a-desk

A*DESK es una plataforma crítica centrada en la edición, la formación, la experimentación, la comunicación y la difusión de la cultura y el arte contemporáneos. La misión de A*DESK es reivindicar activamente el papel de la cultura como generadora de valores que dan lugar a sociedades más justas, igualitarias, empáticas y solidarias.

📓A new week of a curated list of events happening at the different venues proposed for our agenda, check it out to see w...
03/06/2026

📓A new week of a curated list of events happening at the different venues proposed for our agenda, check it out to see what’s on our website:

04.06 → Opening of .palestina with Mariam Barghouti () 18:30h.

04.06 → Inauguration ”Desiring Epidermis” by Vanessa Pey ( ), curated by Gabriel Virgilio Luciani () at 19:00h.

09.06 → Presentation: “Polysemies of Silence #1" at 18:30h

💌Pic: “The first flower is born in the air” by Anna Irina Russell () Inauguration: 06.06, 12:00h at .vila.casas (Can Mario)

🔗 Link in bio-section agenda

🤝🏻To stay up-to-date with all the latest events, make sure to check our website every week and our partner

First text of june under this month topic:  Everything ought to change "Facing precarious futures through biennials in 2...
02/06/2026

First text of june under this month topic: Everything ought to change

"Facing precarious futures through biennials in 2026" by Vivek Gupta () & Denis Maksimov (.a.maksimov)

Can contemporary biennials still help us imagine the future?

Looking across Kochi (), Venice (), and Thessaloniki (), this opening editorial identifies three emerging frameworks for understanding our present: the mutable object, material mythologies, and the anti-modern.

“Is it really possible to preserve and consume abundance in perpetuity?”

Rather than celebrating trends, the authors ask what contemporary art can still reveal about the conditions we inhabit.

From looted heritage and migrant labour to ecological interdependence and the failures of modernism, these biennials suggest that the centres of cultural imagination are shifting.

🔗 Read the full article on our website → A*Desk Critical Thinking → Magazine section → Link in bio.

Featured image: Adrián Villar Rojas, Rinascimento (2015–ongoing). Photo: Denis Maksimov.

KochiBiennale FutureStudies ArtTheory

01/06/2026

A*DESK in June 2026

This month's topic: "Everything ought to change" with Vivek Gupta () and Denis Maksimov (.a.maksimov) as resident editors.

Denis Maksimov is an art historian whose work explores the aesthetics of epistemology, heritage, future-making, and lecture performance.

Vivek Gupta is an art historian and curator specializing in the Islamic, South Asian, and Indian Ocean worlds.

A series of reflections on transformation, inheritance, circulation, and the ways cultural practices shape our understanding of the world through this year’s biennials in Kochi (), Venice (), Thessaloniki ().

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A*DESK en junio de 2026

El tema de este mes: "Todo debería cambiar" con Vivek Gupta () y Denis Maksimov (.a.maksimov) como editores residentes.
Denis Maksimov es historiador del arte y su trabajo explora la estética de la epistemología, el patrimonio, la creación de futuros y la lecture-performance.

Vivek Gupta es historiador del arte y comisario especializado en los mundos islámico, del sur de Asia y del océano Índico.

Una serie de reflexiones sobre la transformación, la herencia, la circulación y las formas en que las prácticas culturales moldean nuestra comprensión del mundo a través de las bienales de este año en Kochi (), Venecia () y Tesalónica ().

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A*DESK al juny de 2026

El tema d'aquest mes: "Tot hauria de canviar" amb Vivek Gupta () i Denis Maksimov (.a.maksimov) com a editors residents.

Denis Maksimov és historiador de l'art i el seu treball explora l'estètica de l'epistemologia, el patrimoni, la creació de futurs i la lecture-performance.

Vivek Gupta es historiador de l'art i comissari especialitzat en els mons islàmic, del sud d'Àsia i de l'oceà Índic.

Una sèrie de reflexions sobre la transformació, l'herència, la circulació i les maneres en què les pràctiques culturals modulen la nostra comprensió del món a través de les biennals d'enguany a Kochi (), Venècia () i Tessalònica ().

Last text of this month’s topic: The Backrooms. Resident Editor: Rosa A. Cruz ()"Backrooms: Architecture of Psychologica...
29/05/2026

Last text of this month’s topic: The Backrooms. Resident Editor: Rosa A. Cruz ()

"Backrooms: Architecture of Psychological Emptiness" by Rosa A. Cruz ()

In this concluding text on Backrooms, Rosa A. Cruz reflects on the phenomenon not as a fleeting internet horror trend, but as a cultural symptom of contemporary life.

“Architecture ceases to function as a refuge… and becomes instead an ambiguous, suspended, and profoundly psychological space.”

Drawing from Sigmund Freud, critical architecture, surrealism, and digital culture, the series traces how contemporary space increasingly reflects invisible anxieties and fractured subjectivities.

From Gregor Schneider to Kay Sage and conversations with Eloy Fernández Porta, the backrooms emerge as emotional landscapes where the familiar becomes uncanny and orientation collapses.

- What happens when space no longer guides us?

- Why do the images that best represent our fears seem almost empty?

- And what does it mean to inhabit a world that increasingly feels suspended?

Featured image: Gregor Schneider (.schneider), Haus Ur

🔗 Read the full article on our website → A*Desk Critical Thinking → Magazine section → Link in bio.

Available in English, Spanish, and Catalan.

NEW SPOTLIGHT"Every blocked source eventually explodes" by Jose Iglesias García-Arenal ()In this reflection on Non plus ...
28/05/2026

NEW SPOTLIGHT

"Every blocked source eventually explodes" by Jose Iglesias García-Arenal ()

In this reflection on Non plus ultra, Jose Iglesias García-Arenal traces the symbolic and material landscape of Extremadura: cracked billboards, abandoned gas stations, irrigation canals, industrial parks, and infrastructures built on extraction and dependence.

“Drought is the repression of other possible worlds.”

Developed through a collective process with young people from different towns in Badajoz, Non plus ultra transforms the territory into a space for imagining alternatives — not through grand gestures, but through interruptions, leaks, and new circuits of meaning.

At the center of the project is Francesc Ruiz’s Los Caños, a visual universe where pipes, roads, and symbols begin to overflow the narratives imposed on the territory.

Featured image: Francesc Ruiz (), "Los Caños". Photo by Félix Méndez ()

🔗 Read the full article on our website → A*Desk Critical Thinking → Spotlight section → Link in bio.
Available in English, Spanish, and Catalan.

📓A new week of a curated list of events happening at the different venues proposed for our agenda, check it out to see w...
27/05/2026

📓A new week of a curated list of events happening at the different venues proposed for our agenda, check it out to see what’s on our website:

27-28-29.05 → International symposium “The Wall and the City: Visual Devices of Modernity” at 18:00h

28.05 → Screening + Talk “Qui som” with Salvador Sunyerand and Inés Massa at 20:15h

29-31.05 →“L’altre Festival 2026” at . Check schedules on their website!

💌Pic: “Two things can be true” by Salvita De Corte .decorte within “at (Sarrià) 28.05, 19:00h

🔗 Link in bio-section agenda

🤝🏻To stay up-to-date with all the latest events, make sure to check our website every week and our partner

Last text under this month’s topic: Backrooms. Resident editor: Rosa A. Cruz () The Backrooms: A Conversation Between El...
26/05/2026

Last text under this month’s topic: Backrooms. Resident editor: Rosa A. Cruz ()

The Backrooms: A Conversation Between Eloy Fernández Porta () and Rosa A. Cruz ()

To close this series on Backrooms, Rosa A. Cruz and Eloy Fernández Porta explore the aesthetic, psychological, and political dimensions of liminal space — where architecture stops functioning as refuge and begins to reflect collective anxiety.

“We live in a chronic liminality in which we’re no longer going through a transition but are already entrenched in it.”

From Freud’s uncanny to platform capitalism, from Piranesi’s imaginary prisons to Lost Highway, the conversation maps a world increasingly shaped by absence, repetition, and psychic disorientation.

Backrooms emerge not simply as internet horror, but as a symptom of a historical moment where meaning, presence, and stability begin to dissolve.

🔗 Read the full article on our website → A*Desk Critical Thinking → Magazine section → Link in bio.
Available in English, Spanish, and Catalan.

Featured Image: Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Le Carceri d’Invenzione. Second edition, 1761, Princeton Univeristy Art Museum

NEW SPOTLIGHT"Godard’s Militant Images, Interview with Manuel Asín (.asin)" by Alejandro Alcolea Marín ()How do you exhi...
21/05/2026

NEW SPOTLIGHT

"Godard’s Militant Images, Interview with Manuel Asín (.asin)" by Alejandro Alcolea Marín ()

How do you exhibit Jean-Luc Godard without turning him into a monument?

At "The Fraternity of Metaphors" — the exhibition at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge () — the goal is not to explain Godard, but to activate his questions.

“Images are not something confined to their own time but something that grows, becomes more complex, and enters into a relationship with other conflicts and other historical moments.”

Far beyond the mythology of the Nouvelle Vague, the interview reveals a Godard obsessed with production, circulation, and the conditions that make images possible.

Not just making political films —
but making films politically.

A conversation on militancy, cinema, and the unfinished life of images.

🔗 Read the full article on our website → A*Desk Critical Thinking → Spotlight section → Link in bio. Available in English, Spanish, and Catalan.

Featured image: View of one of the exhibition rooms. Image courtesy of La Virreina Centre de la Imatge.

📓A new week of a curated list of events happening at the different venues proposed for our agenda, check it out to see w...
20/05/2026

📓A new week of a curated list of events happening at the different venues proposed for our agenda, check it out to see what’s on our website:

21.05 → “Contra Antígona” by Andrea Jiménez and Victoria Szpunberg at 19:00h.

21.05 → Performance ““MURMURIS VII: Spiral of Time” by Edwin van der Heide at 19:00h

23.05 → "L'aigua no cansa" by Maria del Mar Bonet at within “Guitar BCN 2026” 20:30h

💌Pic: “L'excitació del paisatge” by Oscar Bueno within “Això al poble no li agradarà” 21-22-23.05

🔗 Link in bio-section agenda

🤝🏻To stay up-to-date with all the latest events, make sure to check our website every week and our partner

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