For critical joys

Power is built on sad emotions. Those who wield it and those over whom it is wielded, normally interchangeable roles, are governed by dark bile humours. Today's necropolitics are not only articulated through economic, legal or military ideologies, but are also carried out through the government of emotions. Depression, resentment, fear, loneliness or stress are states of mind aimed at the loss of common agency, withdrawal from the given order and distrust of changes that could reverse the causes of one's own discomfort. Meanwhile, they push seemingly "positive" emotions stemming from a perpetual state of dopamine addiction, in order to create a spectacular fiction of monetisable happiness, but its cyclothymic effects put the consumer in a vicious cycle of consumption–elation–depression, and under the power of these emotions.

In the face of this emotional violence, and if power comes from sad emotions, what are the emotions of counter-power? Any dissent, any "no" or "not so", holds potencies made of joyful emotions such as indignation, empathy or solidarity. So, are critical joys possible today? How can we express socially critical joys capable of affirming political-emotional alternatives? How could we exercise them all together? For this occasion, Fernando Gandasegui and Carolina Campos present us with an exercise on the critical joys in the current performing arts, a field in which they develop their research.

Sad emotions are what succeeded in censoring Rocío (1980), by Fernando Ruiz Vergara, one of the most courageous documentaries and one of the most tenebrous and representative portraits of power in Spain, so much so that to this day it has still not received restorative justice. This session will feature Descartes, a work by Concha Barquero and Alejandro Alvarado (2021) based on the discarded remains of Rocío.

Fernando Gandasegui

*Critical joy as a research framework was initially articulated in dialogue between Carolina Campos, Marta Echaves and Fernando Gandasegui.

Activity curated by Hamaca

With the participation of Fernando Gandasegui i Carolina Campos

Screening by Concha Barquero and Alejandro Alvarado


Fernando Gandasegui

Artist, curator and researcher in performing arts, he was coordinator of Teatro Pradillo and a member of its art direction team. He has curated the Festival Domingo at La Casa Encendida, Lo que nos mueve at La Caldera, Secuencia at Fabra i Coats Centre d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, and Desbordes: otra historia del ojo at the Festival Punto de Vista. He teaches classes and workshops in contexts such as Bar Yola with Javi Cruz. He currently co-directs Teatron, where he also blogs.


Carolina Campos

She is Brazilian and lives in Barcelona. Her work oscillates between performance, dramaturgy, pedagogy and curatorship. In 2024, she published the book Interrogar el acompañar (L. I. O., Impremta Oberta). She accompanies pedagogical and creative processes in centres such as Graner, La Poderosa, La Capella and La Caldera. In addition, she collaborates in the stage lighting training and research project Matéria Leve in Lisbon and has participated in the research into real-time composition since 2012.