Primera Persona 2019
Autobiographic Live Sessions: Tragicomic Monologues, Pop Music, Theatre and Narrative
The year 8 of Primera Persona brings together creators from various artistic disciplines who base their work on their own life experience. The festival has its eighth outing in 2019, striking a balance of generations and genres, and underlining its three distinguishing characteristics: special proposals by big names, a showcase for new voices, and thematic capsules of subculture, sociocultural phenomena and secret histories of the city, among others.
Nik Cohn with DJ Kosmos
The Irish writer Nik Cohn, father of the rock writing and epic chronicler of street culture over fifty years, wrote his first novel, Market, when he was eighteen. Four years later, he published Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom (1969), a definitive saga of rock ‘n roll, written ...
Julieta Venegas
Recitals and live songs
The Mexican singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas, who has sold over twelve million records worldwide, but there’s nothing she likes better than holing up with a book under an angle poise in her bedroom. Her photographer parents didn’t let her turn on the television and signed her up ...
Brett Anderson with Xavi Sancho
Brett Anderson is the lead singer with Suede and one of the foremost figures of Brit Pop (the press called him a cross between Bowie and Morrissey). He underwent the predictable stages of stardom and addiction, and got through both. Although Suede’s tempestuous history ended in 2003, ...
Peter Hook with Agnès Marquès
The English musician Peter Hook is co-founder of the legendary band Joy Division, on bass alongside Bernard Sumner and Ian Curtis. After Curtis’s suicide, which was traumatic for all of popular culture, they reinvented themselves as New Order. Despite touring worldwide with New Order, ...
Literature and Music Are Part of Me
Julieta Venegas
Singer-songwriter reflects on creative processes, the relationship between music and literature, and autofiction.
Maria Manonelles, Montse Batalla and Laura Fernández
Boges
Two comic book artists who take mental illness (in the first person) as the theme of two new works: Maria Manonelles, with her comic Dormo molt (2018), and Montse Batalla, with Manicomio (2019). They talk with journalist and writer Laura Fernández.Mental ...
Emil Ferris and Ana Galvañ
For years, the US writer and cartoonist Emil Ferris worked as a freelance illustrator and toy designer. In 2001, at the age of 40, Ferris contracted West Nile Virus (a rare infection for which there is no vaccine) from a mosquito bite. Three weeks after going to hospital, she became paralysed ...
Thomas Page McBee with Use Lahoz
The US journalist and amateur boxer Thomas Page McBee was the first transsexual boxer to fight at Madison Square Garden. But, of course, that’s just a headline; his story goes far beyond that achievement because his is not a simple narrative of overcoming or of success. Born with the ...
María Sánchez
María Sánchez is field veterinarian, poet and writer. Author of the book of poems Cuaderno de campo (La Bella Varsovia, 2017) and the essay Tierra de mujeres (Seix Barral, 2019), Sánchez is a regular collaborator in digital and print media ...
Mark Bray, Jordi Borràs, Helena Castellà Duran and Carles Viñas: "Anti-Fascist"
Stopping fascism is a moral imperative, but how to go about it? Physically confront it in the streets or deny it the oxygen of publicity? “Cordon sanitaire” or legal strategy? Silence or denunciation? We will try to answer these questions with a panel of experts: Mark Bray, historian and author of Antifa.