Education

“At first it seems like a particularly useless act, outlandish and out of the ordinary, but as one discovers that it is a mere manipulation of objects like any other it becomes easy and natural. Looking for barbiturates is like looking for aspirins for a cold and preparing the gas entails the same difficulties as preparing it for a shower.”
 

In 1967 the Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña founded Tribu No and penned the No Manifiesto, a text that proposed not-doing as an action. Starting in the month of March, we will organize a workshop-visit to Seehearing the Enlightened Failure, a retrospective exhibition by the visual artist, poet, filmmaker and activist. Aimed at groups of secondary school students, this activity will engage with the work and strategies of the Chilean artist in order to think and to act through her work.

A laboratory in which we transform our fears, our longings, our best qualities into a body that lives, dances, dreams and moves.

A chance to let our desires flow freely and to understand ourselves as part of an organism that transcends our individual bodies, to subvert our roles, to create a shared being that lets us question, through sound, visuals and movement, the reality in which we live and how we inhabit it.

CA2M’s Education and Public Activities department will take on the functions of a customer services department, inasmuch as undertaking an effective management of ideas, at its offices located at no. 23 Avenida de la Constitución in Móstoles.

We were going to provide people with support in the overall structuring, drafting, analysis, planning and compliance of their projects or goals, as long as they entered within the field of this Oficina de Gestión de Ideas (Ideas Management Office), a field which admittedly was and is extremely broad. The remit would be similar to the first iteration of the Ideas Management Office implemented by Isidoro Valcárcel Medina at Galería Fúcares in Madrid between 26 February and 26 March 1994, an experience recorded in 2019 in a joint publication between CA2M and the publishers Entreascuas, with a report on all the cases resolved during that first office, which had remained unpublished up until then.

As an essential element of this 2nd Office, we were also going to bring on board a team of professionals made up of members of the aforementioned department, María José́ Ollero, and Isidoro Valcárcel Medina as special advisor.

After carefully evaluating the possible implementation of the Office under the present circumstances, and consulting our advisor and first precursor, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, we have come to the conclusion that we cannot implement such a complex undertaking telematically. According to the advisor: “I don’t have an email or smartphone. I profoundly detest the idea of teleworking. I worked on the phone back in 1973 but it was not under the regime of teleworking... just wait and we will make a more human office.”

The 2nd Oficina de Gestión de ideas will open to the public from 28 September to 2 October from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm

You can also send us your ideas before 30 September.
_ Postal address: 2ª OGI CA2M, Avenida de la Constitución 23, 28931 Móstoles
_ Email: educacion.ca2m@madrid.org

We invite groups of secondary school students, who wish to jolly in folly, to take part in this workshop-visit which will explore pieces on view in the exhibition Absurd Humour: A Constellation of Folly in Spain, made up of comic artefacts from, among others, Flavita Banana, Francisco de Goya, Chiquito de la Calzada and Gloria Fuertes.

We seriously believe in the importance of laughing hysterically, from the tips of our toenails, taking us to our wits end and going even further until we come out the other side. Jandemorenawer.

Instructions for absurd actions at home:

_ Day 1: At 7:45 pm applaud a member of your family for 3 minutes (PDF)

_ Day 2: Sing a song to a plant (PDF)

_ Day 3: Write an absurd petition on a big piece of paper. Hang the banner out your window and carry out a silent demonstration march at home (PDF)

_ Day 4: Draw your dreams. Give them to someone close by and ask them to interpret them for you (PDF)

_ Day 5: Only use the vowel ‘a’ during lunch. For instance, “pass ma tha salt plaasa” (PDF)

_ Day 6: Silence the television and try to guess what’s being said (PDF)

_ Day 7: Make a list of the food you have eaten over the last 24 hours and put it in the freezer (PDF)