![John Baldessari, Prima Facie (Third State): From Aghast to Upset [Prima Facie (tercer estado): de aterrado a disgustado], 2005. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/so.jpg.webp)
Held on 19, 20 may 2023
Sociología Ordinaria is a transdisciplinary research group that explores daily knowledge deemed ordinary, superficial or frivolous from a traditional academic and intellectual viewpoint. Over the past decade, its members have sought to render an account of the complexity and relations of power that underlie diverse social and cultural phenomena such as the use of dating apps, language around COVID-19, the world of the cuplé, reality shows, pyjama parties, popstars, TikTokers, club culture, and so on. Their encounters also endeavour to create an open and multi-disciplinary space.
An Uncomfortable Proposal. Sociología Ordinaria Encounters #11 sets out to address discomfort and its correlations and networks of meaning: significations, impressions and feelings, and how they affect us and also orient and disorient us.
Thus, it seeks to treat discomfort as a political, affective, ethical and aesthetic position and situation, and examine it in knowledge, methodological and epistemological research and production. From this perspective, discomfort also operates to indicate or reveal risk and belonging in processes of research, with the understanding that, similar to Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour, we must run at least as much risk as the running people, beings, objects and entities that and whom we study. Therefore, there is importance in designing grounded research and modes of participation, in lieu of seeking to look from above and the outside, focusing on the “China in the shoe” as Latour recalls citing John Dewey, following the problem, the trouble, as Donna Haraway advises, and taking the time to pay attention and listen, breaking from resolutive and explicative aspirations.
The programme is articulated around a selection of proposals received through an open call which pursues a transdisciplinary structure, and which aims to provide a diverse and open space with the capacity to house proposals from different disciplines, styles, formats, generations and living situations.
Sociología Ordinaria is a research group from the Complutense University of Madrid’s (UCM) Sociology Department. Formed in 2011, its concerns revolve around developing new research and teaching methodologies that enable sociological imagination to be applied to contemporary daily life. The group seeks to bring to the surface the dense socio-political roots of the ordinary as abject and disdainful categories of the banal, frivolous and superficial, an aspect of social reality which is invisible in dominant academic analysis.
Friday, 19 May 2023
10am Presentation
― Conducted by Sociología Ordinaria and Germán Labrador
10:30am Methodological Unease
Develop-with Malaise. A Proposal of Epistemological and Methodological Repairs Upon Investigating the Malaise of Sexuality
― Conducted by Nerea Velázquez Berrio
Wake Up, Neighbour! They’re Evicting on Your Doorstep!
― Conducted by Mercedes Cortés, Candela Pastoriza and Iraia Pérez
Common Agencies of Feeling-Thinking for Ordinary Discomfort. On the Experimental Workshop of Creation. Stage One: Theatre-Forum
― Conducted by Feliciano Castaño Villar
As Napoleon Said: A Bird in the Hand Is Worth Two in the Bush
― Conducted by Sopa sólida
12pm Break
12:30pm The House of Your (Bad) Dreams
The Room of Little Spears
― Conducted by Gil-Fournier Esquerra
Architecture of Temporary Fixes. Uncomfortable Mediations of Three Collectives that Are Self-Managed to Rethink Care and its Architectures
― Conducted by Tomasz Czepielik
1:15pm Diners of Discomfort
Screw the Way the Cookie Crumbles: Structural Violence at Lunchtime
― Conducted by Sheila Moreno Griñón and Javier Aarón Rubio Lora
Tabled Protocol. Codes of Conduct as Colonial Heritage
― Conducted by Youssef Taki
4pm Bodies that Matter...
Nobody Knows What a Body Can Do ― to Survive
― Conducted by Irene Mahugo Amaro
My Concentric Body
― Conducted by Virginia Rodríguez Herrero and Ruth María Soria
Corporalities that Cause (Us) (Dis)comfort
― Conducted by Irene Calderón Mazzotti
5:15pm... Bodies that Cause Discomfort
Fat Bodies, Uncomfortable Bodies. Reflections Around Fat Studies
― Conducted by Laura Albet Castillejo
Alianza Diska-Gorde
― Conducted by Itxi Guerra and Laura Castro
Saturday, 20 May 2023
10am Artefacts of (Dis)comfort
By the Skin of Our Teeth! Tasteful Minoxidil Does Sting
― Conducted by Elena Urieta Bastardés, Guillermo José Jurado Villacañas and Biel Navarro López
From Bicycle Pump to Mifepristone. Malaise, Criminalisation and Feminist Resistance in the Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy (A Story)
― Conducted by Carmen Romero Bachiller
10:45am Gestations
BetaBlastoCuir and Communities of Ice
― Conducted by Ona Bros
Markets Formed by People: Discomfort as a Changing Constant in the Study of Fertility Clinics
― Conducted by Sara Lafuente Funes
11:30am Break
12pm Uncomfortable Men
Discomfort, Risk and Desire Between Men Who Have Sex with Men
― Conducted by Kerman Calvo and Ignacio de Loyola González Salgado
Uncomfortable Youth Masculinities. Confusions and Threats Perceived Before the Shattering of Traditional Values
― Conducted by Stribor Kuric Kardelis
Fluid Gender in a Gym
― Conducted by Enrico Mora
1:15pm Female Malaise
The Experience of Academic Writing Groups with Women: The Power of Sharing the Discomfort of Being a Woman at University
― Conducted by Nadia Hakim-Fernández
Grey’s Anatomy: The Discomfort in a Lack of Representation of “Women’s Legacies” Found in Ordinary Aspects of a TV Series
― Conducted by Jocelina Laura De Carvalho Segato
4pm Stage Discomfort
Subnopop as a Strategy of Discomfort
― Conducted by José-Luis Anta Félez and Almudena García Manso
Precarity and Performativity in Contemporary Film: Subjectivity in Dance in Ema (Pablo Larraín, 2019) and Ya no estoy aquí (Fernando Frias, 2019)
― Conducted by Ana Sedeño Valdellos
Failures, Frauds and Other Frictions. Collective Authorship as Resistance
― Conducted by colectivo [intervalos]: Loreto Ares, Kiar Ciotoli, Irene Blanco, Gema Marín, Lara E. Marty and Marta Plaza
5:30pm Like Crazy: Malaise and Mental Health
What Happens to My Mental Health When I Study Mental Health?
― Conducted by Inés Bueno Pascual and Georgiana Livia Cruceanu
Going Crazy: Displacements of Discomfort and Managing Malaise
― Conducted by Rosa Jiménez Pereda and Vega Pérez-Chirinos
Organised by
Museo Reina Sofía and the research group Sociología Ordinaria - Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Inside the framework of
Connective Tissue. The Museo Reina Sofía’s Study Programme: Critical Node, Critical Sociology and TIZ 9. Relational Ecologies
![Dara Birnbaum, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman [Tecnología/Transformación: la mujer maravilla], 1978-1979. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/wonder.jpg.webp)
![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.