Attendance open and free while places last

Ostro is the name of a southerly wind, a hot and humid wind that in most cases doesn't blow for very long.

This live arts series kicks off in March like a warm breeze, bringing the meaning of the body to the museum’s galleries.

Once a month, different performing artists will be invited to develop a proposal in the museum space of their choice to involve the building’s architecture in the flow of movement, body and audiences.

Throughout the year, a series of performative proposals will be held in different parts of the museum. We want to forge bonds between dance, performance and the museum space, connect the creative processes of performativity, and enjoy diverse formulas that explore the body and its possibilities in the museum to generate a permanent space where movement is the protagonist.

On Wednesday 12 February Museo CA2M presents Swiftly Arose and Spread Around Me: Interventions for Sticky Thinking (Act 2), launching the second part of the curatorial research undertaken by Sergi Álvarez Riosalido within the framework of the seventh edition of the Encura Residency programme. La Cuarta Piel, Sandra Mar, Maya Pita-Romero, Laura Ramírez Ashbaugh and María Rojas will take part in the inauguration of this research process.

Encura is a research residency programme that aims to promote, expand and complexify curatorial research processes by intertwining the artistic contexts of Barcelona and Madrid, encouraging and enabling curatorial research that doesn’t result in conventional exhibition projects. The programme is co-led by  HANGAR, Museo CA2M, Casa de Velázquez and hablarenarte.

The second act of this curatorial research project is conceived as a performative and reflective gathering inspired by the study of sticky thinking and the diverse potential of slime as a political, ecological and affective concept.  The event will feature a series of interventions on key themes such as the mediation of viscosity in human and more-than-human relationships and the radical connection between bodies, fluids and environments.

Sticky thinking is developed as a conceptual and sensory framework that blurs the boundaries between bodies, objects and environments, exploring the dynamics of connection and transformation. Drawing on the intimate contact described by Walt Whitman in a poem that inspires the title of the project, sticky thinking takes saliva as a medium which, as it flows and spreads, unites the human with the more-than-human, the scale of our body with the infinitely large and the infinitely small.

Danez Smith amplifies this perspective through poetry from a queer, racialised and HIV-positive standpoint, where fluids, as lubricants, activate an intimate practice while serving as a political metaphor for exchange and relation. Here, viscosity becomes a means to resist normativity and embrace a relational understanding of identities and bodies beyond imposed boundaries.

Authors like Karin Anna Pittman and Karen Barad also explore the sticky as a mediating element: connections “lubricated” by viscosity and stickiness are not merely links between pre-existing agents but generative forces of new, overflowing ways of being and knowing.

Sergi Álvarez Riosalido (Sabadell, 1992) is a researcher, curator and writer. He has a bachelor’s degree in Communication (UAB), a master’s degree in Comparative Studies in Art, Literature and Thought (UPF), a postgraduate diploma in Contemporary Thought (UCM), and a master’s degree in Contemporary Art Curating (Sorbonne Université Paris IV) thanks to a grant from “La Caixa”. He took part in year zero of the independent study programme “Organism: Art in Applied Critical Ecologies” organised by TBA21. With a special interest in curatorial practice as a collective process of co-creation, his research focuses on themes such as the subversive dimension of love, desire and tenderness, and the ways of creating community and the materialities that underlie the present.

He has taken part in exhibition and research projects at institutions such as the CCCB (Barcelona), Jeu de Paume (Paris), Centre Pompidou (Paris) and La Casa Encendida (Madrid), among others. He is the author of the monograph on the experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas, titled No aceptaremos las ataduras (Brumaria, 2017), and he has contributed to publications like Found Footage Magazine, Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema, Exit-express, A*Desk and others.

La Cuarta Piel is a community of practices that translates the extractivist processes that sustain human life in cities. It does this through hedonistic situations that materialise the ecological relationships of these complex processes to assimilate them with the human scale. This exercise of intermediation facilitates the communication between knowledge, species and territories. The collective contributes to publishing projects and initiatives dedicated to territorial transformation and cultural mediation. Together or separately, the members of La Cuarta Piel have taken part in the Vienna Biennale (2017), the Venice Biennale (2018), the Quito Architecture Biennale (2022) and the Krakow Biennale (2017, first prize).  They have also exhibited at Negre (Las Cigarreras, 2021), designed and produced ephemeral installations for A Cel Obert (2020), Insólit Festival (2019), Galeria de Arquitectura Porto, HANGAR Lisbon and Medialab-Prado and stage sets for Productores de Sonrisas and Sorolla Producciones. Their educational backgrounds range from UPM (Madrid), UA (Alicante), UCM (Madrid) and ETSAB (Barcelona) to PUC (Chile), UNAM (Mexico), Tongji (Shangai), UWE (Bristol) and the Accademia di elle Arti de Venezia, and they have taught at the ETSAM, Universidad Diego Portales and UA.

Sandra Mar (Valencia, 1995) is an artist working in the field of sculpture. Her practice revolves around this medium and the line as immediate expressive processes, addressing a manner of construction in which the material dialogues with the body it touches. In her work she reflects on contemporary emotional and affective themes, which she links to the quasi-romantic relationship established with the matter. She has held solo shows at Galería Rosa Santos (València) and has taken part in group exhibitions at Pluto (València), Galería Rosa Santos (València), Institut Français (Madrid), La Casona (Reinosa, Santander), IVAM (València), Galería Fran Reus (Palma de Mallorca), Taca (Palma de Mallorca), Zape (Alboraia, València), Centro 14 (Alicante) and Art Nit (Campos, Mallorca). She was involved in the sixth edition of the Residencias Artísticas Reinosa, the 2024 Space Grant and the Programa Confluències, IVAM (València). She won the Makma Acquisition Award at Abierto València 2024 and the Casa de Indias Acquisition Award at CerArtmic 2024.

Maya Pita-Romero (Madrid, 1999) is a visual artist who uses installation and sculpture to investigate the transformations of ecosystems and their link to bodily processes. She explores intimacy through monstrosity, the abject, fear, tenderness and delicacy, creating new imaginaries and forms of care through fictions in which our bodies and nature are intertwined with traditional wisdom. Her works are constructed from organic elements and materials that change, alter and evolve over time, like plants and textiles which, through components like latex, acquire different flexibilities and formal possibilities, highlighting the similarities between human bodies and the plant world.

My name is Laura Ramírez Ashbaugh (Madrid, 1988) and I’m a choreographer, dancer, educator and DJ living and working between Madrid and Amsterdam. I hold a degree in Physical Theatre from RESAD and am currently taking the DAS Choreography master’s course in Amsterdam. I have previously studied dance and choreography at the Martha Graham School (New York), SNDO (Amsterdam) and PAF (France).

I am/was a member of the Mediation and Education Department at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía but I am currently conducting my research and practice concerning the museum space in relation to dance at the IVAM and Galería NF. My practice involves dance, sound and choreography. My practice focuses on liminal spaces, sound and feeling with the beat. I use images and fiction to think about choreographic methods and to explore languages of movement that are overlooked in the forms we already know in order to create intermediate spaces that may give rise to new logics that help us to understand the body’s perceptual and intuitive qualities. Right now, I’m totally obsessed with hormones as a choreographic practice and tool, and with horror images.

María Rojas (Zaragoza 1987) is an artist and researcher whose work uses photographic images to create installations that explore different types of materialities, reverting digital or fluid processes to textures and forms. Her work focuses on the limits of language and space, transcending the boundaries between digital and natural. In this succession of boundaries, gesturalism occupies a prominent position in her work as a vehicle for presenting fictionalised spaces through observation and change, and through small actions that help us to narrate new realities. She has a diploma in Sculptural Techniques from the Escuela de Arte de Zaragoza, a degree in Fine Art from UCLM and the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, and a master’s degree in the Development of Photographic Projects from Blank Paper, Madrid. She has worked in Berlin as an arts administrator and as a photographer for the Ministry of Culture in Praia, Cape Verde. As a speaker, she has given talks on creative processes at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, she worked as a curator for EXP.20 Barcelona and ArtConnect, and she directed the Cyclo art and music festival, winner of an Injuve award. She is currently developing her next project at Casa Velázquez in Madrid.

In collaboration with:

Ciudad Sur is a space of shared experimentation that was launched in 2021 and aims to inquire into the many facets and riches that generate a sense of belonging in cities around Madrid’s outskirts, taking Móstoles as its point of departure.

In this fourth edition of Ciudad Sur, green is going to take us through different landscapes that that have marked the history of Móstoles and of what Móstoles is not in this and other times. With spectral green, we’ll take leaps through time in each session, which will propose a look at more specific issues in this city south of Madrid while also projecting it on a more global scale and connecting with other neighbourhoods and places in order to share and debate different issues that particularly concern us in this tumultuous political and social context.

In this 2024–2025 edition, the coordinators will once again be: Irene de Andrés, the La Liminal collective and the reporting of Blanca Sotos, accompanied by Estrella Serrano, head of the Education and Public Activities department at the Museo CA2M. Registration will be opened on the website at least 15 days in advance for participation in each session. The sessions are held on Tuesdays from 6 to 8 pm. The dates for this year’s edition are:

• 22 October
• 12 November
• 3 December
• 21 January
• 18 February
• 18 March
• 29 April
• 20 May
   

Irene de Andrés was born in one of the most popular destinations, the island of Ibiza, which has inevitably led her to inquire into the evolution of the concept of leisure and the very meaning of travel throughout history, from the first colonists to tour operators. Spas, cruise ships and discos are key settings for the artist, who uses films, sculptures and graphic works to create journeys through time and around different waters, connecting different historical deeds that make us reflect on the tourist consumption model, which is especially designed for the working class.

La Liminal is a cultural mediation collective which inquires into the city and uses urban routes as a tool for analysing the public space collectively. Our goal is to experiment with the urban landscape to suggest new interpretations that focus on the stories that have been rendered invisible over time, those that we have not valued, in order to build alternative discourses that are based on collective learning and allow us to reappropriate the idea of public space as a common good.

Blanca Sotos (Madrid, 1978) thinks, reads, writes, translates, corrects, edits and publishes different textualities. She has worked as an editor in ministries, publishers and museums and has directed artbook fairs. She has also taught courses and delivered lectures at the Casa del Lector-Matadero, CA2M Museum, Casa Encendida, Sala Mendoza of Caracas, Centro Nacional de las Artes of Mexico, Centro Cultural de España in Mexico, Tenerife Espacio de Artes, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the Community of Madrid. She has directed marcablanca since 2018, and she and Ramón Mateos are in charge for the first edition of MiraLookBook, the International Meeting of Publications Specialising in Contemporary Culture. She is currently a professor at American University and is pursuing a PhD in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid.

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)

María Us is a Guatemalan activist who was a guerilla member during Guatemala’s armed internal conflict between 1960 and 1996.

As the outcome of the partnership between her and the artist Ana Gallardo, we are presenting a play in the form of a biographical act which tells the story of a forest that is both the memory of land struggles and the community’s means of sustenance, in an attempt to disinhibit and publicise the resistance of several generations of female bodies violated by their family members and fellow political activists, too.

MARÍA US

I am a woman with K'iche' roots. I speak my native language. Ever since I remember, I’ve worked the land a lot. I went to primary school in my community. What I remember from primary school: most of the teachers were Latino and they would hit and punish us over anything. And they forced us to study or speak Spanish. I liked to play and run, and I imagined that when I was a bit older, I would go far from my family to study and teach the children of my village. Everything changed when the government of Guatemala began to damage and murder. That was my dream no more. I think that schools should not be enclosed; children should not be inside four walls; they should study in a place where they coexist with nature. Someday I’ll teach children.