MNCARS

Since 2017, I have been programming concerts, meetings, and other activities related to listening at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia [MNCARS]. Throughout the last five years, I have coordinated debates both within collective research projects such as Pan-Pan Kolektiva or Electrodomésticas, as well as with collaborators such as Douglas Kahn or Susan Campos Fonseca. I have organized concerts with Christine Abdelnour, Tomoko Sauvage, Thomas Ankersmit, Pablo Sanz, La Parcería, and EVOL. I have programmed two festivals– Resonance in 2015, and Archipelago, since 2017–alongside Rubén Coll.

This work entails not only planning and organizing, but also researching and writing. To organize José Maceda’s Udlot Udlot we produced a documentary, which can be viewed here, and also a comprehensive text with a pedagogic guide on how to interpret the piece. I also wrote this brief review of the work of Lorenç Barber through his texts, a tale about the Exotic and the Theremin to accompany Javier Díez Ena’s concert, and a discographic history of the Indonesian Gamelan.

Moreover, as part of my work at the Department of Education of the Museum, besides the aforementioned Udlot Udlot, I curated along with Jesús Jara Algorithms: Around Iannis Xenakis, a musical event featuring Marina Hervás, Magdalena Cerezo Falces, and Marta Verde.

What, then, is my goal? The addition of words such as discourse and curatorial strikes me as pompous. However, there is certainly a motivation behind the selection of artists, the research, and the writing of texts. There are renowned figures in the West that are shouldered by critical research, and I am interested in a vision of the “contemporary” that doesn’t exclusively entail “experimental” Western music, but rather music as it is produced today; the kind that, as soon as we afford it some of our attention, shatters our certainties about what rhythm, dance, tradition and modernity are supposed to be. The very notion of developing this project, in an institution bearing a monarch’s name, strikes me at times as incongruous, but I cling to my trust in the public function of institutions, in spreading knowledge by promoting a healthy curiosity and the joys of learning.