Kosmopolis 2017
9th Amplified Literature Fest
In its ninth edition and under the slogan When everything changes, Kosmopolis explores literature in all its dimensions and makes even deeper inroads into its relationship with culture and the world around us.
Narratives for Readers of the 21st Century
Mireia Manjón
At a time of profound changes, at Kosmopolis we wonder about the future of books and of the publishing industry. What will the tales of the new decade marked by artificial intelligence be like? The three Bookcamp discussions that we propose to you explore the commitment to narrative experiences.
Literary Dialogues at Kosmopolis
Eva Rexach
Jean Echenoz and Jean-Yves Jouannais. John Banville and Pierre Lemaitre. Werner Herzog and Paul Holdengräber. The K Dialogues for the 2017 edition of Kosmopolis played host to authors with similar track records which enabled us to zoom in closer on their work, discover some of their secrets ...
The female constelations at K17
Eva Rexach
Subversive mothers, repentant mothers, grieving mothers and free mothers. Women who celebrate their old age, who write from experience and imagination. We are going to dedicate part of the programming of Kosmopolis to the Female constelations.
Seven sessions on climate change in K17
Eva Rexach
Climate change is already a reality and many are the symptoms that show it, from the emergence of vegetation in Antarctica to the alterations in the planet temperatures. Kosmopolis we wanted to reflect on this and we offered several talks about climate change, because facing climate change ...
Thank You
Kosmopolis
Thank you for attending the conferences, for participating in the workshops, for making louder the literature with your voice (in person and in the networks).
Kosmopolis 17. Female Characters and (Im)possible Worlds
Colloquium between Kirsty Logan, Sophie Divry and Marina Espasa
Marina Espasa, writer and literary critic, and since 2016, director of the UNESCO Barcelona City of Literature Office, conducts a conversation between two writers, Kirsty Logan from Scotland and Sophie Divry from France, on writing, feminisms, female characters, readers, and possible and impossible worlds.
Frédéric Pajak and Jorge Carrión
Anatomy of Conflicts and of the Memory
Following the presentation of Pajak works, the author and Jorge Carrión talk about the narrative and philosophical conflicts raised in his books and about how he has tackled the representation of major European traumatic events and warring conflicts in them. To what point is graphic ...
Zeina Abirached and Paco Roca
Fertile Hybridisations of Reality and Fiction
Following the presentations of their respective works, the authors converse about who in their projects they take as a starting point real experiences or situations to construct, based on them, universal tales and stories, through visual designs that grow and become complex along with the stories that they aim to narrate.
Daniel Tammet and Màrius Serra
Change in an Extraordinary Mind
A conversation-game between writer and savant communicator Daniel Tammet and wordplay specialist Màrius Serra. Daniel Tammet is capable of learning any language in a week and can recite the decimals of the mathematical constant Pi for five hours, but his true gift ...
Kosmopolis 17. Kingdom
Performance by Agrupación Señor Serrano
The causes of global warning are everywhere and they are largely associated with human activity. Climate change is the principal consequence. Global change of biblical proportions is occurring; we’ve created a monster, and there’s no stopping it.
Kosmopolis 17. New Voices of Europe
The first public presentation of the “New Voices of Europe”
Which are the most interesting new voices in Europe? What kind of literature are emerging writers producing? At Kosmopolis we will be getting to know the “10 New Voices of Europe” of 2017, a group of writers, poets and playwrights originating from Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, Iceland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Spain and Wales, selected by experts from the Literature Across Frontiers festivals, who will be revealing the new literary tendencies in Europe to us.
Carl Safina
Can We Know What Animals Think and Feel?
Consciousness, self-awareness, empathy, non-verbal communication, imitation, teaching, grief. Many animals think and feel a lot like people do; after all, people are animals. Carl Safina shows that in some surprising ways non-human minds aren’t really too different from ours. They know ...
Kosmopolis 17. NaNoWriMo: Socialisation of the Processes of Writing and Reading
Round table with Albert Altimira, Víktor Valles, Meritxell Terrón. Moderator: Mariana Eguara
Just as reading marathons exist, so do writing marathons: a new method is NaNoWriMo. At this round table, authors who are taking part in NaNoWriMo will explain what it consists of and what their experience is with this platform for stimulating writing.
Kosmopolis 17. The Walk by Robert Walser
Colloquium between Esteban Feune de Colombi, Marc Caellas, Marta Sanz and Alicia Kopf
The first edition of the short novel The Walk, by Robert Walser, was published in April 1917, nearly 100 years ago. In it Walser updated the figure of the flâneur, a pensive stroller who as walks analyses the impressions that the surroundings cause him. Novelist ...
Kosmopolis 17. Expanding the limits of the book: transmedia experience of The Trial, by Franz Kafka
Lecture by Belén Santa-Olalla and Nieves Rosendo
The Trial, by Franz Kafka, is a theatre adaptation premiered in Malaga in November 2016. But this work goes further and expands beyond a transmedia experience that includes digital and analogical media, street actions and immersive performances in the theatre itself, that also opens ...
Kosmopolis 17. From the Book to the Screen and Beyond
Round table with Ana Mar López Contreras, Jordi Solà, Carlos Coronado, Eva Domínguez and Iñaki Díaz. Moderator: Marisol López
The digital support has broken with traditionally separate formats to allow the unlimited expansion of the literary universe: video games, interactive comic books, literary apps… We present innovative home-grown cases to analyse the role of the narrative, whether that story can be told in another format, what the digital brings to paper and what is lost, what the business model is, and what public reception is like.
Jo Nesbø, Marc Pastor and Serielizados
Harry Hole, Occupied and Other Nordic Stories
Before becoming a writer Jo Nesbø was a footballer, had an industrial rock band and earned a living as a financial analyst. He was commissioned to write a book about his life on tour with the band Di Derre and when he started to type he heard the echoing words of Aksel Sandemose: the ...
Kim Stanley Robinson and Ian Watson
The New Reality: Climate Fiction
‘Climate Fiction’, set in the near future, is the realistic fiction of our time, and Kim Stanley Robinson is its leading practitioner. Veteran SF author Ian Watson will discuss with Kim Stanley Robinson his career committed constructively to surveying how our human race may survive ...
Javier Celaya
The Book to Come
In a world of driverless cars and trains, smart vacuum cleaners and fridges, sensors that track sleep and exercise, can we suppose that the book will continue to be the same as ever? The boom in artificial intelligence and big data augur a radical transformation in the way in which we consume all types of cultural contents. At this moment of changes and uncertainties, we will be performing an exercise in foresight and venturing to predict the future of the book.
Evelio Cabrejo
The Reading Before the Readers
Colombian psychoanalyst and linguist Evelio Cabrejo affirms that a prior reading exists to the reading of written texts. He is referring to the reading of oral texts. He also defends that this act of reading is inherent to the starting up of thinking.
Stefano Mancuso
The Roots of the Intelligence of Plants
Plants behave in curiously intelligent ways: they fight against predators, maximise opportunities for food, and have more senses than we can imagine. How should our ideas about the plant world and its function in the fabric of life change? Italian neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso presents some ...
Green Slam: International Poetry Slam Competition
Clotilde de Brito, Dani Orviz, Laura Sam, Raquel Lima, Toby Campion, Salva Soler, Simone Savogin, Crisal, Jose Luis Cabeza and Dive Dibosso
Poetry Slam Barcelona is celebrating the third edition of Grand Slam Barcelona at Kosmopolis 2017, an international oral poetry contest that welcomes the world’s leading poetry slam exponents back to the city to compete alongside regular slammers at the CCCB’s monthly championship. Three minutes, no props, no music—voice, poetry and interpretation are all the means participants have to convince the jury that their performance is the best. ...
John Banville and Pierre Lemaitre
Crime novel
John Banville and Pierre Lemaitre established a dialogue on genre literature, which the two of them believe is not highly considered. “Nobody casts doubt on the fact that Simenon is a great author”, said Lemaitre, “but the crime novel continues to be regarded as a sub-genre.” ...
Kosmopolis 17. Crisis and Change in the Literary Ecosystem. The Voice of the Writers
Colloquium between Jean Echenoz and Sophie Divry. Moderator: Albert Lladó
Jean Echenoz and Sophie Divry are two of the most prominent novelists in French literature today. The two talk with writer and journalist Albert Lladó, about the changes that the crisis may have caused to the literary ecosystem; to the choice of themes with which to construct fiction, ...
Kosmopolis 17. New Ways of Producing and Consuming Contents
Dan Franklin talk
In the new Internet environment of the 21st century, does copyright make any sense? How is disintermediation and self-publishing affecting the publishing industry? Is it possible to filter the enormous quantity of data? Will that of publisher be a feasible profile for developing the selection of contents? What is the role of contents curation and which are its keys? Aiming to offer an answer to al these questions will be Dan Franklin, a digital strategist who has worked at Canongate Books and Penguin Random House.
Kosmopolis 17. Return to the Spoken Word
Round table with Irene Fortes, Benjamín Figueres, Paulina Wardęga, Juliana Rueda. Moderator: Javier Celaya
The resurgence of podcasts, the success of WhatsApp voice messages and the possibility of talking to the machines that surround us highlight the relevance being acquired by the voice. In a world of communications where writing and audiovisual formats predominate, the voice and sound are taking ...
Orna Donath, María Llopis, Brigitte Vasallo and Bel Olid
The Family Is Dead. Long Live the Family
Access to cheap and effective contraception has been one of the driving forces of feminism: released from the obligation of reproducing women could, finally, decide what they wanted to do with their lives. However, how do those of them who have decided to have children actually live motherhood? ...
Hope Jahren
Be as a Tree Planted by the Waters: The Magic of Roots, Leaves, and Everything in Between
Trees are the oldest, biggest, and most successful creatures in the world. Using energy from the sun, and carbon from the air, they have thrived on land for more than four hundred million years. Hear about the amazing and unique methods that plants around us use to establish, grow, flourish, ...
Kosmopolis 17. Appearances / Reappearances
Dialogue between Jean Echenoz and Jean-Yves Jouannais. Moderator: Jordi Corominas
The work of Jean Echenoz and Jean-Yves Jouannais feature a series of elective affinities that go beyond the language. At some point in their career both have transited through an archaeology of disappearance in order to resuscitate men, works and remains that the present had caused to disappear. ...
Kosmopolis 17. Give Me VR and Call Me Stupid: Virtual Reality as a Generator of New Themes
Colloquium between José Luis Farias, Francisco Asensi and Flavio Escribano
Virtual reality has existed since someone thought about it, and that was a long time before Oculus or Samsung Gear. In all this time, just as Verne did in his day, imagining inventions yet to come, authors have fantasised about virtual realities in other fields such as literature, film or video ...
Kosmopolis 17. Women-Led Innovation
Round-table with: Lauren Romeo (Tekstum Solutions), Anna Ascolies (The Spanish Bookstage), Mireia Lite (Ara Llibres) and Maribel Riaza (Innovation in the book sector). Moderator: Joana Sánchez (Incipy)
Is the publishing environment a woman-friendly environment? We analyse whether projects and start-ups led by women offer added value or have a different focus to projects led by men. In general, the mission of male-led projects tends towards selling to a third party, scaling it, making it bigger ...
Sílvia Bel and Jordi Blesa Montoliu
Blind Readings
Does any female poetry exist beyond that written by women? Or is it just good or bad literature that exists? Is it necessary to continue treating women as a collective to whom visibility may be given in thematic cycles? Does a female canon exist? Or has it been imposed upon us by cultural and ideological questions? Blind Readings is a poetic game that aims to raise the visibility of gender prejudices in literature, a recital that challenges the audience to guess whether the text has been written by a man or a woman.
Kosmopolis 17. Immersion in Virtual Worlds
Lecture by Jose Valenzuela
The worlds created using virtual reality technologies induce an illusion of reality that can be really powerful, as they play with various cognitive mechanisms associated with human perception and emotion. It is relatively easy to deceive our senses and feel ourselves in another place or in ...
Lynne Segal
The Scandal of Ageing
Perhaps old women need to begin ageing scandalously, to beat back the scandals of ageing. As Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies Lynne Segal illustrates in her book Out of Time: The Pleasure & Perils of Ageing, across times and places older women, although usually devoid of ...
Kosmopolis 17. MAPA10: Literary Cartography of Barcelona
Project presentation with Xavier Theros and Marina Espasa
The Barcelona City of Literature UNESCO Office presents the project MAPA10, a literary cartography of the city of Barcelona produced by architect Itziar González and literary critic Jordi Galves, and presented by writer Xavier Theros, winner of the Josep Pla prize for narrative and highly knowledgeable about the history and literature of the streets of Barcelona.
Timothy Morton
Change Is Changing
The ecological crisis we are facing is also a crisis of our sense of what things are. Not only are we witnessing colossal, disturbing change to parts of our world that we treated for too long as a static, neutral background; but also we are seeing how one person’s change for the worse ...
The Lumières of VR: Opportunities and Risks of Immersive Video
Carles Sora
Virtual reality appears to offer extraordinary possibilities, but only time will tell whether we are seeing the birth of a new language or a false promise.
Ways to enjoy Kosmopolis
Kosmopolis
Kosmopolis 17 is already here. You will have five days to enjoy literature, to discover new authors, new stories, new ways of narrating and reading. To think about and discuss climate change, the mixture of genres and the prejudices that still exist on literature written by women.
Non-human intelligence
Eva Rexach
Thinking that only humans are intelligent beings is wrong: there are other forms of intelligence that allow animals and plants to inhabit the world in different ways than we do. At Kosmopolis, we will talk about it with ecologists and experts in geobotany and animal neurobiology, and we will ...
Ian Watson presents Kim Stanley Robinson
Ian Watson, one of Britain’s leading science-fiction writers, presents Kim Stanley Robinson, one of the main exponents of climate fiction. They will be at Kosmopolis on Saturday March 25. This interview was shot last November at the Eurocon. The convention, Europe’s biggest devoted ...
New formats and great classics. Literature in pictures at Canal Alfa
Eulàlia Guarro
Historically, the artistic disciplines have mixed together, nourishing and inspiring each other. Each one having its own language, they convey the stories and contribute with their own idiosyncrasies and genuine tools. But what happens when we mix different languages and open the narrative space?
Climate change as a narrative twist
Jorge Carrión
What will the narratives of the Anthropocene be? How will we explain the world since our realisation that we have drastically changed it?
The future of reading at Bookcamp Kosmopolis
Eva Rexach
Is it possible to imagine a world without books? In an environment dominated by audiovisual media, what is the meaning of an object that has existed virtually unchanged for hundreds of years? Bookcamp Kosmopolis will be an opportunity to discuss the future of books and narratives.
The Writing and Reading of 21st Century Books
Mariana Eguaras
New forms of content creation and consumption are forcing the publishing industry to redefine its production and distribution model.
A journey through Scottish creativity with Neu! Reekie!
Eva Rexach
Beyond the clichés about men wearing kilts and villages hidden in the mist, Scotland, and Edinburgh in particular, is one of Europe’s most outstanding creative centres. And some of the most outstanding names of «Neu! Reekie!» festival will be at Kosmopolis.
Thinking in Strips
Jorge Carrión
Thinking in images, thinking in panels, thinking visually: human beings have always done it, but now the creative community and the editorial industry agree on the importance of developing the potential of these hybrid languages.
The Literature of Change
Eva Rexach
Science fiction literature is about apocalyptic worlds and dystopian futures in which climate change menaces the survival of the planet. But some writers, such as Kim Stanley Robinson, tell a different story. This is the literature of change.