This publication is the outcome of the work undertaken in Artist at Work, CA2M’s art residency programme in schools. It is the result of the research and an account of a project that lasted almost three months and 20 sessions at the Beato Simón de Rojas school in Móstoles, with the guest artist Nuria Mora and the rest of the team at the museum’s education department.
Exercises in disorientation. Three trips to extraordinary places
We have been left exposed, without a sense of time or the certainty of touch. Our realities have been turned on their heads, upsetting our sense of direction. We want to take advantage of this fluctuation to explore the art of uncertainty, the unknown and the unpredictable, but also what is already being inscribed in the landscape for some time now. We propose pushing the boundaries of the Region of Madrid to see the museum from a distance by visiting places that generate surroundings which allow us to imagine in an unfettered way.
Agua de Borrajas and the artists-in-residence in the Acento programme have jointly produced a publication that rounded off the three-day event in which each one presented their own piece. The outcome are seven A1 posters making up a Manual of Instructions that that wishes to put the body of the actions to the test at home.
After a long slow time spent in conversations and encounters with amateur collectors connected with the museum, we are now launching a publication about some of the things they have been telling and showing us. We invite you to read, observe and get involved in these collections.
The department’s first cinematographic production, Pyramids, is an audiovisual investigation on the project by the El Banquete collective within the Artist at Work programme. The documentary is a tool for encouraging spaces for reflection on artistic and educational practices as well as on other challenges facing collective work.
The book Arte actual. Lecturas para un espectador inquieto [which we could translate roughly as Art Today. Readings for an Edgy Viewer] is a compilation of essays by experts in art theory and practice on recurrent issues within art over recent decades, including: the viewer´s position vis-à-vis art today and its institutions; the construction of the modern subject and its crisis; gender issues; art in a global world; and the connections between aesthetics and politics.
After several failed attempts, we can finally announce the presentation of We didn’t know what we were doing. Readings on education, a publication explaining some of the practices developed for and by CA2M’s education department. This publication compiles not just texts, but also a good number of group dialogues which bring into play a way of working that understands dialogue, constant research, experimentation and investigation as the basic pillars of educational work.
In the 2014-2015 school year we started a project of artist residencies in primary schools with the purpose of integrating within the official curriculum a series of art projects that would take place throughout the whole duration of the school year. We believed that it was essential to view the school as a space of experimentation where, by means of implementing methodologies coming from art, we can posit a vision of education that takes into account other forms of productivity other than those that schools have been subjected to in the official plans.