Multimedia

On 8 October 2020, in the framework of the 2020 edition of the Politics and Aesthetics of Memory Chair, directed by Chilean theorist Nelly Richard, American feminist theorist Judith Butler gave a lecture based around the idea of memory outside hegemonic readings of history. She began by reflecting on the virtual medium of the lecture she was presenting, on a situation that brings us together but creates a longing for contact and encounter as it leaves us in solitude. She went on to refer to the right-leaning and volatile political situation in the United States on the eve of the election and in the midst of the pandemic, characterising it is as necropolitical exhilaration. She also contrasted this context with the resurgence of Black Lives Matter, at once a movement and a slogan, and also an archive of live, just as Richard has put forward. Finally, her lecture centred on a reading of Marx from a feminism perspective, connecting the exist/resist of Palestinian claims and the performance “Un violador en tu camino” by Chilean collective Las Tesis. The lecture was followed by a conversation with Nelly Richard and Ana Longoni.

Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds the Hannah Arendt Chair and is a Professor of Philosophy at The European Graduate School (EGS). Her work, initially focused on gender studies, also sets forth notable reflections in the field of ethics, politics and human rights. She is one of the foremost intellectuals of our time.

Lucy Lippard (1937) is one of the foremost critics and creators in the conception and history of contemporary art. Her writing, exhibitions and biography have been the subject of far-reaching studies and shows, for instance the recent Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of the Conceptual Art (Brooklyn Art Museum, 2012–2013) and From Conceptualism to Feminism. Lucy Lippard’s Numbers Shows 1969–74 (Afterall, 2012). Lippard was a guest at the opening of the Juan Antonio Ramírez Chair, which explores different approaches to art history – understanding it as a constantly evolving discourse – and signalled the start of activities in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Centre. Therefore, on the occasion of her visit, a master lecture, workshop and interview were all conducted, the latter of which looked over, for the first time, her career as a whole, for example the landmark exhibition Eccentric Abstraction (1966), representing a feminist and organic critique of Minimalism, a key term in the “dematerialisation of art” (1972), or the displacement of the institutional systems of art by community- and territorial-based aesthetic practices.