Mind Reading Machines. Del magnetismo animal a la ingeniería cerebral.

Gala Hernández López combines film and research to produce poetic and dreamlike works in which documentary elements, subtle layers of speculative fiction and an examination of the material reality of computational capitalism are interwoven.

In her work, Gala examines the imaginaries and narratives that circulate within the discourse on technological innovation, as well as the possible futures — the ‘futurabilities’ — suggested by technologies presented as revolutionary. She approaches them not only from a technical perspective, but also as stories steeped in fiction that end up permeating the collective unconscious, eventually becoming subjective conditions that shape the design of the world and the conditions of existence within it.

In this session, Gala opens the doors to her virtual workspace to show us how visual, socio-technical and anthropological research is transformed into an audiovisual narrative. More specifically, she takes us on a journey through the key themes of her research into the history of methods and inventions designed to decipher the mind’s ‘black box’: from the pseudoscientific fantasies of animal magnetism to the cybernetic view of the brain as a machine to be deciphered, right up to the promises of neurocapitalism — equally commercial and ideological — and its utopian visions of optimising and controlling our cognitive systems.

This session is an event organised in collaboration with Documenta Madrid as part of Estudio de Sistemas, Medialab Matadero’s new series of extradisciplinary studies. Organised as a regular series of workshops, talks and seminars, the aim of Estudio de Sistemas is to foster creative intuition and methodological experimentation in relation to emerging and unstable technologies. In 2026, the initiative comes along the annual thematic programme LAB 5 La Mecánica de la Verdad.