Elena Blesa Cábez in collaboration with Violeta Mayoral, 'Interval', 2024. Photo: Juande Jarillo
Activity
From January 17, to April 21, 2025
Interval
A research by Elena Blesa Cábez in collaboration with Violeta Mayoral. [contra]panorama
Through a dialogue with the artist Violeta Mayoral, we move through an investigation into mediation practice(s) and the ways they can fit into institutions.
And we do so through a dialogue because mediation practices do not function on their own; they cannot exist if isolated. They are complex practices and difficult to define, both on a symbolic and on a labour level. Who activates them? Is there a professional figure who can be identified as a mediator? Under what legal framework do they act? It is within this dialogue that we focus our attention on listening and put it at the centre. Literally, but also figuratively. Interval as a practice is an exercise of paying attention to context and of accompanying. It is a challenging kind of accompaniment that seeks to awaken and generate movement, to make us constantly question our assumptions.
This investigation stems from an interest in reflecting on the labour conditions in which the mediation task is carried out in contemporary art cultural institutions, but straight away, we have come up against the limits of the lack of professional definition of this work. Without understanding what the work linked to mediation practices actually is and the role they occupy in the institutional context, it becomes practically impossible to define a legal framework in which they can take place. All of this research, including its development in the museum’s rooms, has been made possible by a sustained conversation over the last few months with a series of associations and agents that – from very different approaches to mediation tasks – have taken on the difficult job of trying to define this practice.
participants
Asociación de Mediadoras Culturales de Madrid (AMECUM) 
Associació Catalana d’Educació Patrimonial (ACEP) 
Elena Blesa 
Violeta Mayoral 
Programa Experimental en Mediació i Educació (PERMEA) ![[contra]panorama](https://img.macba.cat/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/contrapanorama_iweb.jpg)
In 2021, MACBA launched the triennial Panorama, which aimed to “deepen its collaboration and dialogue with local artists and cultural agents”. [contra]panorama, the second edition of Panorama retains the same aim but works towards it through a year-long series of interventions that take the project’s title literally, in order to question both the continuing relevance of the triennial (or biennial) format and its capacity to offer a panoramic image of the present.
From October 24, 2024 to April 21, 2025