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“I lose days, life, sleep. But it’s not my fault if I desire death and life at once, at the same time, at the same hour. And I want everything at the same time.” Alejandra Pizarnik

Girls (whispering): Hey, sweeties, are you awake?

Sadness: Yes, fully awake... It’s impossible to sleep in this heat.

Girls: Yeah, we're all wide awake as well...

Sadness: What’s up? What’s on your mind?

Girls: Nothing special... It’s just that feeling that we could maybe be somewhere else right now, you know?

Sadness: Yeah, that happens sometimes... Do you want to come over to my place? We can do something, anything.

Girls: We were thinking that it’s ages since we went to a party. A really great, fantastic party, surprisingly tender, dramatic and luminous... A party that represents us!

Sadness: Well, of course, when you put it like that! These are strange times for parties... But anyway, come over, we’ll think of something. Come now. You can even come in your pjs!

Girls: Ok, we're on our way. In any case... it shouldn’t be too hard to have party in these times, should it? In these times, a party can simply be about pausing and being together. In these times, a party can be about loving and remembering we're lovable.

Sadness: Totally. In these times, a party can be about spending a great hour dancing. A great hour singing. A great hour told well.

Girls: Invoking the night so we can see the stars, if only for a moment. Invoking the night and making it last until we drop. Tired, sweaty, listening to a story, an idea, a song.

Sadness: As Juan de Mairena said, an hour well told would never finish being told. A party can also be about celebrating time and celebrating the night.

Girls: Girls getting together for a twilight picnic. That could be nice.

Sadness: Great, so that’s what we’ll do, ok? All we need is a nice place in the open air, some music and a hundred or maybe two hundred friendly people. That will change the night completely, take it to places we can’t imagine...open it up, right?

Girls: Yes, that’s it. Let the night open up.

Open up the night.

La tristura and Mucha Muchacha arrive at the Museo CA2M this year with a joint proposal for the 2026 Picnic Sessions. What they propose is a time of listening, dancing, watching. According to anthropologists, before we shared a language we shared rituals, which is essentially what makes us human. We want to share this ancient ritual with the people of the city, share the feeling of being hospitable in this century. We’ve sought out different artists to spend a few hours with at twilight, artists who strive to establish a unique relationship with our times, who can hold their gaze in these dark times we are living through, and who can also perceive a light in that darkness. Who can see the crack. So between 28 May and 2 July we’ll meet on the museum terrace and open up the night together.

“When the light leaves
and the sky’s black,
no nothing
to look at,
day’s done.
That’s it.”  Robert Creeley

PROGRAMME

• Thursday 28 May. Guillem Jiménez | Okkre
• Thursday 4 June. Los Voluble
• Thursday 11 June. Laura Morales | Fantasma Sur
• Thursday 18 June. TEMPO DE FURIA (Egozkue and Paz) | Eddi Circa
• Thursday 25 June. Carmen Muñoz | Derek van den Bulcke
• Thursday 2 July. Natalia Fernandes | Las Víctimas Civiles

Time: 9 pm to 11 pm

CURATED BY:

Celso Giménez and Violeta Gil, members of La tristura, have been working in the performing arts field since they were twenty years old. Trying to generate “human situations” on and off the stage. Investigating the limits between presentation and representation, with a special focus on contemporary theatre, and committed to the intuition that intimacy and poetry are essentially political concepts. During this time, La tristura has collaborated with venues like the Teatros del Canal in Madrid, the Grec Festival in Barcelona, Cena Contemporânea in Brasilia, the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, Noorderzon in Groningen, and the AUA Festival in Bern, among others. Over the years they have also generated contexts like the Escuela de Invierno, Festival Salvaje and the Gran Convocatoria Mundial, all with the desire to keep connecting different agents and artists, trusting that these connections will give rise to unexpecting and inspiring movements. In recent years they have started solo projects and new collaborations in the fields of cinema, the stage and literature. Their work is still tied to Madrid, the city where they live and develop their projects.

Ana Botía and Belén Martí have been directing the dance company Mucha Muchacha since 2016, together with Marina de Remedios and Marta Mármol. Since the outset, their work has been focused on researching the body as a space of memory, identity and transformation, creating proposals that combine tradition and contemporaneity. Their performance language incorporates elements of folklore, pop music and Spanish dance codes, reconfigured through a critical gaze rooted in the present.  Since its birth the company has created Volumen 1 (2019), Mucha Muchacha (2021), Para cuatro jinetes (2023) and more recent projects like Cantar de gesta (2026) in which they continue to explore the relationship between body, narrative and collectivity. Mucha Muchacha has developed a collaborative practice with artists from different disciplines, generating research and mediation projects like SERÉ FOLCLORE and the TALLER-FIESTA project.

“Out of the mud... these seams” is a morning workshop at the Museo CA2M where we invite groups of pre-school and primary school children to come and share stories connected to other forms of knowledge and transmission, using experiences they already practise: gestures, listening, play, telepathy, imagination, dreams...

The stories are shared in the workshop without the need for words. Sometimes they emerge in the form of stitches, sometimes in gestures or silences. The children explore ways of learning and remembering that are not always taught but are felt. The workshop and the exhibition space are a place to come together, imagine and listen with the body, a place where the ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary, and art emerges without anyone naming it.

Adriana Reyes (anthropologist and creator in the living arts field) and Gregoria Batalla Batalla (teacher at the infant school Zaleo, History of the Americas graduate and revolutionary in the art of educating) know a great deal about all of this, which is why we’ve invited them to design this workshop in which the children will turn something small into a new creation; where the body, collective action and other contemporary art forms will be harnessed to create something wonderful out of something small.

“Dancing the neighbourhood”, held every Tuesday evening at the Museo CA2M, is conceived as a permanent meeting space for children, a little community where the ordinary becomes special, where every gathering is an opportunity to discover something new along with other people, a feel-good place in which to explore through the body and movement. 

Last year, children between the ages of 6 and 12 participated in a creative adventure that took them to different parts of the museum... and the city! As well as exploring works by artists such as Sol Calero, María Medem and Santiago Sierra, they went to places like Avenida de la Constitución, Parque Cuartel Huertas and Plaza del Pradillo.

During the sessions, they engaged in body play, designed spaces, created dance scores and recorded an audiovisual experience to discover different forms of dance in Móstoles.
All of this movement prompted multiple questions that continue to energise the project:  Where can dance be found? Who can dance? How can we document our own dances? What do we learn when we dance?

This year we want to go on exploring, opening up new routes and looking at the place where we live with different eyes. Using body play, time and space, we’ll design major choreographic expeditions to imagine and share new ways of dancing together.

The activity is led by Alba Sáenz-López Aumente and Mar Sáenz-López Aumente, dancers, choreographers, cultural mediators and founders of Baiven, a collective that uses dance as a form of cultural mediation and is committed to the horizontal sharing of experiences, perspectives, knowledge and critical thinking. 

You can sign up at any time during the school year.
Places are subject to availability, but we’ll be delighted to welcome you if there are any vacancies.