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 Apr, 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.
Más actividades
![Céline Sciamma, Naissance des pieuvres [Lirios de agua], 2007, película](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ciclocine-piscinas-3.jpg.webp)
Céline Sciamma. Water Lilies
Friday, 10 July 2026
Céline Sciamma’s directorial debut, Naissance des pieuvres,depicts the emotional and sexual awakening of three teenagers around an indoor swimming pool in a Parisian suburb. Marie, a fifteen-year-old introvert, becomes fascinated by Floriane, the charismatic captain of a local synchronised swimming team. Driven by this attraction, Marie tries to get closer to her while observing the complex dynamics of desire, friendship and power that develops between the young girls. At the same time, Anne, one of Marie’s friends, has her own experience of insecurity and affective search, shaped by the pressure to fit in and belong. As the relationship between the three intensifies, contradictions surface between the image they outwardly project and their real feelings.
Standing away from the common places on adolescence, Céline Sciamma explores first love, burgeoning queer identity and the uncertainty of desire with an intimate, observational gaze, resulting in a sensitive and honest portrait of a time of transformation, in which each gesture leads to the passage from childhood to adulthood.
Sofia Coppola. Somewhere
Saturday, 11 July 2026
Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), a famous Hollywood actor, lives a life of pleasure in Hotel Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, drifting aimlessly between vacuous relationships, punctuated by film shoots and commercial duties. Cleo (Elle Fanning), his eleven-year-old daughter, stays with him for a few weeks due to her mother’s absence, forcing him to rethink his life.
Sofia Coppola’s employment of swimming pools is carefully considered in the film — blue water in Somewhere is the only place where Marco can recover the meaning of his existence as the pool acts as a womb in which he finds balance. While living with his daughter Cleo and the reflection of these aquatic moments — diving under water, floating, playing or simply sunbathing with no real purpose — everything happens. Thus, Coppola explores in depth themes such as fame, loneliness and the complexity of human ties, putting forward an intimate and profound portrait full of the subtleties of life.
Jonathan Glazer. Sexy Beast
Friday, 17 July 2026
Gal Dove (Ray Winstone), a criminal for the British mafia, lives happily retired with his wife in an idyllic villa in southern Spain and a dazzling swimming pool. Their peace is shattered with the arrival of Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), a former gangster and criminal associate who wants to convince him to do one last job.
If a swimming pool can be at the heart of suspense, then Sexy Beast is the quintessence. The reflection of blue water in Gal’s idyllic seclusion symbolises the artificial paradise that can be broken at any time. This first feature-length film by British director Jonathan Glazer (also the director of The Zone of Interest, 2023) starts with one of the most striking swimming pool scenes, a symbol for the impending danger about to reach this whitewashed haven of peace. The perfect vision of recreated beauty — luxury pools on the Andalusian coast — which, in the depths of pristine water, conceals an unsettling fear of returning to the past.
![François Ozon, Swimming Pool [La piscina], 2003, película](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ciclocine-piscinas-6.jpg.webp)
François Ozon. Swimming Pool
Saturday, 18 July 2026
Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling), a frustrated English writer paralysed by writer’s block, is invited by her editor to spend a few days in her summer house in the south of France. While there she meets Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), the editor’s uninhibited daughter. The young girl’s hypersexuality clashes with Morton’s cold nature, an initial hostility which turns into a fascination with the private life of the young girl, serving the writer as inspiration for her new novel and tugging the story to an ambiguous game between truth and imagination.
Being in crisis is wanting to be another person. Sarah wants to absorb the vitality of her young host, a process of metamorphosis triggered by the swimming pool. The pool is the film’s central character, the place where Julie shows her naked body and amorous acts, sending Sarah into a state of agitation. Through the pool and its water, the writer drinks in Julie’s wild passion. The aquatic enclosure thus acts as catharsis: the place where the subconscious of the writer flourishes, enabling her to unleash her creativity and free her fantasies. At the same time, water distorts the image, blurring fiction and reality; ultimately, the necessary medium to keep art afloat.
![Jean Vigo, Taris, ou la natation [Taris, rey del agua], 1931, película](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ciclocine-piscinas-7.jpg.webp)
Leni Riefenstahl. Olympia, Part 2. Festival of Beauty and Jean Vigo. Taris, Swimming Champion
Friday, 24 July 2026
The body in water as an object of ideology. This is one of the major themes of the 1930s and this session, where Nazism and Anarchism dissolve into two different swimming pools. Two great films of counterposed ideologies which have gone down in history as examples of film’s power to represent a vision of the world. In Olympia, Part 2. Festival of Beauty, Leni Riefenstahl films the Olympic Games of Berlin in 1936, organised during the Third Reich. The camera leaves the athletics stadium to show the repertoire of modern sports — fencing, polo, cycling, pentathlon — before culminating in the Olympic pool with Adolf Hitler as the host, where the beautiful, disciplined, classical bodies of the swimmers bring to mind, as Susan Sontag wrote, the visual fascination that characterised fascism. Meanwhile, Jean Vigo, the son of an exiled Spanish anarchist, films French Olympic champion Jean Taris in a funny, playful exercise, where the swimming pool becomes a field of play without rules and where avant-garde film-making elements of the 1930s materialise, such as slow motion, superimposed images and dynamic editing. Two avant-garde films, two films on opposite poles that show, for a time, swimming not as an object of pleasure or desire, but as a space of contest from which to demonstrate the power of the twentieth century’s great ideologies.