Anyone interested

The Conference on the Study of The Image is an event dedicated to collective reflection on the theory, practice, semantic openings and contemporary demarcations of visual cultures. It is structured to include a debate forum, seminar and workshops, as well as a public call for research projects (details below).

This conference offers an encounter between artistic, theoretical, activist and epidemiological perspectives on mental health, in an attempt to think about these intersections through certain collaborative artistic practices and the public’s participation.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic unleashed a wave of depression and anxiety-related disorders, the question of its impact on particular, very specific communities, as well as critiques of certain medical positions related to their diagnosis and treatment, were increasingly on the table, overflowing traditional legitimising spaces.

Mental health and its connection to neurodivergence are part of an often tense dialogue with treatment methods and curative principles, as well as with denial strategies used against collective causes. Particularly critical areas such as grassroots activist movements and artistic practice claim embodied positions and denounce the violence and stigmatisation of much psychiatric practice. At the same time, ‘over-diagnosis’ is prone to critique, among other things, because it excludes the most socially marginalised groups, making them invisible.

Artistic and activist practices propose definitions and approaches to mental health that focus on more intimate, affective aspects of mental health, as well as the vindication of visions read as neurodivergent and the importance of networks for overcoming collective discomfort. These spaces and feelings built around the idea of community self-management of mental health find in creation a tool for healing, but also for protest.

We are looking for papers that reflect on this framework from the artistic and cultural sphere, based on practical work and/or theoretical research (either in progress or complete), with which to build a collective roadmap around the relationship between art and mental health.

Some suggested topics and themes include the following:

• Artistic narratives and genealogies of madness and mental health.

• Intersectional perspectives: feminism, anti-ableism, anti-racism, etc.

• Alliances from art and activism. Strategies of collectivisation of discomfort, stigma and pathologisation of neurodivergence.

• Artistic practices and trauma.

• Ethics in artistic work and the participation of audiences and communities around mental health.

• Anti-psychiatry histories and practices.

• Pathologisation and de-pathologisation of dissidence.

• Political and affective approaches to illness and pain.

• Repressive spaces and mental health: prisons, IDCs, psychiatric hospitals…

Submissions should include:

• The application form (downloadable HERE), including a summary of the message (250 words)

• Brief project dossier (pdf, doc, docx) with a maximum size of 10 MB

All documentation should be sent to the following e-mail address: ca2m@madrid.org. If you choose to include attachments, please follow the instructions outlined on the application form. Communication will be in Spanish.

NB: Those selected will be specifically notified of the time and date they will be participating; regardless, we recommend that you have the availability to attend the three days of the conference, namely 16th, 17th and 18th of November. Each selected person will receive 300 euros following the end of the conference and submission of an invoice, to which the relevant deductions must be applied. Selected participants will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation arrangements.

This conference is being organised by Inés Plasencia, Patricia Mayayo and Noemí de Haro within the framework of the project ‘The audiences of contemporary art and visual culture in Spain: new forms of collective artistic experience since the 1960s’ (PID2019-105800GB-I00, Agencia Estatal de Investigación).

With the collaboration of:

Cha-cha-cha at dawn at dawn cha-cha-cha

Cha-cha-cha the backside the backside cha-cha-cha

Cha cha beach hammock idler

Idler hammock beach cha cha

Cha cha apple orange pineapple

Pineapple orange apple cha-cha-cha

Cha-cha-cha square palm trees tra-la-la

Tra-la-la palm trees square cha-cha-cha

Cha-cha-cha boats barbed wire boom-boom-boom

Boom-boom-boom barbed wire boats cha-cha-cha

Cha-cha-cha on the phone on the phone cha-cha-cha

Cha-cha cha-cha word

Word cha-cha-cha

In little more than a decade, the body has moved from the sidelines to a become a focal point of contemporary culture. For this shift to fully unfold its potential, it is necessary to pay attention to the way our materiality articulates with our surroundings. Word cha-cha-cha explores turning points in which bodies are given shape by words, and vice versa, through the paradigm of expanded language. Ambivalently, this language of blurred boundaries both produces and is the result of movement, sound, images, automatisms, feelings, economy and modes of social organisation. This programme proposes a series of performances that bear partial witness to the complexity with which these elements intertwine and affect each other.

Language no longer belongs to humans alone but, in a return to the fable of sorts, animals, objects and natural elements murmur in our ears. On the other hand, the certainty of signifiers fades when confronted with the infinite variability of models and the multiplicity of possible interpretations. In this realm where vagueness reigns, every sentence we utter is a spell, a door we open without knowing where it leads. By questioning the mechanisms for naming and their relationship with things, there is also interference with established dynamics, and possibilities emerge that are beyond the imaginable.

Through choreographies, poems, songs, whispers, shouts, rumours, spells, films without images, the clacking of castanets, familiar languages, obscure languages, unusual translations, incarnated books and newspapers, the language of birds and computers, we may temporarily lose our speech and be forced to search for words. Who knows if we will find different ways of expressing thought to, facing, before, below, fitting, with, against, about, from, since, after, during, in, between, towards, until, for, by, according to, without, under, over, behind, versus, via the silhouette of clouds, the bottom of pockets or the dregs of coffee.

Curated by Quim Pujol

Early 19th-century London witnessed the founding of The Picnic Society, an association that would meet regularly in the open air, at which time each member was expected to provide some of the entertainment and refreshments without there being a specific host. Borrowing this concept from the Picnic Society, the CA2M Museum invites a number of curators each year to design a programme for the Museum’s roof terrace.

Every Thursday from the end of May until the end of June, our roof terrace is turned into a space for hosting a programme of activities that combine body and sound with education and participation. 

PROGRAMME

Thurs 25/05 I Llorenç Barber. ACTUM REENACTMENT. Javi Álvarez.

Thurs 01/06 I Juf (Leticia Ybarra + Bea Ortega Botas), Pol Jiménez, Matthieu Blond.

Thurs 08/06 I Park Keito (Kotomi Nishiwaki + Miquel Casaponsa), Joris Lacoste, Noela Covelo. 

Thurs 15/06 I Paula Miralles, Josep Xortó & The Congosound.

Thurs 22/06 I Alix Eynaudi, Clara Amaral, Simon Asencio.

Thurs 29/06 I María Jerez +Élan d’Orphium, Laura Llaneli, Venecia Flúor.

TIMES: 9–11PM, EXCEPT FOR THE SESSION ON 29/06 WHICH WILL START AT 8:30PM

DOORS OPEN AT: 8:30PM. PLEASE BE ON TIME.

SELF-PUBLISHING TABLES

Thurs 25/05 I CAJA NEGRA

Thurs 01/06 I CANICHE

Thurs 08/06 I LA UÑA ROTA

Thurs 15/06 I CONTINTA ME TIENES

Thurs 22/06 I LIBROS DE ARTISTAS

Thurs 29/06 I VARAMO PRESS

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Combining the performing arts and contemporary art, Quim Pujol’s artistic practice denatures language to reveal the ideology that lies behind ordinary modes of expression and to open up other possibilities of association. The latest pieces by this iconoclastic writer and performance artist are El mensaje de otros mundos (2021) and Variedad de variedades (2022). He has participated in exhibitions at arts centres such as the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, La Capella and the EACC. Together with Ixiar Rozas, he edited the book on affect theory Ejercicios de ocupación (Ediciones Polígrafa, 2015). He curated the experimental programme of the Mercat de les Flors (2011–2015) and collaborates with the Observatorio del Placer.

Acknowledgements: Berta Gutiérrez Casaos.

Guerrilla Drugstore is a transdisciplinary and antidisciplinary, grassroots action for people who sow utopia and harvest reality. A grassroots pharmacy of medicinal plants that were once oppressed, capitalised, forgotten and made invisible, which are now being revived from Barcelona and beyond through a self-managed, caring network of plant, animal and human beings.

Guerrilla Drugstore arrives at the CA2M Museum, where a new pharmacy will be set up dedicated to menopause-friendly plants. This action creates an alliance between wise women and plants, through the creation of a hanging garden dedicated to the health of women experiencing menopause.

A space will be prepared on the museum’s roof terrace for experimentation with growing plants and textile art where we can offer mutual care, which will include plants with phyto-oestrogenic properties and what we can learn from them. The implicit intention is to promote our well-being by redefining menopause as a time of transformation and deep reconnection with ourselves and with each other.

The workshop will be held in four sessions:

LEARNING FROM PLANTS 19 April 11:30am–1:30pm

We’ll be approaching the subject of plants associated with menopause management from the perspective of participatory ethnobotany and by collectively compiling our knowledge and remedies. During the session, we’ll begin to create the hanging structure that will house the plants.

PLANTING KNOWLEDGE 20 April 11:30am–1:30pm

We will take a closer look at our new friends. We’ll be learning how to plant them from seed and care for them, and about their uses and particular properties. A Guerrilla seed-planting workshop that will unite us forever with these forgotten plants that should have a place in our medicinal garden.

CONVERSATION BY CROCHET 10 May 11:30am–1:30pm

The session is devoted to crocheting the structure that houses the plants. The action of hands interlocking stitches allows words to circulate, creating a space for dialogue, sharing and caring.

INSTALLATION OF THE TEXTILE PLANT STRUCTURE 24 May 11:30am–1:30pm

During the last session we’ll be completing and installing the structure on the roof terrace of the museum, and attaching our plant friends to it. It will be a place of celebration and culmination of the entire process in which we hope to be able to enjoy what we have acquired both on a personal and human level, as well as in terms of ancestral knowledge, as wise women of an ethnobotanical world that is reborn through this project.

Margherita Isola, artist, performer, dancer of Mediterranean origin. She lives and works with no permanent address, currently residing in Barcelona. Her practice involves experiments with different media – dance, installation, performance art, textile art, community art – and deals with such themes as feminism, migration, colonialism and the capitalisation of Gaia – in order to reconsider new forms of life-centric interdependencies. She has presented her work at the ISELP contemporary art centre, Brussels; 2011 Dance Biennale, Charleroi;  Fashion & Lace Museum, Brussels; Choreographic Centre, Rio de Janeiro; National Museum of Natural History and Science, Lisbon; FAAP, São Paulo; and MACBA Studies and Documentation Centre, Barcelona, among others. In synergy with her practice, she has gained experience in the social and educational field by giving workshops for young people and women, mostly in vulnerable situations.

Xisela García Moure is a teacher of agroecology, permaculture and techniques specialising in urban food gardens and sustainable food systems. She has been a member of the Instituto de Transición Rompe el Círculo (‘Break the Circle Transition Institute’) collective since its foundation in 2014, and since that time has been collaborating in all its training and dissemination activities, including lectures on energy transition and visions of new models of society, the most outstanding of which are her Visualización Móstoles 2030 project and the implementation of the Hamacódromo (‘hammockodrome’) In Parque Finca Liana. She has been collaborating with the CA2M Museum since 2013 on its Roof Terrace Food Garden project, and has been actively involved in the organisation and management of urban and semi-urban community gardens since 2009.

The third edition of the CA2M Museum Cuttings Exchange will take place on the afternoon of Tuesday, 28 March. It is a time to share knowledge, bring cuttings and barter seedlings to make our homes greener and less boring.

Although the Cuttings Exchange is mainly about indoor plants, you are welcome to bring plants of all kinds to share. Bring the ones you don’t want, and take home the ones you like best. In addition, on this occasion, we will be holding a kokedama workshop so that you can take your new plant home ready to place in its final location.

This Japanese technique for making hanging baskets from organic materials is perfect for small plants and cuttings, such as the ones we’ll be sharing share in the Cuttings Exchange.

Bring your cuttings or unwanted plants in a small pot with soil or in a small cup wrapped in a wet napkin. Exchange them for the ones you like best.

Don’t miss out! Drop in anytime between 6pm and 8pm, and come and learn with us.

Our interest in these temporary encounters is to focus on the construction of knowledge through experience, rather than on the transmission of knowledge. We will start from the viewers’ point of view and how they see art at present. This will allow us to turn this time into a space for encounter in which the participants are not objects receiving an education, but subjects who collectively develop a critical discourse on contemporary works of art. In this way, visits will focus on a limited number of works in order to give rise to a more profound and open reflection, thus avoiding the more superficial exhibition itinerary and the idea of a single discourse.