Charlas y conferencias

A pond emerges
A frenetic sprouting of the phreatic
An invisible flow
There are holes in the history of this pond and each one is filled in their own way
Dug out by a giant
A gigantic company, a gigantic machine, a gigantic desire
And then nothing can dry it, but it will evaporateIf you stop nearby, you can sometimes hear a choir of children from a nearby bilingual public school learning the song the water cycle… 
When the children go back to school in September they are taken to the pond
They spend the morning sitting down, looking, they see that it is no longer there
They had visited the pond in February, collected samples of its crystal-clear water
And one evening in spring they went to listen to the frogs
An historian, a lawyer and an artist agree to start there.

Ciudad Sur is a shared experimental space begun in 2021 which, taking its starting point in Móstoles, wishes to explore the many faces and manifold riches that generate a sense of belonging in the cities within the metropolitan area of Madrid. Its second edition is called Brota invisible (Invisible Flow).

Brota invisible is aimed at all those interested in a shared rethinking of the inhabited space. Over the course of six sessions, spaced out between May and December 2022, we will explore the idiosyncrasy of Móstoles based on an omnipresent yet very often invisible element, which is water. Up until relatively recently, the people of Móstoles sourced their water locally, underground. This all changed when Móstoles connected to Isabel II canal water supply network. Taking our point of departure in this rupture, and all its ensuing implications, we will open the conversation. But there are also other elements in the various strata of the city that are forgotten about: the memory of those who are no longer with us and those that were silenced. And also the initiative of locals to decide how to build their own city. We will try to bring to the surface and throw light on some of these invisible flows, rivers that run underneath the ground we stand on, ponds that disappear and which, almost as if by magic, suddenly reappear.

The first session will take place on Tuesday 24 May and will consist of a walk which will start at CA2M at 6:00 pm. The following sessions will take place on 21 June, 27 September, 25 October, 22 November and 13 December. Each session will centre on this core theme as well as the interests suggested by participants. The enrolment form for the first session is already available.

AHIMOS (Amigos de la Historia de Mostoles, Friends of the History of Mostoles) is a relatively new association which came about with the purpose of investigating and promoting the past of this city in the Region of Madrid. Despite its newness, some of its members have been involved in these activities for almost twenty years, on a journey involving thousands of hours spent digging into archives and libraries, into excavations in search of treasure that nobody expected, of strolling streets and countryside to portray them as they are... and all with the goal of bringing the past customs, events and society closer to the local community today, in the hope that they will appreciate and feel a greater attachment to the place where they live.

Patricia Esquivias grew up in the suburbs on the outskirts of Madrid. Since she came of age she has lived in different cities, always searching in them for traces of local crafts and artisanship. Since 2005 she has mainly worked with video, a discipline she uses to share her narratives on history and the city. In 2016 she had a solo show at CA2M called “At Times Embellished”.

Carlos Copertone studied Law and obtained a PhD on the ways cities grow. In his teaching practice he literally proposed taking to the streets to explore and rethink them. All these approaches have gradually taken him closer to the field of architecture and contemporary art. He has curated various exhibitions and has also published books and is closely involved with Caniche, a publishing production and action platform outside conventional exhibition circuits that came into being in 2015.

The idea behind the Image Symposium is to provide a space for collective thinking on the theory, practice, semantic openings and contemporary demarcations of visual cultures, taking the form of a forum for debate, a symposium and workshops, and an open call for research projects.

The point of departure for this edition of the symposium is the work of a research group at MCA2M which has sourced in Manel Clot’s texts a multitude of incipient ideas, obsessive desires, textured references, serious nostalgia, untimely utopias and sudden fatigues that underpinned the brevity and transience of his sentences and dominated his thinking almost permanently. Rather than anachronisms, his discursive output has left us reminiscences of the 1990s: one worth underscoring is the connections between the concept of club culture and art practice; another is the invention and implementation of appreciative and operative categories, where none previously existed, for the consideration of new expressive repertoires and new meaningful registers that would become symptomatic of a time and a place.

This symposium is curated by Jesús Alcaide, Néstor García and Víctor Aguado. The title is borrowed from Musée des phrases, 2003-2015, by Manel Clot. The image (High Culture, 1996) is by Carles Congost, produced for an exhibition at Transmission Gallery and taken in Manel Clot’s studio with the assistance of Daniel Riera. The image shows a young Fine Art student called Joan Morey.

CALL

MCA2M announces an open call for the submission of research projects to be presented at the 27th Image Symposium, whose theme is club culture: club culture as the act and practice of expanding the field of given representations of subjectivity, of producing fictions of somatic permanence, fluctuations in desire, possibilities of dissidence towards the social distribution or other relationships between the body and temporality.

The selected projects may be presented in two different formats:

(1) Presentation of papers or performative lectures, with a duration of 30-45 minutes during the afternoon, based on or presenting for the first time a research project related with the theme of the symposium.

(2) Commented listening sessions on a theme of interest for the symposium, with a duration of 45-60 minutes during the morning, either closed or open to the participation of attendants in the construction of meaning.

Projects submitted to the open call should send: application form and project dossier to the following email: recepcion.ca2m@madrid.org. When attaching video or audio files, please follow the specific instructions included in the form. The submission and presentation of the project can be made in English or Spanish. Forms with incomplete information shall not be accepted.

The deadline for presenting projects is 31 March. The curators of this edition of the symposium shall select a maximum of 6 projects, bearing in mind the selection criteria of the relevance of the project to the theme and format of the symposium, as well as its overall coherence within an artistic or research practice.

The names of the selected projects will be announced on 7 April. Although persons selected shall be informed of the exact day and time of the presentation, it is expected that they be available to attend the symposium on all three days: 19, 20 and 21 May.

Selected projects shall receive a fee of €300 for their presentation at the symposium, which shall be subject to obligatory tax deductions. When necessary MCA2M shall also run with the travel and accommodation expenses.

International Seminar  May 20 to 23

May 23 Forum for Researchers and artists 
May 13 to Sept. 27 Exhibition

CA2M organizes the XVI Image Symposium including a conference and debate programme on the subject of Imagine_Historicize.

Within the framework of this programme, an open call is issued inviting participation of researchers and artists. The selected authors will introduce their projects to the public attending, during journeys dedicated to the Forum of the unpublished. Those projects will be published in the book of minutes of the Symposium.

The Image Symposium intended to be a place of discussion and reflection around issues relevant to the setting of the contemporary subject.

Within this frame, history and memory currently have a strength and visibility that goes beyond the academic sphere which constitute a social and cultural hot debate. The official History, single and linear, has been broken into parts to give rise to multiple memories, demands as a mean of identity and, also, as a set of political and cultural values.

Such proliferation of histories, sometimes incompatible, is the result of complex dynamics and societies ever more diverse that consider the past time through memories, remains and monuments as an archeological process ever open. For its part, the global cultures of the images produce a time and space in a continue present, where cohabit all geographies, discourses, disciplines, visual styles and historic periods. All of them, floating and available to reinvent pasts, presents and futures.

With all this, what is the capacity and ethic and political role of the production, retrieval (and destruction and occultation) of images in the construction of history and memory? How do historians use images and how do they face the digital era? How “other histories” transform the hegemonic history written by the modern states with cohesion desire? What visions of the present lie behind the images used by artists? What idea of the future? Those are some of the questions raised in the following journeys by means of lectures, debates from great specialists and a “CA2M Abierto” Forum, for researchers and artists.

CALL

CA2M organizes the XVI Image Symposium  including a conference and debate programme on the subject of Imagine_Historicize. Within the framework of this programme, an open call is issued inviting participation of researchers and artists. The selected authors will introduce their projects to the public attending during the journeys of the Forum of the unpublished. Those projects will be published in the book of minutes of the Symposium.

The Call aims to start a forum for debate to projects related to the questions raised before and also to other topics:

- Historians and images. Images: documents of historical evidence or problematic evidence in an irretrievable past?

- Images of memory. Impact of production and destruction of images in the process of constitution of history and memory.

- Other histories. New voices of history through images: imaginary stories.

Requirements: The proposals must include the registration form dully filled in.

- Project on Artistic Theory and Practice. It must be an unpublished project and must  have the DIN A4 size; in case of an artistic practice, it should have the presentation of a memory, dossier or portfolio. The investigation essays will have a range between 10 and 15 pages, doble space and Times New Roman 12. Images screening are permitted during lectures.

Projects, both in Spanish and English, are accepted

Uncompleted applications won´t  be accepted.

The selected authors who wish to attend the Symposium and reside outside the Region of Madrid may benefit from 150 € as travel expenses (the applicant may enclose in its application any relevant document supporting the proof of place of  residence  - eg. Resident permit, City Certificate of Registration, a photocopy of student card, electricity or gas bills...).

The documentation from non-selected projects could be collected during the days of the Symposium.

DOCUMENTATION REQUIREMENTS AND REGISTRATION PERIOD

The deadline for receipt of projects is April 15, 2009. Participant may submit the aforesaid documentation:

- By email: download form at  www.ca2m.org  and send, duly filled in, together with project (in a .doc or .pdf format) to actividades.ca2m@madrid.org. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

- By mail, enclosing the duly filled in registration form together with the printed project (projects arrived later than April 15 will be discarded)

SELECTION

The directors of the Symposium will select a maximum of 10 projects. April 30 it will be published the list of selected participants in the CA2M web page. The selected participants will receive an express communication, which will state the date and time of his/her presentation at CA2M.

For further information  actividades.ca2m@madrid.org. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   or at 91 276 02 27

It will be positively consider those applications that show rigor, creativity, interdisciplinary and   relevancy to the line of work detailed in the call. It won´t be taken into account  the order of registration nor the fact of having participated before in previous editions.

SCHEDULE

MAY 20

11,00 h. Opening  Hon. Minister of Culture and Sports , Mr. Santiago Fisas Ayxelà.
Presentation Ilma. Director General of Archives, Museums and Libraries, Dña. Isabel Rosell Volart.
Presentation Director of Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Ferran Barenblit.

11,15 h. Introduction to the Symposium. Mónica Portillo and Sergio Rubira, Directors of the XVI Image Symposium of the Region of Madrid.

12,00 h. Philippe-Alain Michaud. Art historian and curator of film at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris.

16,00 h. Svetlana Boym. Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature and Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Design, Harvard University.

18,00 h. The Otolith Group: Anjalika Sagar (artista, comisaria y escritora, Londres); Kodwo Eshun (artista, escritor, DJ, profesor del Máster en Cultura Visual del Goldsmiths College, University of London).

JUE 21 MAY

11,00 h. Santu Mofokeng. Photographer, Johannesburg.

16,00 h. Rogelio López Cuenca. Artist, Malaga.

18,00 h. Rogelio López Cuenca (artist, Málaga) and Pedro G. Romero (artist, Seville).

MAY 22

11,00 h. Nuria Enguita Mayo. Cultural worker, member of the management team arteypensamiento (Universidad Internacional de Andalucía).

13,00 h. Basilio Martín Patino (Film Director, Madrid) and Aurora Fernández Polanco (Professor of History and Theory of Contemporary Art, Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

16,00 h. Eyal Sivan. Documentary filmmaker, London.

18,00 h. Francesc Torres (artist, Barcelona) and Fernando Sánchez Castillo (artist, Madrid).

MAY 23

11,00 h. CA2M Abierto: Forum for researchers and artists.

17,00 h. Screening of The Specialist, documentary film by Eyal Sivan and Rony Brauman, 1999, 128 minutes, OV subt. Spanish. (1999: Official Selection Berlinale, Berlin, best documentary of the year, Guild of Media Authors (SCAM); best documentary of the year, Adolf Grimme Prize, Germany).

19,15 h. Closing Day

The Museum will provide simultaneous interpreting for the lectures to be conducted in English or French.

Free registration at   centrodeartedosdemayo@madrid.org or by phone at 91 276 02 27 as of April 15, 2009

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE LECTURERS

Svetlana Boym is a writer, theorist and artist, Professor of Slavic and comparative literature, associate professor in the School of Architecture and Design, Harvard University. Author of The Architecture of the Off-Modern (2008), Territories of Terror: Memory and Mythology of the Gulag in Contemporary Russian-American Art (exhibition catalog, 2007) and The Future of Nostalgia (2001).

www.svetlanaboym.com

Nuria Enguita Mayo has been responsible of projects  at Fundació Antoni Tapies, Barcelona (1998-2008). She was part of the curatorial team of Manifesta 4 (Frankfurt, 2002). He has worked on numerous projects such as Tour-ismos. La derrota de la disensión (2004) o Culturas de Archivo (2000)  and she is a member of the management team of art and thought (Universidad Internacional de Andalucía).

Aurora Fernández Polanco is Professor of History and Theory of Contemporary Art, UCM. Her publications include "Shoah y el debate Lanzman (Moses) / Godard (San Pablo)" in Er (2004), " Historia, montaje e imaginación: sobre imágenes y visibilidades," in Imágenes de la violencia en el arte contemporáneo (2005). Artistic advisor and editor of the exhibition catalog Basilio Martin Patino: Espejos en la niebla -Mirror in the Mist (2008).

Rogelio López Cuenca is an artista who works with contemporary audiovisual material, historical archives and history of art, among others. His work examines the processes of ideological production of identities and histories. Among his projects include: Gitanos de papel (2009); Málaga 1937 (2007), o El Paraíso es de los extraños (2001). He participated in the Johannesburg Biennale, Manifesta 1 (Rotterdam), São Paulo, Lima and Istanbul.

www.malagana.com

Basilio Martín Patino has led Nueve cartas a Berta (1965) or, in hiding, Queridísimos verdugos (1973) and Caudillo (1974). Awarded on numerous occasions, he has presented retrospectives in Bremen, Hamburg, Rome and at  MoMA in New York (2007). In 2008, Madrid held his solo exhibition Espejos en la niebla

www.basiliomartinpatino.com

Philippe-Alain Michaud is an art historian and curator of the film collection of the Musée d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Author of Sketches: histoire de l'art, cinéma (2006) and Aby Warburg et l'image en mouvement (1998). Curator of Le mouvement des images (Centre Pompidou, 2006-2007) and Comme Le Reve Le dessin (Louvre / Centre Pompidou, 2002).

Santu Mofokeng is a photographer and writer. His work is an investigation into the construction of social identity and history, landscape and memory, especially in the context of the history of South Africa and Apartheid. He has exhibited recently at Rivington Place, London (2009), Iziko-South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2007), Venice Biennale (2007) and Africa Remix (2006-2008). He has participated in Documenta 11, Kassel (2002).

The Otolith Group is composed by Anjalik Sagar-artist, writer and curator, and Kodwo Eshun, writer, artist, DJ and curator, professor of the Master in Visual Culture at Goldsmiths College, London. Their  recent projects include: the performance Communists Like Us, and A Long Time Between Suns, two-part exhibition of the films by Otolith, visual essays narrated from investigating the future, past, present and the future itself, mixing fiction, personal files and documentaries, both in London in 2009.

Pedro G. Romero is an artist, editor and researcher, working primarily on two projects: Archivo FX, an extensive file of visual material on the anti-sacramental iconoclasm in Spain between 1845 and 1945, and Máquina P.H., a series of projects on flamenco. He is member of the arteypensamiento team at the International University of Andalusia, where he has coordinated SI, Sevilla Imaginada.

www.fxysudoble.org

Fernando Sánchez Castillo is an artist. His work moves and subverts symbols of power deployed in public spaces. Among his recent exhibitions include: Divertimento, Galería Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid (2009), The Unresolved ... Vleeshal, Holland (2008), 7 +1, MARCO Vigo (2008), and Abajo la inteligencia, MUSAC, Leon (2007). He participated in the Havana Biennial, Bucharest, Istanbul and Sao Paulo.

Eyal Sivan is a documentary filmmaker, producer, essayist and professor of production in the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies (East London University). Among his award-winning films stand out: Itsembatsemba, Rwanda one genocide later (2004), Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel (2003) and The Specialist (1999), fiction based on file of the trial of Adolf Eichmann and inspired in Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt.

Francesc Torres, artist, curator and writer. His work invites a constant reflection on the mechanisms of power, memory, ideology and violence. His work has been exhibited, among others, in: IVAM, Valencia, Bilbao Guggenheim, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona: Whitney Museum and MoMA in New York, MNCARS, Madrid, or MACBA, Barcelona, where he conducted a retrospective in 2008, Da Capo.

DIRECTED BY

Mónica Portillo is curator and art critic. From 2002 to 2007 he was director of the department of education and public programs at Mudam Luxembourg. Editor of Le petit Jean de la Ciotat de l'art contemporain (2007), Lamento (2007) and Mark Lewis. Arrêt sur ​​images (2006).

Sergio Rubira is curator and art critic. Associate Professor of History of Contemporary Art, UCM, Madrid. He is part of the cultural production agency RMS La Asociación. He has been deputy director of EXIT publications between 2006 and 2009 and is currently external editor of the photography magazine EXIT.

Signalling a context before an extract is an action of configuration, an exercise in emergence. This dynamic validates propositions where actions, gestures and statements are read and recognised from the legibility facilitated by that which argumentative doxa calls “context”. However, the material condition of these same elements enables us to uncover other ways of speaking of a context. A novel that begins, like the title of Una novel que comienza the only book by Macedonio Fernández published while alive, is a statement of a beginning and conditions the movement of reading and the reception of a story. This plural and subjective narration throws light on various forms of partaking in a context. Diego Vecchio, Alejo Ponce de León, Karina Peisajovich, María Moreno and Pablo Schanton will rethink some of the “living materials” with which Argentinian art arrives at different works and positions. The sole intention of breaking down this stock of materials in first person is to share ideas about the keys to participation; fields of relationships in which art hinges around the idea of community, literature, music, the construction of the artist and the productive surplus value that emerges through affectivity.

PROGRAMME

16:00: Presentation by Mariano Mayer
16:30: Diego Vecchio
17:00: Alejo Ponce de León
17:30: Karina Peisajovich
18:00: María Moreno
18:30: Pablo Schanton

Curated by Mariano Mayer

Admission free

The core element of a proposal for global change is the idea of cities in transition, a change led by people who wish to respond with practical solutions to the big challenges of our time, like climate change, peak oil, and the socioeconomic crisis that seems to have become a chronic illness. We will look for a third option somewhere between the ecologically impossible fantasy of perpetual growth in a finite planet, and the perspective of the collapse of industrial society increasingly predicted by scientific reports. We call this third option creative decline.

In addition, we understand that the challenge of sustainability is a good opportunity to plant the seed of a more just, participative and fulfilling society. Since eight years ago, the Rompe el Círculo Institute for Transition has been working towards implementing the philosophy of movement in transition in the city of Móstoles. We hope that these seminars will mark a point of inflection on the road towards a model of city geared towards the enjoyment of the good life, within the reach of everybody, bearing in mind the limits of a finite planet. The idea behind Móstoles, City in Transition is to live better with less.

Organised by Rompe el círculo Institute for Transition

SPEAKERS PROGRAMME

MONDAY 18 APRIL. 19:00
CA2M
The Limits of Growth.
Jorge Riechmann and Emilio Santiago
Our expansive economic systems are already beginning to clash frontally with our planet’s biophysical limits. In fields such as climate, energy, water and biodiversity, we are facing an authentic planetary state of emergency. This seminar will take a look at key scientific evidence for a proper understanding of our time. Jorge Riechmann is a lecturer in moral philosophy at UAM, a poet, translator, environmental activist and one of the most important figures in eco-socialist thinking in Spanish. Emilio Santiago is a social anthropologist who has penned the books No es una estafa, es una crisis (de civilización) and Rutas sin mapa (winner of Catarata 2015 prize for essays).

TUESDAY 19 APRIL. 19:00
CA2M
Ecofeminist gazes on the crisis of civilization
Marta Pascual
This session is conceived to introduce us to the main ideas of ecofeminism, and to help us to better understand the way in which a project of transition must also be a project of liberation with regards patriarchal structures. Marta Pascual is the coordinator of Ecologistas en Acción’s education section. She is also the co-author of, among others, the books Cambiar las gafas para mirar el mundo and Ecología y Educación.

WEDNESDAY 20 APRIL. 19:00
CA2M
Engaging with movement in transition
Juan del Río
Movement in transition is one of the most interesting responses that have arisen to confront the crisis of civilization. Its central idea is that the energy decline is an opportunity to move towards a longed-for reality, and that the best way of addressing it with hope is through advances in local self-governance. Juan del Río is a biologist, educator, author of the book Guía de la Transición and co-founder of Red de Transición de España.

THURSDAY 21 APRIL. 19:00
CA2M
The Limits of Renewable Energies, under debate
Antonio García Olivares and Pedro Prieto
A sustainable future must be a future based on renewable energies. But there are fundamental doubts on the type of society that can be sustained by renewable energies. This session will feature a debate between two of the leading experts in Spain on this issue, who have also publicly defended differing positions with regards the compatibility of renewable energies with the modern way of life. Antonio García-Olivares is a physicist and sociologist, a member of CSIC and of the Crash Oil Observatory research and outreach collective. Pedro Prieto is an engineer, vice-president of AEREN (Association for the Study of Energy Resources), who has spoken widely on Peak Oil and is the editor of the Crisis Energética web portal.

COMMUNITY RESILIENCE WORKSHOPS.
PRACTICAL SESSIONS

TUESDAY 19 APRIL. 11:30
Roof terrace garden
We are largely unaware of the huge potential to grow our own food at home and the pleasure of eating food we have grown ourselves. In this workshop we will learn the basics on how to grow food in small spaces, like a balcony or roof terrace.

WEDNESDAY 20 APRIL. 11:30
Energy Efficiency
Our houses are designed to use lots of energy. This workshop will teach us tricks on how to reduce our electricity bill while at once contributing, from the domestic realm, to a more rational use of energy.

THURSDAY 21 APRIL. 11:30
Solar Cooking
Cooking with solar energy is easy if you know how; especially in a country like Spain. In this workshop we will build our own solar kitchen to cook effortlessly without consuming energy, thanks to recycling common materials.

All practice sessions will be held on the CA2M roof terrace

IMAGINARIES OF FUTURES

FRIDAY 22 APRIL. 11:30
CA2M
Visualisation of Móstoles in 2030 [participative community education]
This participative initiative will endeavour to collectively imagine Móstoles in 2030. We will do so under the hypothesis that Móstoles will have become a place in which energy consumption has declined as an obligatory condition for living full lives.

FRIDAY 22 APRIL. 19:00
ROMPE EL CÍRCULO
Presentation of the journal 15/15\15
Manuel Casal Lodeiro
15/15\15 is a journal conceived to support the construction of a new post-industrial, post-capitalist and post-growth civilization. The presentation will showcase some passages from issue zero, focused on stories that reflect different aspects of life in 2030. Manuel Casal Lodeiro is author of the book Esquerda ante o colapso da civilización industrial, a member of the Galicia-based collective Véspera de Nada and editor of the journal 15/15\15.

FRIDAY 22 APRIL. 21:00
ROMPE EL CÍRCULO
Craft beer tasting + Negroni in Transition
Local Bier and Negroni collective

ROUNDTABLE ON THE ÚLTIMA LLAMADA MANIFESTO

SATURDAY 23 APRIL. 18:00
FINCA LIANA PUPPET THEATRE
The Challenge of Sustainability in Political Change
Signed by key political figures in Spain, the Última llamada manifesto was published in Summer 2014. Its goal is to warn people of the pressing need to place sustainability at the centre of political change in Spain. However, left-wing parties have lent scant importance to the challenge of sustainability. To respond to these and other questions, the roundtable has invited leading representatives from political parties to debate the Última llamada manifesto: Teresa Ribera (PSOE), former Secretary of State for Climate Change (2008-2011); Florent Marcellesi, MEP for EQUO; Juan Carlos Monedero, founder of PODEMOS; Sol Sánchez, member of parliament for Unidad Popular [to be confirmed]. The roundtable will be moderated by Margarita Mediavilla, physicist at the University of Valladolid and a member of the group promoting the Última llamada manifesto.

MÓSTOLES, CITY IN TRANSITION. PUBLIC PRESENTATION
SUNDAY 24 APRIL.
CEIP JULIÁN BESTEIRO

11:00 — 12:30
Arrival and breakfast in transition for International Book Day, with CIDESPU
12:30 — 13:30
Presentation of the Móstoles, City in Transition project
13:30 — 14:30
Other transitions: presenting the work of social movements in Móstoles
14:30 — 15:30
Communal lunch
15:30 — 17:00
After-lunch show with surprises, relaxation and rest
17:00 — 18:30
Driving Móstoles, City in Transition
18:30 — 20:00
Living well with less
20:00 — 20:30
Closure

Admission free while places last

More info on: www.rompeelcirculo.org and www.institutodetransicion.rompeelcirculo.org

The Convention on the Use of Space is a legal instrument drawn up in the Netherlands between March and May 2015 as a response to the housing crisis: the lack of affordable housing, the absence of provisions for the undocumented, rising rents, and the criminalization of squatting. The Convention considers space as a “good” that should not be privatised for profit or be left empty simply for speculative purposes and it lists the uses in which squatting should be protected, like providing free health services, sharing knowledge and skills, occupying space in protest, for housing purposes, running cooperative systems for wealth and labour distribution, providing mental and physical support, or the taking of space in order to protect it from environmental destruction.

In June and September 2016 we are organising a series of public meetings in various spaces in Móstoles and Madrid in which the Spanish chapter of the Convention will be prepared. Paying special attention to the historic genealogy of the issue of housing in Spain and the subsequent development of legislation, the meetings will feature keynote speakers and will encourage the public to take part in drafting this legislation from the perspective of different movements. A translated version of the Convention on the Use of Space will be read during the meetings, after which it will be discussed and modified in close collaboration with local groups of activists, legal experts, lawyers and the general public. The meetings will be open to the public and all those interested in issues related with the use of space. To receive more information on the Convention and on the times and venues of the meetings, join the mailing list on actividades.ca2m@madrid.org

Between April and May 2016, a number of meetings were held at Cuarto de Invitados to work on the convention and its translation. These meetings, which included a small group of participants, examined the ways in which the convention is expressed, the implications of the language used, and the issues involved in translating it. In addition, based on the material compiled during each meeting, there was a shared reflection on the various concerns raised by the document in question. The first meeting was held on 23 April at El Cuarto de Invitados (Calle Mesón de Paredes 42, 2ºA, Madrid) from 11:00 to 14:00 and from 16:00 to 18:00.

UPCOMING MEETINGS

WED 7 SEPT - ESKALERA KARAKOLA 19:00 - 22:00 (Calle de Embajadores, 52 Lavapiés, Madrid)
Article 12: If a space is occupied, how are the uses of that space decided?
In this session we will be taking a look at the Article dealing with issues of mediation and arbitration. If spaces are assigned in response to the principles agreed in the convention, how should they be assigned? How can disputes arising in these spaces be resolved?

The previous version of the convention underlined several questions and scenarios in relation with arbitration:

- If an empty space is occupied, how are the uses of this space decided?
- Are there uses in Spain that should be considered more important than others? Why?
- Are there successful experiences in assembly/collective decision-taking processes that can help to shape the structure for arbitration in relation to the convention?
- Or, should the convention be merely a document without rules for arbitration? If this were the case, how could conflicts be resolved?
- What are the possible effects of conflicts?

With the participation of:

Ana Méndez de Andés Aldama is an architect and city planner. She is currently an advisor to Madrid City Council’s Culture Department. As an architect and city planner she has worked on various landscape and urbanism projects in Amsterdam, London and Madrid and at different scales, ranging from general municipal plans to territorial strategies for the design of small urban public spaces. She has also taught city planning in Madrid and Shanghai, and has coordinated workshops and symposiums on issues such as urban commons, public spaces, strategic cartography and a radical democratic municipal project, at various universities and cultural institutes. She has taken part in research projects including Areaciega and Car-Tac, and is a member of the Observatorio Metropolitano in Madrid.

Lotta Tenhunen is an activist in the right to housing movement and a researcher.

Zuloark is an architectural infrastructure linked to the construction of open networks. Its goal is to respond to the necessity of evolving economic and entrepreneur models. Zuloark is a working platform defined as an area of proximity development, the interstitial space that exists between knowing how to do something and not knowing how to do it; it is the area where learning takes place, providing room for learning how to do something with help.

Jacobo García Fouz graduated with a degree in set design from RESAD in 2014 and produces new models and spaces for performance. He is one of the driving forces behind the community co-management project El Campo de Cebada, winner of many awards for the public space. He has created construction and design projects for stages for many theatre companies. He has also designed and built urban fixtures for different projects, collaborating with architecture and art collectives such as Zuloark.

THURS 15 SEPT - LA HIDRA 19:00 - 22:00 (Carrer de Sant Vicenç, 33 Sant Antoni, Barcelona)
Article 13: What kind of mutual support structures can guarantee the sustainability of networks?
The questions raised throughout the meeting have to do with the material maintenance of spaces, with caretaking and the possibility of generating support networks among signers of the convention. In this regard, how can we create a support network that will help to maintain housing/buildings, and how can we proportion mutual support for temporary housing? Buildings get run down if their users do not look after their maintenance, and in the majority of cases occupiers prolong the life of buildings. And while these repair and maintenance operations are normally carried out by the occupiers of the buildings, this excludes the possibility of these spaces housing people with different capacities, given the impossibility of carrying out repairs independently, and is this a problem?

Some of the questions raised:
- If the convention operates outside normative channels of external funding (bank, state or subventions), then how can the members avail of a safety net of some kind?
- What practices of sustainability/maintenance should be specified in the Convention?
- How should the mutual support be managed, what are the parameters for this support and how are they decided?

Rubén Martínez specializes in the relationship between social innovation practices, public policies and new community economies.Between 2002 and 2011 he was founder and co-director of YProductions, a company focused on the political economy of culture. He is co-author of books such as Producta50: una introducción a las relaciones entre economía y cultura (CASM, 2008), Innovación en cultura: una genealogía crítica de los usos del concepto (Traficantes de Sueños, 2009), Cultura Libre (Icaria, 2012) and Jóvenes, Internet y política (CRS, 2013). He has given papers at international symposiums and congresses on public politics and community management including Latin America Commons Deep Dive (Mexico City, 2012) and in European research groups like P2P Value and TRANSGOB. He is currently finalising his doctoral thesis on politics of social innovation at Instituto de Gobierno y Políticas Públicas (IGOP). He is also a member of Observatorio Metropolitano in Barcelona.

Manuela Zechner is a cultural activist and founder of the Future Archive project. She has a PhD in Precarity and Networks of Care in the European Crisis, from Queen Mary University of London; an MA in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths University London, with a thesis on Subjectivity and Collectivity in Foucault and Simondon; and a BA in Fine Art Media from Chelsea College of Art. She works across relational methods (Theatre of the Oppressed, Somatics, Choreography, Writing), research methods (mapping, performative interview, co-research, militant research) and audiovisual production (radio, video). Her main projects are Future Archive (2005- ), Radical Collective Care Practices (2012- ) and the radio show The Sounds of Movement (2012- ) and Vocabulaboratories (2007-2009). She is active in various collectives, including the Nanopolitics group (2010- ), the Centre for Ethics and Politics (2011- ), the Kamion jounral (2014- ) and la Electrodoméstica (2014/15)

SAT 17 SEPT - CA2M, 11:00 - 18:00
GENERAL REVISION: A day for debating and editing the final draft of the document.

PROGRAMME OF PREVIOUS MEETINGS

7 JUN. PRIMER ENCUENTRO. CA2M
LA FORMA LEGAL
PREÁMBULO Y ARTÍCULO 1
En esta sesión se discutió acerca de la forma de la convención: ¿qué es una convención? ¿Cómo opera como documento? Además revisamos el preámbulo de la convención, sus fundamentos: ¿qué es lo que apoya esta convención? ¿Cuáles son sus principios? 

Durante esta reunión además nos centramos en el artículo primero de la convención: «Las partes de la convención». ¿Para quién es esta convención? Poniendo en relación con precedentes para este tipo de documentos como la carta de las Okupas británicas y qué es lo que se entiende por una legislación «desde abajo».

Contó con la presencia de:

Emilio Santiago Muíño. Doctor en Antropología Social. Miembro del Grupo de investigación transdisciplinar sobre transiciones socioecológicas. Fundador y activista del Instituto de Transición Rompe el Círculo. Autor de No es una estafa, es una crisis (de civilización) y Rutas sin Mapa (premio ensayo Catarata 2015).

Somateca es el nombre que agrupa a un conjunto de personas que están trabajando en torno a las prácticas crip-queer (taradas cuir) en Madrid. Desde su investigación abordan asuntos como la diversidad funcional y sexual, el cuerpo, la normatividad, los feminismos, los afectos o los deseos son algunos de los temas que vertebran el trabajo de esta constelación de personas y sobre los que investigan en diferentes proyectos que toman la forma de reflexión teórica, creación artística o acción performativa entre otras. El grupo Somateca surgió como resultado del programa de Estudios Avanzados en Prácticas críticas del Museo Reina Sofía, dirigido por Paul B. Preciado.

Eduardo Gómez Cuadrado. Licenciado en Derecho por la Universidad de Valladolid, con un Máster en Práctica Jurídica por la Universidad de Salamanca. Socio fundador de Red Jurídica Cooperativa. Abogado especializado en Derecho Penal. Trabajo en el Turno de Oficio Penal, Menores y Audiencia Nacional y en elServicio de Orientación Jurídica General del Colegio de Abogados de Madrid. Miembro de la Asociación Libre de Abogadas y Abogados (ALA), en la Comisión Defensa de la Defensa.

14 JUN. SEGUNDO ENCUENTRO. ROMPE EL CÍRCULO.
EL DERECHO A LA CIUDAD
ARTÍCULO 4
Esta sesión estuvo orientada hacia el «derecho a la ciudad» y la cuestión de la crisis de las hipotecas. ¿Cómo sería un derecho a la vivienda/ a la ciudad en España? Reescribiendo el artículo de la convención esta reunión se centró en la criminalización de las prácticas especuladoras relacionadas con la vivienda. Por ejemplo ¿cuál ha sido el impacto del Estatuto de la ciudad que ha establecido en Brasil el derecho a la ciudad? ¿Cómo podría ser una ciudad libre de una legislación hipotecaria represiva?

Contó con la presencia de:

Alberto Astudillo García, reportero gráfico especializado en fotografía social, participa también en la creación del documental La Cañada Real; Otra mirada (2012). Licenciado en Ciencia Política por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, completa su formación académica con estudios de Antropología en la misma Universidad. Miembro activista en el sector de la vivienda desde 2007, en la actualidad es concejal del grupo en la oposición Ganar Móstoles.

Eva Álvarez de Andrés, cuya trayectoria ha estado orientada hacia el objetivo de hacer efectivo el derecho a la vivienda y a la ciudad para todas las personas. Inicia Arquitectura y Urbanismo en 1989, fue socia fundadora de la ONG Ingeniería Sin Fronteras en 1991 y trabajó en el Instituto de Estudios Políticos para América Latina y África (IEPALA) al terminar la carrera. Movida por el deseo de conocer in-situ la realidad de quienes ven sistemáticamente vulnerado su derecho a la vivienda y a la ciudad en los países más pobres residió República del Benin entre 1999 y 2003, tras lo cual volvió a España para iniciar estudios de doctorado en el Departamento de Urbanística y Ordenación del Territorio (DUyOT–ETSAM–UPM), con el objetivo de profundizar en las causas de la exclusión habitacional y estudiar posibles alternativas. Desde finales de 2013 y hasta la actualidad ocupa una plaza de personal laboral en la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. A lo largo de toda la etapa investigadora (desde 2003) he realizado varias publicaciones, todas en la línea del derecho a la vivienda y a la ciudad; desde 2010 hasta 2014 ha sido coordinadora de la Red Internacional de Estudios Urbanos sobre Ciudades del Sur (N-AERUS), y miembro del Grupo de Investigación Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Sostenibilidad (GIAU+S).

21 JUN. TERCER ENCUENTRO. TRAFICANTES DE SUEÑOS.
¿QUIÉN DECIDE LOS COMUNES?
ARTÍCULO 3
¿Quién define los procomunes? ¿Cómo se definen los bienes comunes? En este encuentro se abordó uno de los aspectos fundamentales de la convención: el valor de uso del espacio. Si pensamos en una ciudad libre de la especulación de la propiedad privada y abierta a las posibilidades de la toma colectiva de espacios ¿cómo podemos hacer estas demandas evidentes? ¿Qué sucedería si el espacio tuviese valor no tanto por su capacidad de generar beneficio como por su uso? ¿Qué sucedería si su uso fuese protegido?

Contó con la presencia de:

Miguel A. Martínez es profesor de sociología y ha participado en varios movimiento sociales. Sus publicaciones se han centrado, sobre todo, en temas urbanos y en el movimiento de okupaciones, tanto en España como en Europa. Es miembro de la red de investigación-activista SqEK (Squatting Europe Kollective).

Alejandra de Diego de Qiteria, entidad cooperativa que se rige bajo los principios de la economía social, formada por un equipo interdisciplinar de profesionales de las ciencias sociales, con amplia experiencia en investigación cualitativa y cuantitativa e intervención social, incluyendo el ciclo completo del proyecto: ideación, diseño, implementación y evaluación. Alejandra de Diego es licenciada en Antropología Social y Cultural por la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid con especialidad en análisis y diseño social urbano así como en el diseño y desarrollo de procesos participativos. Con experiencia en investigación e intervención social. Es socia fundadora y ha formado parte de la cooperativa de investigación social aplicada QITERIA donde ha participado en numerosos proyectos diseñando, desarrollando y evaluando procesos de investigación e intervención social en diversas áreas: migraciones (MENARA), prácticas cooperativas ciudadanas (COOPERLAND), alfabetización digital (PADIMM), diseño social urbano (DREAMHAMAR). Actualmente está en Medialab-Prado como coordinadora de Inteligencia Colectiva en el Laboratorio de Innovación Ciudadana investigando sobre herramientas digitales para la democracia y su aplicación en el territorio.

29 JUN. CUARTO ENCUENTRO. SOLAR ANTONIO GRILO
CRIMINALIZACIÓN DEL USO DEL ESPACIO
ARTÍCULO 2
¿Quién ha sido criminalizado y cómo ha sido afectado el uso de espacio privado/público después del 15M? A través del análisis de la ley Mordaza, sus precedentes y consecuencias reformulamos el artículo 2 de la Convención sobre el uso del espacio.

Contó con la presencia de:

Juan Carlos Mohr. Formado en Bellas Artes, en los últimos años viene desarrollando un trabajo dentro del activismo de la imagen que lo ha situado en el centro de los principales acontecimientos de los últimos años: del 15M y el movimiento de ocupación de las plazas, al movimiento antidesahucios o a la crisis de los refugiados en Lesbos y Hungría. Lejos de trabajar dentro de la lógica del fotoperiodismo ortodoxo, las imágenes de Juan Carlos Mohr dirigen una mirada políticamente situada sobre los acontecimientos, poniendo su objetivo en los lugares que habitualmente quedan invisibles para los medios hegemónicos. Para Juan Carlos Mohr además las imágenes son bienes comunes, por ello están a disposición de quien quiera usarlas bajo licencias creative commons.  Twitter, Facebook y las redes sociales son espacios de expresión y difusión de su pensamiento y trabajo.

La Plataforma ‘No Somos Delito’, formada por más de 100 organizaciones de activistas, juristas, y ciudadanía, nace con el ánimo de informar acerca del significado de la Reforma del Código Penal y Ley de Seguridad Ciudadana.  Somos una plataforma apartidista y realizamos presión institucional para que estas reformas no se aprueben, a través de todos los caminos democráticos habilitados para ello.

«Somos vecinos y vecinas. Somos ciudadanos que sueñan con una sociedad más solidaria, empática, consciente, activa y fuerte. Somos un grupo de personas unidas en contra de la reforma del Código Penal, la Ley de Seguridad Ciudadana y la Ley de Seguridad Privada».

No Somos Delito lleva más de un año denunciando la gravedad de estas reformas con las cuales se construye una justica para ricos y otra para pobres.

Más información en actividades.ca2m@madrid.org

Este proyecto fue desarrollado en conjunto con Beirut, en El Cairo y Casco, Oficina de Arte, Diseño y Teoría de Utrecht. La segunda fase del proyecto se realizá en el CA2M.

Aimed at artists, Fine Arts students, and at anyone interested in Jeremy Deller's work.

The meeting / workshop will be run in English.

Registration is open up until the 21st of April. Download the form and send it to actividades.ca2m@madrid.org.

Jeremy Deller approaches signs, images, lifestyles and objects in order to reflect on the mechanisms and the culture that define our current post-industrial society. With a background in Art History, his methodology is not so much defined by a specific artistic procedure, but by turning observation, research and critique into his tools, premised on his curiosity.

Coinciding with the exhibition "The Infinitely Variable Ideal of the Popular", Jeremy Deller proposes a workshop/meeting where to establish a dialogue and exchange impressions on his work and his methodology, as well as to open up a space for the discussion and exchange of criteria among the participants. The artist will also lead a visit to the exhibition, as well as to the piece Sacrilege, set up at El Soto park, in Móstoles.

Jeremy Deller (London, 1966) lives and works in London. He studied Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. He won the Turner Prize in 2004, and in 2010 he was awarded the Albert Medal by the Royal Society of the Arts. Even though he works with a variety of media, such as video, sculpture, and visual art, his work has had an emphasis on collaborative projects, re-enactments and public art, on the basis of which he poses a reflection on post-industrial English popular culture.

Some of his most relevant projects include: Acid Brass (1997), Folk Archive (since 1999) in collaboration with Alan Kane, The Battle of Orgreave (2001), Procession (2009), and Sacrilege (2012), among others. Some of his most notable exhibitions are: English Magic for the British Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the retrospective Joy in People, Hayward Gallery (2012), Carte Blanche à Jeremy Deller, Palais de Tokyo, París (2008). In a similar manner, he has developed some notable curatorial projects: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (2013), The Bruce Lacey Experience (2012), and British Council Collection: My Yard (2009), among others. 

Download full program

ORGANIZED BY YAYO AZNAR AND MARÍA IÑIGO CLAVO

“Politics is only exposed as a means of conflict, paradoxes, reciprocal impacts which knit the complete history”, as Didi-Huberman mentioned,  knitting, by the way, the whole past, that one that is almost unseen when building History. That´s the way we were told, so, that is the way things are. Nevertheless, History can also be a battlefield. History With No Past is concerned about images and counter-representations of the History (and) of Art in relation to the national/colonial discourse of Spain and Latin America.

Aníbal Quijano uses the term colonialidad –coloniality-  to propose the fact of how colonialism, far from keeping itself in the past, keeps on building discourses of powers, knowledge and difference in contemporary society. In our opinion, during the Bicentennial of Latin America, the inner latency of these colonial structures and its spread into the Spanish historical narratives became apparent. From that point of view, this congress aims to review the Spanish-Latin America historical and discursive links with the objective of creating an active debate necessary in Spain about today´s relation with its colonial past and present.

History, indeed, will become a space of reply. Art, furthermore, considered as a way of thinking capable of catalyzing the contributions from any theoretical field within the visual field, to reveal itself as a place for constructing and deconstructing narratives.

LECTURERS: Helena Chávez Mac Gregor, Giuseppe Cocco, Loreto Garin Guzmán y Federico Zukerfeld (Grupo Etcétera...) Olga Fernández, Esther Gabara, Leah Gordon (Ghetto Biennale), María Iñigo Clavo, Jaime Iregui, Jorge Luis Marzo, Eduardo Subirats, Jaime Vindel, Michael Asbury, Valerie Fraser and Isobel Whitelegg.

Congress organized in collaboration with the Ministry of Science and Innovation, UNED, I & D D  Imágenes del arte y reescritura de las narrativas en la cultura visual global, Meeting Margins, Transnational Art in Latin America and Europe 1950-1978. University of Essex and University of the Arts London, TrAIN (Transnational Art Identity and Nation).

DAY 1. FRIDAY 20TH APRIL

10:00 INSTITUTIONAL PRESENTATION

Aurora Fernández Polaco, Valerie Fraser, Pablo Matínez and María Perex, Dean of the Faculty Geography and History of  Spanish National Distance Education University.

10:30  CorpoBraz. Giuseppe Cocco. Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

PANEL I   Counter-Celebration of the Bicentennials
11:30-  Bicentennial Pavillion - Pabellón del Bicentenario- Jaime Iregui. (Esfera pública, University of the Andes)
12:30  From Spectres and other Ghosts: Past, Memory and History - De espectros y otros fantasmas: Pasado, memoria e historia- Helena Chavez Mac Gregor. (MUAC, National Autonomous University of Mexico)
13:30- Racializing history and other fears… -Racializar la historia y otros temores…- María Iñigo Clavo. (Meeting Margins research Group + “Imágenes del arte…”), Spain.

14:30-16:00 LUNCH TIME

16:00- La amnesia de Clío y la revolución de sus cuerpos errantes -The amnesia of Clio and the revolution in their wandering bodies- Loreto Garin Guzmán and Federico Zukerfeld (Grupo Etcétera…) Artists, Argentine.
17:00- Round table: Jaime Iregui, Helena Chávez, Grupo Etcétera, María Iñigo Clavo. Moderator: Olga Fernández. (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid/ Royal College of Art).

PANEL II. Counterbiennials

18:15 - The Ghetto Biennale: where first world art rubbed up against third world art. Did it bleed? -Guetto Biennale: El salón de los marginados del siglo XXI. ¿Qué pasa cuando el arte del primer mundo se restriega  contra el del tercer mundo? ¿Sangra?- Leah Gordon. Artist, photographer and independent video creative, London.
Reply: Change of format? Biennials, Ghetto and Pirate Bay -¿Cambio de formato? Bienales, guetos y bahías de piratas-. Olga Fernández (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid/ Royal College of Art).

DAY 2. SATURDAY. APRIL 21.

PANEL III:  Spain-Latin America colonial memory
10:30 The museologic triangle of Bermuda: Prado, Museo of America and the Museo Nacional de Antropologia -El triángulo museológico de las Bermudas: El Prado, el Museo de América y el Museo Nacional de Antropología-  Esther Gabara (Duke University).
11:30-  The Baroque d-efect: the failure of politics and the myth of culture -El d_efecto barroco: el fracaso de lo político y el mito de la cultura- Jorge Luis Marzo (Escuela Elisava/universitat Pompoeu Fabra de Barcelona).
12:30  The Reform of Memory -La reforma de la Memoria- Eduardo Subirats . (New York University).
13:30- Round table: Eduardo Subirats, Esther Gabara and Jorge Luis Marzo. Moderator: Antonio Urquizar (National University of Distance Education-UNED-), Spain.

14:00-15:30 LUNCH TIME

PANEL IV. Spain and UK researching and exhibiting “art in/from Latin America” 
15:30- Archive Policies, networked knowledge production and cultural counterhegemony: dilemmas about the revival of the experiences of Latin American conceptualism -Políticas de archivo, producción de conocimiento en red y contrahegemonía cultural: dilemas en torno a la reactivación de las experiencias del conceptualismo latinoamericano-. Jaime Vindel. (Conceptualismos del Sur), Spain.
16:30- Meeting Margins.
18:00 Round table: Michael Asbury, Valerie Fraser, Jaime Vindel, Isobel Whitteleg. Moderator: Valerie Fraser

ABSTRACTS

CorpoBraz. Giuseppe Cocco
Claude Lévi-Strauss, already in 1985, characterized the new paradigm of production and technology as a shift in the industry trend by reducing man to machine, up to the point where men will be replaced by machines. Consequently, the production of subjectivities became the terrain itself of accumulation, not in the sense of replacing men by robots, but in that of a machine-man hybrid. With this lecture, we intend to develop new reflections by taking up the aesthetics of the paltries by Glauber Rocha and especially his unfinished institution of a Brazilian "Utopya" which "metaphorizes in a  Baroque symbolic language of our tropicalism, speaking as it structures the collective poyetika unconsciousness, maxim by Aleijadinjo and Vila-Lobos, image and sound by Kuerpo Brazyl, KORPOBRAZ".

Bicentennial Pavillion. Jaime Iregui
It will be addressed a series of drifts and journeys made as bicentennial counter-celebration in Bogota. Monument transformation and displacement will be reviewed in various places in Bogota in relation to the celebration of independence. Specific cases will be presented about spontaneous ceremonies and rituals in public spaces.

From Spectres and other Ghosts: Past, Memory and History. Helena Chavez Mac Gregor.
This lecture aims at placing within the Mexican the relationship between past and History. Within this frame, we will put into question the artistic and curatorial exhibitions that from 2010 (official year of the celebrations of the bicentenary of the Independence and centenary of the Mexican Revolution) till now have been trying to present a critique of History in a complex net of memories and ghosts. We want to ask these practices what kind of relationship we are establishing, within the failure of the ideological narrative structure, with History? And most importantly, what kind of subjects arises from this landscape of fragments, ruins and spectres? Will it be possible from here to generate another political formulation of History?

Racializing history and other fears... María Iñigo Clavo
Avoiding indigenous peoples' progress, the debates around the race or around the Haitian Revolution mean to evade the bond of the American Independence movements together with the vindications of the race at a moment when the notion of pure-blooded still had a huge influence on the distribution of power within the South Continent (Fernandez Retamar). This paper provides an overview of art pieces and investigations that during the last years have contributed to that racialization of the Western history, intending to expand the old framing of the narration of Modern history, incompletely told and today, from post-colonialism trends, it is aimed to redeem, under a permissive acknowledgement of what is being called “other modernities”.

The amnesia of Clio and the revolution in their wandering bodies. Loreto Garin Guzmán and Federico Zukerfeld (Grupo Etcétera...)
This lecture will address the inseparable link between art, politics and society. Assuming that any cultural manifestation necessarily reflects, testifies or leaves traces of the causes of its origin in its specific context. The poetic use of the word mirror, in this case, questions the very notion of representation and at the same time defines the cultural production as a reflex or illusion. During the lecture, the artists will present a journey through those reflections and refractions that arose as a result of the investigation within the framework of the project ESPEJOS. A project contextual en el tiempo, based on the collective investigation of extra-disciplinary collaboration, originally conceived as part of militant research on the role of the cultural industries concerning the official celebration of the Bicentenary of the Latinamerican "independences".
http://crisisrepresentacion.wordpress.com/

The Ghetto Biennale: A Salon des Refusés for the 21st century.  What happens when first world art rubs up against third world art? Does it bleed? Leah Gordon. 
Leah Gordon, one of the founders and curators of the Ghetto Biennale, will discuss the conception of the Ghetto Biennale and its roots in social, racial, class and geographical immobility. Gordon will discuss the multiple, and sometime contradictory, agendas underpinning the event. There will be an evaluation and comparison of the outcomes of the 1st and the 2nd Ghetto Biennales, the effect of the earthquake and the ensuing NGO culture in Haiti. There will be a presentation of a number of projects from both Biennales accompanied by images and films. Finally Gordon will discuss the potential futures of the Ghetto Biennale including collaborations with Deptford X and mechanisms to broaden the demographic of visiting participants to include a greater class and racial spread. The conclusion will be an analysis of the question ‘did it bleed’, and if so, where?

The museologic triangle of Bermuda: El Parado, Museo de America and the Museo Nacional de Antropologia. Esther Gabara
Contemporary Latinamerican art is not in vogue in Spain, although it has high selling market in Fairs and Galleries. How is this contradiction understood? Is it being created another real collection/corporative to be divided in the triangle future of Bermuda? Will those contemporary Latinamerican art pieces be destroyed or sold abroad, as were the great part of the golden pieces during the colonial time, casted in order to brace the new market economy of Spain?  Intending not to limit the project to the artistic work, the current Spanish immigration politics will have its space, the renew government´s outspread of the Spanish language, and the expansion of the Spanish banks throughout Latinamerica together with cultural, educative and artistic programming.

The reform of Memory. Eduardo Subirats
Under the wide open prospect of a “Reform of Memory”, Eduardo Subirats will present a series of intellectual topics closely related with these historical dilemmas, such as the absence of a critique of the national-catholic project of 1936, and of the colonial and postcolonial cultural processes of Latin America, the absence of a enlightened intellectual reform during de eighteen, and nineteenth centuries, and last but not least the Inquisitorial destruction of sixteenth century Spanish Jewish Humanism.

The Baroque d-effect: the failure of politics and the myth of culture. Jorge Luis Marzo
From 2004 to 2011, a group of people from Peru, Mexico, Chile, Ecuador and Spain analyzed to what extent the recurrent referrals to the Baroque within the cultural tales about what is national and Latin (or Hispanic) hides certain strategies to legitimize specific models of cultural politics and of memory.  This lecture will state the main arguments of the investigation process, the questions that guided him and the conclusions reached, which can be summarized as follows: when referring to the Hispanic, we are then talking about how a speech model has pervaded cultural dynamics, regardless if these dynamics account for the model.   The inability to handle the Hispanic world drew the attention of the Baroque as an apparent adhesive.  The self-interested impotence in the exercise of power gave rise to a sick exaltation of cultural exceptionality, which was cleverly exploited in the early eighties to spread the idea that some cultures ballasted by their anti-modernity had the best conditions to preside post-modernity.

Archives Policies, networked knowledge production and cultural counter-hegemony: dilemmas about the revival of the experiences of Latin American conceptualism. Jaime Vindel
"As a member of Red Conceptualismos del Sur, Jaime VindeI will present the general outlines of the epistemological project and the political positioning of this collective initiative and, then I will highlight the achievements as well as the contradictions that, from my point of view, the project has faced and faces.   This diagnosis will enable to widely reflect on the problems of archives policies regarding the dematerialized practices, of the relation between networked knowledge production and of the inherent aporia in an attempt to "reactivate" today, the memory from Latinamerican "critical" experiences from the sixties and the seventies. 

MEETING MARGINS: Michael Asbury and Isabel Whitelegg

BIOGRAPHIES

Giuseppe Mario Cocco is currently professor at the Universidad Federal of Rio de Janeiro, a member of the Graduate School of Communication and Program in Information Science (Facc-Ibict), Main Investigator of the CNPq, Scientist of Nosso  Estado (Paperj) and also editor of the journals: Global Brazil, Lugar común and Multitudes (Paris). He is also coordinator of the collections (ed.  DP&A) and << A Política no Império>> (Civilização Brasileira).

Jaime Iregui is an artist living in Bogotá, Colombia. His artistic work deals with a wide conception of the space and the spatial as found in practices related to information dissemination and mediating processes in the public arena.

Helena Chavez has a PhD in Philosophy from the UNAM, Mexico, and a MA at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona on Contemporary Art Theory. Currently, she is the Academic Curator of the MUAC, University Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico City where she has developed the project Extended Campus a Critical Theory research program.

María Iñigo Clavo is artist and researcher. She has been Research Officer for the AHRC Project Meeting Margins: Transnational Art in Europe & Latin America 1950-1978, University of Essex. She finished her PhD at Universidad Complutense of Madridand teaches MA courses at the European University of Madrid.

Loreto Garín Guzmán & Federico Zukerfeld. In 1997 they both, with other artists, form the group Etcétera… working closely with the human rights group H.I.J.O.S. (Children for Identity and Justice Against Forgetting and Silence) in developing and popularizing “escraches,” acts of public denunciation. In 2005, together with artists and intellectuals from different places of the world formed part of the foundation of the movement International Errorist, an international organization that claims error as a philosophy of life.

Leah Gordon (born 1959 Ellesmere Port) is a photographer, film-maker and curator who has, in recent years, produced a considerable body of work on the representational boundaries between art, religion, anthropology, colonialism and folk history. In 2010 she published the photography book Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti.

Olga Fernández is an academic researcher, teacher and curator. Since 2009 she lectures at the History and Theory of Art Department, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and she is deputy coordinator of the History of Contemporary Art and Visual Culture MA. Currently, she is carrying out a research about the specificities of the exhibition medium and its critical possibilities for curatorial practice.

Esther Gabara is Associate Professor of Romance Studies and Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University. Her main area of specialization is the relationship between literature and visual culture in modern and contemporary Latin America. She is currently working on a new book project on theories of fiction in contemporary artistic and popular visual culture, entitled "Non-Literary Fiction: Invention and Interventions in Contemporary American Visual Culture".

Eduardo Subirats born in Barcelona in 1947, studied in the Paris and the Berlin from the sixties. He is author of about 40 solo and collective publications among the following:  Culturas virtuales (México: Coyoacán, 2001); El continente vacío (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1994; Bogotá, 2011), Linterna Mágica (Madrid: Siruela, 1997),  Memoria y exilio (Madrid: Losada, 2003), Viaje al fin del Paraíso. Un ensayo sobre América latina (Madrid: Losada, 2005). His latest books are: Existencia sitiada (México: Fineo, 2006), Arte en una edad de destrucción (Madrid: Ciencia Nueva 2010) and Filosofía y tiempo final (Madrid: Fineo 2010) Subirats is professor at New York University.

Jorge Luis Marzo (Barcelona, 1964). Art historian, art curator, writer and professor at Escola Elisava and Escola Massana in Barcelona. His latest curatorial projects are The Baroque D_effect. Politics of the Hispanic Image (2010-2011), Low-Cost. Free or accomplice (2009), Political Ads. The Spectacle of Democracy (2008). As a writer, his latest two paper The Administered Memory. The Baroque and the Hispanic (2010), May I speak to you openly, excellency? Art and Power in Spain since 1950 (2010) www.soymenos.net

Jaime Vindel. Historian, critic and teacher of contemporary art. European PhD in Art History from the University of Leon and MhD in Philosophy and Social Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid. He has integrated several research groups, among which Research and Development project «Art and Politics in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Spain, 1989-2004» He has been a visitor researcher at the National University of San Martin (Buenos Aires, Argentina, MOMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA) and TRAIN (Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation, University of the Arts, London, United Kingdom).

Isobel Whitelegg is Curator of Public Programmes at Nottingham Contemporary, UK.  She was previously Director of the MA Curating Programme at Chelsea College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London (UAL) and is an Associate member of TrAIN, UAL's centre for research on transnational art. She writes regularly on modern and contemporary art with a particular emphasis on art and artists in Brazil, and has also curated exhibitions. She completed her MA (1998) and PhD (2005) in Art History & Theory at the University of Essex, specializing in modern and contemporary art from Latin America.

Michael Asbury is a British/Brazilian art historian, critic and curator. He is a faculty member at Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, where he works in conjunction with the CCW Graduate School and the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN).  He received his MA in Study of Contemporary Art at Liverpool University and his PhD entitled "Helio Oiticica: Politics and Ambivalence in 20th Century Brazilian Art" at University of the Arts London.

Valerie Fraser teaches in the School of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex, specialising in the art and architecture of Latin America with particular emphasis on the early colonial period and the 20th/21st centuries, and on popular and indigenous culture. She is Chair of the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA, www.escala.org.uk). She has won a number of awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council including funding for a fully-illustrated online catalogue of ESCALA (2002-2005) and, in collaboration with the University of the Arts in London, a major research project into artistic relations between Latin America and Europe, Meeting Margins: Transnational Art in Latin America and Europe, 1950-1978. 

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