A priori, a philosophy festival that was committed to bringing reflection to the street did not seem like the best move to gather crowds. But the City Council Barcelona did. In 2018 he launched the Biennial of Thought and invited the citizens addebate on politics, education, feminism, gender, technologies, city, urbanism… and the initiative was a success that brought together 20,000 participants.
In 2020, the meeting was also repeated with a note by adding 16,000 attendees (10,000 ‘on-line’) in the midst of the pandemic. Now, from October 11 to 16, the third expanded edition arrives and, if possible, improved with the incorporation in the organization and deployment of the festival of Palma and Valencia. The objective is to turn the meeting into a tool for dialogue between the three cities to value what unites them and promote a Mediterranean cultural corridor.
Authors and thinkers
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It will be the first time that the three Mediterranean capitals that, “they share language, culture, history and many challenges for the future & rdquor ;, has affirmed Ada Colau, will collaborate in the same festival: three editions of an event driven by a common spirit but that will be adapted to the idiosyncrasies of each venue. There will be unique and other common activities as a simultaneous reading of the work of the Valencian Joan Fuster, the Catalan gabriel ferrater and the Balearic Blai Bonet, which will be recited by representative poets. The program of each venue will be presented on September 14, but the presence of Yuval Noah Harari, Svetlana Aleksievich, Chantal Muff, and Lucrecia Martel.
future challenges
And there will be four thematic axes: culture, city, democracy and technology in which issues such as the importance of urban space to respond to current and future challenges, the health of democracy, the survival of colonialism, feminism and, above all, the climate emergency. With the aim of “taking reflection out of the Academy and taking it to the streets and squares, and making it with citizenship not by citizenship & rdquor;, according to the mayor of Barcelona. Each venue has its advisory council and its own curator, although in permanent contact with the rest. Another shared element is the Biennale poster, designed by Susanna Blasco, which represents “citizens looking at the challenges that the future plans with critical but optimistic thinking”.