These sessions explore different formats with which artistic tools enable other possible worlds to be imagined: mapping networks of activism, drawing up manifestos, creating spaces of assembly in the framework of art and developing collective dramaturgies as modes of investigating the present. Researchers, artists and activists from the Institute of Radical Imagination will share their experiences on artistic platforms as strategies of subjectivation and political action in the projects Art for UBI (Universal Basic Income) and Art for Radical Ecologies, in addition to studying the approach to radical pedagogies via projects such as The School of Emergencies, Kirik and Raising Care. Finally, the Centro Revolucionario de Arqueología Social (Revolutionary Centre of Social Archaeology, CRAS), alongside the Institute of Radical Imagination (IRI), will raise issues around the situation of CSA La Tabacalera in Lavapiés after thirteen years of free culture and self-management.
![Maja Bajevic, Arts, Crafts and Facts (Top 10%, 90%) [Artes, artesanías y datos (Ricos 10%, 90%)], 1967. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/nim.jpg.webp)
Held on 20, 21 abr, 25, 26 may, 05, 06 jul 2023
Inside the framework of the Critical Node Militant Research, from the Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme Connective Tissue, the Foundation of the Commons, the Institute of Radical Imagination and La Laboratoria, in collaboration with the Museo en Red team, put forward a space of training and study on the specificity of forms of militant research. Situated outside academic frameworks, these investigations pick up the legacy of workers’ co-research from the 1960s, feminist epistemologies and theories of research-action. Therefore, more than establishing a method, they seek to generate devices in order for social struggles to read each other and find causes that lead to action.
This Critical Node looks to reflect on (and from) tools and learnings from networks with which the Museo has been collaborating over the past fifteen years, in relation to those processes of knowledge production which ultimately aim not to interpret the world but to organise its transformation.
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The Institute of Radical Imagination (IRI) is a Mediterranean-wide network founded in 2017 by artists, activists, academics and cultural producers with a shared interest in co-producing knowledge, artistic and political research and interventions aimed at implementing post-capitalist ways of life. With the vocation of joining art, activism and pedagogy, the IRI emerges as a post-capitalist institution — a "quasi-institution" — which operates as an interface between diverse spaces and agents, causing mutual contamination between academic institutions, museums and self-managed social centres.
La Laboratoria. Spaces of Feminist Research is a transnational device of feminist activist research, that which is developed by those involved in different territories, involved in specific conflicts and struggles, with different yet common languages and questions. The research applies the lens of feminist contempt to diverse processes, flowing beyond any drawer or pigeonhole of so-called "women’s" issues. With participation from four cities — Buenos Aires, Quito, New York and Madrid — La Laboratoria promotes activist research inside the feminist tide as situated theoretical practice allowing maps of position and analysis to be constructed collectively.
Foundation of the Commons is a laboratory of discourse and political action, entangling a series of research, publishing, training and bookshop groups that pool resources to drive the development of critical culture and social democratisation. The structure of the network is made up of social and research spaces (La Casa Invisible, Ateneo La Maliciosa, Traficantes de Sueños, IDRA, Ateneu Candela, Synusia and Katakrak) from different corners of the Iberian Peninsula (Málaga, Madrid, Barcelona, Terrassa, Iruñea-Pamplona).
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Organised by
Inside the framework of
Connective Tissue. The Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme: Critical Node, Militant Research
Participants
Participants
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Thursday, 20 April 2023 Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
Session 1
6pm Approach to Radical Pedagogies: The School of Emergencies and Kirik
— With the participation of Dimitry Vilensky and Zeyno Pekünlü (Institute of Radical Imagination)7:30pm Artistic Platforms as Strategies of Subjectivation and Political Action: Art for UBI and Art for Radical Ecologies
— With the participation of Marco Baravalle, Gabriella Riccio and Emanuele Braga (Institute of Radical Imagination) -
Friday, 21 April 2023 CSA La Tabacalera (calle de Embajadores 51, Madrid)
Session 2
11am Research and Artistic Practices from Self-management
— With the participation of Pablo García Bachiller, Gabriella Riccio and Marco Baravalle (Institute of Radical Imagination) -
Friday, 21 April 2023 Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
Session 3
Tickets6pm Approach to Radical Pedagogies: Raising Care
— With the participation of Maddalena Fragnito, Elena Blesa Cábez and Theo Prodromidis (Institute of Radical Imagination)7:30pm The Common and the Legal: Tools and Strategies
— With the participation of Giuseppe Micciarelli, Gabriella Riccio and Pablo García Bachiller (Institute of Radical Imagination)
Can a summer camp be considered a militant research practice? And the list of organic suppliers who stock a social centre’s canteen? In the following sessions, the Foundation of the Commons explores how spaces of knowledge production forged in the heat of social movements’ political and organisational practices are shaped. To this end, keys to two research devices are shared: Encuesta Inquilina (The Tenant Survey) — propelled with Sindicat de Llogaters from Barcelona — and the line of work around the eco-social crisis, articulated through the series of self-training and encounters The Future Is Unwritten. Organising in the Capitalocene Crisis. Drawing from these experiences, the aim is to put into practice possible militant research.
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Thursday, 25 May 2023 Nouvel Building, Protocol Room and Online platform
Session 4
Online platform6:30pm La Encuesta Inquilina (The Tenant Survey)
— With the participation of IDRA (The Urban Research Institute of Barcelona) (Foundation of the Commons)7:45pm The Future Is Unwritten
— With the participation of Synusia, Katakrak and Traficantes de Sueños (Foundation of the Commons) -
Friday, 26 May 2023 Ateneo La Maliciosa (calle de las Peñuelas 14, Madrid)
Session 5
Online platform11am How Do We Conduct Militant Research?
— With the participation of IDRA, Synusia, Katakrak and Traficantes de Sueños (Foundation of the Commons)
This session sees La Laboratoria look to apply situated research to the systemic dimension and the interconnection between different forms of violence: social, sexual, economic, judicial. It looks to explore the potential of the situated epistemological perspective to deploy a radical critique of hegemonic discourses on violence or the role of States in legitimising and concealing some forms of violence and criminalising others, raising, from collective practices, the possibilities of transformative feminist justice. Alongside feminist researchers and collectives from Quito, Porto Alegre, Buenos Aires, New York and Madrid, and at the crossroads of movements for prison abolition, against the criminalisation of poverty, and dissident street feminisms, a space is opened from which to reflect on the possibilities of thinking about justice as a collective practice, where mutual protection, support, accountability and remediation go hand in hand with a critique of patriarchal, racist and class-biased logics.
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Wednesday, 5 July 2023 Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200 and online platform
Session 6
Tickets5pm Introduction. What Does Investigating Violence from a Situated Perspective Mean?
— With the participation of Susana Draper (Madres Protectoras) and Itzell Sánchez (Técnicas Rudas / Colectiva Acción Directa Autogestiva). Supported by Débora Ávila7pm All that Crushes Us. Intersecting Violence
— With the participation of María José Barrera (Colectivo de Prostitutas de Sevilla), Luci Cavallero (Ni Una Menos) and Ana Pinto (Jornaleras de Huelva en lucha). Supported by Constanza CisnerosThis activity offers a play centre for children to help parents with childcare. The registration form can be found at this link.
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Thursday, 6 July 2023 Nouvel Building, Protocol Room and online platform
Session 7
Tickets5pm Debates around (Anti)Punitivism from Situated Feminist Struggles
— With the participation of Vicky García (La Laboratoria Nodo Europa Sur), Fernanda Martins and Laia Serra. Supported by Justa Montero7pm Beyond Victimisation. Feminist Self-defence and Strategies of Community Responsibility
— With the participation of Jazmin Sofia Escuntar Chavez (Mujeres de Frente), Martha Cecilia Collaguazo Velasco (Mujeres de Frente), Maria Jose "Guru" Jiménez Cortiñas (Asociación Gitanas Feministas por la Diversidad), Aida Elizabeth Pino Naranjo (Mujeres de Frente) and Helena Silvestre (Escola Feminista Abya Yala). Supported by Tatiana RomeroThis activity offers a play centre for children to help parents with childcare. The registration form can be found at this link.
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
Más actividades
Christian Nyampeta and the École du soir
13, 14, 15 NOV, 11, 12, 13 DIC 2025
Christian Nyampeta is a Rwandan artist, musician and film-maker whose work encompasses pedagogies and community forms of knowledge production and transmission. His Ècole du soir (Evening School) is an art project conceived as a mobile space of collective learning and is named in homage to Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), a pioneer of African cinema who defined his films as “evening classes” for the people, a medium of education and emancipation through culture.
This block is made up of three double sessions: the video work of Christian Nyampeta, the films of École du soir and one of Ousmane Sèmbene’s feature-length films. Nyampeta will introduce all three first sessions.
UP/ROOTING
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 NOV 2025
Museo Reina Sofía and MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) invite applications for the 2025 iteration of the School of Common Knowledge, which will take place from November 11th to 16th in Madrid and Barcelona.
The School of Common Knowledge (SCK) draws on the network, knowledge and experience of L’Internationale, a confederation of museums, art organizations and universities that strives to reimagine and practice internationalism, solidarity and communality within the cultural field. This year, the SCK program focuses on the contested and dynamic notions of rooting and uprooting in the framework of present —colonial, migrant, situated, and ecological— complexities.
Building on the legacy of the Glossary of Common Knowledge and the current European program Museum of the Commons, the SCK invites participants to reflect on the power of language to shape our understanding of art and society through a co-learning methodology. Its ambition is to be both nomadic and situated, looking at specific cultural and geopolitical situations while exploring their relations and interdependencies with the rest of the world.
In the current context fraught with war and genocide, the criminalization of migration and hyper-identitarianism, concepts such as un/belonging become unstable and in need of collective rethinking:
How can we reframe the sense and practice of belonging away from reductive nationalist paradigms or the violence of displacement? How to critically hold the entanglement of the colonial routes and the cultural roots we are part of? What do we do with the toxic legacies we inherit? And with the emancipatory genealogies and practices that we choose to align with? Can a renewed practice of belonging and coalition-making through affinity be part of a process of dis/identification? What geographies —cultural, artistic, political— do these practices of de/centering, up/rooting, un/belonging and dis/alignment designate?
Departing from these questions, the program consists of a series of visits to situated initiatives (including Museo Situado, Paisanaje and MACBA's Kitchen, to name a few), engagements with the exhibitions and projects on view (Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture from Panafrica), a keynote lecture by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, as well as daily reading and discussion gatherings, editorial harvest sessions, and conviviality moments.
The Joaquim Jordà Residencies 2025
Friday, 7 November 2025 - 7pm
In this activity, the recipients of the 2024–2025 Joaquim Jordà Residencies call, María Aparicio (Argentina, 1992) and Andrés Jurado (Colombia, 1980), present respective projects related to their body of work in an open session in which to discover the creative interests of two of the most up-and-coming independent film-makers in Latin America today.
María Aparicio presents the working process behind her film De sol a sol (From Sun to Sun), along with a brief journey through the films prior to this project and her filmic searches in recent years. Aparicio synthesises the storyline of De sol a sol from the silhouettes of a group of men who appear between the stalks of a reedbed. Their knives glisten as the sun hits them, flashing and disappearing with their hand movements. Apprentices split the canes using no method; seasoned workers cut with skill. They are workers from a sugar mill in northern Argentina and are watched by Juan Bialet Massé, accompanied by Rosich, assistant and photographer. It is Argentina in 1904 and he is carrying out a mission assigned to him by his country’s government: to travel the Argentinian provinces, reporting on the state of the working classes.
Andrés Jurado, for his part, will look over his own work and the work of the La Vulcanizadora lab in this session. He will also open the archive stemming from the research process in the project Tonada, a journey through the succession of peace agreement betrayals in the history of Colombia. From the colonial era, understood in tumultuous terms, as a hurricane that keeps swirling, to the present day he traces the stories of people like Tacurrumbí, Benkos Biohó, Bateman and the many women and men who were betrayed by governments and oppressors. Tonada seeks to build a sound and film dialogue between the guerrilla disarmament of 1953 and the period following the peace agreement of 2016, invoking these and other events and confronting traumas of betrayal through a film composition devised to be sung. But what is sung? Some of these songs are heard and voices are shared in this presentation.
The Joaquim Jordà Residences programme for film-makers and artists was set in motion by the Museo Reina Sofía in 2022. The initiative comprises a grant for writing a film project rooted in experimentation and essay, as well as two subsequent residencies in FIDMarseille and Doclisboa, international film festivals devoted to exploring non-fictional film and new forms of audiovisual expression.
Ylia and Marta Pang
Thursday, 6 November - 8pm
The encounter between Spanish DJ and producer Ylia and visual artist Marta Pang is presented in the form of a premiere in the Museo Reina Sofía. Both artists converge from divergent trajectories to give form to a new project conceived specifically for this series, which aims to create new stage projects by setting out from the friction between artists and dialogue between disciplines.
![Carol Mansour y Muna Khalidi, A State of Passion [Estado de pasión], 2024, película](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/palestine%20cinema%20day%202.jpg.webp)
Palestine Cinema Days
Sábado 1 de noviembre, 2025 – 19:00 h
The Museo Reina Sofia joins the global action in support of Palestine with the screening of A State of Passion (2024), a documentary by Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi. The film features in Palestine Cinema Days Around the World, an annual festival, held globally every November, which aims to show films made in Palestine to an international audience. The initiative was conceived as a form of cultural resistance which seeks to give a voice to artists from Palestine, question dominant narratives and create networks of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Palestine Cinema Days Around the World originates from Palestine Cinema Days, a festival organised in Palestine since 2014 with the aim of granting visibility to Palestinian cinema and to support the local film community. In 2023 the festival was postponed because of the war in Gaza, and has since become borderless in scope, holding close to 400 international screenings in almost sixty countries in 2024. This global effort is a show of solidarity with Palestine and broadens the voices and support networks of the Palestinian people around the world.
A State of Passion exposes the atrocities committed against the Gaza population via the testimony of Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, a Palestinian-British plastic surgeon living in London who decides to return to Gaza and save lives in the city’s hospitals amid the Israeli army’s indiscriminate bombing of the population. A necessary film exposé of the experience of unrelentingly working twenty-four hours a day for forty-three days in the Al Shifa and Al Ahli Hospitals in the city of Gaza.