Activity

This time, CA2M launches the revision of gaze. From a number of talks with theoreticians, educators and artists, this course seeks to reflect on both current art proposals and on our gaze toward art. Against that plain spellbound, admiring and unselfish contemplation that apparently modern art demanded us, current art seems to confront the distracted gaze already mentioned by Walter Benjamin: the disperse gaze from the bourgeois around the city, the walker that looks at everything and doesn´t see anything, maybe even the paradigm of contemporary art as if by consensus all of us would have lost that capacity to gaze simultaneously. So, it is all about wondering about the possibilities that current art can offer for the vindication of a gaze, from its dispersion, remains affected and politically interested.

CA2M offers a number of training activities on art and contemporary thinking within the framework of traditional free universities specifically designed for young people and adults. These courses offer a clear and concise insight into some of the basic concepts for understanding and interpreting contemporary art. The activities are divided into two parts: the first part consists of the introduction of a theme by a guest speaker, who in the second part opens the floor to a discussion involving participants.

PROGRAMING

WED. 20 FEB. 18:30 H.
MIRADAS INOFENSIVAS
Yayo Aznar. Associete Professor at UNED

To start with, we consider important to carry out a brief reflection on different gazes offered to contemporary viewers. From  that Kantian “disinterested contemplation” fetch and carry to the “distracted gaze” from citizens, yet, the truth has always been over the discussion table certain depolarization of our perception.

With the participation of Aurora Fernández Polanco, Rabih Mroué, Ziad Chakaroun, Carles Guerra, Peio Aguirre, Yayo Aznar and Marc Roig, among others

It now appears that the world is not the same since in 2011 we started to receive images about the taking over of squares: images taking over squares, to such extend that we do not longer think about how those images influences the Middle East riots and the campings at the Spanish squares, we are ready to understand how these riots have indeed modified the image nature. The images of “the actions” are not only documents of a politically agitated historical moment, instead they are attached to the bodies and they become inevitable part of their battle.

What interest us this time is to think together with images, from a certain distance, the necessary one to hold a position and see how some artistic productions have reflected on the making of images, on their performativity. We are also concern about analyzing how images´s free flow seem to be at risk at present: from Syria to Egypt, or even at the Spanish streets, where censorship threat flies over them.

The opening of this course coincide with the solo exhibition by Rabih Mroué at CA2M Image(s) mon amour, curated by Aurora Fernández Polanco, that will approach us to an art work where the involvement with the images gravitate from what they represent to what the images are capable of doing. This time, we will not talk about the hackneyed representation crisis, instead we will think about images´s transformation capacity.

Performance-Lecture by Rabih Mroué on Friday 25th Octuber at 20:00 H.

PROGRAMMING

WEDNESDAY 23 OCT. 18:30 H.
Aurora Fernández Polanco.
Aurora Fernandéz Polanco, Fine Arts professor at Universidad Complutense of Madrid. She leads the investigation group “Images from art and rewriting of the narratives within the global visual culture”and the magazine Re-visiones (re-visiones.imaginarrar.net). Her writings, conferences and commissions have always been related to politics, memory, visuality and representation. She is curating the show Rabih Mroué. Image(s) mon amour.

FRIDAY 25 OCT. 20:00 H.
The pixelated revolution. Performance-Lecture by Rabih Mroué
Rabih Mroué developed his career as director, playwright, performer, essayist and visual artist, his work always reflects on the use of images for (and against) official narratives: from the Lebanese geopolitical reality to the massive production of images of the Syrian revolution. The Pixelated Revolution is a performative lecture on the use of cell phones and it main role mobilizing people during the revolutionary episodes, due to the nature of the shoot images, their reproduction and their quickly broadcasting.

WEDNESDAY 30 OCT. 18:30 H.
Round table moderated by Yayo Aznar
Yayo Aznar professor at the Fine Art History Department of UNED (National Distance Learning University), director of the collection Arte Hoy de Nerea, and editor of Arte actual. Lecturas para un espectador inquieto, Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid, 2012.

WEDNESDAY 6 NOV. 18:30 H.
El tiempo y la edad del ojo. Performative-Lecture by Ziad Chakaroun
Ziad Chakarounis is a Lebanese actor, performer and Arab-Spanish translator. He has been residing for long periods in Spain. El tiempo y la edad del ojo was inspired by texts and essays by Walid Sadek, artist and Lebanese writer, translated by Ziad Chakaroun, and reinterpretes images from Lebanon war and Civil war.

WEDNESDAY 13 NOV. 18:30 H.
Carles Guerra is chief curator at MACBA, artist, art critic and  Contemporary Art professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. His work focuses on the usage of images within the education, communication means and contemporary art frameworks, as well as on the Post-Fordism political culture. He has been director of Barcelona Virreina Centro de la Imagen and curator of  exhibitions such as: Después de la noticia. Documentales postmedia (CCCB, 2003), 1979. Un monumento a instantes radicales (Virreina, 2011) or Ahlam Shibli. La casa fantasmal (MACBA, 2013)

WEDNESDAY 20 NOV. 18:30 H.
Peio Aguirre is art critic, independent curator and editor, lives and works in Donostia-San Sebastián. He “irregularly” writes for international magazines such as Afterall, A Prior Magazine, Flash Art, ExitExpress, e-flux journal among others, author of numerous monographic texts on contemporary artists. From 2000 to 2005, he was co-director of D.A.E. Donostiako Arte Ekinbideak. He has curated shows as Casco Issues X-The Great Method (co-edited with Emily Pethick), Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht (2007), Imágenes del otro lado, CAAM, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2007), Arqueologías del futuro, sala rekalde, Bilbao (2007) and Asier Mendizabal, MACBA, Barcelona (2008). He writes “critic and metacoment” on his blog http://peioaguirre.blogspot.com

Free access to a single lecture, until full seating capacity reached.

«The conference one should give, is the conference one doesn't know, and one should make every attempt not to know it by the end either. The less we know, the higher we will be able to hold our heads when we sit before the audience.» Isidoro Valcárcel Medina

After five years of intense debate between the public and the conference givers, we are still unable to answer the question that forms the title of this course. We also continue to question how to put a creation as multi-faceted as that created by current-day artists into words. An art that is immaterial, fragile and mutable that can happen in any place and at any time. Perhaps the problem lies in adhering solely to the word, to academic theory and in attempting to translate what cannot be translated based on previous knowledge.  

This is why, in this sixth edition, we have invited artists, theoreticians and educators to take the course participants, and indeed themselves, towards the unexpected. The speakers, whether through an intervention in the space or due to the alteration of the academic logic of their discourse, will reflect on various matters that affect contemporary creation. Thus, we will combine the points of view of the different players involved in the art world to generate a dialogue between their ideas and a construction of meaning that does not solely depend on what is said, but also on what happens. 

These sessions will be complemented with contemporary art texts and a visit to the exhibition
Per/Form. How to do things with[out] words for the course participants.

CA2M develops a line of art education and contemporary thinking activities framed within the tradition of the popular universities. In these courses, some of the fundamental approaches to understanding and interpreting current art are dealt with. These activities are structured into two parts: the first consists of a guest speaker presenting a subject, while in the second a debate is opened on the subject for the participants to express their opinion.

PROGRAM

WEDNESDAY 19 FEB. 18:30 
INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE
Cris Blanco, Multi-disciplinary artist and Victoria Gil-Delgado, CA2M educator and curator
It would be so easy to have a set of unquestionable rules to help us finally understand contemporary art when we enter a museum feeling lost. Yet on the contrary, modern-day art invites us to question the immovable ideas and our role as passive spectators in front of the works. During this first session, we will lay the foundations for the course and invite participants to break their own rules of play.

WEDNESDAY 26 FEB. 18:30
MURDER BETWEEN THE LINES
Sandra Santana, poet and professor of philosophy at the University of Zaragoza
The author has died and the body has disappeared from the crime scene, but their blood still runs fresh on the paper and lines of ink. We will seek the clues left by the murderer in the Parisian studio of Roland Barthes, we will closely examine the moustache of Stéphane Mallarmé, and we will empty the pockets of Isidore Isou, Vito Acconci or Ewa Partum. Readers and spectators, now transformed into detectives, we will have to reconstruct the scene of the crime, find the body, discover the motive, and uncover the weapon that ended the victim's life.

WEDNESDAY 5 MAR. 18:30
FROM FLOOR TO CEILING
Yayo Aznar, professor of the History of Art Department of the UNED
Understanding, as a point of departure,  that art is «sacralized» by going, literally, from the floor to the ceiling, this talk will attempt to think through the political positions of the art proposals of Teresa Margolles (and other artists) to reinforce the possibility of an observation so self-interested that it is no longer capable of surviving without the public and even the private when it becomes a public problem.

WEDNESDAY 12 MAR. 18:30 
A SMALL CHANGE IN THE STATE OF THINGS
Beatriz Alonso, curator and researcher, and Carlos Granados, CA2M educator and artist
Contemporary art is replete with references to the everyday and more and more artists are poetically emphasizing ordinary situations, offering us new views and possibilities in relation to what surrounds us. In this session, we will not only talk about some of these proposals, we will also participate in a small change in the everydayness of the course, displacing its participants to a strange and unexpected place.

FRIDAY 14 MAR. 20:00 
LECTURE ON NOTHING BY JOHN CAGE
The experimental musician, John Cage, gave this conference (Lecture on Nothing) in 1949. At present, the work of John Cage is among the most influential in the current creation scene. This lecture reflects on indetermination, chance and the absurd as fundamental elements of art creation.

WEDNESDAY 19 MAR. 18:30 
PLACEMENT 2/B/ARTIST/. 
Eva Garrido and Yera Moreno, artists and educators. Together they make up the art group, Colektivof
Female art practice is positioned on the verges of placement/ displacement. Marked by this movement, this (non) place enables a precarious, provisional and necessary position to generate thought and action. It is precisely this constant «state of movement» that becomes a critical positioning from which to reflect on the power strategies that mark contemporary art in relation to gender/ sex.

This session is an invitation to cross the threshold and penetrate a space for debate in which we will discuss the relationship between art and feminism, the body as an ambiguous place of action, the (in)visible contributions of feminist thinking and the construction of subjectivity, among other subjects.

WEDNESDAY 26 MAR. 18:30
111-119 GENERALÍSIMO/CASTELLANA
Patricia Esquivias, artist and Pablo Martínez, CA2M Education and Public Activities Manager and associate professor of the History of Art at the Fine Arts Faculty, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
The construction of collective stories, images and ways of life goes hand in hand with the constructions of the city, its stories, the rumors and the gossip that flow through it. In this session, we suggest using a performative dialogue (naturally), to think about the public and the private, the city and its spaces, the bodies and the images. The city of Madrid, its past and its present will be the element that works as the vessel for this class.

WEDNESDAY 2 APR. 18:30 
TRUTH OR DARE
Lilli Hartmann, artist and David Armengol, independent curator and educator
Using the Truth or Dare game as a starting point, this session proposes an approach to art practices without having to talk about art. The structure of the game invites an exercise of expectation based on which fundamental concepts in the artist's work will be analyzed: the dialogue between what is true and what is false, the power of action, the real-time experience and the emotional and passionate capacity implied by living and working off art.

WEDNESDAY 9 APR. 18:30
CULTURE
Los Torreznos, artists and Ferran Barenblit, director of CA2M and curator of the Los Torreznos exhibition, Cuatrocientos setenta y tres millones trescientos cincuenta y tres mil ochocientos noventa segundos.

Los Torreznos will offer a lecture to discuss culture, that territory we move in. But, how to talk about something that surrounds us on all sides?

Everyone dreams of flying, the artist Olga Diego tells us, but if you haven’t yet dreamed of flying, there is still time.

During the last school year Universidad Popular took up the challenge to bewitch us again with art, to rediscover the ability to inspire awe. Starting out from this idea, the museum’s educational department has conceived this year’s programme as a place where the incredible can happen because it makes us believe in it. The sessions will focus on thinking about or experimenting with occult practices related with art that subvert scientific logic and conventional forms of knowledge: art practices that deceive the eye, that work with the inexplicable and turn lead into gold.

The course will use a series of publications which will be available for consulting at the CA2M library. In addition, before each session, we invite participants to join in a group reading of a publication selected for the occasion.

CA2M organises further educational activities in contemporary art and thinking within the tradition of community adult education centres. Its courses address some of the fundamental issues for a proper understanding of art today. They are divided into two parts: the first consists in the presentation of a theme by a guest speaker and the second consists in opening a debate to all participants. This structure can change to accommodate more experimental formats introduced by the individual guest speakers at each session.

SESSIONS

24 OCTOBER
Make Yourself Matter to Someone

Raisa Maudit is preparing a performative conference which will explore the laws of desire in force both in the practice of magic and the occult as well as in art. Through a survey of different occult practices ranging from the nineteenth century until the present moment and the core axes of her artistic and curatorial work, we will address questions on dissident identities, surviving the system, inhabiting darkness, and how to achieve your desires but only perishing a little in the attempt.

Magic is the definitive art. We understand Magic and the Occult as all those processes that are based on symbolism and imagination which, through actions and words, wish to affect their surroundings by engendering changes and transformations in natural laws, in space, in time, in bodies, in psyches and in identities. No form of magic is possible without putting it into practice. In magic, practice starts out from an almost suicidal openness to leap into the unknown and letting it hit you with all it has got. It is based on questioning each and every one of the things that we take for granted. Magic hopes to alter the very weft of reality itself. Magic and Art have points in common such as speculation and the allegorical but at once they have a beef in which Art always loses out. We will take a look at Dion Fortune and psychic self-defence, The Craft, otherkin identities, vampires as the definitive evolution, demonology, Magic Battles, neuro-divergent rebellion, and how to get your hands on a free home.

Raisa Maudit is an artist and curator
http://raisamaudit.com/

31 OCTOBER
Queer Spirituality as Resistance. Yet Another Path in the Conspiracy.

Diego Rambova will lead us on an exercise in fragmentary mapping through a range of contemporary performative practices which are presented as a kind of common ground between new age and queer politics, revealing how, both for the artists who propose them but also in their own right, the confluence is a powerful site of agency, resistance and transcendence. Represented by artists of different ages and from different origins around the world from the seventies onwards, they appear under many different guises. But the truth is that they all respond—as we shall see—to the same “conspiracy”.

Diego Rambova is an artist and researcher.
www.diegorambova.com 

7 NOVEMBER
Performance Lecture for Flying

Is it possible to fly? We all know that you can, but … What happens when you realise that you can fly on your own? This lecture explores the irrational desire to fly and its materialisation in artistic creation, in manifold studies and calculations, prior sketches in flight books, failed attempts and disappointments. And also the involvement of the public. Flight artefacts built from a sculptural gaze and attempts to fly as performance art.

We will take a look at, among others, the projects created by Olga Diego since 2003, when she managed to take to flight on the beach of Carabassí in Alicante, as well as other flights with cameras in the Western Sahara and in Salamanca, or more interactive projects like the one developed by the University of California in 2017.

Olga Diego is an artist
http://olgadiego.blogspot.com/ 

14 NOVEMBER
Just as Up is Down, Down is Up

In this lecture Marian Garrido has devised a walkthrough of the symbolic dimensions of lost forms of knowledge and the narrative constructed through the bonds between art and magic or alchemy. Is there really any difference between an extract from The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, in which Carlos Castaneda learns to fly guided by the expert hands of a shaman, and the experiences related by Terence McKenna or Douglas Rushkoff in Cyberia in a framework of comparison with online culture; virtual realities, flight simulators, videogames or the visual rendering of almost vaporous omniscience in Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void and neo-touristic journeys in Google Earth?

Marian Garrido is an artist and researcher
www.mariangarrido.com 

21 NOVEMBER
Angels of Anarchy. Modern Shamans, Artists of the Invisible

Servando Rocha reveals to us a secret tradition that unites art and magic through the masked figure, both in popular culture as well as in movements like Dada or Surrealism which were fascinated by the primitive, the mask, the world of spirits and the unknown. The intervention includes a Cabinet of Curiosities of the world of secret societies and masking as a tactic but also as transformative potential.

Servando Rocha is a writer and editor.
www.servandorocha.com 

28 NOVEMBER
From Spell to Spell, from (Magical) Gesture to Gesture

Ana Contreras invites us to a performative lecture which will uncover the ways in which bonds between feminism and witchcraft have been woven over time, from the medieval period to postmodernism. It will take us on a secret journey through its appearances and persecutions from which we will be able to extract lessons about its dangers and its powers. A witches coven that discloses the importance of occult practices and performative tactics, as well as their conscious and unconscious use in contemporary art.

Ana Contreras is a stage director, researcher and lecturer

Anyone interested in art today. No prior knowledge necessary.

More information at actividades.ca2m@madrid.org / 912 760 227

DIRECTED BY SELINA BLASCO

We are now setting out on another new course with this question, introduced a long time ago with the advent of modernism. Surprisingly, in our hyper-consumerist society, it is still as valid and seemingly unexhausted as ever. We use it as a weapon and as a shield, and also as a refuge. We manipulate it and manhandle it. Sometimes, the question has been asked from an incredulous pose (after all, one has to admit that, for whoever actually asks such a question, the answer is no), but never one of suspicion. We believe in art and especially in the enigma it hides. That is why the answer does not have to be yes, nor do we necessarily wish to convince anybody of anything. The answer is that there is no answer or, perhaps, that we don’t know what it is, that we have no idea.

And so, we are stuck with the question, and in this year’s course we will give it another turn of the screw. Instead of pretending that there is a certain type of art which we accept that is difficult to define as such, what if we were to undermine all the certainties with which we have treated art as we have known it? Presupposing a brand of art that requires explanation means establishing a division between a person who doubts and a person who has the answers. But we are going to take a less categorical approach. We will rethink the practices associated with accepted disciplines (drawing, painting, sculpture, musical sounds or design), with supports, places of exhibitions and audiences that seem natural but, let’s be clear, doing so from the here and now. And with renewed urgency. What intrigues us is what is supposedly self-evident.

This course has no title but it could be something related with the desire to fold the tasks of art. The art of folding: a course in origami.

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 courses it offers address some of the key issues for a proper understanding and interpretation of art today, to use it to think. 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. The sessions at CA2M are complemented with individual work by the persons enrolled in the course with texts handed out before the beginning of each session.

14 FEBRUARY
Painting is Mysterious
Selina Blasco

Following Ángel González García’s observation that it is best to paint without having an idea, we ask ourselves: How should we engage with painting? In this session we will try to do so from this idea of not knowing, but situating it elsewhere, in the ignorance of someone who does nothing, who paints nothings. We will ask people who paint, in order to see what it is that we can find out. We already have one answer, and we like it so much that we have chosen it as the title of the session. It bodes well. We are also going to work out some way of building a narration of this exercise in experimentation on the ground, in fieldwork. Painting wants to be engaged with Selina Blasco is a lecturer in History of Art at the School of Fine Art, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

21 FEBRUARY
Contemporary Visual Culture and Drawing. An approach from art practice
Azucena Vieites

Azucena Vieites focuses her practice on graphic processes and techniques of expression, engaging with contemporary visual culture through drawing and silkscreen printing. Multiplicity, fragments and repetition inasmuch as a form of breaking away from the absolute image and linear forms of narration or the ephemeral nature of the artwork are brought to the surface as basic aspects of her production. Taking a few examples from her practice and other works by various artists exploring similar lines of investigation, in this session we will reflect on drawing as a form of representation and insight into our surrounding environs at a specific moment in time.

At the same time, the examples used will be interrelated with some of the issues posed by the German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger; in each one of her films this artist works with the intention of finding a suitable form that has to do with colours, with time, with dramatic structure and with the way of combining the images.

Azucena Vieites is an artist and teacher at the Schools of Fine Art of Madrid and of Salamanca. Among her most noteworthy solo shows are Woollen Body, Carreras Múgica (Bilbao, 2015) and Tableau Vivant, Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2013).

28 FEBRUARY
An Amateur Carpenter
Carlos Granados

I like to think ideas and to do things. To move from the mind to the hand. And from the hand to the mind. From conceptual artist to carpenter. Have art and carpentry anything to do with each other? Duchamp said that you should only travel with a tooth brush, without any baggage. When I studied art, my referents were those kinds of artists, people who worked with ideas. Now I am working with the plane my grandfather used and it makes me think of his job. Suddenly I see myself accumulating, working with wood, making things. I like projects that take a long time. My friend Ángel always says: “Measure twice. Cut once”. I think that sums up a carpenter’s work very well. A painstaking, patient and slow trade. And a job well done.

Carlos Granados is one of the heads of CA2M’s Department of Education.
 

7 MARCH
Silenced Histories, Forgotten Sounds
José Luis Espejo and Andrea Zarza

How do people position themselves in the public space with sound? This question is a pretext to address narratives focused on the work of blacksmiths, bells and sirens, noise barrages, protest rallies, carnivals and rituals that, if they are not different, at least they are parallel to those that structure the history of music and art. Sound, noise, the murmur of an enraged community and the reverberations of work are quasi-archaeological storylines dissenting with those of official historiography. Charivaria, an exhibition curated by José Luis Espejo and Andrea Zarza at CentroCentro Cibeles between October 2017 and January 2018, showcases a series of works that address these learnings, very often handed down orally or by allegories, which have been minimised by academic disciplines. Artists like Grupal Crew Collective, who take the sounds from parties by collectives without a consecrated identity, or Cuidadoras de Sonidos, Rafael SMP and Vivian Caccuri, who give voice to the inhabitants of neighbourhoods destroyed by the advance of modernism, and Xabier Erkizia, whose work with the culture of ox-carts attunes the hearing to a sound displaced by the hegemony of the urban, are all convinced that their works expand our conception of art. Archives, sounds and writings enable us to recover silenced histories and forgotten sounds in order to rethink genealogies of sound art and music. A display of enigmatic contents surprises the visitors and rarefies the gallery space.

Andrea Zarza is an archivist with a BA in Philosophy. She works as a curator in the British Library sound archive. Her record label, Mana Records, which she runs together with Matthew Kent, is dedicated to publishing works on the intersection between contemporary sound and the archive.

José Luis Espejo is a member of the team at Radio Reina Sofía, Mediateletipos and the Master in Music Industry and Sound Studies at Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. He has developed curated projects in Madrid and in Donostia-San Sebastián 2016.
 

14 MARCH
A Call to Sensuality
Elena Alonso

Defending the value of crafts and the fight to prevent them from disappearing is nothing new. In the early twentieth century, artisan practices were viewed as a revolutionary strategy against industrialisation and capitalism, taking a stance against the unstoppable dehumanisation of work and production. By assigning it qualities such as resistance, skill, authenticity, goodness and self-determination, more than one century ago, the idea was to try to slow down the disappearance of making things by hands due to mass production.

Today, with the digital revolution and late-capitalism, we are witnessing a warped revival of these desires and problems. The conflict leads to a call for sensuality which means that crafts are once again referred to as an exploration of “embodied” relationships, materiality, affect, ecology, localism and sentient intelligence. But there are many questions waiting to be answered... Is there anything contemporary about artisan practices? What is their place within the present system? What is their meaning in terms of resistance? What is the life drive that makes us cling to them?

This session will look at examples of contemporary artists and designers whose working processes are closely related with crafts, focusing on the material quality of objects and the affective nature of their production. An approach to Art and Design to think about the meaning of crafts today, the anachronistic or inevitable nature of these practices, and the art market as the realm in which to keep them alive. All these issues could equally respond to the question: Why do artists keep painting and drawing?

Elena Alonso works mainly with drawing, combining it with other disciplines like architecture, crafts and design, paying special attention to affective relationships with the surrounding environs. She has recently had a solo show at Matadero Madrid, Museo ABC and Espacio Valverde.
 

21 MARCH
Do it to yourself and do it to others
Javier Pérez Iglesias and Marta van Tartwijk

Self-publishing has given a voice to many people who felt that they had something to say outside the usual channels. Which explains why there is such a tradition in the use of fanzines among the queer, anarchist, feminist and other communities.
Artists discovered a long time ago that a book could be an artwork and since then we have arrived at an increasingly varied range of publications.

There is a meeting between self-publishing (or alternative publishing) and artistic intentionality that oversteps the boundaries of the conventional book which is the paradigm of libraries and bookshops.

We act in the libraries of two very institutional institutions, the museum and the academy, but endeavouring to boost their porosity, to explore their cracks and to connect with what happens on the street.

Books are not what they used to be… And the same goes for libraries.
Javier Pérez Iglesias is a biblioactivist, talkperformer, reading curator, bad cataloguer and worse classifier
Marta van Tartwijk is, among other things, a part-time artist, vocational librarian, photocopying self-publisher, bibliographic maze engineer, fanzine disorderer and catalyst for literary afternoons.
 

4 APRIL
Sculpture in the Making
June Crespo

This session is conceived to think about the various aspects proper to sculpture, looking at works that engage with sculpture from different media. I am interested in a kind of sculpture in the making, the negotiation between subject and object that takes place during the process, and  what the first contact with it is like. To approach it, walk around it, move away and keep within its magnetic field. From its surface to its body, outline and image.

How does it affect me? What physical resonance does it have in me? From where does it look at me? What movement and choreographies does it instigate? How does it activate the space?
June Crespo lives in Bilbao, where she graduated with a BA in Fine Arts in 2005. She also works and exhibits in other international contexts, focusing her practice on sculpture.
 

11 APRIL
Here there is no place from where we cannot be seen
Rafael Sánchez-Mateos Paniagua

The Prado Museum: the reserve of knowledgeable scholars, of flocks of tourists disappointed at not being able to take selfies with Velázquez, and children who have to be explained that we are the ignorant subjects of high culture. Lost, overpowered or even a little underwhelmed by the artworks of yesteryear and their saints, kings and virgins which makes it difficult to find a people you would want to identify with. One might imagine that everything has already been said, clarified, catalogued and fallen into decline, after having lavished such privileged attention that today could not be anything but anachronistically and complacently legitimising of the context where they have ended up. Despite the artworks, to the extent in which they continue to be accessible to experience, they are radically contemporary with whom they find themselves. They offer themselves to the senses so that each individual can recognise, reflect and refract a new non-prescribed sense. They might even hope to adopt new lives, driven by the memory and imagination they are still capable of exciting in us. Always open to the unforeseen—-individual or collective—experience that is still possible to have, despite all the sacralising context of the museum institution and its security guards, both inside and outside. The important thing is to try to intensify, revitalise and reorganise the space of attention, aisthesis and perception—so overlooked in its material form and so threatened by the modernisation we have undertaken—with the purpose of renewing the experience of art today which is as strange as it is succulent, from the generosity of those who approach something strange and (re)discover themselves when being observed by the very work they contemplate.

Rafael Sánchez-Mateos Paniagua is an artist, teacher and researcher.

More information on actividades.ca2m@madrid.org / (+34) 912 760 227

In recent years the Universidad Popular explored illusionism and magic. With this idea in mind, we are now proposing to follow up our research and take it to the limit, to the fabulous. This year we will work with the idea of the chimera, understood as improbable illusion and also as an impossible being made from different bodies. We have conjured up bodies that multiply, that question the idea of the human and the artist, mixing science and art, like the Quimera Rosa collective; or those that safeguard the chimerical fire, like Fermín Jiménez Landa. We invite anyone interested in thinking about these unexplored ideas and in feeding the monster.

This year we will also be featuring a series of publications which will be available for browsing and consultation in the CA2M library. In addition, just before each session, participants are invited to take part in a shared reading of a book chosen for the occasion.

CA2M organises educational activities on contemporary art and thinking that can be framed within the tradition of community colleges. The courses it offers address 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. But this structure can also change to adapt to more experimental formats depending on the guest at each session.

SESSIONS
 

30 OCTOBER
Quimera Rosa | Trans*Plant: a journey through the chimerical looking glass
 

"We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism;
in short, we are cyborgs."
Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto
 

The material and products for cultivating new symbiotic beings are prepared in a bio-hacklab. While the preparations are taking place, the chimeras take the public on what they call the OncoMouseTM journey, by means of a live commented AV presentation. OncoMouseTM is the first animal created in a lab and then patented. The first cyborg, the first laboratory chimera.

You are invited to a performative and participative bio-art lecture. This commented journey is based on three years of biomedical research in an artistic-scientific setting, on the ethical issues we came across and our investment in self-experimentation, trans-disciplinary approaches and the trans-feminist gaze in art practices.

_ Quimera Rosa is an art collective exploring the body, technology and identity.
 

6 NOVEMBER
Fermín Jiménez Landa | Save from the Fire
 

- What work of art would you save if there was a fire in the Prado Museum?
- The fire
(Response attributed to Jean Cocteau)
 

In this lecture on fire we will talk about a year of local euphoria, carpentry, security guards, falleras mayores, hearths and homes, bonfires and wildfires, Airbnb and afters, rituals of purification and ashes. A commission the artist received to create a falla for the official programme of Valencia’s annual festival was dispersed in infinite parts interrelating folklore, night-time, conceptual art and quick fixes. Humans lit bonfires to cook food and to keep themselves warm but they soon discovered that it also prolonged the light of day, ignoring the rhythm marked by the turning of the planet, altering circadian cycles and creating a perfect time for fables, tall tales and stories.

_ Fermín Jiménez Landa is an artist.
 

13 NOVEMBER
Moon Ribas | The Seismic Sense
 

In this lecture Moon Ribas will talk about the possibilities of hybridising bodies and technology and how these bodies act within art. Moon Ribas will speak about the creation of a seismic sensor and how it allows her to perceive earthquakes anywhere in the world through vibrations in real time. With the purpose of sharing this experience, Ribas translates her new seismic sense to the stage, transposing earthquakes into sounds in Seismic Percussion or into dance in Waiting For Earthquakes.

_ Moon Ribas is a contemporary artist.
 

20 NOVEMBER
Pablo Esbert y Federico Vladimir | How to Engender Your Own Dragon
 

Pablo and Federico give a lecture-concert on dragons and other collectively created creatures. Using speculative fiction as a tool and their own work as artists, they address questions on trans-individuality, the post-human, automation and non-traditional forms of narrating ourselves.

The dragon is a fictional creature that appears in the imaginary of many different societies throughout the course of history. It is a hybrid being that interlaces nature and culture, a cocktail of earthly and fantasy animals. The dragon lives in a fantastic narration in which diverse subjectivities can coexist and interrelate without the usual prejudices underwriting realist narrations. It is a monster that helps us to be critical and creative, to imagine challenging representations of “us”. It is also a fiction in which, similarly to contemporary practice, different artistic disciplines coexist, like a trans-disciplinary hydra with many heads.

The dragon is a creature made up of various individuals whose monstrosity prevents it from being too balanced, too organic or too polished. A being of beings in continuous transformation which aspires to the impossible: to devour its spectators in order to incorporate them.

_ Federico Vladimir Strate Pezdirc and Pablo Esbert Lilienfeld are artists.
 

27 NOVEMBER
Marc Sempere | From Art to Ritual
 

For several years now the artist Marc Sempere Moya has been examining the limits between the individual and the collective. Here he is proposing a circular performative lecture in which we can explore the possibilities of rituals today in both theory and practice.

We will discover some of his works, his recent theoretical investigations and his performative projects.

We live in a world in which rituals barely exist anymore, and in which everything is pure representation. Is there any possibility of recovering a world that lives in common? Of recovering a "relational identity"? Of living in a chimera?

_ Marc Sempere Sempere is a multifaceted artist who works, researches and popularises relationships between the oral tradition and free culture through music, performance, theatre, film... and paellas!

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Anyone interested in art today.
 

No prior knowledge necessary.
 

More information: actividades.ca2m@madrid.org / 912 760 227

LABORAL CENTRO DE ARTE Y CREACIÓN INDUSTRIAL AND CA2M CENTRO DE ARTE DOS DE MAYO COPRODUCTION

The exhibition AUTO. road and movies complete the programming of Sueño y materia -dream and material- proposing an approximation to some of the aspects of the film and automobile. The films that compose the cycle, rather than trying to make an overview from the film gender, compose an individual propose of analysis that finds in its complement and global context within the exhibition. If the show reflects on the automobile culture from an art perspective from the latest years, and does it from the consideration of the car as the greatest exponent of a productive and technologic period that already perceive other social and industrial realities. This cycle allows casting a retrospective glace that illustrates complementary aspects of the show..

The cycle is composed by several European and Northamerican productions which a faithful reflexion of the way both continents represent the automobil. In the States, the great and fast adaptability of the film productions easily integrate  automobile as well as unfold  the fast development of a subgender as it is the road movie. The road, search for freedom, escape, speed and persecutions become common elements and codes in many films. On the contrary, the European cinematographic glace is considerable more critic and scentic about automobile and culture. It is not common within the United States culture a movie that critically reflects on the problems derivated from the automobile. On the contrary, in Europe, automobile is the sintome and the sign of unadecuated evolution of our society: alienation, violence, urban problems and deshumanification. The critic to the automobile culture takes here the demonstration of a disagreement that embraces the whole society. Alongside the proper cinematographic productions, CA2M presents other road movies with a more experimental or enssayist character, showing as well other aspects as the extension and adaptability of the proper road movie concept as a construction mechanism. Works as Sophie Calle or Chip Lord acquire greater relevance in aspects such as autobiography, identitarian or culture.

Alberto Martín
Curator of the exhibition Auto. Dream and materia

FR 23 OCT 20:30 H.
Weekend. Jean-Luc Godard. 1967, V.O.S., French 105 min.

A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer reoccupations. A car trip by road will be full of unexpected contingences, gestions, accidents and eccentric characters.
 

Fri  30 OCT 20:30 H.
Night on Earth. Jim Jarmusch. 1991, V.O.S., English. 129 min.

A collection of five vignettes taking place during the same night, concerning the temporary bond formed between taxi driver and passenger in five cities: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki. Cada historia trata sobre la relación que entabla un taxista local y sus pasajeros. Journeys where occur diverse events ranging from comic to dramatic..

FR 6 NOV 20:30 H.
Trafic. Jacques Tati. 1971, V.O.S. French. 96 min.

Mr. Hulot is a bumbling automobile designer who works for Altra, a Paris auto plant. He, along with a truck driver and a publicity agent (Maria Kimberly), take a new camper-car (designed by Hulot) to an auto Fair in Amsterdam. On the way there, they encounter various obstacles on the road. Some of the obstacles that Hulot and his companions encounter are getting impounded by Dutch customs guards, a car accident (meticulously choreographed by the filmmakers), and an inefficient mechanic. In the film, “Tati leaves no element of the auto scene unexplored, whether it is the after-battle recovery moments of a traffic-circle chain-reaction accident, whether it a study of drivers in repose or garage-attendants in slow-motion, the gas-station give-away (where the busts of historical figures seem to find their appropriate owners) or the police station bureaucracy.”

FRI 13 NOV 20:30 H.
Paris, Texas. Wim Wenders. 1984, V.O.S. English 147 min.

An amnesiac man who, after mysteriously wandering out of the Mojave Desert, attempts to re-assimilate his life with his brother, his seven year old son, as well as track down his former wife.

FRI 27 NOV 20:30 H.
No Sex last night (Double-Blind). Sophie Calle. 1992, V.O.S. English 75 min.

In this road movie, Sophie Calle and Gregory Shepard account their road trip across the States.   Both hide behind their cameras as they make the mythical journey westward from New York to California in Greg's troubling convertible. The couple stops in a Las Vegas Drive-Thru wedding chapel and decide to get married, in order to save their shaky relationship, with their cameras recording everything. A road movie fraught with places that the protagonists take distance from. The third character, the car, actively participates during the complete shooting of the film, touting the trip despite being the habitual habitat of Sophie and Greg. Homemade shots with apparently thoughtless shots, reflections on the human condition and on the couple with a exquisite editing which makes such an estrange and active film.

FRI 4 DIC 20:30 H.
Motorist. Chip Lord. 1989, V.O.S. English. 70 min.

El automóvil como icono norteamericano es un tema que siempre ha fascinado a Chip Lord. A "road video" homage to the car culture of the 1950s and '60s. MOTORIST follows the driver of a 1962 Thunderbird as he crosses the Southwest and arrives into Los Angeles, all the while commenting on the road and his personal history with cars. Richard Marcus plays the motorist with a nervous intensity that captures the "white line fever" of a cross-country road trip.

 FRI 11 DIC 20:30 H.
The Devil on Wheels Duel. Steven Spielberg. 1971, V.O.S. English 90 min.

The devil on wheels is one of the greatest representative films where the vehicule become a threat. Indeed, the threat reaches a methaphoric character, an atmosphore of nighmares that refers and affects nature and the surviving instinte of the protagonist, a commercial agent that drives his car and is besieged my a truck. The car is shotted emphasizing its agressive and almost monstrious character, where the truck driver is no the one frightening, but the truck itself.  This humanization of the truck provoques that we get to see it endowed by instinct and will.

FRI 18 DIC 20:30 H.
Little Miss Sunshine. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, 2006, V.O.S., English 101 min.

The Hoover is quite a conflict family: Sheryl Hoover is an overworked mother of two children who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her brother Frank is a gay scholar of French author Marcel Proust, temporarily living at home with the family after a suicide attempt. Her husband Richard is striving to build a career as a motivational speaker and life coach. Dwayne, Sheryl's son from a previous marriage, is an unhappy teenager who has taken a vow of silence until he can accomplish his dream of getting into the US Air Force Academy in order to become a test pilot. Richard's foul-mouthed father, Edwin, a World War II veteran recently evicted from a retirement home for using and selling heroin, lives with the family. He is close with his seven-year-old granddaughter, Olive.

Free entry

FR 20 FEB "Om Shanti Om" Farah Khan
SAT 21 FEB "Parineeta" Pradeep Sarkar

CA2M brings a view to the popular India by screening two films. Two productions in the purest Bollywood style reflecting the Indian film industry with its plots.

This activity is parallel to the opening of ARCO, being India the guest country and the exhibition Cultura popular India and Mas Allá. The (emerging) schism never stated at sala Alcalá 31 of the Regional Government of Madrid, CA2M offers a vision of the popular India from films.

PROGRAMME

FEB FR 20. Om Shanti Om, de Farah Khan

India - 2007 - 35 mm, 168 min. Director: Farah Khan
Script: Farah Khan.
Music: Vishal Dadlani, Shekhar Ravjiani, Pyarelal Ramprasad, Sharma.
Production: Red Chillies Entertainment.
Actors: Shahrukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Arjun Rampal, Shreyas
Talpade, Satish Shah, Kirron Kher.

The purest magic and color from Bollywood brought to us by Farah Khan. The film maker, deeply known by her talent as choreograph, presents her second movie, protagonized by the Bollywood star, Shah Rukh Khan, and new signing, Deepika Padukone, Om Shanti Om is a hommage to the golden age from the Bollywood, with a plot starting in the 70.

Om Prakash, , a two-bit actor, meets a Bollywood film star with whom he is in love. Unfortunaly,  they are not  destiny to live their love in that life, Om dies in a fray. The story comes back to present, where Om Prakash reincarnates in Om Kappor, the superstar from Bollywood 2007. This film looks back at the popular Indian films with a relentless flow of visual resourses, where the greatest stars from Bollywood have cameos with the birthday of the protagonist.

Auditorium
Free entry

FEB 21 SAT. Parineeta, de Pradeep Sarkar.
Director Pradeep Sarkar. India, color, 35mm. 130 min.
Script: Vidhu Vinod Chopra.
Production: Vidhu Vinod Chopra.
Music: Shantanu Moitra. Letra: Swanand Kirkire.
Actors: Raima Sen, Saif Ali Khan, Sanjay Dutt, Vidya Bala.

This film is based on a literary classic, at least with contact points. The film maker knows that he has in hand a subject with legions of viewers. At the same time, he has the challenge of distilling emotions written on the screen with virtuosity. Pradeep Sarkar is successful. And how! He has taken the liberty of passing the scene of his debut film Parineeta, by the writer Saratchandra Chatterjee (author of Devdas) of Calcutta from 1913 to the vibrant and sultry Calcutta from 1962. But beyond the challenge of deploying the classic pages with vivid images on the screen, without subtracting one iota of emotional subtlety to the story and its characters. Shekhar (Saif Ali Khan's idol), son of a wealthy businessman, and Lolita (Vidya Balan radiant), an orphan who lives with the family of his uncle, are neighbors and childhood friends who do not recognize the intense love that binds them together, until a  London manager arrives and creates a love triangle. A refreshing return to the romanticism of the past, Parineeta is a wild and irresistible ride in the purest Bollywood style.

Auditorium
Free entry

Film, video, music and other delights… During the weekend, it will take place at CA2M in a relaxing atmosphere, different contemporary representations of moving images and sounds: four video screenings, three concerts and a  film screening accompanied by  venues for encounters.

PROGRAMMING

FR 20
20:00: Wine party to start awaking our senses at CA2M hall.
20:30 h: OFFMÓSTOLES09 presentation.

PROGRAM 1. CA2M Auditorium

21:30 h: y para cerrar el primer día OFF, el estreno de La Zona, concierto de Tadeo

SAB 21

• 13:00 h: un buen momento para tomarse un aperitivo en nuestra terraza y comenzar el día.
• 13:30 h: concierto: Pierre Bastien. Terraza del CA2M
• 14:30 h: picoteo y charla al sol de noviembre en la terraza
• 16:00 h: PROGRAMA 2. Salón de Actos

Durante toda la tarde, tés, cafés y pastas en torno a los que poder hablar… para que no se enfríe el ambiente

• 17:30 h: PROGRAMA 3. Salón de Actos
• 19:00 h: Les plages d’Agnès, Agnès Varda. Salón de Actos

DOM 22

• 13:00 h: despiértate el domingo al sol de nuestra terraza.
• 13:30 h: concierto de Kammerflimmer Kollektief. Terraza del CA2M.
• 14:30 h: picoteo y charla al sol de noviembre
• 16:00 h: PROGRAMA 4. Salón de Actos

INFORMACIÓN COMPLEMENTARIA

Los cuatro programas de cortos presentan un variado conjunto de la creación reciente en vídeo. Los programas 1 y 3 han sido comisariados por el CA2M y recogen algunas creaciones exhibidas durante los últimos años en festivales y exposiciones internacionales. A pesar de que estos programas no responden a un planteamiento temático, las piezas que se presentan comparten muchos puntos de conexión, tanto en los asuntos tratados como en los aspectos formales, quizás por que sean reflejo de las pre ocupaciones que ocupan a la mayoría de artistas representados, todos ellos nacidos después de la década de los 70.

El fin de semana contará también con un programa comisariado por el colectivo madrileño Playtime audiovisuales (programa 2) que recoge algu nas de las últimas producciones nacionales que se encuentran en la periferia del cine comercial; producciones de autor con marcado carácter independiente que están a camino entre el documental, la ficción y la videocreación. Este programa recoge una sele cción de artistas españoles emergentes que con sus obras intentan romper fronteras entre formatos, soportes y también espacios de exhibición. Y cerraremos el fin de semana con un programa temático de corte más experimental comisariado por Xavier García B aldón: El paisaje del hombre en el que se suceden paisajes reales y soñados, utópicos y apocalípticos, desiertos o habitados, primitivos, mediáticos, naturales o humanos. El arte del paisaje en nueve filmes y vídeos recientes, entre postales mandados des de la prehistoria, cuadros de otros mundos, escenas humanas y visiones de videojuegos.

Asimismo se presentará por primera vez en Madrid la última película de la gran dama del cine de autor francés Agnès Varda "Les Plages d'Agnès".

La parte musical del fin de semana la completan tres conciertos que nos acercan a la magia del directo desde posiciones muy diversas: la electrónica como acompañamiento sonoro del cine, la mecánica aplicada a la creación musical y una aproximación al jazz desde una óptica nada ortodoxa… de la mano de Tadeo, Pierre Bastien y Kammerflimmer Kollektief respectivamente. Todo ello acompañado de picoteo, bebida y espacios para la charla y el encuentro.

ARTISTAS: Peggy Ahwesh, Pierre Bastien, Alex Brendemühl, Carlos Casas, Luis Cerveró, Chris Chong Chan Fui, Anouk de Clercq, Aitor Equeverría, Félix Fernández, Fernando Franco, Beatrice Gibson, Stephen Gray, John Hey, Kammerflimmerkollektief, Pablo Lamar, Adam Leech, Vicent Meessen, Michael Morley, Jacco Olivier, Pedro Ortuño, Manuel Padding, Enrique Piñuel, Elodie Pong, Michael Robinson, Rogelio Sastre, Tadeo, Mike Tamney, Agnés Varda, César Velasco Broca.

Free entry