth edition of the Museo Reina Sofía’s programme Documents, which revolves around independent artist publications, platforms, networks and publishing spaces, in addition to the potential of archive to reinvent the narratives of art and its ecosystem.

The reappearance of Native Americanness as a displacement and break-away from a modernity in crisis in 1970s and 1980s Latin American art is the subject of this encounter, made up of a lecture by Mexican artist and theorist, Mariana Botey, followed by a conversation with Peruvian researcher and feminist activist, Elisa Fuenzalida.  

Museo Reina Sofía presents a selection of solos, held across two sessions, by Lucinda Childs, a pre-eminent choreographer from so-called minimalist dance and founder of New York’s Judson Dance Theater.

This edition of Intervals, a series which screens and presents recent films, features The Spy Within, a documentary essay on friendship and betrayal during the Years of Lead in Spain and terrorism in the Basque Country. The film narrates the relationship between Juan Gutiérrez, a mediator between the Spanish State and ETA, and his closest collaborator, Roberto Flórez, who turns out to be a spy for Spain’s Secret Services. Both sessions feature a presentation and talk by Juan Gutiérrez, the writer Edurne Portela, and the film-makers. 

The struggles in different corners of the planet with feminisms at the forefront go beyond traditional categories in readings of social movements. Putting into practice ‘the personal is political’ and reshaping our understanding of the political, the feminist tide pulses and proliferates on a global scale with its persistent iterations and capillary potential for dissemination and influence.

The research policy advocated by the Study Centre seeks to function as a collaborative springboard between research groups and independent debate. This approach is behind an encounter, organised with research+rs from the CRUSEV group, to publicly present the results of the European research project Cruising the Seventies, a reformulation of the channels through which the desires and practices of dissident bodies flowed in the late period of Francoism and the Transition to democracy in Spain.

This conference, organised inside the framework of the exhibition The Poetics of Democracy. Images and Counter-Images from the Spanish Transition, centres on the imaginary of the Transition period in Spain via leading figures with specific artistic and activist experience of transitional counterculture, as well as current researchers and artists.

The Museo Reina Sofía presents a new series of publications under the title Carta(s) which seeks to broaden the editorial format of the debates that unfold in the institution and beyond. Carta(s), the result of a joint project between the Museo’s Editorial Activities and Public Activities Departments, looks to draw attention to the reverberations between initiatives driven and welcomed by the Museo’s different lines of research and artistic and critical production. The first three recently published volumes include content that was intended for the journal carta, now transformed into this series.

The Museo Reina Sofía presents the first edition of ESTUDIO, an annual programme which, over two days, brings together presentations in a range of formats (stage pieces, performance lectures, actions, readings, conversations). The programme issues from the research conducted by a series of artists and researchers whose practices are tied directly to or engage in dialogue with the area of choreography and performance.

This encounter sets out to rethink the notion of the archive in its different facets, reflecting on the forms in which history is presented as a disputed territory in building the present.

Theories on the crisis of capitalism have swamped social, political and economic analyses in recent years, with all interpretations, although hugely relevant, generally lacking a proposal for the future. Paul Mason, however, has formulated a theory about the transition to an alternative and impending system — a guide to postcapitalism.

As part of the series of performing arts designed in tandem with the Community of Madrid’s Teatros del Canal, the Museo Reina Sofía presents A Mary Wigman Dance Evening (2009). The piece materialised from the interest of Ecuadorian dancer and choreographer Fabián Barba in the work of Mary Wigman (1886–1973).

Laurie Anderson will conduct a performance in the Museo Reina Sofía to tie in with the publication of her latest book, All the Things I Lost in the Flood (Rizzoli, 2018), a survey of a career spanning more than forty years.