Activity

Coordination: Juan Albarrán and Iñaki Estella / CA2M / Department of the History and Theory of Art -UAM

The purpose of this seminar is to compare some of the studies of the practice and theory of performance conducted in Spain in recent years form a dialogue-based and inclusive perspective. The event is aimed at educators, researchers and students working in the field of art history, aesthetics and theatre studies, as well as artists and professionals who work in the contemporary art context. The activity consists of two round tables at which six specialists will share research approached from very diverse platforms and disciplinary traditions, ranging from feminism to curatorial studies, as well as the theory of theatre and the history of art. All of this with a view to revealing the wealth of debate  generated around performance at a time in which it is beginning to occupy a central role in both museum and art centre programs, and in the trends towards methodological renewal of both art history and other similar fields.

PROGRAM

THURSDAY 24 APR

16.30-18.30
Round table: “Performance: curatorial discussions and tales”. Lola Hinojosa (Reina Sofía Museum), Patricia Mayayo (UAM), Ferran Barenblit (CA2M). Moderator: Iñaki Estella (UAM)

18.30-19.00
Break

19.00-21.00
Round table: “Performance and meditation”. Judit Vidiella (Universidad de Évora), Óscar Cornago (CCHS-CSIC), Gabriel Villota (UPV/EHU). Moderator: Juan Albarrán (UAM)

With the collaboration of:

Department of the History and Theory of Art, UAM

Vice-chancellorship of University Cooperation and Expansion, UAM

Junior Dean of students and cultural activities- Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, UAM

SPEAKERS

Juan Albarrán is a doctor of the History of Art from the University of Salamanca. He has been an associate professor of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Cuenca (UCLM) and, between 2009 and 2012, he formed part of the editorial team of Brumaria. At present, he teaches at the Duke Center for Hispanic Studies (Duke University, Madrid) and is Associate Professor of the Department of the History and Theory of Art at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. His research has reveolved around Spanish art in recent decades. In this area, he has coordinated the collective volume Arte y transición (2012).

Ferrán Barenblit is the director of CA2M in the Madrid Region, a space that has housed exhibitions of the ilk of Bestué / Vives, Leopold Kessler, Cristina Lucas, Guy Ben Ner, Estación Experimental, Sonic Youth Sensational Fix, to mention but a few. He was formerly the director of the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica de Barcelona and curated various exhibition cycles in Espacio 13 of the Fundació Joan Miró. He has also worked at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in Nueva York. He has given seminars and conferences on curatorial practices in numerous museums and universities all over the world. In 2008, he co-curated the SITE Santa Fe Biennial, in New Mexico. He is on the board of directors of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT) and the Asociación de Directores de Arte Contemporáneo Español (ADACE).

Óscar Cornago is a Tenured Scientist at the Instituto de la Lengua Española del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Spanish Language Institute of the National Research Council), in Madrid. In 1997 he received a doctorate in Philosophy and Arts, with a specialisation in Hispanic Studies from the University of Strasbourg, and he spent two years at the Freie Universität of Berlín with a post-doctoral research scholarship. His studies have focused on the history and theory of contemporary theatre and literature. Between 2001 and 2006 he led a research project called "La teatralidad como paradigma de la modernidad: análisis comparativo de los sistemas estéticos en el siglo XX" (Drama as the paradigm of modernity: a comparative analysis of 20th century aesthetic systems), financed by the Programa Ramón y Cajal of the Ministry of Education and Science. Apart from numerous articles, he has also published a number of books: La vanguardia teatral en España L (1965-1975):del ritual al juego (Visor, 1999), Puesta en escena y discurso teórico en los años sesenta. La encrucijada de los "realismos" (CSIC, 2001), Pensar la teatralidad. Miguel Romero Esteo y las estéticas de la modernidad (Fundamentos, 2003) and Políticas de la palabra (Fundamentos, 2005), which include texts by Spanish stage creators from recent decades, such as Esteve Graset, Carlos Marquerie, Sara Molina and Angélica Liddell; he also directs the edition of those works by Miguel Romero Esteo that are appearing in the Editorial Fundamentos.

Ignacio Estella Noriega is a doctor in the History of Art. He has given conferences in Spain, Chile and the United States, where he has also spent a post-doctoral period at Columbia University. Among his publications, the first four volumes of Desacuerdos y Fluxus (Nerea, 2012) particularly stand out. He has been a lecturer at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid and is currently an Alianza Cuatro Universidades researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He is a member of the research group Art History in Spain: Development Narratives and Proposals (HAR2012-32609).

Lola Hinojosa is an Art History graduate, has a Master's in Museum Studies and an Advanced Studies diploma in Contemporary Art. Her main fields of research are performance, the moving image, the institutional review and the gender theory. She is responsible for the Performative Arts and Intermediate Collection of the Reína Sofía Art Museum of Madrid, and has formed part of the curatorial team of the collection presentations since 2009. She has participated in the curatorship of film and video cycles, such as Merce Cunningham, Archipiélago Val del Omar or La pantalla convulsa.

Patricia Mayayo holds a Master's Degree in the History of Art from the Case Western Reserve University (Ohio, E.E.U.U.) and a Doctorate in the History of Art from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. At present, she is a Full Professor of Art History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Between 1998 and 2006, she was a professor of the History of Art at the Universidad Europea de Madrid. Various fields of work are interspersed in her research: the history of women, feminist historiography and the study of contemporary art practices. Among other publications, she is the author of the books Cuerpos sexuados, cuerpos de (re)producción (Barcelona, UOC, 2011), Frida Kahlo. Contra el mito (Madrid, Cátedra, 2008), Historias de mujeres, historias del arte (Madrid, Cátedra, 2003), Louise Bourgeois (Hondarribia, Nerea, 2002) and André Masson: Mitologías (Madrid, Metáforas del Movimiento Moderno, 2002). Together with Juan Vicente Aliaga, she has recently jointly curated the project Genealogías feministas en el arte español, 1960-2010 (Feminist Genealogies in Spanish Art, 1960-2010).

Judit Vidiella is a Doctor of Fine Arts from the Facultad de Barcelona. Her research revolves around studies of performance, education and feminism. She is a member of the performance group, Corpus Deleicti. At present, she is a lecturer at the Universidad de Évora and forms part of the teaching team of the Master's in Visual Arts and Education, at the Universidad de Barcelona.

Gabriel Villota Toyos, since1996, he has been a lecturer in the Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising of the Faculty of Social and Communication Sciences, at the Universidad del País Vasco. He has worked as an artist, author and organiser of multiple activities relating to the visual arts. He has collaborated in various publications, such as Rekarte, Zehar, Papers d’Art, Banda Aparte, Política y Sociedad, Revista de Occidente, or Impasse. He has also written texts for exhibition catalogues such as Señales de vídeo (MNCARS, Madrid, 1995), Històries sense argument. El cinema de Pere Portabella (MACBA, Barcelona, 2000), Malas Formas. Txomin Badiola (Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2002), and Esfuerzo (KM, Donostia, 2004), among others. Some of his publications include Sujeto e imagen-cuerpo. Entre la imagen del cuerpo y el cuerpo del espectador (UPV/EHU, Bilbao, 2004) and the video, Devenir vídeo (adiós a todo eso) (2005).

How to create an exhibition on performance in the present time? From what curatorial approach was PER/FORM born? What are the challenges to exhibiting performance nowadays? Why is it important for the museums to conceive new ways of displaying contemporary art? What are the challenges and specific problems, and even the difficulties?

Why is the pragmatic approach ideal to handle performance? What has art history done or not done for performance? How does performance challenge our view of art and art exhibition in the institution or the space and in the public spheres?

What are the precedents for PER/FORM in my career as a curator? How does this project enhance some of my previous work?

What can be done in the future of exhibition practice that takes performativity and contemporaneity into account?

Chantal Pontbriand is art critic and curator. Her work is based on the exploration of questions of globalization and artistic heterogeneity. Since 1970, she has curated numerous international contemporary art events: exhibitions, international festivals and international conferences, mainly in photography, video, performance, dance and multimedia installation.

 She founded PARACHUTE contemporary art magazine in 1975 and acted as publisher/editor until 2007. In 1982 she was president and director of the FIND (Festival International de Nouvelle Danse), in Montreal. She was appointed Head of Exhibition Research and Development at Tate Modern in London in 2010 and since then lives in Paris and has founded PONTBRIAND W.O.R.K.S [We_Others and myself_Research_Knowledge_Systems]. www.pontbriand-works.com

The administration of fear, the discourses of hate, and the common experience of shock are other ways of speaking about the control that neo-liberalism exerts upon our bodies. Although Brian Massumi considers today that fear is an ontogenetic concept, we can think about a kind of “passion” that concerned us since the beginning of modernity when Hobbes proposed the binomial fear-security as the basis for the state’s authority. As for the shock, Walter Benjamin had already situated his experience (shockerlebnis) at the heart of modern life, considering that its reception had become the rule. All these ideas lead us to work with images, which may help us understand the “now” as a crystal of time.

We use the word management in relation with fear for its double meaning. On the one hand, there are works which criticise and analyse the production and handling of shock/fear via images (and the devices on which they can be displayed). On the other, there are those which question how to bring about, from the worlds of art and thought, this kind of operation whilst resisting the politics of fear.

We welcome papers dealing with this state of affairs, through general analyses, case studies regarding artistic practice or concrete events, genealogies, as well as visual or curatorial essays. We expect them to meet the editorial requirements of the journal, included in the guidelines of Re-visiones.

Papers should be submitted by 15th July 2015

The digital magazine Re-Visiones is a yearly, indexed, bilingual publication in which previously unpublished recent works in Spanish on visual theory, art history and art research are published. CA2M, as an observer entity involved in the promotion of the research and development project I+D VISUALIDADES CRITICAS: REESCRITURA DE LAS NARRATIVAS A TRAVES DE LAS IMÁGENES  (HAR2013-43016-P, Ministry for the Economy), undertakes this collaboration with Re-Visiones with a view to helping to promote and support the research conducted in this field. Which is why one of CA2M's missions is to foster and support image-related research. The Centre's own collection along with the Jornadas de Estudio de la Imagen organized by Madrid's regional government and held yearly since 2009 are just two examples, perhaps the most outstanding, of their work in relation to image.

Author’s Rights and Creative Commons

Authors publishing in Re-Visions are subject of keeping their authorial rights over their work. Unless stated otherwise, the distribution of articles in Re-Visions is done under the following Creative Commons license, allowing for free distribution and public communication with the mandatory condition of referring to the original source and author, and excluding any commercial use and its utilisation in derivative works without being properly cited.

During  three consecutive afternoons on June, 17, 18 and 19, three simultaneus workshops  will take place at CA2M by: Ayreen Anastas & Rene Gabri, Asier Mendizábal and Luis Jacob. The workshops, independent, will be personally addressed by each of the artists. These artists have worked in experimental formats of knowledge production, with teaching experience; they have also participated in many collective works.

These three consecutive workshops will be hold in the afternoon, parallel to the Symposium as a space for reflection.

For artists, critics, theoreticians or anyone interested in the image. Groups of 12 people max.

LUIS JACOB is an artist, writer, curator and educator living in Toronto. Luis Jacob’s diverse practice addresses issues of social interaction and the subjectivity of aesthetic experience. In 2012, his work display as part of Pop Politics: Activism at 33 Revolutions at CA2M, year that his work is also part of another exhibition in Spain Visible, Móvil, Vidente, at Center Párraga from Murcia. His works been displayed in Taipei Biennal in 2012, Taipei Museum of Fine Arts, Witte of With Contemporary Art, Guggenheim New York, Generali Foundation, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and  Documenta 12. His solo exhibitions has been showcased in sites as: Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Fonderie Darling, Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Kunstverein Hamburg and Galerie Max Mayer.

ASIER MENDIZÁBAL. Bilbao-based artist, whose practice, linked to the sculpture program, is developed through diverse media and procedures, including writings habitually. Multiple crossings between specific modern codes and some of his last updates in shape of popular culture (politics, music, cinema…) sets recurring references in his work. He has exhibited in solo shows at en Culturgest, Lisboa; DAE, San Sebastian and in the Museu d’Art Contemporani in Barcelona; Raven Row in London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. He has participated in group exhibitions such as: IllumiNATIONS, 54 Venice Biennal; Scenarios about Europe, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig; In the First Circle, Fundació Tapies, Barcelona; Às Artes, Cidadãos, Serralves Museum, Porto; Després de la notícia, at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània in Barcelona, Manifesta 5 and the Biennials in Taipei and Bucarest.

AYREEN ANASTASREEN is a Palestine artist living in Brooklyn. Anastas is one of the organizers of the 16 Beaver group, an artist community that functions as a social and collaborative space on 16 Beaver street in downtown Manhattan, where the group hosts panel discussions, encounters, film series, artist talks, radio recordings, reading groups and more. Anastas’ recent artistic projects and exhibitions include: Pasolini Pa* (2005) Palestine, M* of Bethlehem (2003) and  Library of Useful Knowledge (2002). RENE GABRI was born in Tehran and now lives in New York. He is also member of 16 Beaver group, he is interested in the complex mechanisms which constitute the world around us. Ayreen Anastas' and Rene Gabri's collaborative projects have evolved a great deal through their work at 16Beaver. Their Radioactive Discussion series was a physical counterpart to their fictional Homeland Security Cultural Bureau project. The artists recently had a solo exhibition entitled 'eine welt ein thema ein korn ein zeichen ein lied ein spaziergang ein lächeln eine wand eine notiz ein datum eine karte eine und eine frage' at Kunstverein Arnsberg (2011). Other collaborations include: Camp Campaign, Artist talk, Radio Active, United We Stand, What Everybody Knows, Eden Resonating, 7X77, Case Sensitive America and more.

The workshops will be conducted in Spanish, except for the ones by Rene Gabri and Ayreen Anastas, conducted in English.

To attend the workshops, send form (download form) and send it before June 7 to actividades.ca2m@madrid.org

MAPEAR Madrid is a work group created in response to a shared desire to seek out and identify the artistic structures and various agents involved in the cultural sector of the region of Madrid. Following an initial period of research and investigation, an announcement will be made, and sessions open to the public will be offered on the first Tuesday of each month until July. At a later stage in the project, a tool for public use will be created to provide the agents and intermediaries of the contemporary creation and art scene with an efficient channel for pursuing professional projects.

The goal is to encourage interaction between artistic communities, strengthening professional ties to help the sector operate more effectively and efficiently; to democratise access to and use of information on the art and creative sector, and achieve greater transparency in its professional practices; and to promote dialogue between contemporary creation and civil society.

Following the technical research phase – interviews with sector professionals and cultural agents in the region in order to detect and identify their professional relations with universities, industry, the authorities and the media – a tool has been created which allows us to visualise these interconnections.

Register now at http://www.mapearmadrid.net/ 

On the occasion of the exhibition No Heroics, please, an encounter will take place  between the curator of the exhibition, Tania Pardo, and the artists involved at the exhibition: Iván Argote, Sara Ramo and Teresa Solar Abboud. The encounter will introduce topics about the development and global context of the show and, also, about previous works of the three artists.

On the occasion of the new exhibition created with CA2M funds, it will take place an encounter with the artists displaying in the show as Concha Jerez, Paula Rubio Infante, Antonio Ballester Moreno and Nuria Carrasco.
 
The artists will discuss their work in the documentation area  of the exhibition with the attendees, representing an opportunity for dialogue and debate about their motivations, concerns and artistic practices in an informal context and close to the artworks.

April 13: Antonio Ballester Moreno
May 4: Blonde Paula Infante
May 11: Concha Jerez
May 18: Nuria Carrasco

On the occasion of the furniture creation workshop at CA2M, Peter Marigold will hold a open presentation of his work.

Peter Marigold is today a renowned furniture designer with a solid background as a sculptor and designer applied to means economy, in a search for new relationship between objects from a formal and conceptual setting and enabling designs to generate tiny modifications between the user´s behavior. His work has been displayed in diverse spaces as in MoMA or at London Design Museum. Peter Marigold was granted with the  'the designers of the future award` at Design Miami/ Basel.

On the occasion of the exhibition "Tied Up to the Table Leg", and the workshop “Tying and Untying", Wilfredo Prieto will make a public presentation of the works on display at the CA2M and other works never before exhibited in our country.

Coinciding with the Fold Along the Line exhibition, Guy Ben-Ner will offer a public presentation on his work at which he will talk about the pieces featured in the exhibition and others that have never been shown in Spain.

Free admission. The encounter will be in English.