Activity

For the second 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 2-hour sessions , with a half-hour discussion on the key themes in current art.

The death of the author, the crisis of the subject, the decline of the great narratives and the formation of art as a critical space are some of the themes that will be addressed by contemporary art experts and CA2M educators over the course of the 11 sessions.

At the beginning of the 1970s the category "art" underwent such a radical change that since then anything can be described as art. Modernity (and its entire aesthetic system with it) came to an unequivocal end. Postmodernity and its new parameters of thought seem to have provided a reasonably appropriate platform from which to take this step. Simply learning to look at artists’ proposals in a different way is an insufficient aim for this course. Beginning to think about these proposals is a more attractive objective: thinking about them from the perspectives of philosophy, politics, aesthetics and personal experience in order to discuss some of the paradigms which, like the death of the author and the crisis of the subject, have been crucial to most of the works and conducts we shall be exploring.

WED 3 MAR

COURSE PRESENTATION

Yayo Aznar. Course director. Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and History. UNED (National Distance Learning University).

BATTERY OF QUESTIONS. INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSEVictoria Gil-Delgado. CA2M educator.

At this first contact we will use questions to explore contemporary art, examining our role as spectators.

WED 10 MAR
ART CIRCA ‘68: THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR

Joaquín Martínez Pino. Assistant Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and

History. UNED (National Distance Learning University).

General introduction to the death of the author based on the text by R. Barthes. The death of the author implies the birth of the spectator. The new role of the spectator and the new roles of the artist.

WED 17 MAR
APPROPRIATIONIST ATTITUDES

Carlos Granados. CA2M educator and artist.

A look at some of the projects that include appropriationism. We will discuss the attitudes and methods of appropriationist practices: quotes, samples, inclusion, interpretation, variation, transformation, hybridisation, alteration, deviation, transgression, mutation, etc.

WED 24 MAR
WITNESSES OF THEMSELVES, HISTORIANS OF OTHERS

Miguel Ángel García. Part-time Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and History. UCM (Complutense University, Madrid).

Since as far back as the Renaissance, artists have played the dual role of witness and historian. Nowadays, there are attempts to reinstate these categories from different viewpoints, adopting a critical discourse on certain occasions and a merely sanctimonious discourse on others. In relation to this situation that has dogged modernity from the outset, we will ask one key question: witness to which event, historian of which processes?

WED 7 APR
DEAD, A THOUSAND TIMES DEAD

Jordi Claramonte. Lecturer in Contemporary Aesthetics. Faculty of Philosophy. UNED (National Distance Learning University). The author is not dead – he is alive and more of a nuisance than ever – and nor is the spectator in a valid position to curse it  – being lacking in all authority to do so. Furthermore, not even the critics and art teachers have a clue which way the wind is blowing. Can we find out?

WED 14 APR
FROM PARTICIPATION TO COLLABORATION

Pablo Martínez. Head of education and public activities at the CA2M. In this session we will examine some of the artistic practices that draw on spectator participation and the development of collaborative pieces to create new ways of confronting and relating to the sensible world. We look in particular at the practices which do not need to reinforce a non-existent social tie or resort to direct action in order to generate new relational methods.

WED 21 APR
FROM CONCEPTUAL ART TO CONTEXTUAL ART

Jordi Claramonte. Lecturer in Contemporary Aesthetics. Faculty of Philosophy. UNED (National Distance Learning University). We will explore the concepts of military tactics, strategies and operations as ways of understanding some of the fundamental changes that have occurred in artistic and social practices since the mid-20th century. New art will propose new forms of operating and will either articulate these socially and politically or – more probably – will continue to fool around for centuries to come.

WED 28 APR
POETICS AND POLITICS, FOREVER FRIENDS?

Yayo Aznar. Course director. Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and History. UNED (National Distance Learning University). Politics and poetics: the Benjamin/Adorno debate. Benjamin’s reflections on the reproducible work of art. Adorno’s autonomous art and its critical capacity. Different politics and different arts since May ’68. Towards a new definition of aesthetics. Susan Buck-Morss’s aesthetics and anaesthetics, and Rancière’s aesthetic alliance.

WED 5 MAY
DE-FOCUSING TO SEE

Miguel Ángel García. Part-time Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and History. UCM (Complutense University, Madrid). That which we call art, not without a certain prestige, has been structured for many centuries as a focused structure. In other words, as something that is seen and should be seen clearly, without any optical aberrations or visual residues. In the west, sight has functioned in the fashion of a well-oiled machine, that neither tires nor breaks down. From Velázquez to Monet and situationism, we will address the physiological drifts that the eye is always so pleased to engage in.

WED 12 MAYBUT WE ARE MANY OTHERS: FOOLS
Yayo Aznar. Course director. Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and History. UNED (National Distance Learning University). The “others” in us. Foucault’s reflections on the subject and power. The construction of madness through its representation. The crisis of a definition: Tony Oursler, Frances Torres, Juan Muñoz…

WED 19 MAY
AND THIS IS ARCHITECTURE?

Jesús López. Assistant Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and History. UNED (National Distance Learning University).
Where do people go at weekends? In fact, thousands of people flock to shopping centres and sports complexes. And yet, if you look at architecture magazines or the great books on the subject, you will find that these spaces are non-existent for critics and historians. Although almost a century has passed since concepts such as beauty were banished from the visual arts and now any object is worthy of being admitted to the plastic discourse, this has not occurred in architecture. Fortunately, people build cities without listening to the critics, and we will revisit them aided by revived situationist texts.

DIRECTED BY YAYO AZNAR

The notion commonly built around current art and its creators usually appears as linked to the discourse spread by mass media. Therefore, it is perceived as a legacy of a romantic ideal and modern paradigm which conceive art as autonomous. But artistic production created under aesthetic and thought paradigms since post-modernity has given up on the autonomy of the artistic object and is starting to look beyond the traditional conception of Art: it is related to its environment and deals with other current actors to build a discourse. 

In Looking at the present. Seven sessions to think about current art, we will have theoreticians and artists analysing, along with some of their proposals, subjects that affect in depth the way we perceive ourselves in the late-capitalist context: our shared past, our role as spectators-citizens, the way we relate with authority or the influence of the institutions on ways of life are only some of the debates’ starting points. This way of thinking with objects and art images may be the only possible approach to find out about its dialectical capacity as well as its capacity for agency. So that, in the end, we’ll see the way art lives amongst us as a manner of looking critically at the present. 

The CA2M offers a number of training activities in contemporary art and philosophy as part of its public education programmes specifically designed for young people and adults.These courses offer a clear and concise insight into some of the basic concepts for understanding and interpreting contemporary art. The activities are divided into two parts: the first part consists of the introduction of a theme by a guest speaker, who in the second part opens the floor to a discussion involving the participants.This seven-session course will be completed by a tour to the exhibition Before everything.

WED 20 OCT
Course Presentation and Introduction
Pablo Martínez. Head of Education and Public Activities.
Ferran Barenblit. CA2M director

WED 27 OCT
Yayo Aznar, PhD in Art History, is currently teaching as a tenured professor in the Art History Department of the UNED University in Madrid.
Amongst her publications, some books like El cauce de la memoria. Arte en el siglo XIX (Madrid, Istmo, 1998), Arte de acción (Madrid, Nerea, 2000), La memoria pública (Madrid, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 2002), El Guernica (Madrid, Edilupa, 2004) or La memoria compartida. España y Argentina en la formación de un imaginario cultural (Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2005) are particulary worth pointing out. In addition, she is co-manager with Javier Hernando Carrasco of the collection Arte Hoy, published by Nerea’s publishing company.

WED 3 NOV
Dora García (Valladolid, 1965) is an artist focused on dismantling conventions and codes of conduct in particular those between the artwork, the artist and the spectator by use of performance, or an unusual treatment of the exhibition space.

WED 10 NOV
Pablo Marte (Cadiz, 1975) works with videos playing with its fictionality and facing it to reality. In his work, we can also sense a political concern captured by his treatment of the relation between body and space.

WED 17 NOV

Since the mid-sixties, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina (Murcia, 1937) is a conceptual artist who has been questioning, through his work, the status of the artwork and its aestheticized value as well as the institutional frameworks where it takes place. His practice goes from experimental poetry, music and mail art to film, performance or sound intervention.

WED 24 NOV
Fernando García (Madrid, 1975) works intentionally mixing formats to deal with different concerns related to his personal experience and condition of artist. As a matter of fact, his pieces refer ironically to contradictions on the contemporary creator position and the structures of the art world.

WED 1 DIC
David Bestué and Marc Vives (Barcelona, 1980 and 1978 respectively) collaborate as artists since 2002. Their work consists of incisions on quotidianness through fictional elements using a plurality of references on art history as well as philosophical or popular culture. 

Educational programme 2010 - 2011

One of the most powerful art capacities is the transformation of our look towards the objects of our world. In this regard, many artists concentrate their practice in the activation of objects apparently trivial in order to trigger new narratives which go beyond a positivist materialism, thus, they deny any reality whenever it appears reaffirmed in an excessive manner.

These creative acts are focused on generating new forms of relationship with our surrounding, whether by using appropriationist strategies of Duchampian influence, others closer to surrealism of found objects, or whether by those strategist from détournement of the Situationists. Then, it´s  when art shows it most resistant form, when Magritte pipe is no longer a pipe and starts acting as object of counter-information or of double affirmation, which it only has sense insofar as demands our eyes to retrieve the lost gaze.

In “What are the objects telling us? Prose and poetry of the daily world. We will count with theorists and artists to analyze with them and with some of their proposals, topics which influence our way to place us and to view the world.

Activating the objects towards the generations of new narratives would probably be a starting point for debate, understanding objects from an art perspective is probably the only way to discover the dialectical capacity as well as new agency capability still unknown.

PROGRAMME

OCTOBER  26 WEDN.
Course presentation
Ferran Barenblit. Director of CA2M

Introduction
Yayo Aznar. Doctor in Art History. Professor of Art History at UNED University in Madrid. Among her publications, we highlight some of her books El cauce de la memoria. Arte en el siglo XIX (Madrid, Istmo, 1998), Arte de acción (Madrid, Nerea, 2000), La memoria pública (Madrid, UNED, 2002), El Guernica (Madrid, Edilupa, 2004) or  La memoria compartida. España y Argentina en la formación de un imaginario cultural (Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2005). She is also co-director, together with Javier Hernando, of Arte Hoy Collection, edited by Nerea Editorial.

NOV. 2 WEDN.
Mateo Maté. Madrid, 1964. Artist whose work ponder over the existence of a series of elements which make up his domestic surrounding. On a number of occasions, he subverts the functions and forms of some ordinary objects using irony. In other occasions, he rearranges some of his personal belongings in order to meet answers to some of his vital questions. His work has been displayed in numerous solo exhibitions, such as Área restringida (Museo Sequeiros from Mexico D.F., 2011), UCI. Unidad de Cuidados Intensivos (Circulo de Bellas Artes , Madrid, Spain. 2010), Viajo para conocer mi geografía (Matadero, Madrid, Spain. 2010) and Reliquias de artista (Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid, Spain. 2008). He has also shown in many group exhibitions. His work Nacionalismo doméstico forms part of the CA2M Collection.

NOV. 9 WEDN.
Pablo Martinez. Course Director and Head of Education and Public Activities of CA2M. Associate Professor of Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts at Complutense University of Madrid.

NOV. 16 WEDN.
Eulalia Valldosera. Villafranca del Penedès, 1963. Artist whose work has shifted from her beginnings of her career around three constants: the main body, the domestic environment and the relation with others. Many of her installations are based on situations, thus, generating new narratives around objects. She has taken part in the Biennials of Sydney  (1996), of Johannesburg (1997) and of  Istanbul (1997) as well as in Manifesta I in Rotterdam (1996)  to the latest ones in  Yokohama in  2001 and Sao Paulo in 2003. In 2000, Witte de With of Rotterdam and  Fundacion Tapies from Barcelona organized his first retrospective. In 2009, Museo de  Arte Reina Sofia housed it in the exhibition “Dependencias”.

NOV. 23 WEDN.
Sara Ramo. Madrid, 1975. Artist who lives and works between Belo Horizonte (Brasil) and Madrid (Spain)  Ramo´s work enters into the search of new senses for those objects that have lost their primary function. With all those objects, she creates installations and situations where a world in crisis is presented to us. Many of her works have a common nominator: “the usage of any object as a mean for games, changing its purpose”. At this moment, she is preparing the group exhibition “Sin Heroísmos, por favor” –“No heroics, please”, curated by Tania Pardo, which will open in CA2M next March. Among her solo exhibitions, the ones that stand out are, “Bienvenido” -“Welcome”- exhibited in Centro Cultural de España and in EAC of Montevideo (2011), “Crossing Landscapes” in Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy (2009) and “Traslado” in  PHotoEspaña, Madrid, Spain (2009).

NOV. 30 WEDN.
Ignasi Aballí. Lives and works in Barcelona. His artistic labour is very closed to conceptual art and he approaches to ordinary world objects from diverse positions and intentions which go from classification to simple show of the objects as time goes by. In the last decade, he participated in many solo and group exhibitions. Among the solo ones, it stands out the ones in Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, Brasil (2010); Meessen de Clercq, Bruselas (2008); Museo Serralves, Oporto (2006); ZKM, Karlsruhe (2006); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2006) or MACBA, Barcelona (2005). Furthermore, he took part in the 8th Biennial of Sharjah, Árab Emirates (2007), in the 52nd  Biennial of  Venice (2007), in 11th  Biennial of Sidney (1998). His work  “Fotografía para jardines” form parts of the  CA2M collection. He has exhibited in the group exhibition “Antes que todo” –“Before Anything”- held by CA2M and curated by Aimar Arriola and Manuela Moscoso.

For the third year running, the CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo is offering the "But… This is Art?" introductory course on contemporary art. The course, consisting in 2-hour sessions, will focus on key themes in current art: The death of the author, the crisis of the subject, the decline of the great narratives and the formation of art as a critical space.

WED 2 MAR
UNBEARABLE LIGHT. INTRODUCTION
Victoria Gil-Delgado, CA2M educator.

WED 9 MAR
WHAT HAPPENED TO MODERNITY?
Yayo Aznar. Course director. Lecturer in Art History. Geography and History Department. UNED (National Distance Learning University).

WED 16 MAR
WHAT YOU SEE IS MORE THAN JUST WHAT YOU SEE.
Yayo Aznar. Course director. Lecturer in Art History. Geography and History Department. UNED.

WED 23 MAR
A NEW AUDIENCE: PARTICIPATORY ART AND RADICAL DEMOCRACY
Pablo Martínez. Head of education and public activities. CA2M.

WED 30 MAR
UTOPIES OF USELESSNESS OR HOW TO REACH THE IMPOSSIBLE
Carlos Granados. Educator and artist. CA2M.
"To work and create "for nothing," to sculpture in clay, to know one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries — this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions". Albert Camus.

WED 6 APR
THE OTHER STRANGER. ASSIMILATION PERSPECTIVE AND POSTCOLONIAL CULTURE.
Jesús López Díaz. Lecturer in Art History. Geography and History Department. UNED.

WED 13 APR
ART AND GENDER
Yayo Aznar. Course director. Lecturer in Art History. Geography and History Department. UNED.

WED 27 APR
ART FOR OUR FRAGMENTED SOCIETY

Pablo Martínez. Head of education and public activities. CA2M.

WED 4 MAY
INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE AND INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF CRITICISM
Ferran Barenblit. CA2M DIrector.

WED 11 MAY
IN THE BEGINNING:  THE SITUATIONISTS
Jesús López. Lecturer in Art History. Geography and History Department. UNED.

Days: On Wednesday. 2 March - 11 May
Hours: 18:30 — 20:00 h. aprox.

Aimed at people with interest in current art. Not necessary any previous art knowledge

Free admission

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. Understanding the public sphere as a plural one, and considering it capable of hosting aesthetic options which are producers of emotions and mobilizers of conflicting passions. Music and Pop, Punk or Techno aesthetics can be understood from that point of view, as engines of intersubjective connections which keep shaping a public sphere even more sophisticated than what Habernas or Hannah Arendt could ever believe.

With Cracks on the Asphalt, CA2M counts with the presence of diverse culture producers and artists to jointly analyze with them, and with some of their proposals, some matters that affect our placing and gazing model within our surrounding. Thinking about aesthetic strategies of  activation of our political position, as well as in the creation of affective nets and communities most probably would only be a starting point for debates; thinking about urban as a means of constructing an unique experience, it may reveal new ways of agency, of living and of revolting: another existing rhythms.

Lecturers: Amanda Cuesta, Discoteca Flaming Star, Antoni Hervás, Amparo Lasen and Azucena Vieites.

PROGRAMMING:

WEDNESDAY 31 OCT
Just Dance. Sound space, rhythm and power emergencies
AMPARO LASÉN DÍAZ

During the talk, we will explore diverse examples of contemporary music practices, mainly linked to dance and to the listening of dance electronic music, means of listened music shared on-line or off-line, which embodies different kinds of mediations (choreographies, videos, etc.) in response to the many forms of participation from people, collectives and technologies which generate sound spaces and modulations on the public, where it takes place shared powers in a intermittent and resonant manner.

Amparo Lasén Díaz, professor of sociology at Universidad Complutense of Madrid, Ph. D. at La Sornonne, and researcher at London School of Economics and at Digital World Research Centre from Surrey University. Lasen investigates the usages, practices and presence from new communication and information technologies (mobiles, social media, digital photography) in particular in relation to their participation in the contemporary configuration of subjectivities and affectivities; along with music practices in relation to dance electronic music and the role of technologies which makes and helps to listening to music.
http://ucm.academia.edu/AmparoLasén

WEDNESDAY 7 NOV
COLLAGES. AN APPROXIMATION TO  DRAWING, EDITION AND DIY CULTURE.
AZUCENA VIEITES

Drawing as a means of expression along with the edition and the DIY culture techniques, in a dialogue with the feminist thinking, is based Azucena Vieites´s work. Topic of contemporary interest would be raised in a journey throughout her works.

Azucena Vieites is a Spanish artist, who has lately display in solo exhibitions in: Fundido encadenado-Break You Nice, MUSAC, León, Spain (2012) and Coloring Book, Moisés Pérez de Albéniz Gallery, Pamplona, Sapin (2011). She has participated in numerous projects and collective exhibitions and collaborated with her drawings in publications such as New Feminism (Löcker, Viena, 2007) or Dig Me Out . Discourses of Popular Music, Gender and Ethnicity DVD(www.digmeout.org, 2009). She co-founded in 1994 the collective Erreakzioa-Reacción, an initiative between art and feminism featured in fanzines, exhibitions, workshops, seminars, lectures or videos.

WEDNESDAY 21 NOV
Urban Mythologies
ANTONI HERVÁS

Carrying out a drawing apology as a documentary tool and as an expanded milieu to represent the subjective vision from our closest surrounding. A space where the Underground and Pop hold hands to dance a “tied up” transforming the urban space in a psychedelic scenario.

ANTONI HERVÁS, ARTISTA, STUDIED FINE ARTS AT BARCELONA UNIVERSITY. HE WAS AWARDED WITH THE ILLUSTRATION INJUVE PRIZE IN 2010. HE IS DOING A RESIDENCE IN HANGAR. HERVÁS´ SOLO EXHIBITIONS HÉRCULES EN LA LUNA TOOK PLACE AT ESPACIO CULTURAL CAJA MADRID IN BARCELONA, AND IN SITES AS TIENDADERECHA IN BARCELONA AND IN URBAN PROPERTY CHAMBER IN BARCELONA. HERVÁS HAS EXHIBITED IN COLLECTIVE SHOWS AS IN LA CASA ENCENDIDA WITH LO TENGO, NO LO TENGO AT  ESPAI ZER01 IN OLOT, OR DRAW, DRAW, DRAW AT  MAD IS MAD GALLERY IN MADRID AND CAMBIO DE TURNO AT KKKB GALLERY IN BARCELONA

WEDNESDAY 28 NOV
IN FACT, 12 TIMES ALISSA
FLAMING STAR DISCO

From a tiny theater balcony, in motion bodies carry  written texts on their backs. Poems becoming songs, poems that one would rather not have written and songs that talk about everything: about pleasure, fuss, anxiety, birth, death, cities, dawn. In fact, 12 times Alissa.

Cristina Gomez Barrio  studied Fine Art in Madrid, Munich, and Berlin. In 2005, She took part of the Whitney Independet Study Program in New York. Cristina draws, photographs, sings, films and acts. In 1998, she founded, together with Wolfgang Mayer under the name Discoteca Flaming Star, an interdisciplinary-artistic performance collective. Discoteca Flaming Star aims at offering a space to artists in search for diverse aesthetic practices. Cristina´s work has been displayed in Museums, plazas, galleries as The Kitchen, Artists Space, Parlour Porjects, Whitney Museum, Performa 2009, NYC; MUMOK, Viena; NBK, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin; Ojo Atomico, Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Madrid; Galería Freymond-Guth, Zürich; Tate Modern, London.

WEDNESDAY 05 DIC
AMANDA CUESTA

Amanda Cuesta, art critic, curator and independent editor, was part of Creatures (1996-2002) experimental curatorial team, developing a range of  projects that challenged the traditional exhibition format.  Her latest work is based on the creation and the analysis of production structures and platforms as in  Processos Oberts and P_O_2_QUEDA LA MARCA (Terrassa, 2004 and 2005) that she coordinated.

She is author of the homonym publication CASM, 2006, centered in the intricacies from the art economy. Amanda´s  wager on PAPERBACK publishing house, committed to low-cost editions, aims to extend and to diversify the existing means of art circulation and to popularize a low-cost collectionism. She has published critics in catalogues and specialized magazines as Babelia, Matador, ABC de Arco, Camera Austria, Transversal, Temps d'Art, ArteContexto, Exit or Nexus.

Download Educational Programming 2012 - 2013

Targeted at people with interest in current art. No prior knowledge is required

Free registration through the web at the link below, by phone to 91 276 02 or CA2M front desk  as of January 16th.

For a single assistance to a lecture, free entrance is permitted until seating capacity is filled.

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.

From the active position of the viewer, it is important to learn to look at different proposals from the artists, but we can even go further. Looking is thinking, thinking with all the knowledge, feelings and readings we have. Our own experience becomes part of the experience with the artwork, and from that point of view, we could start a discussion on themes that affect our position as contemporary subjects. Over the nine sessions, contemporary art professionals will address those themes. This Class Programme is in conjunction with tours to the exhibitions on view and encounters with artists.

CA2M offers a number of training activities in contemporary art and philosophy as part of its public education programme specifically designed for young people and adults.

These courses offer a clear and concise insight into some of the basic concepts for understanding and interpreting contemporary art. The activities are divided into two parts: the first part consists of the introduction of a theme by a guest speaker, who in the second part opens the floor to a discussion involving the participants.

PROGRAMME
FEB 22. WEDNESDAY
UTOPÍA Y CRISIS -UTOPIA AND CRISIS-
Carlos Granados, educator of CA2M and artist
This session will introduce us into the analysis of new behaviors and into the artistic practices after the 68s. We will study the different roles of an artist under a constant construction and crisis and, also, we will discuss about her/his role in the present

FEB 29 WEDNESDAY
MÁS ALLÁ DE LA MUERTE DEL AUTOR -BEYOND THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR-
Pablo Martínez, Head of education and public activities at CA2M, and associated professor in the Art History Department of the Faculty of Fine Art from Universidad Complutense of Madrid.
In this session, we will approach that 60´ practice that has questioned the traditional notions of authorship and spectator. We will review some of the main proposals centered in the construction of the collective sense and had gone further the optical regimes of art.

MARCH 7 WEDNESDAY
LOS NUEVOS PAPELES DEL ARTISTA -THE NEW ROLES OF THE ARTIST-
Yayo Aznar, Lecturer of  the Faculty of Geography and History. UNED (National Distance Learning University).
The idea of the death of the author, quite nourished by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault´s texts, becomes a constant within the artistic thinking since the late 60´. We will discuss on how that crisis of the authorship obliges artist to assimilate new roles as conservators, historian, analyst, etc.

MARCH 14  WEDNESDAY
HASTA QUE TENGA SENTIDO -UNTIL IT GETS SEENS-
Victoria Gil-Delgado, educator at CA2M and curator
We will discuss on the spectator position against current art and on the museum as an odd place that needs an active receiver to generate sense. We will address how that new position can drives us to new unknown areas of relation, experience and thinking.

MARCH 21 WEDNESDAY
ALTERATION OF  REALITY
Ferran Barenblit, director of CA2M
A large part of the contemporary art production has used, as strategy, the alteration of the way the world normally works. From that Duchampian heritage, which quotes a shred from reality, many artists have inverted processes or changed the use of objects to carry out their projects. All of this, with the goal of subverting that reality, turning it against itself, forcing to question themselves why that order and origin of their contradictions.

MARCH 28 WEDNESDAY
¿DE QUÉ OTRA COSA PODRÍAMOS HABLAR?-WHAT ELSE CAN WE TALK ABOUT?-
Pablo Martínez
What is the politic capacity of art? Can it exist an art socially useful? Is it about a commitment or just about responsibility? These and other questions will join us in the discussion.

APRIL  11 WEDNESDAY
UN PASEO POR LA CRISIS DE SIEMPRE -WALKING THROGHT  THE ONGOING CRISIS-
Yayo Aznar
The “Me” rational and contemporary (Western, heterosexual, male, white and middle class) exploited in the 80´ over thousands of pieces  by the recognition of new subjectivities hitherto ignored. Those that are with and within us: women, homosexuals, ills, mad, villain… We will analyze the way art has dealt to join its voices and its crisis.

APRIL 18 WEDNESDAY
ARTE Y COLONIALIDAD- ART AND COLONIALITY-
María Iñigo Clavo, artist and researcher.
The discussion will focus on art pieces that dialogue with problematic related to Post-colonial theorization mostly within the Latin-American context, but also in the Western: coloniality, colonial difference, intern colonialism, border thinking, new multiculture, creolization of the world and metonymies of the presence.

APRIL 25 WEDNESDAY
ESPEREMOS QUE NO PASE NADA -LET US HOPE NOTHING HAPPENS-
Luis Ortega, artist
It will take place a visual experience of time through the features of cartography and the material.

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. Against that plain spellbound, admiring and unselfish contemplation that apparently modern art demanded us, current art seems to confront the distracted gaze already mentioned by Walter Benjamin: the disperse gaze from the bourgeois around the city, the walker that looks at everything and doesn´t see anything, maybe even the paradigm of contemporary art as if by consensus all of us would have lost that capacity to gaze simultaneously. So, it is all about wondering about the possibilities that current art can offer for the vindication of a gaze, from its dispersion, remains affected and politically interested.

CA2M offers a number of training activities on art and contemporary thinking within the framework of traditional free universities specifically designed for young people and adults. These courses offer a clear and concise insight into some of the basic concepts for understanding and interpreting contemporary art. The activities are divided into two parts: the first part consists of the introduction of a theme by a guest speaker, who in the second part opens the floor to a discussion involving participants.

PROGRAMING

WED. 20 FEB. 18:30 H.
MIRADAS INOFENSIVAS
Yayo Aznar. Associete Professor at UNED

To start with, we consider important to carry out a brief reflection on different gazes offered to contemporary viewers. From  that Kantian “disinterested contemplation” fetch and carry to the “distracted gaze” from citizens, yet, the truth has always been over the discussion table certain depolarization of our perception.

With the participation of Aurora Fernández Polanco, Rabih Mroué, Ziad Chakaroun, Carles Guerra, Peio Aguirre, Yayo Aznar and Marc Roig, among others

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. The images of “the actions” are not only documents of a politically agitated historical moment, instead they are attached to the bodies and they become inevitable part of their battle.

What interest us this time is to think together with images, from a certain distance, the necessary one to hold a position and see how some artistic productions have reflected on the making of images, on their performativity. We are also concern about analyzing how images´s free flow seem to be at risk at present: from Syria to Egypt, or even at the Spanish streets, where censorship threat flies over them.

The opening of this course coincide with the solo exhibition by Rabih Mroué at CA2M Image(s) mon amour, curated by Aurora Fernández Polanco, that will approach us to an art work where the involvement with the images gravitate from what they represent to what the images are capable of doing. This time, we will not talk about the hackneyed representation crisis, instead we will think about images´s transformation capacity.

Performance-Lecture by Rabih Mroué on Friday 25th Octuber at 20:00 H.

PROGRAMMING

WEDNESDAY 23 OCT. 18:30 H.
Aurora Fernández Polanco.
Aurora Fernandéz Polanco, Fine Arts professor at Universidad Complutense of Madrid. She leads the investigation group “Images from art and rewriting of the narratives within the global visual culture”and the magazine Re-visiones (re-visiones.imaginarrar.net). Her writings, conferences and commissions have always been related to politics, memory, visuality and representation. She is curating the show Rabih Mroué. Image(s) mon amour.

FRIDAY 25 OCT. 20:00 H.
The pixelated revolution. Performance-Lecture by Rabih Mroué
Rabih Mroué developed his career as director, playwright, performer, essayist and visual artist, his work always reflects on the use of images for (and against) official narratives: from the Lebanese geopolitical reality to the massive production of images of the Syrian revolution. The Pixelated Revolution is a performative lecture on the use of cell phones and it main role mobilizing people during the revolutionary episodes, due to the nature of the shoot images, their reproduction and their quickly broadcasting.

WEDNESDAY 30 OCT. 18:30 H.
Round table moderated by Yayo Aznar
Yayo Aznar professor at the Fine Art History Department of UNED (National Distance Learning University), director of the collection Arte Hoy de Nerea, and editor of Arte actual. Lecturas para un espectador inquieto, Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid, 2012.

WEDNESDAY 6 NOV. 18:30 H.
El tiempo y la edad del ojo. Performative-Lecture by Ziad Chakaroun
Ziad Chakarounis is a Lebanese actor, performer and Arab-Spanish translator. He has been residing for long periods in Spain. El tiempo y la edad del ojo was inspired by texts and essays by Walid Sadek, artist and Lebanese writer, translated by Ziad Chakaroun, and reinterpretes images from Lebanon war and Civil war.

WEDNESDAY 13 NOV. 18:30 H.
Carles Guerra is chief curator at MACBA, artist, art critic and  Contemporary Art professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. His work focuses on the usage of images within the education, communication means and contemporary art frameworks, as well as on the Post-Fordism political culture. He has been director of Barcelona Virreina Centro de la Imagen and curator of  exhibitions such as: Después de la noticia. Documentales postmedia (CCCB, 2003), 1979. Un monumento a instantes radicales (Virreina, 2011) or Ahlam Shibli. La casa fantasmal (MACBA, 2013)

WEDNESDAY 20 NOV. 18:30 H.
Peio Aguirre is art critic, independent curator and editor, lives and works in Donostia-San Sebastián. He “irregularly” writes for international magazines such as Afterall, A Prior Magazine, Flash Art, ExitExpress, e-flux journal among others, author of numerous monographic texts on contemporary artists. From 2000 to 2005, he was co-director of D.A.E. Donostiako Arte Ekinbideak. He has curated shows as Casco Issues X-The Great Method (co-edited with Emily Pethick), Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht (2007), Imágenes del otro lado, CAAM, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2007), Arqueologías del futuro, sala rekalde, Bilbao (2007) and Asier Mendizabal, MACBA, Barcelona (2008). He writes “critic and metacoment” on his blog http://peioaguirre.blogspot.com

Free access to a single lecture, until full seating capacity reached.

«The conference one should give, is the conference one doesn't know, and one should make every attempt not to know it by the end either. The less we know, the higher we will be able to hold our heads when we sit before the audience.» Isidoro Valcárcel Medina

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. We also continue to question how to put a creation as multi-faceted as that created by current-day artists into words. An art that is immaterial, fragile and mutable that can happen in any place and at any time. Perhaps the problem lies in adhering solely to the word, to academic theory and in attempting to translate what cannot be translated based on previous knowledge.  

This is why, in this sixth edition, we have invited artists, theoreticians and educators to take the course participants, and indeed themselves, towards the unexpected. The speakers, whether through an intervention in the space or due to the alteration of the academic logic of their discourse, will reflect on various matters that affect contemporary creation. Thus, we will combine the points of view of the different players involved in the art world to generate a dialogue between their ideas and a construction of meaning that does not solely depend on what is said, but also on what happens. 

These sessions will be complemented with contemporary art texts and a visit to the exhibition
Per/Form. How to do things with[out] words for the course participants.

CA2M develops a line of art education and contemporary thinking activities framed within the tradition of the popular universities. In these courses, some of the fundamental approaches to understanding and interpreting current art are dealt with. These activities are structured into two parts: the first consists of a guest speaker presenting a subject, while in the second a debate is opened on the subject for the participants to express their opinion.

PROGRAM

WEDNESDAY 19 FEB. 18:30 
INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE
Cris Blanco, Multi-disciplinary artist and Victoria Gil-Delgado, CA2M educator and curator
It would be so easy to have a set of unquestionable rules to help us finally understand contemporary art when we enter a museum feeling lost. Yet on the contrary, modern-day art invites us to question the immovable ideas and our role as passive spectators in front of the works. During this first session, we will lay the foundations for the course and invite participants to break their own rules of play.

WEDNESDAY 26 FEB. 18:30
MURDER BETWEEN THE LINES
Sandra Santana, poet and professor of philosophy at the University of Zaragoza
The author has died and the body has disappeared from the crime scene, but their blood still runs fresh on the paper and lines of ink. We will seek the clues left by the murderer in the Parisian studio of Roland Barthes, we will closely examine the moustache of Stéphane Mallarmé, and we will empty the pockets of Isidore Isou, Vito Acconci or Ewa Partum. Readers and spectators, now transformed into detectives, we will have to reconstruct the scene of the crime, find the body, discover the motive, and uncover the weapon that ended the victim's life.

WEDNESDAY 5 MAR. 18:30
FROM FLOOR TO CEILING
Yayo Aznar, professor of the History of Art Department of the UNED
Understanding, as a point of departure,  that art is «sacralized» by going, literally, from the floor to the ceiling, this talk will attempt to think through the political positions of the art proposals of Teresa Margolles (and other artists) to reinforce the possibility of an observation so self-interested that it is no longer capable of surviving without the public and even the private when it becomes a public problem.

WEDNESDAY 12 MAR. 18:30 
A SMALL CHANGE IN THE STATE OF THINGS
Beatriz Alonso, curator and researcher, and Carlos Granados, CA2M educator and artist
Contemporary art is replete with references to the everyday and more and more artists are poetically emphasizing ordinary situations, offering us new views and possibilities in relation to what surrounds us. In this session, we will not only talk about some of these proposals, we will also participate in a small change in the everydayness of the course, displacing its participants to a strange and unexpected place.

FRIDAY 14 MAR. 20:00 
LECTURE ON NOTHING BY JOHN CAGE
The experimental musician, John Cage, gave this conference (Lecture on Nothing) in 1949. At present, the work of John Cage is among the most influential in the current creation scene. This lecture reflects on indetermination, chance and the absurd as fundamental elements of art creation.

WEDNESDAY 19 MAR. 18:30 
PLACEMENT 2/B/ARTIST/. 
Eva Garrido and Yera Moreno, artists and educators. Together they make up the art group, Colektivof
Female art practice is positioned on the verges of placement/ displacement. Marked by this movement, this (non) place enables a precarious, provisional and necessary position to generate thought and action. It is precisely this constant «state of movement» that becomes a critical positioning from which to reflect on the power strategies that mark contemporary art in relation to gender/ sex.

This session is an invitation to cross the threshold and penetrate a space for debate in which we will discuss the relationship between art and feminism, the body as an ambiguous place of action, the (in)visible contributions of feminist thinking and the construction of subjectivity, among other subjects.

WEDNESDAY 26 MAR. 18:30
111-119 GENERALÍSIMO/CASTELLANA
Patricia Esquivias, artist and Pablo Martínez, CA2M Education and Public Activities Manager and associate professor of the History of Art at the Fine Arts Faculty, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
The construction of collective stories, images and ways of life goes hand in hand with the constructions of the city, its stories, the rumors and the gossip that flow through it. In this session, we suggest using a performative dialogue (naturally), to think about the public and the private, the city and its spaces, the bodies and the images. The city of Madrid, its past and its present will be the element that works as the vessel for this class.

WEDNESDAY 2 APR. 18:30 
TRUTH OR DARE
Lilli Hartmann, artist and David Armengol, independent curator and educator
Using the Truth or Dare game as a starting point, this session proposes an approach to art practices without having to talk about art. The structure of the game invites an exercise of expectation based on which fundamental concepts in the artist's work will be analyzed: the dialogue between what is true and what is false, the power of action, the real-time experience and the emotional and passionate capacity implied by living and working off art.

WEDNESDAY 9 APR. 18:30
CULTURE
Los Torreznos, artists and Ferran Barenblit, director of CA2M and curator of the Los Torreznos exhibition, Cuatrocientos setenta y tres millones trescientos cincuenta y tres mil ochocientos noventa segundos.

Los Torreznos will offer a lecture to discuss culture, that territory we move in. But, how to talk about something that surrounds us on all sides?

Everyone dreams of flying, the artist Olga Diego tells us, but if you haven’t yet dreamed of flying, there is still time.

During the last school year Universidad Popular took up the challenge to bewitch us again with art, to rediscover the ability to inspire awe. Starting out from this idea, the museum’s educational department has conceived this year’s programme as a place where the incredible can happen because it makes us believe in it. The sessions will focus on thinking about or experimenting with occult practices related with art that subvert scientific logic and conventional forms of knowledge: art practices that deceive the eye, that work with the inexplicable and turn lead into gold.

The course will use a series of publications which will be available for consulting at the CA2M library. In addition, before each session, we invite participants to join in a group reading of a publication selected for the occasion.

CA2M organises further educational activities in contemporary art and thinking within the tradition of community adult education centres. Its courses address some of the fundamental issues for a proper understanding of art today. They are divided into two parts: the first consists in the presentation of a theme by a guest speaker and the second consists in opening a debate to all participants. This structure can change to accommodate more experimental formats introduced by the individual guest speakers at each session.

SESSIONS

24 OCTOBER
Make Yourself Matter to Someone

Raisa Maudit is preparing a performative conference which will explore the laws of desire in force both in the practice of magic and the occult as well as in art. Through a survey of different occult practices ranging from the nineteenth century until the present moment and the core axes of her artistic and curatorial work, we will address questions on dissident identities, surviving the system, inhabiting darkness, and how to achieve your desires but only perishing a little in the attempt.

Magic is the definitive art. We understand Magic and the Occult as all those processes that are based on symbolism and imagination which, through actions and words, wish to affect their surroundings by engendering changes and transformations in natural laws, in space, in time, in bodies, in psyches and in identities. No form of magic is possible without putting it into practice. In magic, practice starts out from an almost suicidal openness to leap into the unknown and letting it hit you with all it has got. It is based on questioning each and every one of the things that we take for granted. Magic hopes to alter the very weft of reality itself. Magic and Art have points in common such as speculation and the allegorical but at once they have a beef in which Art always loses out. We will take a look at Dion Fortune and psychic self-defence, The Craft, otherkin identities, vampires as the definitive evolution, demonology, Magic Battles, neuro-divergent rebellion, and how to get your hands on a free home.

Raisa Maudit is an artist and curator
http://raisamaudit.com/

31 OCTOBER
Queer Spirituality as Resistance. Yet Another Path in the Conspiracy.

Diego Rambova will lead us on an exercise in fragmentary mapping through a range of contemporary performative practices which are presented as a kind of common ground between new age and queer politics, revealing how, both for the artists who propose them but also in their own right, the confluence is a powerful site of agency, resistance and transcendence. Represented by artists of different ages and from different origins around the world from the seventies onwards, they appear under many different guises. But the truth is that they all respond—as we shall see—to the same “conspiracy”.

Diego Rambova is an artist and researcher.
www.diegorambova.com 

7 NOVEMBER
Performance Lecture for Flying

Is it possible to fly? We all know that you can, but … What happens when you realise that you can fly on your own? This lecture explores the irrational desire to fly and its materialisation in artistic creation, in manifold studies and calculations, prior sketches in flight books, failed attempts and disappointments. And also the involvement of the public. Flight artefacts built from a sculptural gaze and attempts to fly as performance art.

We will take a look at, among others, the projects created by Olga Diego since 2003, when she managed to take to flight on the beach of Carabassí in Alicante, as well as other flights with cameras in the Western Sahara and in Salamanca, or more interactive projects like the one developed by the University of California in 2017.

Olga Diego is an artist
http://olgadiego.blogspot.com/ 

14 NOVEMBER
Just as Up is Down, Down is Up

In this lecture Marian Garrido has devised a walkthrough of the symbolic dimensions of lost forms of knowledge and the narrative constructed through the bonds between art and magic or alchemy. Is there really any difference between an extract from The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, in which Carlos Castaneda learns to fly guided by the expert hands of a shaman, and the experiences related by Terence McKenna or Douglas Rushkoff in Cyberia in a framework of comparison with online culture; virtual realities, flight simulators, videogames or the visual rendering of almost vaporous omniscience in Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void and neo-touristic journeys in Google Earth?

Marian Garrido is an artist and researcher
www.mariangarrido.com 

21 NOVEMBER
Angels of Anarchy. Modern Shamans, Artists of the Invisible

Servando Rocha reveals to us a secret tradition that unites art and magic through the masked figure, both in popular culture as well as in movements like Dada or Surrealism which were fascinated by the primitive, the mask, the world of spirits and the unknown. The intervention includes a Cabinet of Curiosities of the world of secret societies and masking as a tactic but also as transformative potential.

Servando Rocha is a writer and editor.
www.servandorocha.com 

28 NOVEMBER
From Spell to Spell, from (Magical) Gesture to Gesture

Ana Contreras invites us to a performative lecture which will uncover the ways in which bonds between feminism and witchcraft have been woven over time, from the medieval period to postmodernism. It will take us on a secret journey through its appearances and persecutions from which we will be able to extract lessons about its dangers and its powers. A witches coven that discloses the importance of occult practices and performative tactics, as well as their conscious and unconscious use in contemporary art.

Ana Contreras is a stage director, researcher and lecturer

Anyone interested in art today. No prior knowledge necessary.

More information at actividades.ca2m@madrid.org / 912 760 227