The CBA is launching a new initiative based on the idea of ​​continuing to propose activities that allow for calm analysis and reflection, far removed from the vice of headlines, and that help us to better understand the society in which we live.

Through a broad program of small and large exhibitions that aim to showcase and provoke thought, the conferences—more than thirty a year—add a regular fixture to Madrid's cultural calendar, featuring prominent figures in the arts. Alongside them (Ana Fernando, Luis de Pablo, and Juan Navarro Baldeweg, among others), el Círculo It offers a new space where poetic, artistic, political, cultural, or social themes will be addressed, serving as a starting point for a deep debate, where the boundaries between disciplines are blurred.

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07.03.16 Juan Bordes : Playing at the avant-garde

Juan Bordes is the curator of " Construction Toys: School of Modern Architecture ," an exhibition that analyzes, through plans, sketches, notes, and objects, the influence of construction toys on the history of modern architecture. In his presentation, he will explore the concept of play from different perspectives, examining how play influenced, in the 19th century, both the iconography of the avant-garde movements and the shift from academic to modern styles. Interview with Juan Bordes on the CBA Blog

14.03.16 Ana Fernando : Games, deconstruction

Every game, like so many other vital matters, is at the mercy of distance and rhythm. And it requires, like any fissure, the greatest rigor: poetic rigor. Games have the capacity to expose any refuge to the elements and vice versa. They introduce the epic into the domestic, they develop attempts at transcontinental journeys in the minuscule. If you let them, they put you in the other's place. And, if you're lucky, even in the place of the place itself. They generate a strangeness in the everyday, an uncertain consistency. They're not interested in tying up loose ends and generating certainties. They have the infra-ordinary capacity to, by pretending to tie up loose ends, untie them. Deconstruction. Post on CBA Blog

28.03.16 Luis de Pablo : Alea

Luis de Pablo, one of the most important Spanish composers of contemporary classical music, delves into the presence of chance in time in Alea , a concept that underpins the musical experience. This element manifests itself in the struggle between the fixed and the mobile, a struggle that has always been present throughout history. In this sense, music is the art form that best handles time, more than any other. Music and the dialogue established between time and sound constitute its essence, something we can also perceive in dance. Unlike a constructed object, music is not material, as it is performed at a unique moment (recordings have only preservation value). However, music and play converge in the fact that both are imbued with time. Press release . Post on CBA Blog

04.04.16 Patxi Lanceros : On the other side of the river. Dissidences and endings

The 2.888 kilometers of the Danube (according to some official measurements) traverse Europe. If not along its visible course, then certainly through the subterranean confluence of the Danube and the Rhine. The Danube's constant flow and imposing volume are the scar of countless wounds. And this will be a starting point for this exhibition, an open wound that foreshadows future scars. The flow of this river cannot be summarized in a single lecture. But it is possible to pinpoint the Danube's geopolitical and geocultural place in the landscape, not only in Europe, but worldwide. Crossroads and crossing, passage and border where languages, myths, religions, political systems, arts, literatures, and philosophies have met (amicably or hostilely). No census of them all will be attempted. The aim is to determine the Danube's place starting from the Danubian space itself . Between Empire and barbarism , between tribes and nations, between two empires, between fourteen countries. A thousand wounds. One scar. Post on CBA Blog

11.04.16 Juan Navarro Baldeweg : Display Art

In an essentially artificial, largely manufactured world, the task of building, in Juan Navarro Baldeweg's opinion, becomes that of transforming already formed objects. According to the architect, construction is becoming a process of metamorphosis, in which the found elements are manipulated through combinatorial means. It is about learning to present things of a heterogeneous nature, so that a simple grouping suffices to provide an unexpected meaning to the whole. Such operations characterize a type of art that is nothing more than simple display . Ultimately, it is about recycling, not only in a physical sense, but above all in the realm of meaning. The " less is more" principle will have to be generalized and its referential territory broadened to understand this type of strategy. By placing one thing next to another, neatly, and at the same time with the intention of integrating a whole, we approach a term that transcends the concept of the ready-made , an art of presentation: display art. Press release . Post on CBA Blog

18.04.16 Javier Arnaldo : Was art a joke?

Recent scientific studies address the question of whether the artistic contributions of creators as pivotal in our historical memory as Kazimir Malevich and other equally prominent figures could be categorized as jokes . They solidly argue their hypotheses, challenging the still-undefined notion of the benefit of the doubt, as readily inclined to smile as to express disapproval. Where, how, when, and why did this game begin? Press release. Post on CBA Blog

25.04.16 Juan Calatrava : Playing the City / Playing in the City. From Jules Verne to Aldo van Eyck

The playful dimension is present as an essential component of some modern reflections on cities and how we inhabit them. Huizinga's pioneering analyses of the seriousness of play and its central place in urban culture are reaffirmed by reviewing certain proposals and reflections from the mid-19th century onward. The conference will present, as case studies, various approaches to the relationship between play and the city in modern metropolises, from Jules Verne's anticipations of board games, from Bruno Taut to Le Corbusier, culminating in the major theme of playgrounds or play areas, drawing on examples from Aldo van Eyck in Amsterdam, Isamu Noguchi in the USA, and Dimitris Pikionis in Athens. Press release

09.05.16 Juan Miguel Hernández León : Art and Play

In this lecture, Juan Miguel Hernández León takes as his starting point the essay by Giorgio Agamben. Childhood and history, which recounts Pinocchio's arrival at a children's republic where everything is play. Hernández León weaves together various concepts that lead us to constructivism and its pedagogical function: he traces a path through names such as Lévi-Strauss, Gadamer, Chernikhov, Ginzburg, Froebel and Malevich; reflections on concepts such as ritual, bricolage, myth and the art of play, and conclusions about the aforementioned constructivism and play in cities. Press release Radio Report Círculo