Reading Group

“We’re back. We’re going to continue what we left unfinished and this time transform ourselves. We come as lost Amazons. Echoing in the air are the mythological polyphonies that generate this system of unequal relationships, those voices, symbols and images that don’t represent us. The narrative has been so, so, so successful that we’re still pushing the Boulder.

We wanted to kill the mother but we failed, so now we're going to save her. We might not achieve that goal either, but this time we’ll aim better. Although in our attempts to adapt ancestral myths to the new identities of the twenty-first century we might miss Diana’s mark.

Here, there and everywhere, through the centuries, they've stolen our narrative, even though it was all chaos in the beginning. Our journey has brought us to IthaCA2M. We're going to shut Telemachus’s mouth, we’re going to appropriate mythos for ourselves. Potatoes protest by whistling in the cruelty of the kitchen. Because now we know we’re either mad or bad, really bad or super-bad, or good, really good without nuances, one-dimensional. 

At our next meetings we’ll explore and interrogate the role of myths in every sense and in every aspect. We’ll reflect on the narratives that have shaped the construction of female subjectivity to challenge them and rebel against them. Magicians and priestesses, fiends, old women who used magic potions and spells, frequented cemeteries and could even fly. Persecuted and punished: was the imposed narrative in danger?

For witches Circe and Medea. Men’s fantasies, for good or for bad. Powerful witches, negative models for women’s conduct who also represented the antithesis of the chaste woman. Penelope would weave and un-weave, create and un-create. And so do we. We fall so often into the stereotypes that we hate and envy Helen.

Our Trojan Horse for destroying this imaginary will be literature and art, sister allies, the tools we’ll use to unravel ourselves. We’ll make room for popular traditions, other forms, in truth to explain the same thing. We’ll open Pandora’s box, or just for change we’ll leave Pandora free of boxes. The Apple is very good for whitening your teeth. We’re the mixture, result, product of Celtic, Roman and barbarian lands. Dehumanised, de- and human, perfect and imperfect, although they’ve screwed us alive and even dead. But from the mud new narratives have emerged with different voices and different airs. And we’ll (re-) embrace them to discuss and listen to each other in the midst of sounds, words and silences.”

The Daughters of Jocasta

PS. Jocasta committed suicide whereas Oedipus only gouged out his eyes. How unfair it all is. We put up with so much.

Who are we? The Daughters of Jocasta.

We’re called the Daughters of Jocasta because we like the name, because we’re all daughters, and because Jocasta was the mother (and wife) of Oedipus, who gave her so much pain (and pleasure).

We found the excuse for the name in Christiane Oliver's book The Children of Jocasta and appropriated it. It’s ours.

Four daughters: Rebeca Contador, Sandra Cabrera, Ángela Solano and Ana Isabel Fernández Álvarez.

We're the resistance of the Museo CA2M reading groups. But we've become more than the origin, we have our own voice. United by a love of talking and talking, of always mulling everything over from every angle.

NEXT SESSIONS

30 October

13 and 27 November

18 December

‘After walking aimlessly; we want to go back, go back to find ourselves (again), to drop anchor and renovate ourselves; through our bonds’.

A ‘bond’ is officially defined as the union or tie between one person or thing and another. But is a union the same as a tie? Do we need to feel bonded and/or tied to other people or things? What effect does these bonds or ties have on us? Do they make us free or suffocate us?

We want to tinker with what is taken for granted to discover new sea floors, embark on artistic expressions and dive into tales and stories, told and sung, to play and share voyages, ours and others.

We want to lay down roots, enter the cliché, tack around the conventional definitions of our unions and ties without fear of diving into the abyss, floating on the water or drowning, but in the same boat.

This is an invitation.

At the CA2M Museum, dispossessed but rooted, we’ll engage in sensorial and delightful interpretations like: The summer when my mother had green eyes. We’ll listen to the creaking of the woodworm. We’ll see if there’s any truth behind what Verónica tells us and whether our attachments are as fierce as Gornick’s. We’ll talk about love with Carver, and Lucía Berlín’s bitterness may make us tremble. Through our sessions, we may consider creating new kinship ties with Donna: will we continue with the problem or not?

We’re looking forward to seeing you.

Moderated by Las Hijas de Yocasta [Daughters of Jocasta]

We are Las Hijas de Yocasta: Ana Isabel Fernández, Ángela Solano, Rebeca Contador and Sandra Cabrera. A mother, a mother-grandmother and four daughters. We are driven by childhood, patients, walking amidst stones, what art suggests to us. We read. We reread.  We listen. We are the resistance of the CA2M Museum’s reading groups and we’re here to stir everything up.

This year, we want to focus on the books that inhabit our shelves. As ours is a library within a contemporary art museum, it is full of rare books, artist's books, fanzines and countless publications that explore other possible ways of reading and understanding the subject. These publications also tell us about exhibitions and activities that have given the library an unprecedented and extraordinary life. Under the guidance of the library manager, Sonia Seco, we will bring to light some bibliographic oddities; these, in turn, will lead us to an endless number of possible texts and readings. 

The requisite to participate will be reading the texts before each session, where you will be expected to participate.

Moderated by BOYA x Seminario Euraca. Ignacio Redrado, Paula Pérez-Rodríguez and Erea Fernández.

This course’s educational activity programme is oral. If you are interested in this activity, write to us at educacion.ca2m@madrid.org or call us on 912760227 and we’ll tell you all about it.

You can sign up HERE

This project is part of the series of language workshops by the A.C. Banda Editorial Silvestre. Organised by BOYA~célula in collaboration with Seminario Euraca.

ENROLMENT COMPLETED

Moderated by Eva Garrido and Marta van Tartwijk

We avoid touching, fluids and drops of saliva. We cover our mouth, our nose and hands. Our reading group over the last few years has explored the oddities of the body and queer bodies. Now that reality is like science fiction, we will turn our attention to the aliens, vampires and bearded women which we have met along the way.

Last year, Birds Fuck in the Air endeavoured to address and think about the different textures of desire and its strange manifestations. Given the unforeseen imposition of the prohibition of touching, a distance was established that nonetheless could perhaps increase the idea of eroticism. And how lovers start to write to each other. We write a lot. Even distances become elastic and we can feel something touching us, that words and tongues walk all over us.

The task of writing, like desire, is perhaps always an unfinished task. One writes to continue writing. The stroller, by definition, is not going anywhere in particular, but is driven by the mere desire to walk. Going nowhere in order to maybe eventually arrive somewhere.

Among our desires as a group, this year we wish to recover one, to read a single book. Perhaps it is the right moment to think together about distances and the potential of strolling. This motor action of putting one step forward and then the other, to take our bodies to different places, opens up a horizon of possibilities and readings to discover the world through the body and the body through the world.

Imparted by: Marta van Tartwijk.

Moderated by Eva Garrido and Marta van Tartwijk

We avoid touching, fluids and drops of saliva. We cover our mouth, our nose and hands. Our reading group over the last few years has explored the oddities of the body and queer bodies. Now that reality is like science fiction, we will turn our attention to the aliens, vampires and bearded women which we have met along the way.

Last year, Birds Fuck in the Air endeavoured to address and think about the different textures of desire and its strange manifestations. Given the unforeseen imposition of the prohibition of touching, a distance was established that nonetheless could perhaps increase the idea of eroticism. And how lovers start to write to each other. We write a lot. Even distances become elastic and we can feel something touching us, that words and tongues walk all over us.

The task of writing, like desire, is perhaps always an unfinished task. One writes to continue writing. The stroller, by definition, is not going anywhere in particular, but is driven by the mere desire to walk. Going nowhere in order to maybe eventually arrive somewhere.

Among our desires as a group, this year we wish to recover one, to read a single book. Perhaps it is the right moment to think together about distances and the potential of strolling. This motor action of putting one step forward and then the other, to take our bodies to different places, opens up a horizon of possibilities and readings to discover the world through the body and the body through the world.

INTEMPERIE ***

Upcoming sessions: 24 September, 15 October, 5 November, 16 November and 17 December at CA2M and the Delirio bookstore in Móstoles. There we will plan a series of routes based on the book Wanderlust. Una historia del caminar, by Rebecca Solnit.

The only requisite for taking part is to have read the texts before each session and to take part with a participative spirit.

More information: educacion.ca2m@madrid.org / 912 760 227