Round table “Curatorial innovation: from the Whitney Museum to the Conde Duque Cultural Center”
In the universe of the composer Sonia Megías, any situation or event is likely to become music. Everything is music, you just have to decipher the sounds that make it up and find the best way to transmit them. The artist is interested in non-professionalized performers being able to understand her scores without needing to know how to read conventional ones. With this purpose, she investigates the notations of different cultures and moments in history, wondering how they did it before and how reading and musical production can be brought closer to the greatest number of people. The main key is the transformation of a written and technical language into a visual one that manages to attract the viewer and involve them in the creation of the piece.
Megías's scores make a leap to the level of fine arts to make the sounds visible and their interpretations manageable. They can not only be read, but also seen, and even touched. Its structure has materialized plastically and invites the public to be part of it and experience it.
From American Space Madrid, the International Institute and the Conde Duque, we organize a round table to talk about curatorial innovation and dialogue between the United States and Spain when it comes to proposing new strategies to promote interdisciplinary artistic practices and creations. To open the debate, we will talk about the work of the composer and former Fulbright scholar Sonia Megías, the development of her experimental scores between New York and Madrid and the comings and goings between different cultural institutions in the United States and Spain that seek new ways of support interdisciplinary artistic creation and its contact with various audiences. Through two unique curatorial projects – the exhibition of the American composer Christian Marclay inaugurated at the Whitney Museum in 2010 and the monographic exhibition of Sonia Megías that is part of the Conde Duque's “Pertubaciones periodicos” cycle – we will try to map how the dialogue between the States United States and Spain is generating new ways of seeing, listening and understanding artistic practices that defy disciplinary boundaries.
We will have the presence of the Artistic Direction of the Count Duque, the Director of the "Periodic disturbances" cycle Manuel Bonilla and members of the curator of the installation "Se se, pero si se toca" where the scores of Sonia Megías will be exhibited in one of the cultural institutions of reference in the city of Madrid. The round table, moderated by Lee Douglas, Director of American Space Madrid, is also linked to the workshops held by Megías at the International Institute, where students from the Colegio Madres Concepcionistas made the pieces for one of the scores that is part of the exhibition .
Information on the “Periodic disturbances” cycle: https://www.condeduquemadrid.es/ciclos/perturbaciones-periodicas
Information about the installation “You can see it, but you can touch it”: https://www.condeduquemadrid.es/en/node/1864
