In recent years the Universidad Popular explored illusionism and magic. With this idea in mind, we are now proposing to follow up our research and take it to the limit, to the fabulous. 

We are now setting out on another new course with this question, introduced a long time ago with the advent of modernism. Surprisingly, in our hyper-consumerist society, it is still as valid and seemingly unexhausted as ever. 

During the last school year Universidad Popular took up the challenge to bewitch us again with art, to rediscover the ability to inspire awe.

After five years of intense debate between the public and the conference givers, we are still unable to answer the question that forms the title of this course.

It now appears that the world is not the same since in 2011 we started to receive images about the taking over of squares: images taking over squares, to such extend that we do not longer think about how those images influences the Middle East riots and the campings at the Spanish squares, we are ready to understand how these riots have indeed modified the image nature.

This time, CA2M launches the revision of gaze. From a number of talks with theoreticians, educators and artists, this course seeks to reflect on both current art proposals and on our gaze toward art. 

For the fourth year running, the CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo is offering the But… Is This Art? Introductory Course on Contemporary Art. The course will be broken down into one-and-a-half-hour sessions, discussing key themes in current art: from the death of the author, the new role of the viewer, crisis of the subject to the decline of the great narratives and the formation of art as a critical space.

CA2M proposes with this course a look at the city as a sense production space, a site where much of our experiences can be developed from different disciplines, hybrids and even ambiguous. We want to think about, then, a cultural production which, from a different space than the official one or the hegemonic one, is capable of creating a “bastard” discourse” searching in the city cracks, other means of production.