Seminars and Lectures

The confrontation between abstraction-realism and artistic imagination-social commitment has polarised a major part of 20th-century art history, dividing fronts, periods and movements from both sides. Yet the work of Andrzej Wróblewski (1927–1957) constitutes an exceptional chapter; the painter imagined a universe that was free from Biomorphic Abstraction whilst, on the back of the same painting, he figuratively documented the opposite: the existential suffering in the Second World War. This conversation introduces his work.

This double performance serves as an introduction to the Hito Steyerl retrospective in the Museo. The studied disappearance of the image in modern surveillance technology is developed in a performance lecture by the artist, followed by an exploration into the new acoustic landscape of war – between military noise and sounds from consumer devices - by Kassem Mosse. Both performances are a posthumous homage to Harun Farocki.

The Falckenberg Collection, built around the concept of art as a space of revolt, assembles one of the most salient historical ensembles of art criticism in post-war Germany and America. In the face of complacency over the market and its logics, this collection represents a counter-current to ways of understanding the role of and narratives that stem from collecting.

This encounter, within the framework of the project Redes, from the Museo’s Study Centre, sees sociologist Christian Laval and philosopher Pierre Dardot set out a reflection of “the common” as a strategic paradigm for considering new socio-economic and political concepts of use in the design of new forms of democratic organisation that go beyond the categories of representation and political sovereignty that are consubstantial with modernity.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster employs literature to explore the relationship between fiction and reality, and theatre to juxtapose an imaginary narrative of the present. This Intervalos session sees three of her films screened, including Otello 1887, a cinematic opera filmed in the Palacio de Cristal and co-produced by the Museo.

Iconoclasm, desire, vulnerability, migration and cultural translation are some of the themes that impress particular intensity upon the work of Danh Vō. This encounter, also held in the Palacio de Cristal, sees the artist enter into conversation with Patricia Falguières, professor at the École des hautes etudes in social sciences in Paris, and author of essays such as Les Chambres de merveilles (Bayard, 2002).

This encounter serves as an introduction to the retrospective devoted to Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi (Karachi, 1937 – Baroda, 1990), an exhibition that looks to acknowledge the specific nature of her work, beyond the canonical accounts that have systematically placed it within minimalist abstraction.

The Museo marks the 55^th anniversary of the OuLiPo group with two activities: The presentation of the work 66 Exercises in Style by Colectivo Armadillo, and a discussion which revolves around the group, which includes participation from illustrious specialists and certain members of this historic literary experiment.

This film series presents a panoramic view of recent independent film from Latin America, while also introducing a new screening area in the Museo – the transformation of the outdoor terraces into a new open-air cinema. Scene Games offers an interpretation of the latest films from Latin American cinema, barely seen in Europe, where theatricality is the key element in approaching reality.

The international conference Politics, State Power and the Making of Art History in Europe after 1945 explores the ways political power seeks to shape and influence the activities of art historians, art critics, museum professionals and cultural institutions in order to control the understanding of art and artistic heritage from 1945 to the present.

The Limitless Place is the first collaboration between Museo Reina Sofía and the Centro Dramático Nacional (National Drama Centre) and Teatro Pradillo, with the latter conducting a programme of performances, lectures and encounters. It comes about from the desire to question the forms and language of the stage with the will to think about the theatre we actually want; what is, in short, the world we strive to build our society upon.

Started in 2010, the Museo Reina Sofía’s programme of master lectures marks the beginning, or end, of the annual academic activity conducted in the Museo, comprising a series of MAs, study programmes, debate groups and research residencies, run in collaboration with different universities.

A debate runs through a whole century of images of bodies in movement: that which refers to the correspondence between these bodies in live performance (on stage, in the gallery or museum) and in film. Through this question, the aim is to elucidate whether the audiovisual record of practices in which the body is at the centre – contemporary dance and artistic performance – “faithfully” reflects its apparent inherent truth.

In collaboration with FILMADRID, a new space devoted to contemporary auteur cinema, the Museo Reina Sofía and Filmoteca Española (the Spanish Film Institute) welcome the retrospective Lav Diaz. The Evolution of a Filipino Film-maker, centred upon a contemporary director whose experiments with duration best represent the popular and tragic history of a community.

Resonance is a series of sound interventions for a specific site, activating the acoustic and historical space in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Sabatini Building. The programme refrains from using the auditorium and electronic amplification, which means guest artists, musicians and composers will present a series of pieces that set in motion alternative contexts for sound and contemporary music.

What are innovation and originality in diverse times? How does the precarious artist participate in the so-called economies of creativity? This lecture sees the Argentinian philosopher and cultural critic Néstor García Canclini analyse the redistributions and alternatives to creativity that come together in a new contemporary framework of institutions, movements, audiences and networks.

Founded by intellectuals such as Mario Pedrosa, Dore Ashton, Carlo Levi and the Spanish critic José María Moreno Galván, this institution represented a brief experience that, while connecting Chile and Palestine, Senegal and the spaces of resistance in the Western world between 1971 and 1973, was used to seek alternative references during the Cold War. This talk by its director, Claudia Zaldívar, introduces its history and recovery. 

In relation to the exhibition Not Yet. On the Reinvention of Documentary and the Critique of Modernism, this series of lectures offers a context for the discussion on the reframing of documentary culture in the 1970s and 1980s. The programme brings together international scholars to debate some of the key aspects of the exhibition from different perspectives.

This encounter serves as an introduction to the exhibition in the Museo devoted to North American artist Carl Andre (Quincy, Massachusetts, 1935) and looks to provide perspective on an artistic career that spans the second half of the 20^th century and which has been historiographically defined by its generational affiliation with the time Minimalism embarked upon the redefinition of sculpture.

This seminar sets out to rewrite the history of post-war art in Europe, traditionally presented as the disjointed amalgamation of art scenes divided into antagonistic blocs. By deconstructing national limits and articulating a transversal debate, this programme presents a divergent history, whilst also identifying new voices and positions.

To mark International Dance Day, the Museo calls on all those interested in taking part, for 10 minutes, in the reinterpretation of one of the most emblematic pieces in the history of contemporary dance: Rosas danst Rosas.

Once again, the Museo joins in with the activities held to mark International Dance Day, to take place on Wednesday 29 April, with a view to giving an artistic practice that is becoming increasingly more prominent in the Museo’s Collection and activities visibility and integrate it into its spaces.

Intervalos is a film programme showing contemporary audiovisual works, Museo's own productions and works that, between the performative and the cinematic, show the new directions of the moving image. This new edition of Intervalos presents Letters to Max, the latest film by Eric Baudelaire

After organising activities with Merce Cunningham and Simone Forti, the Museo presents the choreographer and dancer Steve Paxton (USA, 1939), a central figure in the development of contemporary dance and the creator of contact improvisation. On this occasion Bound, a solo devised by Paxton, will be performed, for the first time in Spain, by the dancer Jurij Konjar, who will also hold a workshop.

This programme of activities, which relates Sahrawi culture to a broader social and cultural framework, aims to become tuiza, a space that reimagines an alternative possible geography, where its centres are not metropolises of financial power, but narrations and accounts of a periphery that lives on in expressions of identity and cultural contamination.