TERRAFILIA FEST PROGRAM
Sunday, September 21, 2025
For more information about the festival, click here.
TICKETS
Sunday’s program begins with a lecture by historian Frédérique Aït-Touati, exploring how scientific and fictional narratives shape our imaginaries of the world, ecology, and cosmology. This intervention is followed by a conversation with Ana Carrasco-Conde, Cristina Catalina Gallego, Haris Papoulias, and César Ruiz Sanjuán, who will broaden the reflection from diverse philosophical perspectives. The morning will be moderated by Antonio Rivera García and Nemesio García-Carril Puy.
Sunday’s programming is completed with the playground El fin del verano, proposed by La cuarta piel, and a film cycle blending experimental documentary, essay film, and speculative fictions through works by artists such as Regina de Miguel, Amar Kanwar, and Asunción Molinos Gordo, among others.
11:00 AM–2:00 PM | LECTURE + CONVERSATION
By Frédérique Aït-Touati in conversation with Ana Carrasco-Conde, Cristina Catalina Gallego, Haris Papoulias and César Ruiz Sanjuán. Moderated by Antonio Rivera García y Nemesio García-Carril Puy.
Location: Auditorium
Language: In French and Spanish with simultaneous translation into Spanish
Collaborators: Co-produced with the Department of Philosophy and Society at the Complutense University of Madrid
Recommended age: All audiences
Price: Free, with invitations available for download on the museum’s website. Activity included in the Sunday ticket.
A quota of 10% of the capacity is reserved for same-day access without a prior ticket.
In this lecture, historian Frédérique Aït-Touati presents her latest research focused on the complex links between science, fiction, and ecology. Her work delves into how scientific narratives, ranging from classical cosmography to contemporary Earth system theories, shape our imaginaries about the world and our place within it. Through an interdisciplinary approach combining literature, dramaturgy, performance, and environmental philosophy, her work challenges scientific and ecological paradigms in times of cosmological change.
About the speakers
Frédérique Aït-Touati is a historian of science and literature, theatre director, and CNRS Research Fellow at EHESS in Paris. She studied at the École Normale Supérieure and Cambridge, and holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and History of Science from the Sorbonne. Her research explores connections between the sciences and the arts. She has received awards such as the MLA Prize in Comparative Literature and the Prix Gegner of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. Her books include Fictions of the Cosmos (Chicago University Press, 2011), Histoires et savoirs (2012), Terra Forma, manuel de cartographies potentielles (B42, 2019 / MIT Press, 2021), and Trilogie Terrestre (2022), among others.
Ana Carrasco-Conde is a Professor of Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid. She specializes in German idealism, Romanticism, and Schelling, focusing her research on the “unspeakable” and the “unrepresentable,” such as evil, pain, and death. She has received awards including the Julián Sanz del Río Prize (2012) and the Eugenio Trías Essay Prize (2024), and is the author of books such as Infierno horizontal and Decir el mal.
Cristina Catalina Gallego is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy and Society at the Complutense University of Madrid, specializing in Marxism, feminism, Critical Theory, and Foucault. She is the author of Pastorado, derecho y escatología (2020) and numerous articles and book chapters. She is a member of SECT and research groups on contemporary history and aesthetics, serves as editorial secretary of Res Publica, and leads a teaching project on the history of capitalism through cultural and artistic sources.
Haris Papoulias is a Professor of Aesthetics at the Complutense University of Madrid, specializing in the reception of ancient and Byzantine aesthetics and the ontology of the image. He has published Iconoclastia Endogena (2019) and the annotated edition of Longinus’ On the Sublime (2022). He is currently preparing annotated editions of Plotinus’ Enneads on Beauty (2025) and an intellectual history of iconoclasm (2026).
César Ruiz Sanjuán is a Full Professor of Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid, specializing in political and social philosophy. He is the author of Historia y sistema en Marx (2019) and numerous academic articles. His current research focuses on the Anthropocene and the role of aesthetics in transforming subjectivity in response to the ecosocial crisis. He is a member of UCM’s Contemporary Aesthetics Research Group.
About the moderators
Antonio Rivera García is a Full Professor in the area of Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts. He is currently the director of the UCM research group “Contemporary Aesthetics: Art, Politics and Society,” and Principal Investigator of the project “Aesthetics and the Digital Transformation of Society” (PID2023-149638OB-I00). His latest book is titled The Cruelty of Images: Aesthetics and Politics of Cinema. His research focuses on the history of political ideas and concepts, as well as on contemporary aesthetics.
Nemesio García-Carril Puy is a Ramón y Cajal Researcher at the Complutense University and coordinator of the European Network for the Philosophy of Music. His work centers on contemporary aesthetics and the philosophy of music, with research recognized by prestigious academic societies. He is Principal Investigator of a project on artistic rights and appropriation. He also has a notable career as a musician, with seven albums and over 20 premieres. In parallel, he performs with various ensembles and, together with Antonio Rivera, co-directs the Complutense University transfer project The Thyssen Museum and the Challenges of the 21st Century: A Platform for Debate.
11:00 AM – 2:00 PM | PLAYGROUND
The end of summer, designed by La cuarta piel
Location: Post-Pop rooms
Collaborators: Co-produced with Educathyssen
Recommended age: All audiences
Price: Free, with invitations available for download on the museum’s website.
As the September equinox marks a fleeting moment of cosmic balance between the Sun and the Earth—when both hemispheres receive the same sunlight before their seasons reverse—we are reminded of how planetary cycles shape our rhythms, and how that seasonal nostalgia now intertwines with a climate in transformation. La cuarta piel presents The End of Summer, an installation that captures the bittersweet sensation of a season in transition. Hijacking galleries usually reserved for artworks, the proposal transforms them into an estival playground, inviting visitors to feel once more the warmth of sun cream, tanned skin, and unproductive days suspended in time, staging a paddle tournament under the glow of a domesticated UV sun. Both celebration and farewell, the piece gestures toward an uncertain horizon where endless summers and blurred seasons redefine landscapes and rituals, inviting us to savour their sweetness one last time—before its irreversible mutation.
About the collective
La cuarta piel is a collective that combines artistic research, design, and cultural mediation, founded in Alicante in 2020. Their work explores new ecosocial relationships emerging within contemporary landscapes. Through situated processes, they aim to foster a new ecological sensitivity that inspires collective reflection and enjoyment. Their projects have been showcased at institutions such as the Mayrit Design Biennial and La Casa Encendida in Madrid, Arts Santa Mònica and the Grec Festival in Barcelona, and both the Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània and the IVAM in València. Their innovative work has also earned recognition and awards from the FAD Foundation, Arquia Innova and the Ibero-American Architecture Biennial.
11:00 AM – 2:00 PM | FILM CYCLE
Location: Post-Pop rooms
Language: Original version with English and Spanish subtitles
Recommended age: All audiences
Price: Free, with invitations available for download on the museum’s website.
Bringing together works by Regina de Miguel, Allora & Calzadilla, Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová, Amar Kanwar, Yeo Siew Hua, Omar Mismar, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Eduardo Williams, Deborah Stratman, and Riar Rizaldi, Terrafilia’s Film Cycle merge experimental documentary, essay film, and speculative fictions, to navigate the fractures and continuities of our planetary condition.
From necropolitics to ecological resistance, from ritual to resource extraction, the films trace spectral geographies where the legacies of colonialism, environmental devastation, and social upheaval converge. They open up spaces of dissonance and reflection, staging encounters with more-than-human agencies, volatile histories, and possible futures.
Conceived as an extension of the festival’s explorations, the cycle proposes cinema as a medium attuned to the temporal fault lines of our present—revealing how images can unearth hidden strata, weave critical fabulations, and reassemble our sense of what is still possible.
Schedule:
11:05 AM – Asunción Molinos Gordo: Barruntaremos (Inklings) (9 min 38 sec)
11:15 AM – Allora and Calzadilla: A Man Screaming is not a Dancing Bear (11 min 15 sec)
11:30 AM – Yeo Siew Hua: An Invocation to the Earth (16 min)
11:45 AM – Tuan Andrew Nguyen: Đại Bác Nghe Quen Như Câu Dạo Buồn (The Sounds of Cannons, Familiar Like Sad Refrains) (9 min 42 sec)
12:00 PM – Omar Mismar: Abou Farid’s War (31 min)
12:30 PM – Eduardo Williams: Pude ver un puma (Could See a Puma) (17 min 27 sec)
12:50 PM – Riar Rizaldi: Mirage: Eigenstate (30 min)
1:20 PM – Deborah Stratman: Last Things (50 min)
For more information about the film program, click HERE.
