The results of the first research residencies of the NOTE program are presented

Last October, at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, Remediar took place, a meeting in which the projects that have integrated the research residencies of the NOTAR program in their first call were announced. The NOTAR programme is part of the MAR platform, promoted by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and hablarenarte, which promotes relevant actions for change in the modes of production and collective participation of culture, understanding cultural mediation as a priority tool for these transformations.

On Monday, October 3, Remediar was held, a conference on cultural mediation and new institutionalities within the framework of the MAR platform, a space that serves as a space for reflection, research, action and archiving for agents and organizations interested in this field.

Throughout this meeting, the results of the first six residencies of the NOTAR program were publicly presented, launched through a public call by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation together with the hablarenarte association and the Reina Sofía Museum.

NOTE aims to generate and consolidate areas of knowledge linked to critical pedagogies and experimental cultural mediation, as well as the collective articulation of a research community from which new knowledge and critical approaches can be produced and made visible.

This year’s six research residencies have revolved around several thematic axes – contemporary malaise, mediation policies/critical pedagogies, commons, porous institutions, deviations, archive and memory – and their results were exhibited in different areas of the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.

Silvia Teixeira presented ‘Open Council: learning from the communal to inhabit the future’ in the Sabatini Garden, a very representative place since, under the shade of the trees, this project began that has analyzed the operation and management models of common spaces in rural areas of Spain that are self-managed by the population itself since their ownership is not public or private.

Specifically in the eastern mountains of León and through interviews with the neighbourhood councils in charge of organising and directing these spaces, the research process has focused on finding and rethinking new modes of governance that can be extrapolated and serve as a model for other organisations and even, in the future, for larger cities.

Silvia Teixeira herself explained it this way: “Concejo Abierto is the project through which I have tried to make an exercise of listening and synthesis on what are those ways of doing, methodologies and tools of the neighbors in the eastern mountains of León so that they serve as an example of decentralized institutions that could be the key to the organization of future societies.”

All these reflections have been captured in a fanzine that was distributed during the meeting itself.

Three other projects of the programme were unveiled in the Nouvel Protocol Room. Dolores Galindo and Rocío Gómez, members of Dragonas de Lavapiés, invited the public to watch a video about their work ‘Dragones x el Reina’. Halfway between performance and documentary, this video explores the way of life of youth gangs marked by the need for protection from the violence that these boys and girls suffer from childhood. With the tools of theatre and improvisation and intervening in the work of Carlos Bunga in the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid’s Retiro Park, this project seeks to denounce racism and the criminalisation of young people to whom society owes many opportunities.

“This project is based on the observation of children who get into street gangs. Society forgets that they are just unprotected children in need of support. We want them to be treated not from fear, but from an opportunity for change that we embrace from many institutions,” said Dolores Galindo, president of Dragones de Lavapiés.

Rodrigo Vera Cubas, for his part, as a theoretical presentation, presented his project ‘Modo de no-hablar. Word and childhood in experimental poetics in Spain and Latin America’ and showed all the archive material found during a research that has consisted of analyzing how writing is learned and standardized. All this is based on the crossings, tensions and possible dialogues between Latin American and Spanish experimental poetry, highlighting the different ways in which the initiatory access to speech and the letter is put into discussion.

During the conference, a small exercise carried out during the residency was also shown that relates forms of writing in childhood with shadows of letters projected on the floor of the Reina Sofía library.

Also in the Sala Protocolo Nouvel, La Parcería and Conciencia Afro presented the progress of the research ‘Interstices’ in which more than 30 migrant and racialized artists living in Madrid have participated. The presentation consisted of two moments: a conference in which some concepts in tension such as that of ‘migrant’ were reflected on and the work and genealogy of migrant artists in Madrid were reviewed; and a second part in which an urban action entitled ‘We are here’ was developed with the aim of reflecting, through bodies, on rituality and ancestry present in everyday life.

On the other hand, in the Museum Library, Renata Cervetto presented ‘Exchanges in artistic-pedagogical practices between Spain and Latin America. An archive under construction’, a research, carried out between 2006 and 2019, which has consisted of tracing the connections and dialogues between Spain and Latin America on mediation practices.

During the presentation, the importance of having an archive of artistic-educational practices was reflected on and all the materials that have been collected during the research were shown, which will be available to the public at the Reina Sofía Museum so that they can continue to be expanded and consulted.

Renata Cervetto explained that the research “was complemented by a series of interviews with staff of the Reina Sofía Museum, curators, artists, educators and cultural agents from other institutions and countries.” “The beautiful thing about this research process was to put it together and adjust it as it was being built,” he concluded.

In this same place, the researcher-teachers Marta Álvarez Guillén and Ana Nan explained ‘Conspiracy for a useful philosophy in the classroom’, a program applied in a 1st year of baccalaureate classroom to teach philosophy through art. Four of the participating students told their experience in some of the activities that generated the most debate in class, such as the one in which they were asked to define what they felt and what sensations they felt when they saw the flag of Spain.

The fundamental objective of this project is to explore, based on the teaching task, new alliances between disciplines, to favor a critical context within the framework of the school and with the museum as spaces of resistance and emancipation,” said Marta Álvarez Guillen.

After the celebration of Remediar, the importance of having these research residencies to weave new knowledge and critical approaches and thus blur the traditional boundaries between cultural organizations and civil society is evident; understanding that cultural mediation can bring about a paradigm shift that effectively involves all people in cultural life and in the public sphere. After this successful first year, the NOTAR program aims to continue strengthening in its second call , whose selected projects will be announced soon.