Thinking the Present
Meetings
April 16 – April 19, 2009
Directed by Estrella de Diego
La Casa Encendida
Ronda Valencia,
2 28012 Madrid
www.lacasaencendida.es
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León
Avda. Reyes Leoneses, 24
254008 León
www.musac.es
La Casa Encendida collaborates with MUSAC in the organisation of the meetings Thinking the Present, which will take place from the 16th to the 19th of April in Madrid and León. It is intended as a forum for people from different realms of creation to reflect on the situation of social transformation currently underway on a global level.
The world is changing fast. The changes affect and will continue to affect its very structures, for it is no longer a matter of the so-called “globalisation” and its consequences —with frequent paradoxes, as is widely known— nor of the migratory trends, the new power relations or the cultural interferences discussed hardly a year ago. The changes are now so many and so unexpected that they are taking place even as we ponder them. We collectively face an order imagined to be new, though no one knows for sure what the future holds. Perhaps it is precisely the crossroads of shared uncertainties that should encourage us to “think the present” and also reflect on what the future we wish to build could or should be like.
That is the idea behind these meetings, which are so crucial in a society undergoing a process of transformation like the one currently afoot. They will embrace global and local issues and micro and macro politics to consider to what extent, in times of crisis, the imagination and “small solutions” can afford some answers to the questions that are to be posed here. Through the input of architects, urban planners, artists, writers, administrators and theorists, the aim is to think about the concerns of the present, those that affect us all.
PROGRAMME
Thursday, April 16th. La Casa Encendida
“New Spaces, Other Cities”
9:00 – 10:00 a.m.
Presentation of meetings
José Guirao, Director of La Casa Encendida
Agustín Pérez Rubio, Acting director of MUSAC
Estrella de Diego, Director of the meetings
10:00 – 12:30 a.m.
Round-table discussion “Other Cities”:
– Diébédo Francis Kéré; architect, founder of the association “Schulbausteine für Gando”
– Langarita+Navarro Studio; architects.
– Kyong Park; Associate Professor at the University of California, San Diego, co-founder and director of the International Center for Urban Ecology, Detroit.
– Armando Silva, PhD in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from the University of California.
Chaired by Juan Antonio Ramírez, Professor of Art History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
1:00 – 2:00 p.m.
Conference by Beatriz Colomina, Professor at Princeton University School of Architecture: “Blurred Visions: The Architecture of Surveillance”
5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
Dialogue between Lacaton&Vassal Studio, architects and Luis Fernández Galiano, architect, Professor of Projects at the Escuela de Arquitectura of Madrid’s Universidad Politécnica and director of the magazine AV/Arquitectura Viva.
Friday April 17th. La Casa Encendida
“Stories/Tales”
10:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Conference by Alan Pauls, writer.
11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Dialogue between Shirin Neshat, artist, and Octavio Zaya, curator, writer, director of the magazine Atlantica & independent curator and advisor for MUSAC.
4:30 – 7:00 p.m.
Roundtable discussion “Statements, witnesses”:
– Sergio González, essayist, narrator and critic.
– Susan Míeselas, photographer, member of Magnum Photos since 1976.
– Mohamed Razane, writer, actor and screenwriter.
Chaired by Guillermo Altares, journalist, editor in Chief of Babelia, cultural supplement of El País.
Saturday, April 18th. La Casa Encendida
“Public Programmes, Educational Projects, Museums”
9:30 – 10:30 a.m.
Conference by Ivo Mesquita, Head Curator at the State Art Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil.
10:30 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Roundtable discussion “Other spaces of artistic reflection”:
– Hu Fang, writer, art critic and curator.
– Isabel García, curator and artist, founder and director of the Centro de Documentación de las Artes in the Centro Cultural Palacio la Moneda of Santiago, Chile.
– Ali Y. Kadar, director of Mixed Media Publishing, advisor for Christie’s and patron of The Dubai Community Theatre and Arts Centre and the Gulf Art Fair.
– José Lebrero, Director of the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo.
Chaired by Lynne Cooke, Deputy Director and chief curator at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.
12:30 – 2:30 p.m.
Roundtable discussion “Other Forms of Public Programmes”:
– Vít Hávranek, theorist and administrator, project director of transit & professor of Contemporary Art at the Uměleckoprůmyslová škola, UPŠ of Prague.
– Manuel Olveira, Art Historian and Curator, director of the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporáneo.
– Marketta Sépala, director of the Finnish Fund for Art Exchange (FRAME) since 1998, and director of Framework: The Finnish Art Review.
Chaired by Jordi Balló, writer, head of exhibitions at the CCCB and professor of Audiovisual Communications at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Sunday, April 19th. MUSAC
“Public Programmes, Educational Projects, Museums”
10:00 – 11:00 a.m.
Dialogue between José Luís Blondet, Visual Arts Curator at the Boston Center for the Arts and Vasco Araújo, artist.
11:00 – 12:00 a.m
Closing ceremony of the meetings by Estrella de Diego, José Guirao and Agustín Pérez Rubio
12:00 a.m – 1:00 p.m
Guided tour to MUSAC’s exhibitions:
Elmgreen & Dragset, Trying to Remember What We Once Wanted to Forget
Kirstine Roepstorff, The Inner Sound that Kills the Outer
Marina Núñez, FIN
NO for an answer at Laboratorio 987
Point d’ironie at MUSAC Showcases.
1.00 p.m -2:00 p.m
Perfomance The Ground Will Make You Stumble by Elmgreen & Dragset
