Anna Ballbona, Tina Vallès, Toni Pou, Francesco Ardolino and La Calòrica

In Invisible Cities (La butxaca, Siruela, 2023), Calvino stages a dialogue between Marco Polo's urban descriptions and the questions and doubts that Great Khan presents to him. Gradually, however, the tension over the method grows: should we multiply the possible cities or seek one that encompasses them all? The theme of the ideal city is born in the Renaissance and crosses all of modernity until it reaches the Situationist utopias, but it encounters its opposite, the imperfections of that which is found in the edges of the city, in the periphery. What is more violent, to hide it or expose it?

In this conversation with Tina Vallès, Anna Ballbona and Toni Pou, moderated by professor and expert on Italo Calvino Francesco Ardolino, we will analyze how the author, throughout his narrative and essay production, gives us uncomfortable examples, complicated itineraries and convoluted routes that lead us to reflect on our way of living in the territory and relating to others.

The event will also include the reading of several fragments of the work Invisible Cities (La butxaca, Siruela, 2023) by the actors Xavi Francés, Marc Rius and Júlia Truyol from La Calòrica.