Scope for action: the public programme of The New Dictionary of Old Ideas

Madrid, 20th to 31st of October 2020

Because even if the scope continues to shrink, we need to find holes for action.

We live in a moment of constant change and daily adaptation. What was originally going to be an exhibition and later a program of activities in the public space, is reconfigured again. We do not want to stop acting, even if it is from the uncertainty and in the gaps that the context imposes on us. From hablarenarte and in close collaboration with the curator Alba Folgado and the invited artists, we propose five actions in a remote format to continue reflecting, even while physically distant, on how to position ourselves and act together.

Each of the activities that make up this program starts from a recent social phenomenon -the new imaginary of hatred, anti-fascist and decolonial struggles- or from a specific place -the Royal Palace of Madrid, a downtown restaurant linked to the history of the city- to provoke a (re)action. Through conversations, postal mailings, virtual tours or the planting of seeds, the artists propose alternative interpretations that run from the collective to the intimate.

Participating artists: Verónica Lahitte, Paula Valero, Diego del Pozo + collaborators, Marco Godoy and Sofía Montenegro.

SCHEDULE

From Tuesday October 20

A DESERT ATLAS - registration form

Action by correspondence with Verónica Lahitte

A DESERT ATLAS explores and sows the drawings and texts that Florian Paucke (Silesia, 1719) made between 1749 and 1767 during his stay in what is now called Argentine territory. In dialogue with people who currently inhabit this space and taking a temporary leap, ATLAS reminds us that capitalism was in its beginnings, colonial and Eurocentred. Because in the 18th century F.P said that the heart of the blackhead was so hard that it did not rot for forty or fifty years and M.L says today that he is standing waiting for something to fall from the sky because his native garden is on fire.

Thursday, October 22, from 7 to 9 p.m.

Vegetable Manifestation - registration form

Action by correspondence + online meeting with Paula Valero

This action is a tribute to Rosa Luxemburg; to her gesture of composing, until the day before her death, the herbarium that always accompanied her; to her attention for the caring for life. A herbarium activated to summon all forms of memory in a constellation between past and present. A memorial linked to the intelligence of plants. A repertoire of resilience that is common to us; of personal actions that show forms of political involvement in everyday life.

This action requires some participation from the public; participation that will take place through listening, in addition to sharing memories and spaces of resistance. An online "demonstration" that helps us sustain ourselves in difficult times, through affection and brotherhood.

Esther Ferrer (Paris), Roberto Alvárez (Cuba), Valérie Lafont (la Reunión), Bherta Díaz (Ecuador), Haydé Lachino /Juliana Faesler (CD México) collaborate with Paula Valero in this activity.

Wednesday, October 28, from 7 to 9 p.m.

PARLIAMENT OF HATE - registration form

Online meeting with Diego del Pozo and collaborators

Several decades of neoliberalism have intensified a control system that allows an economy of affections in which hatred and fear have been internalized by the population. This situation highlights, along with other phenomena, the systemic and social crisis in which we are immersed. How to imagine other times and spaces that reverse the violence of hate? The PARLIAMENT OF HATE is a meeting and dialogue place to unveil together the hidden mechanisms that drive the policies of aversion against racialized migrants or LGTBIQ communities, through the discussion of different current cases.

Elena Casado Aparicio, Leticia Sabsay, Carlos López Carrasco, Violeta Assiego and Rosa Jiménez will carry out this activity with Diego del Pozo.

* Parliament of Hate has been carried out with the collaboration of the Identity, Culture and Communication subject of the Master's Degree in Sociocultural Analysis of Knowledge and Communication (UCM), the Research Group Critical visualities: cultural ecologies and common research, Research Group Hate, Hate, Hate and the Leonardo Scholarships of the BBVA Foundation.

Thursday, October 29, at 5 p.m.

Alchemy and Protocol - registration form

Whatsapp tour with Marco Godoy

What is the relationship between power, alchemy, art and protocol?

Starting from the Royal Palace building in Madrid, we will make an astral trip through its spaces and we will investigate how the figures of power are legitimized through semi-alchemical processes that use architecture, protocol and art. We will seek to reveal the magic tricks that have been used throughout history to turn a symbolic value into a tangible power.

Saturday, October 31

Zinc bar - registration form

Audio tale online+ individual video-calls with Sofía Montenegro

A rod of zinc near twilight. A sound journey through the sensations that emerge from the intersection between space and memory. We propose to begin with the ear, to listen to the voices of the place and go deep into its entrails. There, all the figures set the same rule. Maybe we are getting into something monumental.

* "cinc" - zinc, thus written by Valle-Inclán in Luces de Bohemia.

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BIOS

Verónica Lahitte (Buenos Aires, 1980). Her work investigates forms of writing, enunciation and expropriation, establishing specific logics designed for each context. She has presented her projects in museums and art centers such as Palais de Glace (Buenos Aires), Kunstuniversität (Linz), Württ Kunstverein Stuttgart, Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi (Copenhagen), Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Arts Santa Mónica (Barcelona) , among others. Between 2015 and 2017 she was a research resident and teacher in the department of Critical Theory and Experimental Practices at the University of the Arts, Guayaquil. She recently published the book “Wagschale der Zeit und Ewigkeit” (V___erlag für Handbücher, 2019).

Paula Valero is a multidisciplinary artist with a practice that ranges from proposals with various media (drawing, video, installation) to directing actions and procedural devices with communities, activists, performers, dancers, etc. She uses her own diverse methodologies such as affective psychogeographies, bio-topographies and experimental ethnographies; to put, among other topics, life on stage. She completed her artistic training in Fine Arts in different cities: Valencia (BBAA, UPV), Paris (ENSBA) and scenography in Buenos Aires (UBA, La Plata). In 2017 she did a doctorate on how to put forms into action in Fine Arts, Polytechnic University of Valencia.

Diego del Pozo is an artist and professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Salamanca. He is a member of the artistic collectives C.A.S.I.T.A., Subtramas and Magnetic Declination. He is currently producing a project on forms of hate with the Leonardo BBVA Plastic Arts Grant.

Leticia Sabsay is Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economic and Political Science University. Among other publications, she is the author of The Political Imaginary of Sexual Freedom (2016) co-edited with Judith Butler and Zeynep Gambetti, Vulnerability in Resistance (2016).
Elena Casado Aparicio is a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology of the Complutense University of Madrid and a member of the Ordinary Sociology group. Her lines of research are linked to care, gender relations and the sociology of communication.
Carlos López Carrasco has a PhD in Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid, specializing in the sociology of work and emotions. He has oriented his professional practice to research and community intervention in the field of health and culture. He is a member of Indaga, a social research cooperative.
Violeta Assiego is a lawyer, activist and social researcher. Expert in gender, sexual diversity, discrimination and violence from a feminist, human rights and intersectional perspective. Collaborate in different analysis, advocacy, training and communication projects.
Rosa Jiménez is the promoter of the La Escalera project, which promotes meeting and mutual support among neighbors. He has collaborated in the development and implementation of the pilot project of "Prevention of unwanted loneliness" of Madrid Salud or "From 0 to 99: intergenerational summer camp" of Medialab Prado.

Marco Godoy (Madrid, 1986). Master in Arts with a major in Photography from the Royal College of Art (London, 2012-2014). Graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, with further studies in the Video and New Media department at the School of Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). He currently resides in Madrid. His work has been shown in institutions and galleries such as Matadero Madrid, Center Georges Pompidou, Liverpool Biennial, Stedelijk Museum's-Hertogenbosch, Edinburgh Art Festival, Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art (Tel Aviv), Lugar a Dudas (Cali), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Palais de Tokyo, and Whitechapel Gallery, among others.

Sofía Montenegro (Madrid, 1988) trained in Arts and Cultural Studies in both Utrecht and Madrid and has an MA in Art Praxis from the Dutch Art Institute. She is currently an artist at In Residence, a program developed between MACBA, CA2M and La Casa Encendida. Her work has been shown at La Escocesa (Barcelona), Bosque REAL (Madrid), Ekkisens Art Space (Reykjavik), Laboral Centro de Arte (Gijón), Sala de Arte Joven (Madrid), W139 (Amsterdam), What Remains Gallery (Munich), Ron Mandos Galerie (Amsterdam), Kunstpodium T (Tilburg), among others. Her artistic practice incorporates various methodologies linking the visual and the performative. She is also interested in those elements that separate fiction from reality and look for ways to reveal the practices or codes that operate in a hidden way. All of this usually appears combined in her work with found material, personal experience or true facts that often involve people from different contexts.

Image credits: Paula Valero, Altar to the wild plants of the city, Resistant Herbarium of Rosa Luxemburg (2020).

Scope for action is a program developed by hablarenarte and the curator Alba Folgado in the framework of The New Dictionary of Old Ideas project, a network of independent organizations in Central and Eastern Europe. The network was born in 2017 and expanded itself in 2019 with the incorporation of Spain and Georgia. The platform began by working on the idea of Central Europe, its political and geographical resignification over the centuries, as well as its relationship with the current rise of nationalism, populism and anti-immigration attitudes.

Partners:

International: MeetFactory (Czech Republic) // Trafostacja Sztuki (Polonia) // Silk Museum(Georgia) // Hablarenarte (Spain); National: CentroCentro (Spain)

With the support of:

Creative Europe Programme of the European Union

Comunidad de Madrid