Family audience

Gentle fold, slow cooked is an exercise that revolves around pausing. Targeted at families who visit the Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, the activity consists of five sessions where the aim is to transform the museum into a living laboratory by activating the creative role of audiences. In this fortnightly programme, the acts of playing and testing will merge with the institutional space as we harness all three to unlearn haste and slow down time.

Taking the body as the starting point, each session will be articulated around a particular sense, enabling us to approach sight through contemplation, touch through creation, smell through memory, taste through food and hearing through expecting. The proposed variations of the senses will give us tools to embrace resting and a type of non-productive action in a creative manner.

The programme will close with a final collective gathering where we will pool our shared experiences and discoveries.

PROGRAMME

• Slow blinking. Saturday, 4 October: 5.00–7.00 pm

Contemplation—SIGHT—as a break with productivity and work. Observing without expectation, being open to surprises and chance encounters: to the plant growing between the cracks in the pavement or the cloud shaped like an ostrich.

• Drawing. Saturday, 18 October: 5.00–7.00 pm

Making—TOUCH—through play and repetition, as a creativity wake-up. Making something that serves no purpose and defending its uselessness. Making and unmaking. Playing with the scraps.

• Caressing and cuddling. Saturday, 8 November: 11.30–1.30 pm

Memory—SMELL—as roots, collective imagination and belonging. Poking our little noses through the cracks of time. How do smells connect us to recollections?

• The fold on the table. Saturday, 15 November: 11.30–1.30 pm

Eating—TASTE—as a facilitator of spaces for gathering and interpersonal development.  Sharing. Everyone with their own history and their own way of breaking bread.

• Ssssssssshhhhhh. Saturday, 29 November: 11.30–1.30 pm

Expecting—HEARING—as an active listening exercise and concentration game. The pretext for exposing ourselves to other narratives and other lives in resistance. What do your ears hear while you take a nap?

• The last best night. Neither the last, nor the best, nor at night. Vol. III. Saturday, 13 December: 5.00–7.00 pm

A drop-in session, open to anyone who wants to come and share the discoveries made during the programme. A collective closure to pool shared experiences and the lessons learned along the way.

This programme is conceived as a shared itinerary. When assigning places, we’ll therefore give priority to families that can join us for most of the sessions. We want to create a group that grows together, discovering and enjoying every gathering.

Registrations through the online form.

Regarding ages, if your family includes little ones, they are welcome to join us. We’ll do our best to make them feel comfortable and share this creative space with them.

If places become available as the activity progresses, we’ll contact people on the waiting list to find out if they are still interested in signing up.

POMPA is a collective management, curating and cultural creation project developed by Mara Sannia and Irene Aguilera Martín. Exploring the activation of enjoyment through pausing and resting, it was founded as a self-management initiative in 2021 with the aim of using management and cultural mediation tools in creative and art production processes through slow, situated rhythms. In addition to continuing their practical research on resting as a tool and creative trigger, Mara and Irene pursue the creation of new spaces for production, encounters, exhibitions and celebrations, spaces that are critical and reflective as well as unhurried and accessible.

We are celebrating the arrival of summer on 14 June, and we want to invite you to participate. It will be a kind of celebration where you can remember and enjoy a different kind of evening. We are inviting you to participate in this festival, led by the artists with whom we’ve worked this year in the families project.

We’ll begin with Ángela Segovia and Luz Prado, with whom we’ve created new lullabies in the workshop entitled ‘Donde el tigre se come a los niños’ [Where the Tiger Eats the Children], this time to get mothers to sleep. We’ll close our eyes, and perhaps someone will whisper something in our ear. We may sing or recall the songs from our childhood, or perhaps not because they’ve changed and now there are other songs.

This happened with Ruiseñora in the workshop called ‘Las canciones y los dulces. Mi casa sin patio’ [Songs and Sweets. My House without a Courtyard], in which the popular Spanish children’s song ‘El patio de mi casa’ [The Courtyard of my House] will never be the same again. Now, after the workshops we’ve held, this popular courtyard has a tree that blossoms in the autumn, as well as a Jacuzzi, bologna and pickles.

After that, for dessert, we’ll have De fruta, pastel—we’ll sample the sweetness of dulce de leche, the glazed texture of Portillo pastries and the scent of the honey flowers that flavoured our childhood. And with the aftertaste of so many memories still in our mouths, after dinner we’ll listen to Ruiseñora, who will hold a concert on the museum’s terrace, where her songs will also seem familiar yet different.

• 6 pm Toma mi mamó. Ángela Segovia and Luz Prado. (SUI)
• 6:30 pm De fruta, pastel. (terrace)
• 7 pm Ruiseñora concert (terrace)