Poetic Rebellion for Climate
Film Letters for Voces del Extremo
Free, until full capacity is reached
From 10am to 9pm
On 6 April 2022, in response to the current environmental crisis, the Scientist Rebellion collective convened scientists at the doors of Spain’s Congress in Madrid to carry out an awareness-raising act based on non-violent civil disobedience. As a form of intimidation and to criminalise these protests, fifteen people from the collective were charged and currently await trial. Two years on from that action, Poetic Rebellion for Climate. Film Letters for Voces del Extremo is held, a day organised in support of Scientific Rebellion and the ecologism movements that are criminalised for their activism. The programme unfolds inside the framework of the Film Practices Seminar from Connective Tissue, the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme.
Through poetry, the moving image and debate, the programme looks to expand social awareness and promote civic commitment in support of robust, effective and urgent measures for the eco-social crisis we are currently facing. The scheduled activities are laid out according to the four laws of ecology formulated by Barry Commoner, a North American biologist and activist:
⦁ Everything is related to everything else
⦁ Everything must go somewhere
⦁ Nature knows best
⦁ Nothing comes from nothing
Adhering to these premises, and in relation to the ideas Italian philosopher Franco “Bifo” Berardi expounds in his recent book Breathing: Chaos and Poetry (Semiotext(e), 2019), the day’s activities are conceived as a session of poetic therapy in which poetry is capable of slowing the breathing of the attendees and thus, as Bifo underlines, decelerating the frenetic rhythm that is putting a strain on Planet Earth. At the same time, moreover, the programme is configured around a poetic call to members of Congress to activate governmental measures around the current climate emergency.
The programme is structured in three parts corresponding to the three strands of the Film Practices Seminar: a poetry reading, a film exchange and a discussion. Proceedings get under way with readings by more than thirty poets in the Sabatini Building Garden. The second part takes place late afternoon/early evening with the screening of Se agota el tiempo (Time Is Running Out) by Isaías Griñolo, four film letters made on the basis of Commoner’s laws and addressed to eight poets — Enrique Falcón, Alicia Es. Martínez Juan, Isabel Martín, Antonio Orihuela, Eladio Orta, Ana Pérez Cañamares, Isabel Pérez Montalbán and Jorge Riechmann – who will all participate with poetry readings. The day concludes with a lecture by Franco “Bifo” Berardi on the urgent relationship between poetry and world, and a discussion featuring the participation of Germán Labrador Méndez.
Participants
Franco “Bifo” Berardi is a writer, philosopher, activist and cultural agitator. He studied Aesthetics at the Università di Bologna and trained with Félix Guattari. Central to his career has been the Autonomia Operaia (Workers’ Autonomy) movement in the 1970s. At present he lectures in the Social History of the Media at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (Milan). His theoretical output is coupled with his media activism, an endeavour he began in the 1970s with the founding of the journal A/Traverso and Radio Alice, and continued in 2002 with TV ORFEO. His essays, published in numerous countries, most notably include La fábrica de la infelicidad (The Factory of Unhappiness, Traficantes de sueños, 2003), The Uprising (Semiotext(e), 2012), After the Future (AK Press, 2016), And: Phenomenology of the End (Semiotext(e), 2017), Breathing: Chaos and Poetry (Semiotext(e), 2019), and Medio siglo contra el trabajo (Half a Century Against Work, Traficantes de sueños, 2023).
Isaías Griñolo is a visual artist, camera operator, researcher and curator who studied the UNIA arteypensamiento programme at the International University of Andalusia. He is a member of the Platform of Reflection on Cultural Policies, and works in interconnected projects from his immediate environment to, from art, tackle issues and antagonistic practices via relations of memory, ecology, economy, flamenco and poetry. His works most notably include MEP for the Potosí Principle (Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid) and historia_contemporánea (contemporary_history), a project which, as a poetic-documentary frieze, has been presented in Flares in the Darkroom (Secession, Vienna), L`Art de la Rèvolte (Centre Pompidou, Paris) and Communicating Vessels (Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid).
Enrique Falcón is a poet associated with critical literary and socially committed practices (poetry of consciousness, conflict writing, activist literature, critical realism) inside the current landscape of Spanish poetry. He is a professor of Vocational Training and holds a degree in Spanish Literature from Universitat de València, as well as being a member of the Ignacio Ellacuría Christian Life Community and the Claver Marginalisation Volunteers in Valencia. Moreover, he is an objector to the army and non-military national service benefits and a fiscal objector to military expenditure. His poetry books most notably include La marcha de 150.000.000 (Editorial Delirio), a poem assembled from 1992 to 2017 and published in successive editions, exploring the footprints of poets who have made the poem an instrument for the critical knowledge of reality. His latest published poetry collection is Sílithus (La Oveja Roja, 2020).
Germán Labrador is a lecturer at Princeton University and an expert in Iberian Cultural Studies. He has also been director of the Museo Reina Sofía’s Public Activities Department, where he currently coordinates Connective Tissue, the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme of Critical Museology, Artistic Practices of Research and Cultural Studies from its Study Centre.
Alicia Es. Martínez Juan is a poet and also many women and none. A survivor, mercenary and pirate, so they say. After twenty years as a journalist she has been left high and dry by a now non-existent profession and devotes her time to agitating Toledo’s poetry scene. Her poetic voice is primarily oral and uttered in the public square, on stage and in bits. Her poetry collections include En casa, caracol, tienes la tumba (Gato Encerrado, 2016), No se le miran las bragas a la muerte (Cantos de Des) (Celya, 2013) and Corazones de Manzana (Cocó, 2011), and her poems have been published in numerous anthologies and translated into Arabic, French and Portuguese. She founded the association El Dorado A.C., through which she directs the Voix Vives International Poetry Festival, from Mediterráneo en Mediterráneo in Toledo.
Isabel Martín is a poet. Since 2000, her poem Lo normal has been part of the Carol Iglesias Espazioa room at Itsasmuseum in Bilbao. In 2021, she wrote the pedagogical guide Cómo hacer letrillas for La aventura de aprender (Spain’s Ministry of Education) and published her second poetry collection, entitled Una cosa es una cosa y otra cosa es otra cosa (Fortiori Editorial). In March 2022, the video-poem Moraicas, with images and editing by Julio Albarrán, won the Video-poems #POEX22 Cultura Gijón Competition and at the end of the same year she carried out an artist’s residency at La Laboral Art Centre in Gijón with the project Letrillas para otro habitar.
Antonio Orihuela is a poet, essayist and columnist, a PhD holder from the University of Seville, archaeologist of the present and out-of-time writer of liberal modernity. Since 1999, he has directed and co-coordinated the Voces del Extremo encounters at the Juan Ramón Jiménez Foundation and at the Peña de Cante Jondo de Moguer. His work has been part of the poetry of consciousness or critique movement since the early 1990s, and he has published, among other books, Piedra corazón del mundo (Editorial Germanía, 2001), La ciudad de las croquetas congeladas (Baile del Sol, 2006) and Todo caerá (Editorial Atemporia, 2008). He has also published the essays La Voz Común: una poética para reocupar la vida (Tierradenadie ediciones, 2004) and Libro de tesoros (Fundación Caja Rural del Sur, 2007). In the historical research medium, he has also published Moguer 1936 (La Oveja Roja, 2013).
Eladio Orta is a poet. He works in alternative movements (cultural, ecological, pacifist) and has published the following works: Resistencia por estética (Wancuelen, 1988), Berenjenas pa los pavos (El árbol espiral, 2003), Sincronía del solejero (Fundación El Monte, 2004), Vacío tácito (Centro de Ediciones de la Diputación de Málaga, 2007), Traductor del médium (Ediciones Idea, 2007), Tierrafirmista (Cacúa editorial, 2009), Cangrejo violinista (Germania, 2011), De garzas y otros pájaros (Niebla Editorial, 2015), 45 poemas tontos and 8 latigazos (Amargod, 2016) and Escarabajo pelotero (Marisma, 2019).
Ana Pérez Cañamares is a poet, storyteller and radical feminist who holds a degree in Hispanic Studies from the Complutense University of Madrid. She has written poems from an early age, participating assiduously in poetry recitals and festivals, her poems and stories are part of numerous anthologies. Her books most notably include: La alambrada de mi boca (Baile del Sol, 2007), En días idénticos a nubes (Baile del Sol, 2009), Alfabeto de cicatrices (Baile del Sol, 2010), Entre paréntesis (Casi cien haikus) (La Baragaña, 2012) Las sumas y los restos (Devenir, 2013), Economía de guerra (Ediciones Lupercalia, 2014), De regreso a nosotros (Ya lo dijo Casimiro Parker, 2016), Ley de conservación del momento (La isla de Sistolá, 2016), Querida hija imperfecta (Ya lo dijo Casimiro Parker, 2019), La senda del cimarrón (Ya lo dijo Casimiro Parker, 2020) and Fricción (Bartleby Editores, 2022).
Isabel Pérez Montalbán is a poet. She has published, among other books, Puente levadizo (Diputación Provincial de Albacete, 1996), Fuegos japoneses en la bahía (Miguel Gómez Ediciones, 1996), Cartas de amor de un comunista (Insensata, 1999), Los muertos nómadas (Diputación Provincial de Soria, 2001), La autonomía térmica de los pingüinos (Rafael Inglada, 2005), Siberia propia (Bartleby Editores, 2007), El frío proletario (Visor, 2019) and Vikinga (Visor, 2020). Her poems have been part of numerous anthologies and public collections, for instance Feroces: radicales, marginales y heterodoxos en la última poesía española (Isla Correyero, 1998), Voces del Extremo (Amargord, 2013) and Once poetas críticos en la poesía española reciente (Baile del Sol, 2007).
Jorge Riechmann is a poet, literary translator and head professor in Moral Philosophy at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He conducts research into socio-ecological issues at the Union Institute of Work, Environment and Health (ISTAS). Notable among his poetry works are the collections El día que dejé de leer “El País” (Hiperión, 1997), Muro con inscripciones (DVD, 2000), Desandar lo andado (Hiperión, 2001), Un zumbido cercano (Calambur, 2003), Anciano ya y nonato todavía (El Baile del Sol, 2004), Conversaciones entre alquimistas (Tusquets, 2007) and Mudanza del isonauta (Tusquets, 2020), and published essays such as Ni tribunos. Ideas y materiales para un programa ecosocialista (Siglo xxi, Madrid 1996), Necesitar, desear, vivir (Los Libros de la Catarata, 1998), Cuidar la T(t)ierra (Icaria, 2003) Biomímesis (Los Libros de la Catarata, 2006), Ecosocialismo descalzo (Icaria, 2018), Fracasar mejor (Olifante, 2013). He has been prosecuted for the non-violent action of Scientist Rebellion.
Programme
By:
Ana Deacracia, Ángel Calle, Ángela Martínez Fernández, Anión (Antonio Márquez Avilés), Antonio Crespo Massieu, Aurora Vélez, Balbina Miño-Gómez, Bernardo Santos, Camino Benedicto Schoemer, Carmen Blanco, Carmen Madorrán Ayerra, Celia Bsoul, Claudio Rodríguez Fer, Concha Mateos, Daniel Macías Díaz, David Trashumante, Eladio Méndez, Enrique Fuenteblanca, Fernando Barbero Carrasco , Ferrán Fernández, Francesca Patano, Francisco Marín Campos, Gsús Bonilla, Iris Almenara, Javi Triana (Javier María Morales Tudela), Javier Sánchez Durán, José Ferreras, José León Acosta Carrillo, Julio Mas Alcaraz, Laura de la Fuente, Lola Callejón, Lourdes Vicente Bertolín, Maite Soler, María Ángeles Pérez López, Montserrat Villar González, Pedro Sáez Serrano, Ramón del Buey Cañas, Sara Prida Vega, Selena Millares, T.S. Hidalg y Vanessa Basurto.
Spain, 2024, colour, original version without dialogue, HD, 14’