actividades.ca2m@madrid.org

The garden on the museum’s roof terrace has already earned a name for itself as a beacon for agro-ecology in the city. Since we first started, we have gone through an intense process in which many different people have been involved, making it a meeting point where people work together and share their experience and know-how.

Since it was first set up, the roof terrace garden was conceived as more than a place to teach ecological agriculture because the founding mandate was to create a local community. This goal has been fulfilled today thanks to a hardcore of people who have now accrued years of experience, enjoyment, learning and sharing together based on the practice of agro-ecology and permaculture, recovering traditional rural knowledge and exploring ideas to face the challenges of sustainability.

Today this challenge is more urgent that ever, which is why we need to expand its reach and pay more attention to the direct practice of sustainability in cities, reinforcing self-sufficiency, producing food for self-consumption, DIY and locally-sourced production, promoting and motivating a culture of proximity. This will be our best weapon to respond to the major challenges of the twenty-first century, like climate change, the crisis in natural resources and the need to transition towards a model of society more respectful with the planet and the people who live in it.

To face up to this formidable challenge, we have the experience and collaboration of Instituto de Transición Rompe el Círculo [Break the Circle Transition Institute], which focuses its activity over the last decade on sustainability in cities, taking Móstoles as a testing ground. That’s why today our roof terrace garden now becomes a Community Sustainability Laboratory.

PROGRAMME 2022

BLOCK 3: TRADITIONAL KNOW-HOW AND KNOWLEDGE ABOUT PLANTS
THURSDAYS 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM

THURSDAY 29 SEPTEMBER – 4:30-8:30 PM
Plant cuttings at Museo CA2M
Once again, we are inviting plant lovers to join us in another session of exchanging slips and cuttings of indoor plants. This time, as well as swapping, we will also run a short half-hour theoretical workshop on the basics of looking after plants, held twice during the day: at 6:00 and again at 7:30 pm, for those unable to attend the previous one. Regardless of whether you attend the theoretical workshop or not, slips and cuttings can be exchanged uninterruptedly between 4:30 and 8:30 pm.

THURSDAY 6 OCTOBER– 11:30 am - 13:30 pm
Autumn planting in the garden
We will plant vegetables in our edible forest.

THURSDAY 13 OCTOBER– 11:30 am - 13:30 pm
Medicinal plants and natural remedies
Exploring natural homemade remedies. How to prepare natural oils, ointments and recipes for everyday ailments.

THURSDAY 20 OCTOBER– 11:30 am - 13:30 pm
Listening to the city flora
The plants that grow in the cracks and corners of our towns and cities listen to us as we pass by in our day-to-day coming and going. They are largely ignored, but their forms and colours cry out to us to be listened to. In this session we will step outside the museum and discover curious facts about the flora on our city streets and give them the care and attention they deserve.

THURSDAY 27 OCTOBER – 11:30 am - 13:30 pm
Recognizing local edible herbs
With globalization, many local plants which were once used for curing ailments and for cooking have now been forgotten about. In this session we will take a walk around Móstoles and learn to recognize these overlooked plants that are worth recovering.

THURSDAY 3 NOVEMBER– 11:30 am - 13:30 pm 
Making seed bombs
After all we have learnt about herbaceous plants in popular culture, now is the moment to take over our city by sowing these plants in abandoned lots which have great potential for growing. Learn how to make seed bombs and join our Guerrilla Garden, scattering seeds around the city.

THURSDAY 10 NOVEMBER– 11:30 am - 13:30 pm
Organic gardening: the role of coupling in chemical-free growing
We will learn to combine different plants, shrubs and trees to ensure a bio-diverse garden that maintains the fertility of the soil and makes it resistant to plagues and illnesses.

THURSDAY 17 NOVEMBER– 11:30 am - 13:30 pm
How to make a homemade worm composter
A good way of reducing residues produced at home is composting leftover food and peelings. Learn to build a worm composter and to maintain it throughout the year.

THURSDAY 24 NOVEMBER – 11:30 am - 13:30 pm
Residue-free Christmas
Christmas is the time of free of most compulsive consuming and greatest generation of waste. We will show you how to reduce your environmental footprint with a number of ideas to ensure a sustainable Christmas.

THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER – 11:30 am - 13:30 pm
Healthy recipes for Christmas
If we wish to change our model of society, it is time to break routines associated with certain times of the year, such as Christmas. A menu for Christmas does not have to be expensive or full of gourmet products. In this workshop we will show you original, healthy and inexpensive recipes for the holiday season.

BLOCK 2: SELF-SUFFICIENCY IN ORGANIC GARDENING
EVERY THURSDAY 11:30-13:30
Growing locally and learning to be self-sufficient is becoming increasingly important to ensure our food sovereignty. Join this course and learn how to grow with us and why it is necessary for our cities to commit to sustainability. 

THURSDAY 24 MARCH 11:30 – 1:30
Growing crops in the city.
We will prepare seed beds for the spring in our organic garden and provide pointers on how to prepare a garden of potted plants to produce our own zero-km food.

THURSDAY 31 MARCH 11:30 – 1:30
Sharing the CA2M roof terrace. A session with Elena Alonso and the roof-top garden
This introductory session will talk about how to design and create ecosystems based on the principles of permaculture and will set the ground rules for starting an urban forest garden on our terrace. The session includes the participation of the artist Elena Alonso, whose installation Al cuidado de las pequeñas sombras (Caring for little shadows) will help us to understand the need for a better inter-species relationship in order to maintain a balanced ecosystem.

THURSDAY 7 APRIL 11:30 – 1:30
Planning a forest garden in the city
What’s the difference between an ordinary forest garden and an urban forest garden? An understanding of microclimates. What are the shortcomings and the needs of a terrace garden?

THURSDAY 21 APRIL 11:30 – 1:30
Planting a forest garden: tree stratum
We start by planting the biggest plants. Why do we choose these species?

THURSDAY 28 APRIL 11:30 – 1:30
Planting a forest garden: shrub stratum
We continuing planting with shrubs and small fruit trees. Why do we choose these species?

THURSDAY 5 MAY 11:30 – 1:30
What should I plant in my garden? Planting the herbaceous layer and annual plants 
Learn to calculate the number of plants and the space required depending on your needs.

THURSDAY 12 MAY 11:30 – 1:30
Preventing and treating plagues
Plagues affect us equally whether we are in the city or the countryside. Learn to observe your plants, to prevent the attack of insects and other pests and prepare homemade organic remedies.

THURSDAY 19 MAY 11:30 – 1:30 
Closing circles in a garden
In order for your system to be 100% sustainable you have to make the most of the resources it offers without generating residues.

THURSDAY 26 MAY 11:30 – 1:30 
Jam workshop
Late spring is a good time for seasonal fruits. This workshop will show us how to make jam with the short-lived summer seasonal fruit that we would like to enjoy at any time of year.

THURSDAY 2 JUNE 11:30 – 1:30 
Preserves workshop
Another way of making the most of surplus produce is preserves. It is especially important to pay extra care to hygiene conditions to ensure that the canned or preserved food lasts longer and in optimum conditions.

THURSDAY 9 JUNE 11:30 – 1:30 
Making bread at home workshop
One of the easy and most gratifying ways of being self-sufficient is to make our own bread. Learn to make sourdough starter and basic recipes for making bread at home.

THURSDAY 16 JUNE 11:30 – 1:30 
Preparing a sun drier (double session 10:00-2:00)
Sundrying food is a little-used practice that helps to preserve food throughout the year with their nutritional qualities practically intact.
Join us in this double woodworking session in which we will design and build our own drier for summer gluts.

THURSDAY 23 JUNE 11:30 – 1:30 
Seed collection
In the last of our self-sufficiency workshops we will learn to choose and preserve seeds from our garden so that we don’t have to buy them every year.

THURSDAY 30 JUNE 11:30 – 1:30 
Cool recipes for a sustainable summer
We will conclude the year’s course with a celebratory workshop full of healthy recipes with sustainable locally-sourced products at a time when the summer garden starts to come into its own and offer us a huge variety of produce.

BLOCK 1: THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF INDOOR PLANTS 
EVERY THURSDAY 11:30-13:30

The world of indoor plants
17 February 11:30-13:30h
What do I need to grow indoor plants at home? Find out what are the best plants to suit your home, your tastes and your time.

Basic care for indoor plants
24 February 11:30-13:30h
Is direct sunlight good for my plants? How much and how often should I water them? When is the time to compost? We will help you.

Plagues and illnesses of indoor plants
3 March 11:30-13:30h
Just like garden plants, indoor plans also suffer attacks from insects and funguses. What can I do about them?

Reproducing indoor plants
10 March 11:30-13:30h
How do you make slips and cuttings? Can I divide my plants?

A greenhouse at home
17 March 11:30-13:30h
What are the benefits of having plants at home? Are they suitable for every room? Could my plants cause me any harm?

Very few people know that underneath the museum, exactly three floors underground, there is a hatch that opens onto to a flight of steps which leads down to the depths of an underground river that crosses through the whole of Móstoles. The education department is very much aware of this idea of what is taking place beneath our feet, like an underground river. The most meaningful processes, those that transform us the most, are precisely the ones that take place without us realizing it.

Yet again, this year we invite you to join this course to share together and stir emotions, activating resources that ensure that this will be possible, focusing on processes, events and works that go unnoticed, that happen too slowly to be perceived or that take place within the confines of what we take to be normal.

We have invited artists and collectives whose practices are like tributaries of that underground river that runs through issues like anonymity, invisibility, misfits and the experience of a shared body from the self or from ourselves, but also from the power of the word. A river that does not follow the pre-established banks and returns us once again to the question contained in the name of this course.

CA2M organises educational activities on contemporary art and thinking that can be framed within the tradition of community colleges, aimed particularly at young and adult students.

The course addresses some of the key issues for a proper understanding and interpretation of art today. These activities can be divided into two parts: the first consists of the presentation of a theme by a guest speaker and the second part involves a debate open to the audience: viewing listening and dialogue as transformative actions; art as a shared meeting ground and the development of critical attitudes to imposed reality.

REGISTRATION FOR FEBRUARY 27

SESSION 18:00H HERE

SESSION 20:00H HERE

Continuing the line of work begin in 2014, El cine rev[b]elado has put together a programme of activities on audiovisual performance and cinema’s interconnections with other disciplines, engaging with the cinematographic experience beyond the conventional darkened film theatre and the screened image. Instead, here we will be interrelating and transforming it in order to activate an audiovisual-based experience that questions not just its own language but also its whole structure and logistics.

Similar to previous iterations of this programme, we are presenting a range of transversal projects that blend film and cinema with sound art, new media, radio, architecture and dance. Taking on board the situation of the pandemic and also as a kind of tribute to the origins of this programme, this year we are focused entirely on the local fabric with a view to strengthening the bonds with the territory.

Our goal is to give our audience a chance to share some of the most outstanding contemporary audiovisual and performance-based works. We will be taking a closer look at and lending a particular focus to the local scene, ensuring a continuity with local artists and agents after Covid-19. In addition, most of these projects are being debuted for the first time in Madrid, thus reinforcing El cine rev[b]elado’s role as a key event in the performing arts and in the cultural calendar of the Region of Madrid during the winter season. This year we are celebrating the project’s fifth edition at CA2M, no better moment to meet up, come together again, reflect on the current situation and continue to work together.

Curated by Playtime Audiovisuales (Natalia Piñuel Martin and Enrique Piñuel Martin).

Playtime Audiovisuales. A cultural management platform founded by Natalia Piñuel and Enrique Piñuel in 2007, dedicated to contemporary art practices, undertaking curatorial projects for art centres and cultural institutions like Espacio Fundación Telefónica, Azkuna Zentroa, MUSAC, Instituto Cervantes, Centro Cultural de España in Mexico and Tabakalera. Playtime Audiovisuales has also worked with film and music festivals. Its many projects include “Contemporary Visions: New Cinema and Video in Spain” held at Domus Artium 2002 (DA2) in Salamanca since 2013; the multidisciplinary festival “She Makes Noise” at La Casa Encendida in Madrid since 2015 which focuses on the role of women and non-binary identities in electronic music and audiovisual experimentation; and “El Cine Rev[b]elado”, the performance-based programme at Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M) in Móstoles, Madrid, since 2014. They regularly collaborate with various mass media and as teachers.

More information:

 www.playtimeaudiovisuales.com

http://elcinerevelado.tumblr.com 

Twitter:   https://twitter.com/playtimeav

The Huerto en la terraza of the CA2M has been holding workshops for almost a decade. During this time, we have lived through an active process involving the participation of many different people, all of whom have made it a meeting spot based on teamwork and shared knowledge.

Since its beginnings, the Huerto en la terraza has been a space whose aim is to go beyond just being a school of organic agriculture; it had to form a community. It has far exceeded this expectation, accumulating myriad experiences, learning, collective stories and community links around it, all of which make us proud to have such a space as this in Móstoles, one that is already a benchmark beyond our municipality’s borders.

Today, the community of the Huerto en la terraza of the CA2M faces the challenge of opening up to new people without losing the drive to carry out research and experimentation to motivate those who are already a part of it. For this reason, during this course we will provide an opportunity to those interested in starting out in the field of organic agriculture and permaculture, at its most basic levels, without forgetting the needs and learning pace of those who have already participated in the past and who require other lines of experimentation that combine vegetable gardens, art and our immense capacity to create with our own hands. This year, the workshops will change their timeslot to Thursday mornings. We hope that this change will bring more people to our vegetable garden so we can continue to share and learn together.

Free admission with limited capacity.

In collaboration with Break the Cycle Transition Institute

For further information please visit actividades.ca2m@madrid.org or call 912 760 227.

WORKSHOPS IN THE GABRIEL CELAYA SCHOOL (5:00 TO 7:00 PM) 

23 September: How to start an organic vegetable garden 

Learn to set up a poison-free sustainable vegetable garden from scratch. 

30 September: Seeds: how to gather them and how to plant them

We will work on-site with seeds from our organic vegetable garden and learn to gather them and create our own seedbeds. 

7 October: Cultivating and reproducing aromatic herbs

Learn everything you need to know for planting, caring for, gathering, using and reproducing your own aromatic plants. 

WORKSHOPS AT CA2M THURSDAY (11:00 AM TO 1:00 PM)

21 October: Reproducing cuttings and other plants from the organic vegetable garden

Learn how to reproduce your vegetable garden’s plants so you can exchange them with your classmates and increase the variety of plants in this organic space. 

28 October. How to create a terrace vegetable garden 

Learn how to start a vegetable garden on your balcony. No matter how small, anything is possible. 

4 November: Autumn tasks in the vegetable garden

We will plant in autumn, while also learning together how to look after our organic vegetable garden.

11 November: Home composting workshop

Come and learn the art of home composting with us. 

18 November: How to make your own medicinal oils

We will use our terrace plants in order to extract their medicinal properties and make oils that can be used for common ailments. 

25 November: Natural Cosmetics Workshop I

We will create creams for common ailments in a simple way using easily-accessible products. 

2 December: Natural Cosmetics Workshop II

We will learn to make natural soaps. Original and personal alternatives for Christmas presents. 

9 December: Basketmaking workshop

What better way to accompany your homemade gifts than to put them in homemade baskets, made by you? 

16 December: Sustainable Christmas recipe workshop

Join us, yet again, in putting together a sustainable Christmas menu that is easy to prepare – and affordable for all budgets – that will delight your guests. 

At CA2M, we believe that attention to gender diversity should be central to the programme of any contemporary art museum. This new pandemic year marks 40 years since the emergence of HIV, and touching has once again become something forbidden. This is why this project by choreographer Aimar Pérez Galí seemed a particularly apt choice to open LGTBQ+ Pride’s spotlighted week of demands, to which our programming tries to give voice and, above all, body in a sustained way throughout the year.

TOUCHING BLUES

When you start with a creative process, you never know where the path will lead. That is why we say that the act of creation is a kind of dialogue with the unknown, a close relationship with that of which we are unaware. In 2015, when Aimar Pérez Galí first began work on his project The Touching Community, he only knew that he knew too little about the impact of the AIDS pandemic on the dance community. He embarked on a project of research, seeking out survivors, reflecting and questioning himself, reading and writing letters to the dead dancers whose names and stories he learned. This was his way of confronting the silence that, over the years, has been used to conceal and forget the horror and pain caused by that pandemic, which still continues today. The project grew and branched in surprising directions as Aimar encountered people and their stories, as silenced names were spoken by the mouths of witnesses, as he received answers. First came the lecture-performance A system in collapse is a system moving forward (2016); then the stage performance The Touching Community (2016); followed by the exhibition The Touching Community / Correspondencia and the active work The Touching Community / Greenberg_1992, both in 2017. Next came the tactile research laboratories of the Touching Improvisation Lab (2017-2020), followed by the publications Lo tocante (2018) and Cuadernos sobre el tocar (2019). Finally, in an unexpected and almost surprising contribution, he released the video Touching Blues (2021) during the new pandemic.

Touching Blues, like the rest of the project, is made for commemorative reasons: we keep doing these things, we keep returning to the topic, because we still need to remember, listen to and celebrate the bodies of those who suffered and suffer from HIV/AIDS.  Blues is a laid-back, melancholy kind of music. And blue anchors the chromatic universe of this work of art. We learned about this blue from Derek Jarman and his ‘blue boys’; although this blue has something sad about it, strangely enough, it also has a bright, festive and celebratory note.

Before, we clung to living things and the inevitable vanishing that gives dance its natural quality because that is what allows us to relate directly to the bodies of the dead and to celebrate them through our skins. But now, given everything we are learning with this new pandemic, suddenly video - the ability to transform our bodies into a playable image - has taken on a whole new meaning.

Touching Blues is a two-dimensional image projected onto a vertical plane. This does not have all the complexity, infinite variety of points of view and foci that are possible with a live performance. It condenses all the multidimensionality of the present into a perfect square that appears to hang on a wall like a painting, like a two-dimensional image that can appear over and over again identically. Here, our bodies become patches of light that move on a screen, hypnotic textures that make us see what is no longer there, what has already happened and is already gone.

To do this, we first had to establish a single point of view; this point, suspended above our bodies, allowed us to see ourselves from above, an impossible spot from which no one had ever observed us before. But that was not enough; once our bodies became an image, pace Jackson Pollock, we had to once again ‘hang’ the (blue) floor that we had used as the ‘sand’ base of the action on the wall. In a way that might be called innocent, we have hung the picture on the wall once again, bringing a strange peace to it. It appears almost as if the time for struggle were over, as if a deep and unexpected calm had settled over the whole project once its weight was lifted off the ground.  It seems, therefore, that the rotation of the point of view and the shift to a vertical plane have given Touching Blues the ability to create a type of contemplation that almost becomes a subtle form of devotion. All of this only deepens the memory-focused nature of this project and our decision to honour and celebrate the bodies that came before us, those who were mortal victims of what we still call the ‘HIV/AIDS epidemic’ today. This mission took on a new shape thanks to the appearance of this new work and, of course, thanks to the Cultural Communication Bureau of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México through the following: El Aleph - Arts and Science Festival; Ingmar Bergman Special Programme in Cinema and Theatre; the UNAM Theatre Department; the UNAM Dance Department; the Chopo University Museum; and thanks also to the Espai d'Arts Escèniques Casal d'Alella (Barcelona). To them we extend our deepest gratitude for inviting us to continue imagining new dimensions of this project, a project that has done nothing but bring joy, happiness and knowledge to our bodies. 

Aimar Pérez Galí and Jaime Conde-Salazar s.u.s.

May 2021