Pensamiento y debate

DIRECTED BY CARLOS MARTÍN

It is paradoxical that the books featuring selections from an art collection, collection books, become in turn collectable books, objects that sit on shelves in offices or adorn boardroom tables with the reassuring heft of the coffee table book. Does it make any sense to maintain a format that simply serves to add a coat of intellectual varnish to the culture of luxury? Does it make any sense to perpetuate its fetishistic, untouchable, priceless, reserved and illegible aura?

DIDDCC opens again as a space for study and research into the CA2M and ARCO collections and the development of critical strategies for working with and publicising them. This year, DIDDCC, with Carlos Martín at the helm, will question the various factors behind the publication of contemporary art collections, both public and private; will take a look at the canons and dogmas operating in this particular field; and will propose a space for research that can give rise to open proposals, issues and lines of work which can then be implemented in the upcoming publication of the CA2M and ARCO Collection, due for 2018.

Can a necessarily closed format be made compatible with an open-ended collection in constant growth? Are there any germane distinctions between a public collection and a published collection? Is it possible to write about a specific artistic proposal without, in the process, neutralising its potentials? Is it possible to conceive a radically open book? A collection must publish its contents and the interpretive keys to them, but, does it also have to publish its complex and often controversial origins and formation? These are some of the issues we wish to explore in DIDDCC, in which the confluence of collection and publication will activate various different vectors: research into and curating of the collection’s holdings, writing (style, codes, theoretical approach, potential public, issues of authorship), editing, registering and cataloguing of the artworks, graphic design and strategies for the diffusion of contents.

The participants will have access to the study of the collections, meetings with the staff at CA2M, with artists and other agents in today’s artworld in order to research the various aspects involved and to set out case studies. DIDDCC invites postgraduate, master and doctorate students in Art History, Fine Arts, Humanities and Communication to take part.

Confirmed guest participants:

David Armengol (Freelance curator).
Àlex Gifreu (Graphic designer. Best of European Design and Advertising 2016).
Lola Hinojosa (Head of Performative and Intermedia Arts Collection. Museo Reina Sofía).
Carolina Martínez and Clemente Bernad (Editorial Alkibla).
Rosario Peiró (Director of Collections. Museo Reina Sofía).
Sergio Rubira (Creator of DIDDCC and Deputy-director of Collections and Exhibitions at IVAM).
Isabel Salgado and Óscar Pina (‘La Caixa’ Collection).
Manuel Segade (Director of CA2M).

Enrolment from 15 January to 12 February. The list of selected participants will be announced on 16 February

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

Images occupy a privileged position in the whole framework of fictions, gestures and actions that make up our daily reality. Deliberately arranged, manipulated and shared, they have become undisputed agents that operate beyond the territory that, since modernity, has been defined as aesthetic –and which the Art Institution has inherited. For its affective capacity, its maddening traffic, its connection with the bodies, this issue of Re-visiones not only invites to critically rethink the whole field that the digitalisation of the world has put into circulation, but also to put spatial and temporal strain on concepts that are today thought ‘undercommons’ with others that have concerned us in moments of struggle with the public sphere or the popular, all that broke out in the great hope of the ‘cultural revolution’. We welcome articles that prompt to think of the discontent that underlies the forms of culture required for any community yet to come.

Receipt of original texts: 1^st June 2017 (call closed)

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. 

Presentation of Lucas Platero’s Por un chato de vino, a story of transvestism and feminine masculinity in which the writer invites us to discover a lost history in which he intertwines his experiences with those of María Elena and couples them with images by Eva Garrido. It is hard to classify this book because it situates itself on the boundaries, because it is odd and because it speaks about what is silenced. During the presentation we will read extracts from the book and discuss some of the issues raised.

Lucas Platero has been active in the feminist and queer movement since the 1990s, and at once seriously involved in research into non-normative sexuality. He has a PhD in Sociology and Political Science from UNED and lectures in socio-community intervention. Recent publications include Intersecciones. Cuerpos y sexualidades en la encrucijada (Bellaterra, 2012) and Trans*exualidades. Acompañamiento, factores de salud y recursos educativos (Bellaterra, 2014).

Eva Garrido works on artistic, educational and research projects from a feminist perspective within Colektivof, a collective formed with Yera Moreno. After graduating with a BA in Fine Art she has explored various fields such as artistic and industrial design, set design and drawing.

What happens if one day while out for a few drinks the Guardia Civil take you to the barracks? M.E. is trying to get by on the streets of Barcelona in the late sixties, sometimes donating blood, other times accepting charity or hand-outs from her friends. Until one ill-fated day she stumbles across some guardias civiles who discover the curves under her men’s clothing. The barracks, the prison and the hospital are spaces of discipline to which we must submit. All we know is what the doctors, police and judges declare in examinations or questionings, recorded in a few sheets of paper forgotten in some archive. What is most terrifying is not what is said but what can be easily imagined. M.E.’s masculinity was impossible for them to accept, declaring her desire for woman to be pathological and criminal, but also uncontrollable and therefore meriting punishment and imprisonment. Almost involuntarily, M.E. infringes the moral order of Franco’s regime which, while then on the wane, still harshly repressed anyone who dared to publicly challenge its dictates. Sparked off by “public scandal”, repression was vented particularly on all those whose sexuality and gender expression overstepped the limits of “decency”, binary gender roles and obligatory heterosexuality. This story still reverberates today, at a time which prides itself on its sexual rights, but in which these discontinuities with more normative expressions of gender are still signalled as evidence of pathologies which must be diagnosed in order gain access to a handful of incomplete rights.

http://www.ed-bellaterra.com/php/llibresInfo.php?idLlibre=108

Images occupy a privileged position in the whole framework of fictions, gestures and actions that make up our daily reality. Deliberately arranged, manipulated and shared, they have become undisputed agents that operate beyond the territory that, since modernity, has been defined as aesthetic –and which the Art Institution has inherited. For its affective capacity, its maddening traffic, its connection with the bodies, this issue of Re-visiones not only invites to critically rethink the whole field that the digitalisation of the world has put into circulation, but also to put spatial and temporal strain on concepts that are today thought ‘undercommons’ with others that have concerned us in moments of struggle with the public sphere or the popular, all that broke out in the great hope of the ‘cultural revolution’. We welcome articles that prompt to think of the discontent that underlies the forms of culture required for any community yet to come.

Acces to magazine

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

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

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.