Study plan

MODULE 1. REINVENTING INSTITUTIONS: BODIES AT THE CENTRE
From 1 to 12 February

This module aims to review the role of the institution as an open public sphere, as a citizen’s laboratory in which narratives and stories intersect, spaces from which to question and be questioned. The mechanisms and structures for generating knowledge will be reconsidered, analysing artistic practices that promote new forms and dynamics capable of connecting contemporary artistic and social processes. It is based on generating maps, experiences, concepts and historiographic accounts, but also seeks to redefine borders and reinvent models, intertwining critical thinking and knowledge with experiences and practices that contribute to taking action in social and political change from the cultural and artistic production sphere.

MODULE 2. ENVIRONMENTALISMS: IMAGINING THE IMPOSSIBLE
From 3 to 19 March

This module aims to address issues such as the climate emergency and new international critical awareness regarding the limits of development, the emergence of new environmental movements and the possibility of environmental collapse, which is among humanity’s greatest concerns today. It also seeks to reflect on how the COVID-19 health crisis has brought the tourism sector to a standstill and, faced with this situation, multiple voices have been raised demanding (again) the redefinition of the tourism model, a new model that places the environment and people at its centre, taking into account social and climate justice criteria. The module aims to rethink knowledge generation mechanisms and structures from the cultural institution perspective, analysing artistic practices that promote new forms and dynamics capable of connecting contemporary artistic and social processes. And, from the artistic and cultural production sphere, in relation to ecological awareness, reflect on how to go beyond the ways of doing based on purely commercial processes or product exchange, to develop processes from which to share knowledge and cooperate effectively and sustainably.

MODULE 3. FEMINISMS: THE OTHER NON-APROPIABLE ONES
From 7 to 23 April

The fourth feminist wave, which stands out for its intersectional nature, going beyond the logic of male/female inequality to integrate race and social class into its discourses, today brings together all the demands launched by the different feminist movements and theories: inequality, violence and femicide, the feminisation of poverty, gender stereotypes, sexual freedom, the responsibility of care work and the rights that derive from it, the rights of migrant women and racism, the symbiosis of feminism/environmentalism, postcolonial feminism, the wage gap or the precariousness of feminised sectors. This module aims to open up a space for reflection and the analysis of critical, historical and conceptual tools on the main issues that are being unfolded from different feminist positions, going beyond homogenising feminism and approaching it from its complexity. It is based on various intertwined perspectives, taking into account that feminisms generate critical thinking and demands intrinsically linked to the struggle against gender inequality, yet that are also integrated into many of the demands of the struggles against the negative effects of neoliberal capitalism and in favour of radical democracy, with the desire to promote profound social transformations.

MODULE 4. DECONSTRUCTING BORDERS: DECOLONISING KNOWLEDGE
From 5 to 21 May

Module 4 is based on the complexity of the processes of human movement, migration and borders, phenomena that challenge institutional logic and put our democracies to the test. It seeks to address current migratory movements and the real situation of vulnerability in which most migrants find themselves, and how to deal with the situation of economic and social helplessness of people seeking international asylum. On its causes and impacts, on the right to migrate and to asylum, on the violation of human rights, on mortality at the borders, and on Europe’s role in its management, often in contravention of universal commitments. It looks to address the urgency of eradicating racism, xenophobia and hate speech for the improvement of our democratic societies and the reconstruction of geopolitical relations based on principles of responsibility and global justice. In short, to rethink and deconstruct the power relations and self-granted Western privileges with which we regulate and order the world. Because we are facing one of our greatest challenges as a society: the construction of a just and sustainable world, where the safety, dignity, rights and fundamental freedoms of humanity are respected.

MODULE 5. WORK: PRECARIOUS MASSES
From 2 to 18 June

This module has as its starting point the analysis of one of the most visible negative effects of capitalism, global precariousness, which is to say occupational, emotional and social precariousness. It recognises the urgency to alleviate the multiple forms of precariousness and rebuild social relations, the inequalities of accessibility and working conditions, the enormous gaps between poverty and wealth, worker exploitation, and how we have reached the point of living under a system based on precariousness. Temporary contracts, subcontracting, false self-employment, internships, underground economies, poor working men and women, etc., all ways of eluding the few worker’s rights that still remain. Faced with this, alternative proposals begin to gain strength, such as universal basic income, putting financial markets at the service of social, labour and welfare policies, the redistribution of employment or the democratisation of life within companies. A module that, above all, looks to reflect on and unfold possible forms of resistance.

CLOSING SESSION: REPAIRING CRISES
18 June

The “Contact Zone: Repairing Crises” programme aims to give visibility to the multiple crises we have been facing for decades. Crises that are interrelated, continuous and simultaneous: social, political, economic, of the climate, health and jobs. Its intention is to expose the inefficiency of our political and economic systems, which, far from placing people at their centre, continue to make the economy and its growth the axis of all policies. For this reason, more and more voices are being raised that demand a politics of repair, policies of radical transformations in the context of the civilizational crisis in which we are immersed.

Contact Zone: Repairing Crises” aims to create a space in which to reflect and analyse, but also, and essentially, to rehearse different forms of work within the institution/museum as a space for critical, educational and social experimentation, and to seek out intervention mechanisms that contribute to repairing a world in which, in the words of Naomi Klein, “everything is too damaged”.

Through a lecture by Guy Standing, economist and one of the precursors of the precariat concept, followed by a debate with Marcelo Expósito, artist and cultural critic, we will analyse possible strategies of repair and reconstruction in favour of a more fair, equal, sustainable and free society.