Thinking at the Boundaries of Discourse

Andrea Soto Calderón

Images have often been considered a debased form of knowledge throughout the history of Western thought, a duplication or simulacrum that must be overcome in favour of the concept. What is, of course, understood as concept has no univocal interpretation. While concepts define a specific field based on a number of distinctive features, they are also operators of displacement, openings that welcome a variety of landscapes, responding to specific problems and historically situated. Concepts are dynamic; they traverse and exceed their own determinations and are not empty forms. Nonetheless, this hierarchy of conceptual thought has hindered our sensitivity to plastic space. As Jean-François Lyotard argued in 1971: “From the very beginning our culture rooted out sensitivity to plastic space.” 

What interests us in this seminar is thinking about the boundary where discourse begins to give way and one can intervene in the very matter of language to unfold it in its final instant. In order to do this, we will conduct three sessions in which a guest artist is invited each day to react plastically to discursive reflections that attempt to raise other critical categories for thinking about images. These artistic interventions do not have the status of works, but rather experiments, games and procedures that push forms to the point where lines blur.

PROGRAM

25 November 
Rhythm and Images, with Lola Lasurt

26 November 
Making the Affections of Matter Palpitate, with David Bestué 

27 November 
Thinking from the Boundaries, with Marta Azparren

Lola Lasurt is an artist who uses the recent past in her pictorial installations, ceramic objects, videos, editorial works and collaborative processes to reveal some of the paradoxes of not only the past, but also the present. Stepping away from the mechanisms of historiography, she often presents her proposals as reappropriations of the past according to critical and micropolitical perspectives. An archaeology of the present that includes, among other elements, painting as the basis or primary tradition to be revisited. She graduated in Fine Arts and holds a postgraduate degree in Philosophy from the Universitat de Barcelona, as well as another postgraduate degree in Fine Arts from the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. 

She has held solo exhibitions at venues such as the Museu Abelló in Mollet del Vallès (2011), Sala Muncunill in Terrassa (2012), Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona (2014), World Trade Centre in Brussels (2016), La Capella in Barcelona (2020), Fundació Joan Brossa in Barcelona (2021) and Centro Federico García Lorca in Granada (2022). Her work can be found in the collections of the IVAM in Valencia, Museu Abelló in Mollet del Vallès and MACBA in Barcelona, among other centres.

David Bestué is an artist who works with various sculptural techniques, such as moulding, modelling, spraying or reusing found elements. He is particularly interested in materiality as a sculptural quality, aiming to bring language into the physical dimension through the material itself, using it as a catalyst for the survival of the past translated into the present. This influence of language, particularly poetic language, is also reflected in his concept of time. His most notable solo exhibitions include Pajarazos (Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid, 2023); Ciutat de sorra (Fabra i Coats, Barcelona, 2023); Aflorar (Museo Jorge Oteiza, Pamplona, 2022); Pastoral (La Panera, Lleida, 2021); and Rosi Amor (Museo Reina Sofía, MNCARS, Madrid, 2017). In March 2025, the artist also inaugurated an exhibition entitled Flor Hispania at the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M) in Móstoles, Madrid. His work can be found in the collections of MNCARS, MACBA and CA2M, among others.

Marta Azparren is a visual artist who alternates between experimental film, live arts and drawing. She holds a Fine Arts degree from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a master’s degree in Contemporary Film and Audiovisual Studies from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. In 2022, she was a resident fellow at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome (experimental cinema). Her work encourages meta-reflection on artistic activity, paying particular attention to the connections between the creator, the spectator, the work and the internal mechanisms of mediation, production and exhibition. Her work has been exhibited at Cineteca Matadero, CA2M, Domingo Festival (La Casa Encendida), Xcèntric at CCCB, La Capella, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, Arts Santa Mònica, Autumn Festival, Triennale di Milano, Werkleitz – Centre for Media Art, Spanish Cultural Centre in Mexico, Art Beijing and festivals including LOOP, Madrid Film Festival, New Media Film (Los Angeles), DFA’s Dance on Camera (New York), Videoformes Kassel Dokfest, Strangloscope, CineToro, Les Instants Vidéo and Zebra Poetry Film, among others. She published an essay about monochrome film and image-less images entitled “Cine ciego. Detener el flujo de las imágenes” in Libros de la Resistencia (2nd edition, May 2023).

Andrea Soto Calderón holds a PhD in Philosophy and is a professor of Aesthetics and Art Theory at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She has conducted research in Valparaíso, Barcelona, Lisbon and Paris. Her lines of research focus on the transformation of aesthetic experience in contemporary culture, artistic research and the study of images and media, as well as the relationship between aesthetics and politics. She has written various academic articles, book chapters and texts for artists’ catalogues. Her publications include the books Le travail des images, together with Jacques Rancière (Les presses du réel, 2019), La performatividad de las imágenes (Metales Pesados, 2020), Imaginación material (Metales Pesados, 2022), Imágenes que resisten. La genealogía como método crítico (La Virreina, 2023) and Indisciplinas de la mirada (Kikuyo, 2025).