Multimedia

The Poetics of Democracy: Images and Counter-Images from the Spanish Transition originates from research undertaken in 2008 by the Museo Reina Sofía’s Department of Collections, the objective being to vindicate the artistic experiences excluded from the institutional discourses of the history of Spanish art of the 1970s. In this video, Manuel Borja-Villel (director of the Museum) and Rosario Peiró (Head of Collections) explain this research process —which was carried out over a decade— to recall a period when, alongside civil demands for democratic liberties, social justice, and self-government, there arose a new aesthetic linked to innovative cultural practices that sought to subvert the order of Franco’s regime and the institutional schemes attempting to inherit it.

This show explores the contribution of foreign artists who, after the Second World War, were working in Paris, a city which still preserved a certain aura surrounding its mythical modern embodiment as a “City of Light” in the 19th century. The broad collective exhibition reflects the vitality and vivacity of the art scene in all its complexity, displaying the different creative trends which took hold in the city inside and outside the School of Paris at a time of fervent political debate, held to the backdrop of the new global stage opened by the Cold War. From a broad array of artistic fields — from painting and sculpture to jazz, literature and film — foreign artists dealt with mounting tension by bringing their approaches and hopes to the Parisian milieu in an attempt to connect with the tradition of international modernism but without losing a grip on their own cultural identity.

Throughout his career as a sculptor, Jaume Plensa (Barcelona, 1955), who has received the the prestigious Velázquez Award for the Arts in 2013, has drawn on spirituality, the body and collective memory as the primary sources which tie together his visual artwork. Literature, psychology, biology, language and history become strategic tools in the creation of his work, and, through a broad spectrum of materials — steel, cast iron, resin, glass, water, sound — Plensa lends weight and physical volume to the components of the human condition and the ephemeral. In this instance, the invisible forms the essence of his intervention in the Palacio de Cristal: a group of steel mesh sculptures which take the space to draw the incomplete faces of figures hanging in the air, intersected by light and suspended in time.

In its second edition, Archipelago asserts its approach to listening as a form of both knowledge and aesthetic pleasure. Attendants are encouraged to approach the complexities of the cotemporary world not only through the ear, but also through the body, by absorbing sound with all their organs and bones.

Participants: Janneke van der Putten, Agnès Pe, Hashigakari, Tutu, Clara de Asís, Cedrick Fermont, Toukadime, Sofyann Ben, Youssef (Ammar 808), Áine O’Dwyer, Tarawangsawelas + Rabih Beaini, Nadah El Shazly, Errorsmith and Dj Lag.

This video assembles a series of interviews, carried out in conjunction with the presentation of León Ferrari's literary collage The Words of Others, which explore the Argentinean artist's approaches to his work and the challenges and research entailed in staging this theatre piece in the Museo Reina Sofía.

Participants:
Ruth Estévez. Independent researcher. In charge of direction and mise en scène.
Ana Longoni. Director of Public Activities, Museo Reina Sofía.
Javier del Olmo. Representative of the León Ferrari Foundation.
José Antonio Sánchez. Researcher. In charge of dramaturgy and mise en scène.
Isabel de Naverán. Dance advisor, Museo Reina Sofía.

This retrospective offers a global, contextualised view of the Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer’s multi-faceted work, spanning nearly sixty years. As an essayist, art critic, curator, teacher, lecturer and a creator of objects, actions and musical compositions, Camnitzer focuses on art’s transformative capacity, viewing it essentially as a product of reflection. His practice, whether it be artistic, or through his essays or teaching, is defined by its approach to the controversial issues of our times: the criticism of art-commodity, the demystification and obsolescence of the role of the artist in consumer society, or the capacity of neoliberal societies to turn education into an instrument of propaganda.

This exhibition collects Tanning's extensive, exhaustive and expressive body of work between the USA and France, producing paintings, drawings, costume and set designs for ballets, “soft” sculptures, novels and poems. The exhibition revolves around themed rooms drifting through the periods which were integral to Tanning’s career — spanning childhood and family scenes, girls dressed in Victorian clothing, baroque and bucolic nudes, red-rock deserts, and representations of flowers, highly pertinent in her mature work. Moreover, her installations include Chambre 202, Hôtel du Pavot [Poppy Hotel, Room 202] (1970–1973), with amorphous sculptures inviting visitors to see, feel and be part of the surreal world she inhabits.

The collective of photographers which operated under the name AFAL Group hailed from the publication AFAL, a magazine specialised in film and photography, published over a six-year period, from 1956 to 1963, and coordinated from Almería by José María Artero García (Almería, 1928–1991) and Carlos Pérez Siquier (Almería, 1930). Its independent approach and fresh tone soon attracted inquiring photographers from all over Spain, thus turning the magazine into a force driving behind the renewal of post-war Spanish photography.

In this interview, Dora García (Valladolid, Spain, 1965) draws from different works in the Museo Reina Sofía Collection to reflect on her work from its starting point, with themes such as narrative, infinite writing, performance and psychoanalysis shaping a coherent and continuous world. The artist analyses her use of the book as an object and repository of stories, and, by way of literary and psychoanalytical references, from James Joyce and Freud to Lacan, she discusses the transformation of reading and text production into collective actions. Similarly, she explores the key strands running through debates on performance: how to document and transmit it and questioning the classical idea of impossibility associated with its repetition, present in her approach to the works and writings of Allan Kaprow and Óscar Masotta. She also focuses on the damned artist, the notion of the anti-hero and the inappropriate to define a way of approaching reality through fiction.

This exhibition explores Russian avant-garde art through the perspective of the Anti-art canons associated with the international Dada movement. The anti-academic work of Kazimir Malevich to eclipse classical art and the transrational language experiments (zaum) of Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh are just some of the early contributions which substantiate the reasoning behind this show.

The Museo Reina Sofía presents a retrospective on Eusebio Sempere (Onil, Alicante, 1923–1985), one of the foremost figures in twentieth-century Spanish art who shared the platforms and ideas of Kinetic Art and whose work was set apart through its light- and colour-based poetics.

The exhibition brings together around 170 pieces, including watercolours, gouaches, luminous reliefs, collages, paintings, mobiles, sculptures and interdisciplinary projects, in addition to a documentary section on the period stretching from 1949 to the early 1980s. 

How do we explain a time of excessive and overwhelming information overload? Film-maker Adam Curtis proposes narration as a mechanism for unravelling the present, his documentaries connecting occurrences, people, events and ideas randomly and temporarily, shaping a tightly packed network of connections which explain and confront, in a way few cultural productions do, contemporary reality. How can we add images to this narration? Or, similarly, through film how can we represent the way in which power operates? In this interview, conducted exclusively by Soy Cámara online (CCCB’s video essay channel), and in conjunction with the retrospective on the film-maker in the Museo Reina Sofía, Curtis reflects on these questions and his own concept of film.

Archipelago is a new series of concerts that views listening at once as a form of knowledge and aesthetic enjoyment. In this, the first edition, Archipelago is enveloped in drone and minimalist music, exploring its influences and unexpected offshoots.

In this session, Emmanuel Holterbach performs the full version of Trilogy on Death, by the French composer Éliane Radigue. Agnès Pe, a self-taught and multidisciplinary musicologist and researcher, performs her own interpretation of the concept of Archipelago, approaching a musical theme via different styles and places.