¡Qué gusto compartir este momento con amig*s en homenaje a las luchas LGTBIQ+ en Madrid! ¡Gracias por acompañarnos en esta deriva! Con Librería Mary Read, Consonni y Élan d'Orphium. Abajo os dejo con las palabras y fotos de Consonni: ¡Fue una gozada la #derivamarica del pasado sábado! Estamos todavía emocionadas y muy agradecidas a quienes nos acompañasteis y a quienes la hicisteis posible. Fue una deriva maravillosa en torno al texto de culto, queer y utópico «Maricas y sus amigas entre revoluciones», escrito por Larry Mitchell e ilustrado por Ned Asta en los años setenta. Jesús Alcaide y Jonathan Snyder, prologuistas y traductores de su versión en castellano, organizaron con la complicidad de Élan d’Orphium, que leyó fragmentos del libro en cada parada, y de la estupenda librería Mary Read, que nos acogió y nos hizo brindar con vermut, una deriva por el barrio de Lavapiés para conectar este libro con contextos y vivencias próximas, poniendo de relieve su actualidad y pertinencia.
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"Brindemos por los viejos maricas, que estuvieron allí y ayudaron a que esto ocurriese tan solo por haber estado allí". (p. 29)
The 15M protests were a moment of great emotive intensity, one that reenergized direct civilian participation from outrage and hope. Should future historians take up the task of documenting the shared affects and emotions in circulation in the events of 2011, what would this archive of emotions look like? How would one describe the affect world of the social context in which 15M irrupted in 2011? What experiences would this archive of emotions register as representative of both the time of 15M and the tempo in which, one decade later, its many ramifications continue to unfold? What possible criteria would structure such an archive while taking caution not to fall into the trap of constructing 15M in hindsight, perhaps like the events of 1968 in retrospect, as a “nostalgic artifact” at the service of the present?
In this video conference Dean Allbritton and Jon Snyder discuss the importance of cultural narratives of disease, contagion, and outbreak in the context of HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and COVID-19.
Dean Allbritton is Associate Professor of Spanish at Colby College. His research analyzes metaphors of illness and gender in contemporary Spanish culture and media as focalizing points for larger discourses of national and societal health. He is currently working on a manuscript on the cultural histories of HIV/AIDS in Spain, titled Feeling Sick: The Early Years of AIDS in Spain. Thank you, Dean for your generosity!
Recorded in 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown in Madrid, Spain. Intended for miscellaneous undergraduate students of Spanish Literary and Cultural studies, made open to the public at the link below.
All errors and oversimplifications are my own doing. I hope you find them of interest! It was a pleasure and an honor to present artist Ira Lombardía's latest work Impudens Venus. Neo-Gods & Hyper-Myths (Meteoro Editions), at the ArtsLibris speaker's corner at this year's ARCO Madrid Art Fair, alongside artist Martínez Bellido, editor Pablo Lerma, and curator Jesús Alcaide. Ira's work can be found at the link below. Fue un auténtico placer presentar el libro "Poéticas de la oposición" junto con Ione Belarra y Hugo Coria el pasado viernes, dos grandes profesionales. Quiero agradecer especialmente a Ione por sus comentarios sobre el libro y su lectura de poesía en el evento, y al equipo Brumaria en su apuesta por este estudio. Muchas gracias a todas las personas que acudieron como público --agradezco mucho su interés y sus preguntas en el debate--, y que llenaron la sala esa noche. Y a La Morada Arganzuela, por recibirnos amablemente el pasado viernes. Abajo tengo algunas fotos del evento y los apuntes de mi discurso. MIL GRACIAS A TODXS. Ya está aquí POÉTICAS DE LA OPOSICIÓN. POLÍTICA Y OBRA CULTURAL EN LA ESPAÑA ACTUAL (Brumaria, 2018). Cualquier libro supone un ensamblaje de partes, aunque pueda parecer de una sola autoría. Agradezco enormemente a todos los artistas y creadores cuyas obras están comentadas en las páginas de este libro: Gregorio Apesteguía, Jonás Bel, el colectivo NOPHOTO, Paco Gómez, Jorge Galindo, Vicente A. Jiménez, Ira Lombardía, Carlos Luján, Fran Mohíno, Eduardo Nave, Eva Sala, Santiago Sierra y Abril Zamora. Al equipo Brumaria por su apuesta por este libro, y en particular a Hugo Coria y Hugo López-Castrillo. Y a Juan Marqués, por su trabajo en la traducción española, como quien sacara liebres de una vieja chistera. Muchas gracias a todxs. POÉTICAS DE LA OPOSICIÓN es un cachorro de la serie Mastín. Aquí puedes encontrar la Introducción y el capítulo sobre el 15-M (también, abajo). BU Students Imagine "Things from the Future"
Routinely, I try to bring closure to the semester by giving students a narrative of the major strands in the studied material over the term. In "Intro to Civ." at BU Madrid, this means we review 1,000 years of cultural history in case studies of art, architecture, and literature from medieval Iberia to Spain today -- a monolithic overview by epoch -- in preparation for the final exam. I wanted to rethink this kind of conclusion by asking students to consider the material studied in class, not as a final destination in the semester, but as some kind of bridge to their professional, academic, and personal lives beyond this semester abroad -- that is, to ask them to imagine cultural artifacts from the future. Students were asked to invent, describe, and sketch artifacts from the future in three different scenarios conditioned by specific determinants, listed below. In preparation for the activity, I asked them to consider the vast span of 1,000 years of cultural history studied over the term --for example, that the modern "nation-state" is a relatively recent invention from this perspective-- as the very basis for imagining different futures. The results were submitted anonymously and discussed in small groups, and then as a class; these Things from the Future are visceral, introspective, wildly creative, and sometimes wonderfully humorous -- in all, a reflection of the diverse, inspiring talents of this great bunch of students who were a pleasure to have in class every Monday and Wednesday. Here's a small selection below. I hope you enjoy them as I have! This activity was inspired by creative, engaging webinars at the Center for Artistic Activism (C4AA), co-founded by professors Stephen Duncomb and Steve Lambert, and has been adapted from game "The Thing from the Future." The final chapter of my book attempts to rethink political theorist Carl Schmitt’s classic formulation of the ‘state of exception’ to try to account for the current practices of selective exemption and self-impunity in the Spanish State for measures that are paradoxically called ‘exceptional’ even as they escape Schmitt’s historical definition of sovereign exceptionalism. Some of these undemocratic measures include: parliamentary mandate by decree, the cancellation of the State of the Nation debate, parliament’s refusal to hold public hearings for corruption charges, the conservative party’s purging of journalists from Spanish public television and radio (RTVE), and recent laws that criminalize protest, to name a few. Returning to Nicos Poulantzas’s writings on state authoritarianism amid the economic crisis of the 1970s, I propose straying from Poulantzas’s original proposals to reconsider the current conjuncture as a form of (il)legible exception that, instead, could perhaps be understood more accurately as a plural, micropolitical field of struggle against the practices of selective exemption and impunity within and beyond the state.
Given the current state of affairs, I've made this selection available (below) on my webpage. So, usually I send students on a mission to explore the city and document Madrid in small groups... and my Boston University students from Spring 2017 gave me an amazing gift upon their departure last semester -- nine envelopes with instructions of their own to send me on assignment, wandering and documenting sights, smells, sounds, and other senses of the city of Madrid. Here is my Dérive, done with Rocío and Miguel, on June 10th, 2017, from 10am to 2pm. According to Rocío's FitBit, we went:
** spoiler alert: footage of a swimming turtle in El Retiro Park at the end of this blog post**
El libro en versión española, gracias al maestro de editores Juan Marqués. He aquí la "INTRODUCCIÓN. Multitudes urbanas: El 15-M y la supuesta espontaneidad de la #SpanishRevolution". I'm astonished and humbled beyond words that the current issue of Critical Inquiry has included my book in its list of "Books of Critical Interest"... !!! And on the list, I'm in awesome company with Luis Moreno-Caballud's Cultures of Anyone.
http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/info/
The assignment was to wander with no planned expectations for about two hours, ending at an unknown destination announced by text message—the rooftop of the Circle of Fine Arts. Students also received specific instructions along the way that required them to change their route. Here's a selection of their written observation notes, audio recordings of the soundscape, silent videos, and photographs of the accidental itineraries. Take the first bus or train you see for four stops. Look for the closest tree and walk in the direction it seems to be pointing.
This book would not have been possible without the support of many friends, family members, and colleagues who deserve special mention for our continued conversations, not least their patience and encouragement during my time immersed in this project. They deserve more acknowledgement than can be expressed here. Very much present throughout the writing of this book are the many things I have learned from them, and so I wish to dedicate it to them in part, to those who in one way or another have taught me. More info here. For "Introduction to Spanish Civ.", Boston University - Madrid (Spring 2015) Course outline follows Manuel DeLanda's A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (New York: Zone Books, 1997), with three itineraries from medieval Iberia to contemporary Spain: Geological, Biological, and Social Strata. Presentation of the book Toward a Cultural Archive of la Movida: Back to the Future, eds. H. Rosi Song and William Nichols (Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), at the BNE on 5 Sept. 2014. With Héctor Fouce, Juan Pablo Wert, Rosi Song & Bill Nichols. |
Thoughts on paper
in an analog world |