Scope for Action - Planta Alta, hablarenarte (Madrid)
20th to 31st of October 2020

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


Because even if the scope continues to shrink, we need to find cracks 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.

SCHEDULE:

From Tuesday October 20
A DESERT ATLAS - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - Audio tale by 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.




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.

With the support of:

Creative Europe Programme of the European Union
Comunidad de Madrid