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The Machine Dreams of Smoke arises from the Museo Reina Sofía’s invitation to Eli Cortiñas to revisit The Most Given of Givens, a video-graphic work the artist made in 2016, and a piece recently acquired for the Museo Reina Sofía Collections. The exhibition returns to, expands upon and updates research started by Cortiñas more than a decade ago, in a work which addresses the relationships between the history of cinema, the history of museums and recent digital culture from a perspective that reveals the complex colonial apparatus that moulds the gaze and the construction of imagery and knowledge. Part of contemporary historiography presumes that history is not neutral, that all historical narratives involve a selection, an interpretation that gives rise to omissions and dominant historical narratives that have helped to consolidate the power of certain social groups. Cortiñas suggests, moreover, that algorithms are not neutral: each new technological tool at our disposal is a device loaded with a symbolic function that participates in the configuration of new epistemological regimes. Ultimately, Eli Cortiñas invites us to be wary of the apparent transparency of images, technology and museum apparatus, asking us to question these visual and cognitive systems not only for what they show, but also for the power relations that sustain them, and for the contexts, bodies, memories and historical experiences that produce and cross through them. More information...