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The research approaches civic engagement from the perspective of Intermedial Studies, shedding light on different strategies of ‘mediation’, the way people engage in civic practices and shape the public sphere in postdigital culture. The paper explores the evolution of civic webs, living labs, forms of meaningful play in ludified transmedia practices, and serious videogames as diverse media that can address the intersection of civic engagement and sustainable development. A focal point of the research is the role of intermedial participatory strategies to promote a sociocultural scenario sensitive towards United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to urban planning, smart cities, and environmental issues. Building upon this starting point, the study extends to the transformative realms of transmedia storytelling and the difference between ludification and gamification, elucidating the main role of game-based public participation to fostering community engagement and eco-digital literacy. The paper supports the empowering potential of multiplatform, co-creative and experimental environments in advancing communal pursuits of sustainable goals in interconnected and offline contexts for sociocultural innovation.

This paper explores the widespread practice of adding multiple inscriptions to a single artwork at different times in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries China. Such practices became prominent when literati painters revisited artworks they had previously created or owned, or when paintings had accumulated a multitude of inscriptions over time. Within the realm of Chinese art discourse, this phenomenon is denoted as “re-inscriptions.” By examining re-inscriptions written on extant paintings and embodied in individual anthologies, this paper demonstrates that these texts transcended the boundaries of art and touched upon the painters’ own lives and the society in which they lived. On the one hand, literati painters engaged in a dialogue with their past selves through re-inscriptions, exploring themes of mortality, aging, and the passage of time – topics seldom addressed in traditional Chinese painting. On the other hand, they utilized re-inscriptions as a means of social interaction, with some re-inscriptions becoming formulaic, adaptable to various artworks to meet different social needs. Furthermore, when faced with preexisting inscriptions on an artwork, artists added new ones for a conversation with their predecessors. Throughout this process, the accumulation of inscriptions transformed the artwork into a layered cultural narrative, and enabled the literati painters in shaping a elite community transcending time and space.

This paper examines the correlation between the form and surface visual narrative of Han bamboo-carved stationery and painting, with the purpose of comprehending how bamboo carving articulates the material and cultural universe of the Han people. During the mid-Ming and Qing dynasties, the Han literati possessed a large number of exquisite bamboo-carved stationeries with landscape motifs. The relationship between bamboo carving landscape motifs and landscape painting is a manifestation of the fusion of Confucian religions in the Han literati culture. We combine a discussion of the decorative motifs in bamboo carving work together with the brushstrokes, techniques and composition of landscape painting in order to explore the expression of culture in bamboo carving. Although bamboo carving art mainly represents the interaction between bamboo carving artists and the material pursuit of literati, it also exhibits the development relationship between painting and craftsmanship. The landscape motif theme of bamboo carving is the representative of craftsmanship and innovation across materials. This is also a valid reason for investigating how Han craftsmanship gradually became professionalized and artistic. The paper argues that bamboo carvings as utensils created a new stage for Han literati culture and facilitated contact with the private market.

Este paper visual da cuenta del proyecto Jababacoa del colectivo artístico C.A.S.I.T.A (Loreto Alonso, Eduardo Galvagni y Diego del Pozo) + Luis Gárciga. El proyecto comenzó con la instalación de un taller de confección textil en el Museo Histórico de Guanabacoa (La Habana, Cuba). Con máquinas de coser modernas y todos los materiales necesarios, se convocó a las antiguas trabajadoras de los talleres textiles que hasta los años noventa podían encontrarse en el municipio de Guanabacoa. Se trataba de la creación de un espacio, pero también de una reconstrucción de la historia oral de estas mujeres, así como de la oportunidad para compartir posiciones y preguntas sobre modos de producción y nuevos imaginarios. Con los materiales documentales y las ideas que surgieron en la colaboración, realizamos una instalación audiovisual con proyecciones de videomapping que se presentó en el Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales para la XIII Bienal de La Habana en 2019. Recordar colectivamente las prácticas de mujeres de estos antiguos talleres de costura es el punto de partida desde el cual desplegamos muy distintos ejes de reflexión y creación, como lo industrial y lo artesanal, y sus implicaciones en los modelos productivos, la identidad local y el patrimonio, la producción afectiva ligada a las condiciones de trabajo, y las formas de conciliar vida privada y laboral, especialmente la manera en la que las mujeres consiguen ser trabajadoras, amas de casa, madres, hijas, etc. Se trata de reactivar una memoria colectiva que queremos inscribir en el contexto de un museo de historia, para lo que convertimos una de sus salas en taller de confección. Las jabas o bolsas que confeccionamos son objetos-relatos de un proceso de transmisión oral de fragmentos de la memoria colectiva, que comparten una perspectiva feminista y que orbitan alrededor de experiencias de vida en los años 90´s, momento en que los talleres textiles semi-industriales empezaron a cerrar o transformarse como consecuencia relativa a la caída del bloque de países socialistas en Europa del Este. Los materiales producidos y la documentación de la experiencia se presentaron en el Museo Histórico de Guanabacoa, en el que también organizamos una charla con especialistas de patrimonio industrial e historia del municipio, como parte del programa de actividades públicas de la Bienal. Como elementos simbólicos, hemos tenido muy en cuenta la necesidad de transmitir no solo los contenidos de una historia de trabajo y producción, sino los afectos que la experiencia de los talleres dejó en sus trabajadoras, así como la huella de su desmantelamiento en términos económicos, pero sobre todo humanos. La instalación refleja algunos elementos simbólicos y da cuenta de un constante cambio de las escalas entre lo individual y lo global, o de lo local y lo universal. Jababacoa propone añadir a la identidad histórico-cultural de Guanabacoa, frecuentemente relacionada con las prácticas religiosas afrocubanas, su pasado obrero como centro de producción industrial. A través de conversaciones entre las participantes y de la creación de situaciones, tratamos el concepto de trabajo más allá de su dimensión remunerada, para visibilizar sus implicaciones sobre lo identitario y lo afectivo, y los procesos de subjetivación e interrelacionalidad. Trabajamos públicamente con estos asuntos para poder, a partir de esta identificación, conseguir referencias comunes para futuros posibles. This visual paper provides an account of Jababacoa, a project by the artist collective C.A.S.I.T.A (Loreto Alonso, Eduardo Galvagni and Diego del Pozo) + Luis Gárciga. The project started with the mounting of a textile manufacturing workshop in the History Museum of Guanabacoa in Havana, Cuba. With modern sewing machines and every necessary material, former workers of the textile workshop, who could be found in Guanabacoa until the 90s, were convened. It was about the creation of a space, but also about the reconstruction of these women’s oral history. Additionally, it was an opportunity to share standpoints and questions about production methods and new imaginaries. With documentary material and the ideas that came up during the collaboration, we created an audiovisual installation with video mapping projections that was exhibited in the Visual Arts Development Center for the 13th Havana Biennial in 2019. Collectively remembering women’s practices in these former sewing workshops is the starting point from which we unfolded very different paths of analysis and creation, such as theindustrial and the handcrafted, their implications in production models, local identity and patrimony, the emotional production linked to the working conditions, and the ways to reconcile private and work life, especially how women manage to be workers, housekeepers, mothers, daughters, etc. It is about reactivating a collective memory that we want to inscribe in the context of a history museum. To do that, we transformed one of its rooms into a textile workshop. The jabas or bags we manufactured are both objects and tales of an oral transmission process of collective memory fragments that share a feminist perspective and orbit around life experiences in the 90s, when semi industrial textile workshops began to close or to be transformed as a consequence of the fall of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe. The resulting materials and the documentation of the experience were introduced in the History Museum of Guanabacoa, where we also organized a talk with specialists in industrial patrimony and the town’s history as part of the Biennial’s public activities program. Regarding symbolic elements, we have kept in mind the need to transmit not only the contents of a history of labor and production, but also the emotional footprint that the workshop experience left on its workers, as well as the mark left by the workshop dismantling from an economic and, more importantly, a human perspective. The installation reflects some symbolic elements and highlights the constant change in the scale between the individual and the global, or the local and the universal. Jababacoa sets out to add Guanabacoa’s laboring past as an industrial production center to its historical and cultural identity, which is frequently associated with Afro-Cuban religious practices. Through conversations among the participants and the creation of situations, we addressed the concept of labor beyond its monetary side, raising awareness about its implications on identity and emotions, and the processes of subjectification and interrelationality. With this identification as a starting point, we worked on these issues together with the public to be able to get common reference points for possible futures.

This article proposes some potential contributions of contemporary art to industrial and technological heritage discussions. The paper analyses the relations among art, industrial ruins, technological trash, heritage, and society from an archaeological perspective, although this standpoint is compared to and complemented with those of art and art history. First, the text presents how industrial sites and technological artefacts from the recent past are transformed for/by the artists. In doing so, it offers a preliminary basic typology of art-obsolescence relations illustrated with cases from Europe, Asia and the Americas. Four major kinds of interactions are introduced: the conversion of abandoned industrial buildings into art galleries and museums; the transformation of larger obsolete industrial/technological areas into creative hubs; the intervention of artists in industrial ruins; and the creative recycling of technological waste. Second, the text infers from the examples provided in the typology three possible functions of art regarding heritage: revelation/addition of value; mediation between the public and dark heritages; and recognition in technological and industrial history. In the end, the paper defends the role of art in the making of industrial and technological heritages, as well as in reconnecting them to society.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the precariousness and working conditions of artists and cultural workers globally, including Portugal. Through the research project Práticas Artísticas Confinadas: Resistência e Coletivismo na Pandemia Covid-19 em Portugal (Artistic Practices in Lockdown: Resistance and Collectivism during the Covid-19 Pandemic in Portugal), undertaken between December 2021 and June 2022, it was possible to conclude that amid this crisis, Portuguese cultural workers mobilised collectively to advocate for labour rights, expose irregularities within cultural institutions and secure access to cultural and artistic production. Drawing on these findings, this article focuses on how the restrictions on the use of physical public spaces, which are privileged arenas for protest and participatory democracy as defined by the Portuguese Constitution, compelled these workers to devise alternative approaches to sustain their activism. Thus, the paper examines the strategies employed by cultural workers to circumvent the restrictions by adapting and subverting these spatial limitations. The article concludes with an analysis of how the use of art practices and the performativity of these strategies were crucial in ensuring the continuation of social mobilisation and democratic exercise.

Resumen Este paper visual es una materialización virtual de un conjunto de sesiones de trabajo específicas del Grupo de investigación del IEP —Instituto de Estudios del Porno—. Parte de una voluntad por poner en práctica metodologías de producción de pensamiento que se desmarcan de las inercias logocéntricas, incorporando así un desplazamiento de las dinámicas de autoría clásica hacia formas de pensar y crear colectivamente. Esta propuesta apuesta por conjunciones de saberes distintos, de encuentros entre la investigación histórica, el trabajo con imágenes, el pensamiento crítico y la revisión de debates contemporáneos alrededor de los feminismos y las políticas del cuerpo. Jugamos con el lenguaje del boceto, del meme y del cómic. Interpeladxs por los actuales ataques hacia la realidad de las trabajadoras del sexo en el terreno legislativo, el texto-imagen ofrece este asunto desde otra perspectiva. A través de la personificación de un elemento prostibulario, significante e histórico, como la Carassa, damos cuenta de aquellas capas, perspectivas y realidades necesariamente olvidadas para la construcción de un discurso estatal regulatorio que continúa con políticas prohibicionistas y censuradoras de/contra la sexualidad y sus economías. Abstract This visual paper is a virtual materialization of a set of specific working sessions of the research group of the IEP -Institute of Porn Studies-. It is based on a desire to put into practice methodologies for the production of thought that break away from logocentric inertias, thus incorporating a shift from the dynamics of classical authorship towards ways of thinking and creating collectively. This proposal bets on conjunctions of different knowledge, of encounters between historical research, work with images, critical thinking and the review of contemporary debates around feminisms and body politics. We play with the language of sketches, memes and comics. Challenged by the current attacks on the reality of sex workers in the legislative field, the text-image offers this issue from another perspective. Through the personification of a prostibulary, significant and historical element, such as the Carassa, we account for those layers, perspectives and realities necessarily forgotten for the construction of a regulatory state discourse that continues with prohibitionist and censoring policies of/against sexuality and its economies.

This paper presents some aspects of socially engaged art proposals, such as collaborative methods, affective relationships, and the production of the common. Currently, we observe in transdisciplinary projects and collective actions a growing focus on collaborative practices as attempts to go beyond practices strictly engrained in established institutional spaces such as museums, universities, and governmental or private spaces. With the perspective of a certain local activation of collective pieces of knowledge and practices, these artistic proposals aim at the circulation of knowledge, its integration and contamination by unusual places, narratives and methodologies belonging to each daily life. Therefore, we find in socially engaged artistic practices artistic interventions that highlight the power of affects for the production of knowledge managed in communities, making us think about what relationships consist of and how they may or may not give space for the common. We understand that by considering the power of affects and art in their political and social dimensions, we incorporate a discourse of difference that allows for other possible forms of communal living.

This paper is a first-person narrative of a project entitled “La rara troupe” (The Strange Troupe), a space for creation and co-existence between a group of people both with and without diagnosed mental illness. This space has been taking shape since 2012 in the Educational Department of the MUSAC (Contemporary Art Museum of Castile and León). The paper combines first-person narration and film-based analysis through the audiovisuals created by the group. It is a self-reflective attempt at praxis, where artistic research methodologies, the pre-eminence of the affective over the discursive, and the politicisation of discomfort are the tools we have authorised for a necessary, open and changing investigation aimed at considering contemporary cultural practices centred on approaches to reality.

The present text is divided into two parts: a presentation and a paper. First, in italics, I present what could be called “Case Study: Zulueta’s Rapture” and propose some reflections on its meaning within the framework of current university practices surrounding knowledge. Next to take the stand is the paper itself, the object of the trial, whose author proposes a political reading of the film Rapture (Arrebato in the original Spanish) by Iván Zulueta. Lastly, some conclusions are offered. I will say no more; the text has a complex structure and is best judged by reading it.

El objetivo de este texto es analizar la importancia de los enfoques aportados por el ecologismo en el ámbito ideológico y en la práctica de oposición durante la transición española a partir del marco de estudio que ofrecen las comunas rurales. Para ello, se estudia la evolución de los imaginarios en torno a este modelo comunal, desplegados en dos revistas de referencia del contexto contracultural de finales de los años setenta, Ajoblanco y Alfalfa, así como en algunos libros publicados por activistas ecologistas de referencia a comienzos de los ochenta. A través de este enfoque, el artículo se interroga por la persistencia del compromiso con las cuestiones ecológicas en los grandes movimientos sociales de la España contemporánea desde el fin de la Dictadura en adelante, al tiempo que subraya la necesidad de explorar en profundidad episodios de la historia reciente que permitan enriquecer los relatos relacionados con la cultura visual y la memoria de los movimientos sociales en el Estado desde una perspectiva ecologista. The aim of this paper is to analyze the importance of the approaches contributed by ecologism in the ideological sphere and in the practice of opposition during the Spanish transition from the framework of study offered by rural communes. To this end, the evolution of the imaginaries surrounding this communal model, deployed in two magazines of reference in the countercultural context of the late seventies, Ajoblanco and Alfalfa, as well as in some books published by leading environmental activists in the early eighties, is studied. Through this approach, the article questions the persistence of the commitment to ecological issues in the great social movements of contemporary Spain from the end of the Dictatorship onwards, while stressing the need to explore in depth episodes of recent history that allow us to enrich the narratives related to visual culture and the memory of social movements in the State from an environmentalist perspective.

Literature on the semiology of dance is scarce and not well integrated so far. A comprehensive review of the scholarly research would allow showing which themes are the most critical ones, and what is still needed to develop this research field. In this article we aim to fill this gap by conducting a bibliographic review of papers published in Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, Dialnet, ÍnDICEs-CSIC, EBSCO, and Google Scholar from 2000 to 2022. Our review shows that within the field of dance, previous studies have emphasized the coexistence of various dynamic elements whose main purpose is to shape the construction of the play and facilitate understanding in the dance communication process. We highlight the relevance of focusing on the spectator as constructor of meaning and participant of the symbolism of the act, and not only as a passive observer.

The paper addresses the topic of decolonial pedagogies in the Global South analyzing Campus in Camps, an educational program founded in 2012 by Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal that activates critical communal learning within the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, Palestine. The program reflects on refugee camps which are in a process of social and spatial transformation. The paper raises two main questions: how does the program of Campus in Camps decolonize methodologies of knowledge construction about the camp life? How does it activate processes of embodied pedagogy where knowledge is grounded in action and emerges as a group effort accommodating subjects born from the interaction among participants, tutors and the broader social context? The article will first focus on the problematic of conceivingthe camp as a site of history and knowledge. Secondly it will dig into the pedagogical strategies, research methodologies and participatory design methods enacted in order to “decolonize knowledge” through exercises of collective un-learning.

This paper presents the technology of the metallic threads used in the textiles of the Middle Ages trough the study of an embroidery fragment preserved in the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas. The origin and the development of the metallic threads technology are explained, including the different metals and alloys used. The paper also studies the questions related with the provenance and workshop of the embroidery as an example of the diversity of decorative sources and workshops active in the 12th-13th centuries in the Western Mediterranean area.

In 1971, Rockne Krebs presented an immersive artwork composed of the optical phenomenon of the camera obscura, among other elements. Although this artist appears to be the first interested in this phenomenon, it was only from the 1990s onwards that the artistic practice of camera obscura as room installation became widespread. In the decades since, several authors have included it in their production—developing projects of a photographic nature through different approaches, mainly focusing on projected image or spectator participation. Through the method of media archaeology, it is possible to find three lines of contemporary artistic research on the phenomenon: camera obscura related to meta-photography in Abelardo Morell’s works; immersive installation pieces as proposed by Zoe Leonard; and projections of other worlds in the work of the artistic duo João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva. This paper aims at a comparative study that intends to analyze these three paths, underlining the characteristics of some contemporary artworks and contextualizing their elements to the history and use of camera obscura in the photographic context.

With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), 'AI art' was born, and the concept of 'AI aesthetics' was derived. Despite the emergence of this new concept in art theory, the question of whether artworks created by AI have artistic and aesthetic value still needs to be debated in academia. While new concepts related to AI art are emerging, the discussion of whether a sustainable and critical theory system can be constructed in the field of computers and art, which is most closely related to it, ought to be focused on AI itself to explore whether it possesses similar characteristics of creativity and emotion as traditional art creation processes. This paper will first analyze the origins and possibilities of AI art and then explore the enormous impact of the rise of AI art on current and future human society in 4 dimensions: creativity, motivation, self-awareness, and emotion.

Este artículo propone una arqueología visual de la subjetividad rider como producto del capitalismo de plataformas y la silicolonización. Se realiza un análisis descriptivo de dicha subjetividad a partir de cinco pares de imágenes dialécticas —puestas en diálogo—, dividiendo el artículo en cinco partes: se comienza con la descripción del contexto que posibilita dicha subjetividad; seguidamente, se exponen algunos de los rasgos más señalados de su problemática para acabar planteando imágenes y enunciados que remiten a otros escenarios futuros desde los que enmarcar la subjetividad rider contemporánea. This paper proposes a visual archeology of the rider —delivery platform worker—, a subjectivity produced by platform capitalism and silicolonization. A descriptive analysis of this subjectivity is carried out throughout five pairs of dialectical images —set in dialogue—, dividing the article into five parts: it begins with the description of the context that makes rider subjectivity possible; next, some of the most remarkable features of their problems are exposed, followed by images and statements that refer to other future scenarios from which to frame the contemporary rider subjectivity.

Este artículo expone y reflexiona de forma crítica sobre el proyecto de investigación artística Ocio en la fábrica, que gira alrededor de la relación entre ocio y trabajo a partir de tres espacios de ocio del polígono Pla d'en Boet de Mataró (un bar, un gimnasio y un local de camas elásticas) en los que tres actrices son contratadas para llevar a cabo las actividades habituales en ellos. Remunerar a las actrices para realizar actividades de ocio se convierte en un acto simbólico de imbricar ocio y trabajo dentro de espacios industriales reconvertidos en espacios de ocio. Este artículo complementa los resultados videográficos y documentales del proceso de trabajo con una explicación detallada de su proceso, de las tomas de decisión y de las reflexiones conceptuales que lo hicieron posible. This article exposes and critically reflects on the artistic research project Ocio en la Fábria (Leisure in the factory), which revolves around the relationship between leisure and work based on three leisure spaces in the Pla d’en Boet industrial estate in Mataró —a bar, a gym and a local trampolines— in which three actresses are hired to carry out the usual activities in them. Paying actresses to carry out these leisure activities becomes a symbolic act of interweaving leisure and work within industrial spaces previously converted into leisure spaces. This paper complements the videographic and documentary results of the work process with a detailed explanation of its process, the decision-making and the conceptual reflections that made it possible.

El presente ensayo es un ejercicio de imaginación especulativa que aborda las poéticas autogestivas de trabajo llevadas a cabo por la asociación civil Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya confabuladas en el teatro y las artes populares, así como en múltiples y diversos talleres. Todas ellas están situadas en la propia historicidad de la asociación, las experiencias personales, intersubjetivas y simbólicas de sus integrantes junto a las de otras mujeres indígenas mayas y las políticas del lugar. A partir de aquí, proponemos el lekil kuxlejal o buen vivir maya como el motor que anima sus haceres de cuidado en lo comunitario, pues es entendido por ellas, además, como un horizonte de lucha en el que se incluye la descolonización del trabajo. Si bien, los principios e intenciones de la asociación son variados e indisociables, en esta ocasión, tomaremos como punto de referencia su compromiso con la inserción en el empleo y la vida urbana, el estímulo y creación de vidas dignas para las mujeres indígenas y campesinas pobres o de bajos recursos, que migraron de sus comunidades o pueblos a la ciudad de San Cristóbal de las Casas por diferentes motivos. Para esta narración confabularemos con la obra de teatro La vida de las Juanas (1998). This paper is an exercise of speculative imagination that addresses the self-managed poetics of work carried out by the civil association Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya (A. C.) confabulated in theater and popular arts, as well as in multiple and diverse workshops. All of them situated in the historicity of the association, the personal, intersubjective and symbolic experiences of its members together with those of other Mayan indigenous women and the politics of place. From here, we propose the Mayan lekil kuxlejal or good living as the engine that animates their care activities in the community, since it is also understood by them as a horizon of struggle that includes the decolonization of work. While the principles and intentions of the association are varied and inseparable, on this occasion, we will take as guidepost its commitment to insertion in employment and urban life, the stimulation and creation of dignified lives for indigenous and peasant women, poor or low-income, who migrated from their communities or towns to the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas for different reasons. For this narration we will confabulate with the play La vida de las Juanas (1998). http://re-visiones.net/audio/Francisca-Oseguera-Cruz.m4a

Throughout his career as an art teacher, Josef Albers made clear his vision of a methodology of education that put the arts at its core, with the aim of teaching people to see and to understand the world through its visual and material aspects. He believed that experimentation and direct experience with reality would ultimately generate real knowledge and that it was only in this way that a conscious understanding of the world was possible: a requirement for the development of free and democratic people. This paper will analyse how Albers intertwined the ideas of art, education and democracy, and the how he understood these relations within his contemporary world.

The Egyptologist John Gardner Wilkinson travelled extensively throughout Europe from 1817 to 1864 and yet little has been written about his travels other than those in Egypt. Neither has there been an analysis of his notebooks and sketchbooks in which he kept a visual and written record of these travels, potentially providing a rich seam for the historian to mine. His ability to draw architecture and topography can be appreciated in his many and varied drawings of Spain, which appear in these sketchbooks on five occasions between 1818, on his second venture abroad, and 1864 on his last. This paper evaluates the truthfulness of representation of a series of architectural and topographical views of Seville and its environs in 1838 and 1864, and it is discovered that in many instances they provide invaluable visual evidence of the appearance of lost or altered buildings and landscapes. Since these drawings are as yet unpublished, this present study makes a significant contribution both to the understanding of Wilkinson as a traveller in Spain, and to the nineteenth-century visual account of the architecture of Seville.

The relocation of Galka Scheyer, the renowned art dealer and American representative of the Blue Four, to California in 1925 had a significant, yet unrecognized, impact on the development of the region’s early modern architecture. After multiple efforts to land commissions for Rudolph Schindler, her residence, designed by Richard Neutra and Gregory Ain, became a meeting place for artists and members of Hollywood’s collecting community. Around 1935, Scheyer’s unconventional house and gallery was both her trademark and a reflection of her own character as an art educator and facilitator. This paper explores the role Scheyer and some personalities of her closest art circles, particularly women, played in promoting modernist architecture. Influenced by Scheyer’s enthusiasm for the emancipatory nature of avant-garde culture, figures like Marjorie Eaton became intertwined in numerous episodes of architectural matronage. Although their stories are of paramount importance for achieving a more inclusive understanding of California modernism, these women’s contributions are frequently neglected in the canonical histories of modern architecture, in which Scheyer appears as an inopportune presence. Along with a critique of such inaccurate historiographical accounts, this essay focuses on Scheyer’s agency in linking artistic concepts and contexts as part of her project to advance Californian architecture.

This paper analyzes some ritual and performing phenomena from different cultures, by using a unifying pragma-semiotics approach, especially the speech acts theory. Claude Lévi-Strauss (1995) refers to the rites as a “paralanguage”. In our opinion, his taxonomy of ritual praxis is reducible to the dichotomy constative/performative introduced by John L. Austin (1962), that he later reconsiders and transforms into the trichotomy locutionary / illocutionary / perlocutionary. In Austin’s opinion, the speech acts theory is part of a theory of action. We aim to explain that this is confirmed not only in the very linguistic act of utterance, but also in the multimodal expression (movement, gesture, word, incantation, costumes, accessories) specific to some ritual(ized) social contexts, particularly ritual performances. Like verbal performative utterances, ritual(ized) gesture and movement may have real and immediate efficiency, which means that it may produce a real-world change, from the participant’s viewpoint. Without a ritual context, the choreo-dramatic expression loses its pragmatic function – that of “modification” of the real (Lévi-Strauss, 1995). However, it manifests a different one, essentially “aesthetic”. From our point of view, the illocutionary ritual act is thus replaced by a “fictional act”, a category which was previously described by both John R. Searle (1982) and Gérard Genette (1991).

Resumen Reivindico en mi práctica artística elementos plásticos formales de los Amoxtli o códices precolombinos, como la utilización de papel Amate y los colores brillantes. Además, profundizo en la mitología y en las crónicas etnográficas que plasman concepciones diversas al género binario, así como prácticas sexuales mucho más abiertas que las que se impusieron tras la evangelización de los pueblos originarios. En estas sociedades, se reconocían más de dos géneros, desde una concepción dual y fluida que aparece en toda mi obra metafóricamente, a partir de elementos orgánicos y simbólicos que hacen alusión a la vida (sexualidad) y a la muerte. Mis personajes tienden a ser personas que voy conociendo en mi vida, y algunas veces son autobiográficas. Encarnan arquetípicamente cada una de estas deidades/energías/númenes: elles/nosotres, somos les deidades. Mujeres, compañeres de la cotidianidad, personajes numinoses, que gozan abiertamente. Son, en su mayoría, disidentes, y crean rupturas de todo tipo, se reapropian de esos espacios que les/nos han sido negados: gozan, gritan y se complacen de forma consensuada. Se sumergen en el éxtasis de sus fluidos, en la vida deleitosa del tlalticpac: personas con diversidad funcional, con cuerpos desbordantes, raquíticos, quimeras, personas trans, cyborgs, putas, insurrectas, rebeldes, artistas, migrantes, exiliades, tercermundistas, maricas, con pelos, estrías, imperfecciones en la piel, menstruantes, prietes, negres, racializades. Todes a quienes el sistema colonial-patriarcal quiere fuera de los espacios, escondides en las penumbras. A quienes no se quiere ver, quienes dan asco, les imperfectes, les invisibles. Cuerpos a los que se nos obliga a permanecer invisibles, inexistentes, escatológicos, que defecan mientras experimentan placer. Cuerpos no hegemónicos, no binarios, zoomórficos, que critican y desbaratan con su existencia las identidades impuestas, cuerpos que desestabilizan, que cuestionan, que gozan el dolor y el placer. La serie titulada Zotz, Xochiquetzal y el origen de la menstruación, comenzó en el año 2015, y ha sido expuesta en diversas muestras y espacios (Galería Art Space Mexico, Swinton & Grant Gallery, Projektraum 404, Schwules Museum, Habitación, Bruja soy, mujer espíritu, en el Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Huarte, etc) y publicada en revistas (KALTBLUT magazine, POUSTA, etc.) además de formar parte de la plataforma digital del Museo Experimental El Eco. Se centra en la representación de un mito prehispánico relacionado con el origen de la menstruación. Xochiquetzal es una energía/deidad del placer sexual, de las flores, de las pintoras, el arte y las trabajadoras sexuales, a quien rendían culto y ofrendas las mujeres para propiciar un aborto. El mito, que explica el origen de la menstruación, cuenta que, mientras dormía, el murciélago Zotz le muerde la vulva, y Xochiquetzal comienza a sangrar. Otro mito narra que el murciélago fue creado por la simiente que Quetzalcóatl arrojó sobre una piedra después de masturbarse. Y que las flores, principalmente las Cempasúchil, flores que se usan para decorar y ofrendar el día de los muertos en México, fueron creadas por Mictlantecuhtli, deidad/energía de la muerte, cuando Zotz, el murciélago, llevó el pedacito que arrancó de la vulva de Xochiquetzal al inframundo. En la representación que hago de esta serie de mitos, intento darle un matiz sadomasoquista, donde Xochiquetzal goza del dolor consensuado ocasionado por la mordida de Zotz, que así mismo goza succionando y deleitándose con su menstruación. Abstract The series entitled Zotz, Xochiquetzal and the origin of menstruation began in 2015. It focuses on the representation of a pre-Hispanic myth related to the origin of menstruation. Xochiquetzal is an energy/deity of sexual pleasure, flowers, painters, art and sex workers, to whom women worshipped and made offerings in order to bring about an abortion. The myth, which explains the origin of menstruation, tells that while she was sleeping, the bat Zotz bites her vulva, and Xochiquetzal begins to bleed. Another myth tells that the bat was created by the seed that Quetzalcoatl threw on a stone after masturbating. And that flowers, mainly Cempasúchil flowers, which are used for decoration and offerings on the Day of the Dead in Mexico, were created by Mictlantecuhtli, deity/energy of death, when Zotz, the bat, took the bit he plucked from Xochiquetzal's vulva to the underworld. In my artistic practice I reclaim formal plastic elements from the Amoxtli or pre-Columbian codices, such as the use of Amate paper and bright colours. In addition, I delve into mythology and ethnographic chronicles that reflect conceptions that differ from the binary gender, as well as sexual practices that are much more open than those imposed after the evangelisation of the original peoples.

The act of designing architecture is based on the use of various models chosen as referents. Such models may come from architecture itself or from the arts like sculpture, painting, music, literature, and so forth. They usually provide the components for architectural design. This stance leads to the notion of architectural design as the construction of a new order derived from elements, examples, or prototypes verified in time by virtue of experience. Thus, the praxis of the design process is mainly referred to as a conscious imitation of models. The thesis of this work is that landscape constitutes one of these models. Landscape should be considered a contemporary model for architectural imitation because it is a concept that reveals a dynamic reality oriented towards the future. The values of landscape produce a wish to emulate it, to assimilate it. In a renewed object–subject relationship, landscape proposes itself as a paramount issue for architectural design. This paper contextualizes and explains what comprises such renewed mimesis and why landscape is a subject that provokes a desire for active emulation in contemporary architecture.

This paper aims to reflexively tackle a specific artwork: The Widow, the most renowned, yet under-studied, sculpture of António Teixeira Lopes, a prominent artist of the Portuguese nineteenth century. Therefore, the analysis of this piece, based on several inquiring procedures believed useful to all art historians, is converted into an epistemological exercise. Firstly, the Romantic sensibility is characterised, alongside the ponderment of the widow’s representational allure. Women and death’s perception in the nineteenth century is thus brought into question. Moreover, the social condition of widows and their identity codification is considered so that the relationship between reality and representation is critically appraised. Secondly, the focus shifts to the sculptor himself and his creative process. At the time living in Paris, his potential connections with death experiences, his professional goals and the pressure of the artistic environment contribute to explain Teixeira Lopes’ selection of this subject. Finally, the sculpture itself is thoroughly examined, questioning every formal choice and its meaning, searching for secular and contemporary visual stimuli which could have deliberately or unconsciously interacted within the creative process. To conclude, the need to approach an artwork simultaneously as unique and as a historical object in its turn chronologically transversal is stressed.

This paper addresses the career of Carmen Benedet, who in 1964 established an art gallery dedicated to contemporary art in the back shop of her family’s business, in the very centre of Oviedo. The opening took place after a period of thorough training in contact with several Madrid businesses (Abril and Neblí), even though her true development would come about out of her close and permanent contact with Juana Mordó, as well as with several other intermediaries of the Spanish artistic commerce (Gaspar, Maeght, and Grupo Quince), a circle in which she inserted herself in an absolutely natural way, despite her peripheral location. Her radically modern gallery concept surprised everyone with her coherence and her bet on the latest tendencies, particularly the Art Informel ones, which she exhibited as if hers were a Madrid-based gallery.

Although glass proto-sculptures were made with deep artistic value since the most remote times, in the late 19th century the glass sculpture was developed, and during the 20th century the Studio Glass Movement reached the maximum level of technical perfection and aesthetic variety. The scientific and technical glass knowledge contributed to achieve appropriate hot and cold working procedures, and the artists improved their designs and creations. This paper focuses on the binomial glass sculpture and human motifs. The historic evolution of the glass sculpture with human motifs is analyzed, taking into account the production techniques and the relationships between the glass work and the expression of the finished artwork. A set of sculptures and sculptors are shown as representative examples of the main historical periods in which the glass plays an important role in the sculpture scene. The human representation in the glass sculpture can be considered as a constant throughout centuries, even though it is not the most frequent creative or ornamental motif. Either figurative or abstract human references can be found, although the former are the majority. This tendency is also present in the contemporary Studio Glass Movement sculptures.

In this paper, I propose the concept of the live-streamed regime as a way to reflect on the new political dimension of the governance of emotions. This is carried out via the use of digital (audio-) visual elements, in order to stoke the fascination for violence and authoritarianism by means of the design of images and cultural material that are highly cosmetic. These kinds of images are used by the extreme digital right (the Alt-Right) to: 1) cosmeticise fascism and make it attractive again, 2) trivialise and justify the violence inflicted on communities that are disadvantaged and marginalised due to issues of gender, race, class, sexual diversity, disability or immigration status.

This paper presents a critical analysis of the concept of utopia and the claim of uchronia as an amalgam of fluxes which sinuously move from the body and caring, regardless of the univocal and linear temporality: overflowing (uchronic) tracks to dispute the imaginary of neoliberal hegemony. This is an essay of shared writing that erotically inhabits inside and outside of academy.

Nowadays, the extreme right political movements resurgence, whose success is partly consequence of some manifestations that could be considered as performative, are increasing in Europe. Employing a staging attitude to make them known, these skills are clearly used as tools into a provocative show. In this regard, these conducts could be related to The National Socialism regime manifestation of power, among other events that took place one century ago in Europe. It should be also referred the use of art as both communication and manipulation tool regarding their political discourse. It is striking to find that these situations are taking place at present in democratic countries. This paper proposes a revision on the III Reich aesthetics, referring to some cultural elements that were used to design its own appearance. In order to do this, they deconstructed and denigrated the fragmentary components from the previous avant-garde art, to construct their new totalitarian reality.

This paper studies the movement from an essential order to an existential one in Giacometti’s work. The sculptor will try to join these two orders by means of the human figure. This attempt can be understood as a first step of a humanist aesthetics.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of Nantes tobacco factory building history, located in France. This is one of the most significant buildings in this municipality which exemplifies, through its walls, the architectural evolution of the spaces destined to production, storage and sales of tobacco products, in a context of state monopoly of this product. Moreover, its rehabilitation, in the early 1980s, is an example for the sensitivity with which it was treated by architects, artists and municipal corporation that shaped this project. In their proposals they bore very much in mind not only to preserve the architectural remains of industrialization but also the women and men workers memory that give life it.

We started out as full-time teachers at the university. We are now separated by an ocean and the Caribbean Sea. One is in R.D., the other in MAD. This is the first time that we are working on a full-time basis as academics, so we are excited although we are more than thirty-five years old and, at that age, one does not harbor many illusions anymore as we have been told since childhood, “the flame of love and the fire of life go out with the years” or, at least, it should. This is an attempt at displaced writing. As with any attempt, it probably contains in its initial gesture a certain propensity to fail, to settle in the pit of failure as a possibility of being. To be another writing that, although embedded within the academic sphere, denies and perverts the academic codes and imagines other types of writing permeated with bodies and desires. As an attempt, this draft intersperses, and puts in dialogue, different writing dimensions (romance, work, everyday life), and its fabric is produced by hands that desire, touch, caress, love, but which are now experienced in the distance and entangled in a writing precisely characterized by that geographical distance. Also, it engages with those many other ‘she’ whom we read and who accompany us. We could say that we wrote this text with the aim of questioning the academic system and its normative writing, we could say that we wrote it to blame and shame the academic institutions that expel us, but that feeds on us, our precariousness, our hyper-productive rhythms and our desire —concealed and dressed in uniform— that beats and produces papers. What can be found in this text is that very desire —crude and free of any format. Our last four-handed writing —the Decalogue of ideas for a feminist school— did not work out well, or maybe yes; it got a lot of attention and left an echo like a shout in a cave. We received many criticisms for it, anonymous, disembodied criticisms of our bodies which write, feel, dissent and imagine that writings, and the spaces in which these are produced, can be different, and, above all, can be shared with others.

Empezamos como profesoras a tiempo completo en la universidad. Una en R.D. otra en MAD, nos separan un océano y el Caribe. Es la primera vez que estamos a tiempo completo en la academia, por eso tenemos ilusión aunque tenemos más de treinta y cinco años y a esa edad no se tienen ya tantas ilusiones, nos lo llevan diciendo desde pequeñitas: “el fuego, tanto el amoroso como el vital, se apaga con los años” o al menos debería. Este es un intento de escritura desplazada. Como todo intento probablemente contiene en su gesto inicial ya cierta tendencia al fracaso, a instalarse en él como posibilidad de ser. Ser otra escritura que, aún en lo académico, reniega y pervierte lo académico mismo e imagina otro tipo de escrituras, atravesadas por el cuerpo y el deseo. Como intento, este borrador intercala y pone en diálogo distintos registros escritos (amorosos, laborales, cotidianos), cuya escritura es producida por manos que se desean, se tocan, se acarician, se aman, pero que ahora se viven en la distancia y se enredan en una escritura marcada, precisamente, por esa distancia geográfica. También dialoga con esas muchas otras que leemos y que nos acompañan. Podríamos decir que escribimos este texto con el objetivo de cuestionar la academia y sus escrituras normativas, podríamos decir que lo escribimos para sacarle los colores a esa academia que nos expulsa, pero que se nutre de nosotras, de nuestras precariedades, de nuestros ritmos hiperproductivos y de nuestro deseo que soterrado y vestido de uniforme, late y produce papers. En este texto lo que hay es ese deseo pero en bruto y sin formateo. Nuestro último escrito a cuatro manos no salió bien, o sí, fue el Decálogo de ideas para una escuela feminista, tuvo mucho eco, como un grito en una cueva. Recibimos muchas críticas por ello, críticas anónimas, sin cuerpo, hacia nuestros cuerpos que escriben, que sienten, que disienten, y que imaginan que las escrituras, y los espacios en los que se producen, pueden ser otras, y, sobre todo, pueden compartirse con otras.

The attempt of this paper is to propose a way of understanding what is seen, always, as immanent adaptation, desire and symbolization, that is, understanding it like an image. It will do so according to a concept of ‘surface’ that extends the Didi-Huberman’s reading of Aby Warburg’s concept of ‘imagesymptom’, and is supported by psychoanalytic theory, namely Jacques Lacan, in an attempt not to ruin the hermeneutic capacity of the observer but, rather, to understand the search for meaning and essence -of art, for example- as the investigation of a historical conflict of losses, crisis and memory. ‘Surface’ taken as mass of what is seen, atonic and senseless, where the eye always visions forms: seeing surface entails the eye adapting what is seen, willing to open it in its significance in a visionary way, retrieving the hidden truth but, paradoxically, closing it. Seeing images always implies loosing vision in relation to an alleged totality in which all meanings would be given in all their ambiguities and all their historical possibilities, which will knowable only in their return as a traumatic re-signification. We here postulate that the illusion will be to believe not that appearances are illusory but, rather, that beyond them there is “more reality”. This approach not only ratifies the subject’s position, inserted in a surface/ painting given-to-see, but also discovers the constitutive gap that governs him which is a “more in him” than himself.

The Annunciation from the Monastery of Santo Domingo of Caleruega, founded by Alfonso X the Wise, has remained virtually forgotten by the Spanish historiography. Isolated behind the walls of the cloister, the sculpture group presents a particularity that hasn’t been properly analyzed for too long: the Virgin is pregnant. The amount of recorded examples of the same nature shows that this kind of representations was common in some kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula during the Late Middle Ages. From an essentially iconographic perspective, but without giving up further approaches, this paper provides an in-depth study on the singularity of the Annunciation from Caleruega. At the same time, it becomes the starting point for a comprehensive analysis of this variant of the Angelic Salutation.

Descartes’ Discourse on Method (which continues to be taught from basic education on as the universal basis of scientific thought), not only imposes a standardized procedure for the analysis of objects of study (dividing it and arbitrarily ordering it from what is considered most simple to most complex, etc.), but also and above all builds a subject with a particular subjectivity, which considers itself and its gaze as neutral, objective, and even superior to ordinary people who are contaminated by their opinions and experiences. This paper studies forms of making evident, assuming, subverting and escaping the invisible ("objective") subjectivity that Cartesian scientific thought produces.

This paper aims to examine the building scenes preserved in the cloister of the former Dominican convent of Santa Maria la Real de Nieva in Segovia, founded by Catherine of Lancaster in 1399. These sculptural reliefs had been previously interpreted as mere representations of the Dominican friars, actively involved in the construction of the convent, genre scenes useful for the study of medieval building systems, or even portraits of the friars who inhabited the convent around 1400. Nonetheless, these scenes could have been originally conceived as an instrument for the spiritual edification of the religious community, and most especially, of its novices, in a time when the Order of Preachers was being reformed.

The tourist territory is presented as a real laboratory, due to the complexity in the forms and modes of living. The tourist spaces are able to generate different ways of being in the territory and different models and proposals for cities. We could now work on one of the key parts of these coastal tourist areas: the landscape. Along with this, the tourist architecture must be understood, recognized, valued and identified from this commitment of permeability and diversity, as a major piece of twentieth century architectural heritage. In this paper we present an approach to all these aspects in a review exercise -so far not developed as a multidisciplinary approach- where the tourist architecture becomes the true protagonist of the Costa del Sol.

The Agate Casket is the third of the great jewels from the Early Middle Ages hold in the Treasury of the Oviedo’s Cathedral. However, it has not been loant a historiographical attention comparable to that dedicated to both the two famous jewellery crosses. Drawing on the information obtained through the restoration process, this paper aims to offer a detailed description of the object, and to establish the main lines of its monographical study, from the choosing of its design to a proposal on its originary function.

The alliance between Castile, Aragon and England after the rise of the Tudor dynasty to the throne of England meant the arrival to the English court of a sumptuous matrimonial dowry for the infanta Catherine of Aragon, who was married to both of Henry VII’s heirs, Arthur and Henry. In contrast to his father’s reign, in various inventories in Henry VIII’s time there are abundant references to jewels and goldsmith pieces with decorations of sheaths of arrows, castles and pomegranates or pieces that are referred to as Spanish work or of Spanish style. The aim of this paper is to show how goldsmithing in the reign of the Catholic Monarchs had an impact on the Tudor artistic development and how the objects in the dowry of the infanta Catherine appear not only in royal inventories but were spread throughout the court. Possible connections between Queen Catherine and her role as an artistic patron in the Tudor court will also be pointed out.

Generosity stands out as a presumed royal and noble virtue, and that is why giving presents has been a frequent habit throughout history. In this sense, 15th century literature –especially chronicles, because of its detailed descriptions– is full of references to textile as the favorite sumptuary object to boast about this munificence. Thus, this paper compiles some contemporary literature extracts which give clear proof of the importance of textile gifts as a vehicle of messages such as prestige, diplomacy, altruism or even love.

In this paper some items made in alabaster will be analyzed in order to review the iconography of the Apostle St. James the Greater. Most of these artworks have been kept in religious institutions or Spanish collections but they were made in England, during a period of splendor that took place from mid 14th century to the first decades of the 16th century. These pieces were made in a production line style, so they often repeat the same models, with very few differences. Even so, they are pieces of great beauty which were very appreciated by devotees and collectors in the past and still today.

The aim of this paper is to make a first approach to the composition and evolution of the royal treasure from the death of the first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques, in 1185, to the death of the last king of the first dynasty, Fernando I, in 1383. During these two centuries, we notice that the importance of coins, precious metals and armoury decreases among the mobile goods the kings and their wives transmit to their heirs, and offer to their officials, their dependents, and the monasteries and churches they protect as patrons; the relevance of sumptuary objects grows accordingly.

Notable among the various exceptional pieces of silverwork documented in the reign of Peter IV of Aragon (1336-1387) is a silver and enamel table fountain called Castell d’Amor or Castle of Love, whose iconography was inspired from the Roman de la Rose poem. This paper discusses this table fountain, placing it in its cultural context and determining the date ante quem of its acquisition by the Aragonese royal household.

Interview edited by Pablo Martínez. Extract from: Adelita Husni-Bey. White Paper: On Land, Law and The Imaginary, Ed. Antonia Alampi, Binna Choi, Jens Maier-Rothe y Pablo Martínez, Published by Beirut, Casco-Office for Art, Design and Theory, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo y Valiz, 2016.

During the 80’s and 90’s, some structural changes took place in Mexico to cope with the economic recession caused by the oil crisis in the end of the 70’s. This changes involved private investments which precipitated several adjustments in the way the commercial trade and politics were design an executed. This situation brought a radical transformation in the cultural field because, in Mexico, traditionally the State has had total control over cultural distribution. This form of private investment was tied up directly with the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, Canada and United States, which terms imposed United States’ conception of culture as an industrial one. The Mexican commercial aperture that involve the transformation and foundation of some cultural institutions as CONACULTA and FONCA in 1988-89 also promoted the aperture and consolidation of some private galleries, collections and foundations following the US model of cultural funding. What I will show in this paper is that the economic politics, that involved permanently the US as the main speaker, not only redesigned Mexican cultural politics but the art is understood. I will also demonstrate that the economics are regulated in the body of works and introduce new forms of making , buying, and distributing art in Mexico.

Los espigadores y yo ̶ Adelita Husni-Bey en conversación con Ana Méndez de Andes y Emilio Santiago Muíño. Edición de la entrevista a cargo de Pablo Martínez. Extracto de la publicación: Adelita Husni-Bey. White Paper: On Land, Law and The Imaginary, Ed. Antonia Alampi, Binna Choi, Jens Maier-Rothe y Pablo Martínez, Publicado por Beirut, Casco-Office for Art, Design and Theory, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo y Valiz, 2016.