The Departamento de Investigación, Datos, Documentación, Cuestionamiento y Causalidad was created as a temporary, time-limited space for the study of the collections held by the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo. It has been held for six months as a workshop reflecting on what it means to be a contemporary art museum through the presentation of case studies, group readings, meeting with artists and researchers, and participation in the Colección XIV: Pública exhibition.
Workshop
In a few thousand years a future archaeological excavation will discover what were the limits of the city of Móstoles in 2020 and there they will find, on the site of the Children’s Home, bits of ceramic which, when pieced together, will create objects with no recognizable use purpose. The experts will try to guess where they came from, as they are neither utilitarian or decorative objects. The forms would suggest some kind of mysterious practice closer to the rituals and customs of the former inhabitants of this place.
During this school year, together with the inhabitants of the Children’s Home, we will make loads of extensible, ephemeral, detachable or permanent attachments, traces and remains for the future, sounds that will fill the space and slowly become echoes and then memories. We will create a set of sculptural pieces, hybrids between musical instruments and masks, monstrous fixtures that will be the memory of experiences that took place in this house over the course of these months.
We want to invent our own biography, who we want to be together and how we want to be remembered.
In a few thousand years a future archaeological excavation will discover what were the limits of the city of Móstoles in 2020 and there they will find, on the site of the Children’s Home, bits of ceramic which, when pieced together, will create objects with no recognizable use purpose.
Put your body in a place.
Move it, shake it, jiggle it.
Put it to the test.
Subject it to and free it from a tempo and a rhythm.
Stress it, push it, tire it.
Listen to how your body sounds now.
What are our capacities for listening? Can we think of the body and treat it like a sound body? What sounds do we associate with our body or with the actions it performs and what is the meaning it imposes on them? How does the body sound?
During the month of September, we have invited the artist Sandra Gómez to propose a workshop in which we will use the workspace as a space of resonance, and as an instrument that resonates. And we will do the same with the body: it will be both the instrument that resonates as well as the space of resonance. Pat, rub, brush, caress...
The workshop will focus on research and experimentation with the body’s sonic capacity as well as how we perceive this sonic quality and how it affects the body.
Mor information: https://espaciomutante.tumblr.com/
During the month of September, we have invited the artist Sandra Gómez to propose a workshop in which we will use the workspace as a space of resonance, and as an instrument that resonates.
One day you get a message with a location. This location is the hiding place of a letter that somebody has written to you. This somebody, whose identity you don’t know, proposes an exclusive sound experience for you, a musical gift.
Can you make music by writing words? Hiding Place is a proposal to work with sound without making music, it is an unidentified action that only you and I know, a meeting without meeting.
Individually, we will write a letter for someone we don’t know, proposing a sound experience. We will then hide the letter somewhere in the city so that a person who is communicated the location can pick it up. But, bear in mind that another person might find the letter first. And, of course, you will also receive your letter in a hiding place.
More information: https://espaciomutante.tumblr.com/
Hiding Place is a proposal to work with sound without making music, it is an unidentified action that only you and I know, a meeting without meeting.
R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, Ñ, O, P, Q.
We are going to put ourselves in an unexpected position. It is possible that we end up teaching something that we didn’t know how to do before and somebody whistles loudly for the first time. This could lead to something odd and makes us think for a moment about ways of teaching removed from the academy and art, or that might drive us crazy trying to separate everything from the rules. Or maybe not. We are going to put ourselves in an unexpected position and see whether something changes.
The Last Letter is Q is a workshop for teachers exploring queer pedagogies and their derivations.
Aimed at teachers in nursery, primary, secondary, third-level and non-regulated education.
Two 2-hour sessions, times to be decided with the group.
Minimum of 4 people per group.
Grupos de mínimo de 4 personas que pueden ser de distintos centros educativos (es necesario apuntarse en grupo).
We are going to put ourselves in an unexpected position. It is possible that we end up teaching something that we didn’t know how to do before and somebody whistles loudly for the first time. This could lead to something odd and makes us think for a moment about ways of teaching removed from the academy and art, or that might drive us crazy trying to separate everything from the rules. Or maybe not. We are going to put ourselves in an unexpected position and see whether something changes.
Two years ago, with the performing artist Aitana Cordero, we started a performance workshop focused on exploring the intimacy of adolescents within the classroom. We understand that now these relations mean something else and the performance forces us to ask ourselves new questions through action.
For this reason, this year it strikes us as absolutely necessary to continue placing desire at the very core in order to confront this uncertainty of the body that it is our lot to live through and perhaps to thus learn how to breathe better.
Maximum number of students: 30.
This year it strikes us as absolutely necessary to continue placing desire at the very core in order to confront this uncertainty of the body that it is our lot to live through and perhaps to thus learn how to breathe better.
From the teachers’ room, the boiler room, the fire escape behind the building, the roof, or from whatever is behind the door at the end of the corridor. This workshop proposes entering those places at school where we have never been before and to reveal them through the camera as undiscovered settings you’ve never seen, or maybe you have, perhaps in a movie.
Maximum number of students: 30.
This workshop proposes entering those places at school where we have never been before and to reveal them through the camera as undiscovered settings you’ve never seen, or maybe you have, perhaps in a movie.
Now that normality has finally become strange and we know that strange is normal, we want to celebrate it and continue thinking about it from our bodies (mine and others) and try out new ways of being and of being together. To see how we can touch each other without touching and, with the help of art, to infect each other with ideas, with ways of doing, copying each other, imitating what works for our well-being.
Now that everything can be different, we will support each other and create chains of queer transmission so that each one of us can be who they want to be and have their own space.
Divided into two sessions, this workshop experiments through action and performance.
Maximum number of students: 30
Now that normality has finally become strange and we know that strange is normal, we want to celebrate it and continue thinking about it from our bodies (mine and others) and try out new ways of being and of being together.
Photography: María Eugenia Serrano Díez
“At first it seems like a particularly useless act, outlandish and out of the ordinary, but as one discovers that it is a mere manipulation of objects like any other it becomes easy and natural. Looking for barbiturates is like looking for aspirins for a cold and preparing the gas entails the same difficulties as preparing it for a shower.”
In 1967 the Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña founded Tribu No and penned the No Manifiesto, a text that proposed not-doing as an action. Starting in the month of March, we will organize a workshop-visit to Seehearing the Enlightened Failure, a retrospective exhibition by the visual artist, poet, filmmaker and activist. Aimed at groups of secondary school students, this activity will engage with the work and strategies of the Chilean artist in order to think and to act through her work.
Maximum number of students: 30. Registration from September 18
Aimed at groups of secondary school students, this activity will engage with the work and strategies of the Chilean artist in order to think and to act through her work.
Cecilia Vicuña, Quipu menstrual, 2019. Photo: Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 2019.
A laboratory in which we transform our fears, our longings, our best qualities into a body that lives, dances, dreams and moves.
A chance to let our desires flow freely and to understand ourselves as part of an organism that transcends our individual bodies, to subvert our roles, to create a shared being that lets us question, through sound, visuals and movement, the reality in which we live and how we inhabit it.
Número de alumnos: máximo 30.
Danzónico is a workshop in which we create our own carnival. We transform ourselves into sonic beings, into magnificent beasts, alongside the performing artists Ismeni Espejel and Laura Bañuelos and the musician Julián Mayorga.
Fotografía: María Eugenia Serrano Díez