Research groups

Nuclei of thought and practice on core issues for the institution

The research groups are a specific type of collective that operates as part of the Santa Mònica organisation. Unlike other groups, they do not have the function of generating works, devices or specific actions for the centre, but function as nuclei of research on issues considered core to the institution. In this sense, their task, which is both research and consultative in nature, ends up contaminating all the processes.

Currently, among other cross-cutting issues being investigated are the ideas of ‘participation’, ‘redistribution’ and ‘reparation’. In this sense, it is important to highlight dialogical and experiential ways of doing in order to produce essays on the decolonisation of knowledge, the reconstruction of feminist and queer memories, and the exploration of traumas, both in colonial and post-colonial contexts and in our immediate environment. However, collectives and groups, like any relational space, are not exempt from their own dynamics of power and competition, which is why the research groups are also paying attention to the tactics of linking and exchange, and to the imaginaries that make up the individual-collective tandem, without discarding or making negative affects invisible. In the research framework, different ways of renegotiating the links with the art-institution are proposed, questioning the logics of representativeness and tokenisation with regard to transvestites, in a situation of migration and/or who do not usually establish links with the cultural ecosystem. Another shared interest lies in the analysis of production, reception, discourses, languages and audiovisual temporalities (cinema, video games, etc.) in a contemporary context in which the so-called ‘cultural industries’ are almost unconditionally supported.

The research work carried out by these groups is not strictly theoretical, but leads to prototypes that take Santa Mònica as a small-scale test bench, as an institutional laboratory where strategies and attempts to respond to problems related to sustainability, accessibility or care can be tested, which can later be extended to other areas and on a larger scale.