Activities

This series shows the films of Marcel Broodthaers as a sum of contradictions from which to understand his work as a whole, and develops the reasons for the medium’s privileged place, its investigation and filmic imaginary in contemporary art after 1970.

Museo Reina Sofía presents 20 Dancers for the XX Century by the French choreographer and incumbent director of the Musée de la danse, Boris Charmatz. The piece will feature the participation of twenty dancers and performers and will be executed across different gallery spaces housing the Museo’s Collection.

Museo Reina Sofía is holding an event in memory of Elena Asins (1940–2015), on the one-year anniversary of her death. The activity aims to look back at the uniqueness of an artist dedicated to exploring an abstract language which radically differed from the sensible world, and also acknowledges a broader generation of historians, theorists, poets and artists committed to investigating the limits and potential of abstraction in Spain in the 1960s and 1970s. 

Museo Reina Sofía will hold an encounter with Boris Charmatz, the French choreographer and incumbent director of Musée de la danse, in conjunction with the presentation of his piece 20 Dancers for the XX Century. Engaging in dialogue with João Fernandes, deputy director of Museo Reina Sofía, Charmatz will analyse the relationship between dance and contemporary art, along with the idea of the museum as a living institution which includes dance creation.

The dancer Toni Jodar, a representative of contemporary dance in Catalonia, puts forward this “dancing” lecture, in which he explains the history of dance, illustrated with his own body, across the 20^th century.

Museo Reina Sofía once again welcomes the annual Acción!MAD, International Action Art Encounters, to take place in Madrid across different venues throughout November.

In conjunction with the XVI Madrid Science Week, the Museo Reina Sofía is joined by the IPCE, Spain’s Cultural Heritage Institute, to organise within its programme of activities the following technical encounter: The Surrealist Object. Anoxia, Display Cases and Chocolate.

Throughout her career as a performer and composer, Joan La Barbara, a hugely influential figure in the sphere of contemporary experimental music, has explored the human voice as a multi-faceted instrument, developing a true and signature vocabulary of experimental techniques. She uses these techniques to explore the potential range of timbres in a single pitch, circular breathing inspired by French horn playing, and multiphonics, in addition to recovering classics such as choral singing.

The second activity in the programme Documentos, which revolves around themes related to the Museo Reina Sofía Documentation Centre, is Zines of the Zone: a “nomadic library” bringing together some 1,500 fanzines, photobooks and self-edited photo-zines which all share the use of photography.

Within the framework of the programme Intervalos, Museo Reina Sofía screens Political Advertisement IX 1952–2016, an audiovisual project by artists Antoni Muntadas and Marshall Reese, to be shown in the run-up to the U.S. presidential elections.

The Museo Reina Sofía hosts the opening session of Starting from Peter Weiss, organised by the Centro de Documentación Crítica (Critical Documentation Centre) to commemorate the centenary of the German dramatist’s birth. 

This master lecture, in conjunction with the seminar Dance, Gender and Nation: 1930–1960, is given by Mahalia Lassibille, head professor of the Department of Dance at the University of Paris 8 and an anthropologist specialised in Africa. Lassibille has focused her research on the uses of dance categories, particularly “traditional African dance” and “contemporary African dance”, and their choreographic effects.

Within the framework of the retrospective Txomin Badiola. Another Family Plot (until 26 February, 2017), held in the Museo Reina Sofía, this round-table discussion brings together a series of artists for whom formalism is articulated with a double meaning: gliding or camouflage.

The programme Documentos, which revolves around themes related to the Museo Reina Sofía Documentation Centre, presents its first activity: Art, Words and Memory in the Texts of Gómez de Liaño, a round-table discussion which looks at the output of Ignacio Gómez de Liaño.

Museo Reina Sofía presents, in collaboration with Filmoteca Española, a comprehensive retrospective on the film-makers Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. The series, comprising works spanning from 1962 to the present day, reflects one of the most cohesive and relevant film projects in the 20^th century, whereby cinema is both an artistic form and a way of politically bursting forth in the present. Engaging in dialogue with Jean-Marie Straub, the series includes new translations of the vast majority of the films, original format screenings, remastered copies, a significant number of premieres in Spain, and a new publication featuring essays on the film-makers.       

Marcel Broodthaers (Brussels, 1924 - Cologne, 1976) is a key figure of contemporary art, and a reference point and driving force in many current discourses and practices. Following his initial work as a poet, journalist and photographer, in 1964 Broodthaers decided to become a visual artist, and from that moment on concerns with providing a response to the basic questions posed by visual arts can be discerned as he interrogated the idea of representation and the production of meaning through the use of existing knowledge systems. In this round-table discussion Christophe Cherix, Jean-François Chevrier, Dirk Snauwaert and Manuel Borja-Villel will debate the different readings around the founder of the fictional museum.

Dance, gender and nation, three closely bound concepts within the context of contemporary Western culture, and the thematic cornerstones of this seminar. The focal point is the period spanning the second third of the 20^th century - a period of upheaval in the aftermath of the economic crisis of 1929 and the rise of the totalitarianism that would trigger the outbreak of the Second World War shortly afterwards.

Inside the framework of the 2015-2016 Research Residencies, the playwright, stage director, writer and visual artist Javier Montero puts forward a project of critical research and collective production regarding the different forms of creativity, and the role they play in producing new subjectivities.

The Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Conservation-Restoration, the Geosciences Institute (CSIC-UCM), and the YOCOCU (YOuth in COnservation of CUltural Heritage) association have organized the fifth edition of the International Conference on Youth in Conservation of Cultural Heritage, celebrated from 21 to 23 September at the auditoriums of Nouvel Building.

This seminar analyses the role of Ulises Carrión (Mexico, 1941 - Holland, 1989) in conceiving new strategies to disseminate and distribute art from the mid-seventies, and the emphasis he placed on reinventing the uses, forms and appearances of the book as a device for action. 

The Interventions by Bob Jessop and Ngai-Ling Sum will analyse two interrelated problems. On one side, the production processes of hegemony in the current crisis scenario by the new social blocs emerging in Europe, and on the other, the cultural political economy related to current debates on the civilising change the human species is currently undergoing.

The Intervalos (Intermissions) programme, which shows screenings of recent film work, presents a preview of Andrés Duque’s latest movie, Oleg and Strange Arts. The film moves between biography and performance, bearing witness, through moments in the life of Russian composer Oleg Karavaychuk (1927–2016), to the return of beauty that is at once eccentric, fragile and pathological.

The international conference Cold Atlantic will examine the artistic, cultural and aesthetic exchanges produced between the USA, Europe, Africa and Latin America during the Cold War. The aim is to highlight the axes of alignment and artistic exchange between the geopolitically minor actors that were trapped inside the huge theatrical strategy from this period.

The open-air cinema is closely linked to summer holidays: a space and time where the working class is freed from work obligations and where the chance for enjoyment and leisure presents itself. This series, screened on the outdoor terraces of the Museo, offers a journey through the history of the medium, focusing on its relationship with the conception of holidaying, leisure, travel and tourism, through which a whole range of ideas and questions that surface at this intersection are analysed.

J. M. Coetzee is regarded as a writer of ideas. His literary work bears a distinctly philosophical imprint that is often woven around allegory, yet his stark, analytical view of racial conflict in South Africa, his country of origin, has not stood in the way of a broader horizon and an interest in other universally ethical and pressing causes, for instance the suffering and exploitation of animals, conceived as fragile and dispossessed beings, an issue which takes prominence in his intervention in the Museo.

Museo Reina Sofía presents this retrospective film-program dedicated to Cuban documentary movement around the Revolution, an Avant-garde episode in Latin America usually ignored. Together with the impulse to show a new reality and rethink the public function of the image, the documentary in Cuba merges the factual record with the aesthetics of shock and agitation of the montage, producing a unique visual manifesto.

Blank Paper Escuela puts forward BookJockey, an experimental format with which to show and enjoy photobooks. It involves a DJ session with contemporary photographic books, displaying and mixing materials to create a narrative which prompts the audience to perceive them differently.