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Everyone dreams of flying, the artist Olga Diego tells us, but if you haven’t yet dreamed of flying, there is still time.

During the last school year Universidad Popular took up the challenge to bewitch us again with art, to rediscover the ability to inspire awe. Starting out from this idea, the museum’s educational department has conceived this year’s programme as a place where the incredible can happen because it makes us believe in it. The sessions will focus on thinking about or experimenting with occult practices related with art that subvert scientific logic and conventional forms of knowledge: art practices that deceive the eye, that work with the inexplicable and turn lead into gold.

The course will use a series of publications which will be available for consulting at the CA2M library. In addition, before each session, we invite participants to join in a group reading of a publication selected for the occasion.

CA2M organises further educational activities in contemporary art and thinking within the tradition of community adult education centres. Its courses address some of the fundamental issues for a proper understanding of art today. They are divided into two parts: the first consists in the presentation of a theme by a guest speaker and the second consists in opening a debate to all participants. This structure can change to accommodate more experimental formats introduced by the individual guest speakers at each session.

SESSIONS

24 OCTOBER
Make Yourself Matter to Someone

Raisa Maudit is preparing a performative conference which will explore the laws of desire in force both in the practice of magic and the occult as well as in art. Through a survey of different occult practices ranging from the nineteenth century until the present moment and the core axes of her artistic and curatorial work, we will address questions on dissident identities, surviving the system, inhabiting darkness, and how to achieve your desires but only perishing a little in the attempt.

Magic is the definitive art. We understand Magic and the Occult as all those processes that are based on symbolism and imagination which, through actions and words, wish to affect their surroundings by engendering changes and transformations in natural laws, in space, in time, in bodies, in psyches and in identities. No form of magic is possible without putting it into practice. In magic, practice starts out from an almost suicidal openness to leap into the unknown and letting it hit you with all it has got. It is based on questioning each and every one of the things that we take for granted. Magic hopes to alter the very weft of reality itself. Magic and Art have points in common such as speculation and the allegorical but at once they have a beef in which Art always loses out. We will take a look at Dion Fortune and psychic self-defence, The Craft, otherkin identities, vampires as the definitive evolution, demonology, Magic Battles, neuro-divergent rebellion, and how to get your hands on a free home.

Raisa Maudit is an artist and curator
http://raisamaudit.com/

31 OCTOBER
Queer Spirituality as Resistance. Yet Another Path in the Conspiracy.

Diego Rambova will lead us on an exercise in fragmentary mapping through a range of contemporary performative practices which are presented as a kind of common ground between new age and queer politics, revealing how, both for the artists who propose them but also in their own right, the confluence is a powerful site of agency, resistance and transcendence. Represented by artists of different ages and from different origins around the world from the seventies onwards, they appear under many different guises. But the truth is that they all respond—as we shall see—to the same “conspiracy”.

Diego Rambova is an artist and researcher.
www.diegorambova.com 

7 NOVEMBER
Performance Lecture for Flying

Is it possible to fly? We all know that you can, but … What happens when you realise that you can fly on your own? This lecture explores the irrational desire to fly and its materialisation in artistic creation, in manifold studies and calculations, prior sketches in flight books, failed attempts and disappointments. And also the involvement of the public. Flight artefacts built from a sculptural gaze and attempts to fly as performance art.

We will take a look at, among others, the projects created by Olga Diego since 2003, when she managed to take to flight on the beach of Carabassí in Alicante, as well as other flights with cameras in the Western Sahara and in Salamanca, or more interactive projects like the one developed by the University of California in 2017.

Olga Diego is an artist
http://olgadiego.blogspot.com/ 

14 NOVEMBER
Just as Up is Down, Down is Up

In this lecture Marian Garrido has devised a walkthrough of the symbolic dimensions of lost forms of knowledge and the narrative constructed through the bonds between art and magic or alchemy. Is there really any difference between an extract from The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, in which Carlos Castaneda learns to fly guided by the expert hands of a shaman, and the experiences related by Terence McKenna or Douglas Rushkoff in Cyberia in a framework of comparison with online culture; virtual realities, flight simulators, videogames or the visual rendering of almost vaporous omniscience in Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void and neo-touristic journeys in Google Earth?

Marian Garrido is an artist and researcher
www.mariangarrido.com 

21 NOVEMBER
Angels of Anarchy. Modern Shamans, Artists of the Invisible

Servando Rocha reveals to us a secret tradition that unites art and magic through the masked figure, both in popular culture as well as in movements like Dada or Surrealism which were fascinated by the primitive, the mask, the world of spirits and the unknown. The intervention includes a Cabinet of Curiosities of the world of secret societies and masking as a tactic but also as transformative potential.

Servando Rocha is a writer and editor.
www.servandorocha.com 

28 NOVEMBER
From Spell to Spell, from (Magical) Gesture to Gesture

Ana Contreras invites us to a performative lecture which will uncover the ways in which bonds between feminism and witchcraft have been woven over time, from the medieval period to postmodernism. It will take us on a secret journey through its appearances and persecutions from which we will be able to extract lessons about its dangers and its powers. A witches coven that discloses the importance of occult practices and performative tactics, as well as their conscious and unconscious use in contemporary art.

Ana Contreras is a stage director, researcher and lecturer

Anyone interested in art today. No prior knowledge necessary.

More information at actividades.ca2m@madrid.org / 912 760 227

Curated by Jesús Alcaide, Néstor García Díaz and Víctor Aguado Machuca.

Bogomir Doringer, Chenta Tsai AKA Putochinomaricón, Carles Congost, Ana Laura Aláez, Joan Morey, The Congosound, Magui Dávila, Nayare Soledad Otorongx, Gema Marín Méndez, Manuel Segade, Snap Bitch! X Don’t hit a la negrx (Galaxia, Wat3rmami AKA Donovan Toxic), Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló research group (Bartolomé Limón, Rubén Serna and María Sánchez), DIDDCC working group (Andrea Martín, Manuela Muñoz, Clara Neches, Manuel Padín, Natalia de la Piedra and Rita Zamora).

The idea behind the Image Symposium is to provide a space for collective thinking on the theory, practice, semantic openings and contemporary demarcations of visual cultures, taking the form of a forum for debate, a symposium and workshops, and an open call for research projects.

The point of departure for this year’s symposium is the work of a research group at CA2M which has sourced in Manel Clot’s texts a discursive output which has left us, more than anachronisms, reminiscences of the 1990s, like, for instance, underscoring the connections between the concept of club culture and art practice; or inventing and implementing appreciative and operative categories, where none previously existed, for the consideration of new expressive repertoires and new meaningful registers that would become symptomatic of a time and a place. In fact, the title given to this year’s symposium comes from Musée des phrases (2003-2015) by Manel Clot and the image is by Carles Congost, taken in Manel Clot’s studio with the assistance of Daniel Riera; in it one can see a young Fine Art student called Joan Morey.

The symposium is spread over three days with a full programme of conversations, reading sessions, performative lectures and listening sessions, which will help to situate a number of issues concerning club culture but, at once, they will also respond to the demand to expand the field of given representations of subjectivity, of the fluctuation of its value, of the position of desire; of recognizing possibilities of dissidence with regards social distribution or other relationships between the body and temporality.

PROGRAMME:

19 May. Impure Scenifications (1)
12:00–13:30 Research group at Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló. Reading session on the exhibition and archive for Hypertronix, by Manel Clot.
16:00–17:00 Magui Dávila: Escribir una session (Writing a Session), DJ session and performative lecture.
17:00–17:30 Manuel Segade: Hacer noche (Making the Night), presentation.
17:30–19:30 Ana Laura Aláez, Joan Morey, Carles Congost and Jesús Alcaide: Un soplo en el corazón (A Heart Murmur), selection of frequencies around Manel Clot.
19:30–20:30 The Congosound, DJ selector.

20 May. Dance this Mess around (2)
12:00–13:30 DIDDCC working group: Party and Protest, expanded reading session.
16:00–16:30 Néstor García Díaz: Dance this Mess Around, presentation.
16:30–18:00 Bogomir Doringer: From I Dance Alone to Dance of Urgency, lecture.
18:00–19:00 Manel Clot: Musée des phrases, video-screening.
19:00–19:30 Gema Marín Méndez: Notas a una/sola voz (Notes in one/single voice), performative lecture.
19:30–20:30 Cute aggression, DJ session.

21 May. Sonic, somatic fictions (3)
12:00–13:30 Shared reading session on More Brilliant that the Sun, by Kodwo Eshun.
16:00–16:30 Víctor Aguado Machuca: “Éxtasis; faktura subjetiva”, presentation.
16:30–17:30 Nayare Soledad Otorongx: Cuerpxs que da pánico soñar (Bodies we don’t dare to imagine), performance.
17:30–19:00 Galaxia, Wat3rmami AKA Donovan Toxic: Snap Bitch! X Don’t hit a la negrx.

INFORMATIVE NOTE:

Prior enrolment is required to attend the symposium. Attendance at individual sessions may be allowed although priority will be given to persons previously enrolled. We would also ask all persons enrolled to please be punctual. Ten minutes after the beginning of the first session of the afternoon, any remaining places will be given to persons who have turned up for the session without previous enrolment.

Bogomir Doringer’s lecture is in English with simultaneous translation. All morning reading sessions will be held in the Aula, and the afternoon activities in SUI. The audience will be invited to take part after each conversation and at the end of each session and each day’s symposium.

Certificates of attendance will be issued to enrolees who attend 80% of the afternoon’s session. The morning sessions are voluntary and free while places last, but will not be taken into account when issuing certificates of attendance.

Even if we wanted to, we cannot kill our dead. There are certain tasks that the dead summon us to do. And so, we carry them with us in our day to day lives, in small gestures or flashes of very intense emotion. How to share the losses, that which remains bound to us, the strange impermanence, that eagerness to bury our hearts, the confusing and incessant buzzing blue pain? Mourning is a political task, it builds community, it is a ritual of caring that reproduces life. Mourning unites us. I often talk to my friends about this, I believe that our grandmothers were the last ones to truly understand that death was part of life. They knew how to reconnect with the soil, and now perhaps it is time for us to create other rituals, other ways of being, of living and of dying.

Between January and June 2021, Marta Echaves carried out extensive research into mourning, its representations, politics and rituals. She was accompanied by the choreographer Esther Rodriguez Barbero, the artist Julia Montilla and the researcher Maria Rosón. From that series of meetings and conversations emerge certain questions and approaches which have shaped the programme of public activities That Blue Buzzing Sound.

Understanding research as a way of accompanying other projects that also address our contemporary relationship to death and grieving, That Blue Buzzing Sound focuses on sharing practices and poetics that make it possible to grasp experiences when language fails us and the end is centre-stage.

Marta Echaves. She is the coordinator of activities in Spain for the publishing house Caja Negra. She has written for artists' catalogues and publications and is, alongside María Ruido and Antonio Gomez Villar, the editor of Working Dead. Post-work scenarios (La virreina at the Centre of the Image). Interested in writing and historical research, her projects aim to revisit images and metaphors by focusing on intimate experiences and anecdotes as detonators of poetic memory devices. “La Contrarrevolución de los Caballos” was an investigation into heroin and HIV in the context of Spanish neoliberalism, which took on various formats and was shown in places such as Can Felipa, MACBA, MNCARS, ARCO... More recently, she presented her research into post-dictatorship paranormal memory with the conference "De las Acechanzas" (On the Hauntings) at the Domingo Festival.

REGISTRATIONS SOLD OUT

The Autoplacer festival, the self-publishing music event held every year at CA2M since 2010, is back again this year on Saturday 27 November. This year the festival will focus on defending the creative and relational potential of the underground Spanish scene and its discourses in a series of concerts by independent groups and soloists.

The festival returns again lending support to various guest invited projects that promote concepts of self-publishing, self-distribution and collaborative networks in disciplines like comics, fanzines and illustration, among others.

In addition, Autoplacer and CA2M are once again organizing the Autoplacer Roughcuts competition. Growing in stature with every passing year, it is a platform presenting a major pool of talented young groups starting out on the scene, lending greater visibility to the diversity of music beyond the codes set in place by the industry and formula radio.

In such a fraught moment for live music as the present, projects like Autoplacer, in which institutions and the music scene join forces around concepts such as care, respect and mutual support, provide a big stimulus for contemporary creation. Let’s say it loud and proud: Long live Autoplacer!

Curated by Autoplacer/Sindicalistas

 AUTOPLACER 2021 – SATURDAY 27 NOVEMBER 12:30 - 20:00

12:30 – 15:00 NAVXJA, CABIRIA, XENIA

16:30 – 20:00 AMOR BUTANO, OKOMO, VIUDA, LUZ FUTURO

ADMISSION

Due to the characteristics of the venue in which the Autoplacer 2021 festival is being held, admission will be by prior enrolment only.

Enrolment opens on Tuesday 23 November at 12 noon. Forms are available on this webpage.

Enrolment is personal and non-transferable.

You can enrol for the morning and/or afternoon sessions:

Morning: 12:30 - 15:00 with Navxja, Cabiria and Xenia.

Afternoon: 16:30 - 20:00 with Amor Butano, OkOmo, Viuda and Luz Futuro.

Please be punctual.

Doors open between 12:00 and 12:30 for the morning session and between 16:00 and 16:30 for the afternoon session.

Doors close at the beginning of each session.

AMOR BUTANO

Raquel, Sara y Diego forman Amor Butano en Valencia a finales de 2019, un grupo de pop efervescente con reminiscencias a Mecano o a Vocoder. Conjugando el amor y la física, construyen canciones divertidas con un poso de pesar y nostalgia, un contraste musical que bien podría ser una metáfora de la vida misma.

Vídeo “Entropía”

Disco “Benimaclet” en Bandcamp

CABIRIA

Eva Valero es la mente que se esconde detrás de ese felliniano sobrenombre que es Cabiria y la responsable del disco “Ciudad de las dos lunas”(2021, El Volcán Música) un viaje personal, una toma de conciencia de las capacidades propias y una autoafirmación como artista pop. Donde antes había timidez y socarronería ahora hay canciones redondas y brillantes, donde antes había susurros y ambientes vaporosos ahora hay una voz rotunda que nos guía por un universo pop tan variado en sus referencias como redondo en su factura. Eva ha dejado de ser nuestra Cabiria, un hito underground, para convertirse en una de las grandes artistas de pop electrónico del país, y todo sin perder ni un ápice de su frescura o su personalidad.

Disco “Ciudad de las dos lunas” en Bandcamp

Video “Después de medianoche”

LUZ FUTURO

Luz Futuro es el proyecto musical del productor canario Daniel Benavides. Artista etéreo y avant-garde, transmite sensaciones encontradas entre el nuevo romanticismo y la electrónica más experimental. En su estética sonora está presente el post punk andrógino y su música está influenciada por el new wave de los 80's, el ambient y el electro.

Ha publicado este año su primer EP “Falsos Techos” con el joven sello americano Beso de Muerte Records y mítico el sello alemán Young & Cold Records. Haciendo justicia con su sonido atemporal, recorriendo el pop de la nueva ola y el post punk, con letras directas y melodías nostálgicas.

Luz Futuro en Bandcamp

Vídeo “La cura”

NAVXJA

Artista multidisciplinar, documentalista y parte de la nueva escena bedroom desde una visión racializada y disidente. La cantante afrodescendiente Naomy Salge ha sorprendido con su manera personal de acercarse al pop desde todas sus vertientes, pero sobre todo con una sinceridad que duele en el corazón.

Disco “Amor de verano” en Bandcamp

Vídeo “Mi chica”

OKOMO - Ganador Concurso de Maquetas Autoplacer 2020

OkOmO es un músico con toda una vida de experiencia en multitud de bandas del underground capitalino, inclinándose por la experimentación sonora extrema y sin complejos en la mayoría de proyectos en los que ha participado. Sin embargo para esta nueva aventura ha dejado atrás todo lo complicado e intrincado de sus etapas anteriores y se ha volcado en un sonido directo, sencillo y melódico con cierta querencia por el lo-fi.

Acaba de grabar su primer álbum, con el que promete sofisticar y refinar los sonidos expuestos en la demo ganadora de la última edición del Concurso de Maquetas Autoplacer.

Canción “Fuera” en Bandcamp

VIUDA

Con una inspiración casi demoníaca, cuatro asturianas han juntado su talento y brujería para dar a conocer Viuda. Decimos talento porque mezclar punk oscuro con copla no es fácil, pero ellas lo hacen como nunca antes se había oído. Puedes comprobarlo escuchando desde ya mismo su primer EP homónimo: cinco canciones de furia y puro veneno, traídas para corromper todas las almas puras que se presten a la ceremonia. Las letras pasarían perfectamente por conjuros y hechizos basados en la rabia y la perversión; sin dejar de lado su música imponente y acelerada, para que la fuerza y la magia de este cuarteto asturiano no pase desapercibida.

EP “Viuda” en Youtube

Viuda en Bandcamp

XENIA

Xenia, una joven de 20 años que ha demostrado adaptarse perfectamente a dicha definición explorando sonidos y letras en su música capaces de crear una atmósfera que mezcla los sonidos que irrumpieron en la década de los 80, así como el synth pop o new wave, con elementos de actualidad.

Vídeo “Desde la Luna”

EP “Esfera” en Bandcamp

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 activity is part of the series Overflowing School/Educational workshops created by the EnterArte collective.