Lecture by Douglas Kahn and listening session with Peter Blamey. Energy, Art and Sound

"Sea Orbit Operation", U.S. Navy, 1964. Photo: NNAM

Douglas Kahn, a pioneer in Sound Studies, that analyse the presence of sound and music in the arts, presents his explorations into the relationship between energy, art and sound in the Museo Reina Sofía by way of a lecture accompanied by a listening session centred on Five Fertile Exchanges, by Australian artist Peter Blamey, the subject of a chapter in Kahn’s latest book. The piece was produced in October 2016 in Bogong village in the Victorian Alps in Australia and concentrates a large part of the hydroelectric production of the Kiewa region. Outside this mass production, Blamey’s work explores the responsiveness of certain devices used to extract energy from the natural environment — tiny amplifiers powered with solar panels, basic turbines, etc. – and their ability to grant us different sound experiences through their various reactions with environmental factors.

Dates: Wednesday, 27 June 2018
Hour: 7:30pm
Location: Sabatini Building, Auditorium
Organized by: Museo Reina Sofía
Language: English, with simultaneous interpretation
Admission: Free, until full capacity is reached

Lecture and Workshop. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Yayo Herrero. Raciality and Care in the Dispute Over Other Lives

Protest of Black Lives Matter in Washington on November 10, 2015. Photograph: Johnny Silvercloud

This third session in the series Six Contradictions and the End of the Present is centred on Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, activist and African American theorist, and Yayo Herrero, anthropologist, technical engineer, social educator and ecofeminist. These sessions will reflect on racial difference and care as a point of departure for contemplating a more just and equal society, putting forward a life which is possible outside ideas of production and economic value.

Dates: 27 and 29 June, 2018
Hour: 7pm and 6pm (check programme)
Location: Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200 and Protocol Room
Organized by: Museo Reina Sofía and The Commons Foundation
Language: English, with simultaneous interpretation
Admission: Free, until full capacity is reached
Activity included in the programme: Six Contradictions and the End of the Present

Round tables, performances and screenings. A Possible Strength: Towards a Poietics of Living Together

Ajoblanco nº5. Extra Antipsiquiatría. Hacia la salud mental (Ajoblanco nº5. Extra Anti-psychiatry. Towards mental health), 1978. Images cortesy of Ajoblanco

A possible strength: towards a “poietics” of living together brings together artists, theorists, and activists, in order to share experiences on a number of care networks, non-governmental and communal forms of organization, situated knowledge and ways of life that, after the anti-psychiatric movements of the 1970s, operate as an alternative to medical devices against unwellness, inasmuch as techniques for the repression of subjectivity, desires, and pleasures that do not adhere to what is considered normal.

Beginning with activities of varied formats (round table discussions, conferences, screenings, performances, and reading sessions), the program also wants the truth from every damaged body, its suffering, and the vulnerability it causes, to become visible to the public eye, as a personal and collective euphoria.

This program is complemented by the A Possible Strength Reading group, that during June and July will work with texts related to the group’s principal theses.

Dates: From June 28 to July 6, 2018
Hour: (check programme)
Location: Nouvel Building, Protocol Room and Sabatini Buiding, Auditorium
Organized by: Museo Reina Sofía, as part of the Midstream. New ways of audience development in contemporary art project
Program organizer: Alfredo Aracil
Related activity: A Possible Strength: Towards a Poietics of Living Together Reading group
Admission: Free, until full capacity is reached