Kosmopolis 2021
The Literature That’s Coming
Coinciding with the exhibitions “Mars: The Red Mirror” and “Science Friction”, Kosmopolis 21 explored “The Literature That’s Coming” and celebrated science fiction as a fabulous literary genre that crosses boundaries and traditions. For five days, the amplified literature fest brought together a hundred of today’s most outstanding creators to speak of space travel, planets in collapse, new habitable planets, the future, utopias and dystopias, and the great stories that tell us about our place in the cosmos.
Journey to Mars: First Stop
Talk and screening
Over a period of three months, five groups of men and women creators, activists, thinkers, and young people who have migrated unaccompanied have formed the crew of a metaphorical mission to Mars in order to reflect upon the experience of the journey itself and the future we have in common. ...
Concert by Nico Roig, with Lucia Fumero and David Soler
Martian Heart
The singer and composer Nico Roig re-creates, live, the music he has composed for the exhibition Mars: The Red Mirror and embarks on a sound journey that moves through history from the metamorphoses of the planet to the strange Martian landscapes captured by recent space missions. ...
Verónica Gerber Bicecci and the language to come
Iván de la Nuez
Creator Verónica Gerber Bicecci composes a theory about the language of the future that emanates from the intersection between literature and art.
Robert Macfarlane and Gabi Martínez
The Story of the Fire and the Ice
Robert Macfarlane, a world reference of nature writing, speaks with Gabi Martínez, promotor of the idea of Liternatura, on how to construct a new story about nature, one that draws attention to the importance of looking after marginal spaces and biodiversity when faced with the greyness of the Anthropocene.
Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer
Messengers from Space
The film director Werner Herzog speaks with the volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer about the third documentary they have made together, Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds, an inquiry into the cultural significance of meteorites, the impact their craters have had on humanity, and everything science has been able to learn about them.
Aina Huguet, Iris Llop, Artur Garcia Fuster, Gemma Medina and Martí Sales
Ray Bradbury: A Critical Reading
A story, an actress, and three critics: Aina Huguet reads Ray Bradbury’s The Veldt (La sabana), and Iris Llop, Artur Garcia, and Gemma Medina (from the online magazine of literary criticism, La Lectora) squeeze the text from three different angles in order to extract as much juice from it as possible.
Presentation of the special number of ‘BRANCA’ magazine
The Rockets Came Like Locusts
Presentation of the collection of short stories Els coets venien com llagostes, fruit of a joint project of BRANCA magazine and the CCCB, and that starts out from the wish to think about futures with the excuse of a hypothetical colonisation of Mars.
Verónica Gerber Bicecci and Alicia Kopf
The Dance of Renewal
Recently there has been a proliferation of bridging texts imbibing from the best that fiction and artistic practice have to offer in order to explore new territories and enrich fiction with the plastic arts. These are books that tend to take shape in drawing, photography, videos, and painting, ...
Martian Series: More Fiction Than Science?
Live recording of the iCatFM programme ‘SerieSelektor’
The podcast of the iCat series comes to Kosmopolis to analyse and recommend several series that explore the red planet. In such series, Mars has become one of the obsessions of present-day sci-fi, but how much fiction and how much reality is there? How and when will man arrive on Mars?
Elisenda Solsona, Elena Bartomeu, Cristina Xifra, Elena Polanco & Ricard Ruiz Garzón
Extraordinary
Four writers discuss with the editor of the first women’s anthology of Catalan science-fiction about what this irruption means, the new voices, forms, and themes by which it is sustained and, above all, why it has taken so long to appear, and what future awaits it in our literary world.
Mia Couto, José Eduardo Agualusa and Tania Adam
Translators of Dreams
Although they were born half a continent apart, the Mozambican Mia Couto and the Angolan José Eduardo Agualusa are good friends as well as being two of the most respected figures of African literature. They are united by a linguistic homeland—Portuguese—and a similar conception ...
Poetry Slam: Kosmopolis special edition
Ten slammers will participate in this poetic competition, always in an agile, dynamic form establishing new relations between public and poets, in a special version thematically linked with the exhibitions “Mars: The Red Mirror” and “Science Friction”. As always, the ...
Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Giovanna Rivero, Fernanda Trías, and Jorge Carrión
Future America
What future horizons are being drawn by Latin American literature today? What is it like, this most recent speculative fiction from the other shores of the Atlantic? What interventions does it propose in the domains of realism, experimental literature, and contemporary art? With very different origins and biographies, the writers Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Fernanda Trías, and Giovanna Rivero speak, in this conversation with the writer Jorge Carrión, about their work and that of other contemporary writers of the continent.
Sophie Collins, Irenosen Okojie, Mireia Calafell and Anna Gual
Poetising the Tomorrow
What words do we need for thinking about the future? Are the concepts and ideas of the past of any use or must we create new ones to name another possible world? Where will we find these words that have not yet been spoken? Poetic and audiovisual recital where Sophie Collins and Irenosen Okojie read their texts by videoconference, accompanied from the CCCB by the poets Mireia Calafell and Anna Gual who leads the session.
Pau Riba, Neil Harbisson, Pol Lombarte, Núria Martínez-Vernis, Oriol Sauleda & De Mortimers
On Big Bangs, Cyborgs, and Poetry
The poets Núria Martinez-Vernis and Oriol Sauleda recite fragments from the book that Riba has written for the occasion, after his talk with with Pol Lombarte and Neil Harbisson, the first person to be legally recognised as a cyborg. To conclude, and together with the group De ...
Lana Bastašić, Tatiana Țîbuleac, and Xènia Dyakonova
Writing in Turbulence
In Kosmopolis, Lana Bastašić and Tatiana Țîbuleac, two women among Europe’s writers of most potential, share the stage for the first time to speak about literature, language as activism and turbulences, because their books are shocking, full of extreme characters and dysfunctional relationships.
Presentation of the magazine ‘CARN DE CAP TRES’
Posthuman Landscapes
The literary magazine CARN DE CAP, promoted by the Escola Bloom, presents its third issue, a landscape to Posthumanism, as a space for going beyond the aesthetic, political, and philosophical coordinates of humanism.
Sebastià Portell, Joaquín Rodríguez, and Angelina Cabré
Reading, between Pleasure and Need
In an event organized by the Libraries of Barcelona and moderated by Angelina Cabré, Sebastià Portell and Joaquín Rodríguez, two authors of different but complementary standpoints on reading, speak about their most recent books on the occasion of Kosmopolis 2021.
Maggie O’Farrell, Gemma Ruiz Palà, and Begoña Gómez Urzaiz
Forget about Shakespeare
In this session, Maggie O’Farrell, one of the United Kingdom’s most acclaimed writers, speaks with Gemma Ruiz Palà and Begoña Gómez Urzaiz about her immersion in Elizabethan theatre, the misogyny of biographers, and her discovery of the world of natural knowledge to the point of becoming a veritable healer.
Martian Waves. Science, literature, and live radio
Recording of a live podcast
Closing festivities of the "ALIA Mission", an educational project relating popularisation of science with literary and artistic creation, with the conversation of the astrophysicist Fatoumata Kébé with Miquel Sureda, and the recording of a live podcast with the schools and scientists involved.
Claudia Durastanti and Stefanie Kremser
Being from Everywhere or Nowhere
These two nomad writers talk about identities that are constructed on the basis of passport stamps and refer to their most recent books, L’estrangera (The Stranger – L’Altra Editorial / Anagrama) and Si aquest carrer fos meu (If This Street Were Mine – Edicions de 1984 / Entreambos), to discuss uprootedness, the sense of belonging, and the strategies they have adopted to find their place in the world.
Isaki Lacuesta, Pedro G. Romero, and LaboratoriA
Mute Portraits
Isaki Lacuesta has once again amplified flamenco with Retratos mudos, a performance-screening of a series of soundless films of great flamenco artists, accompanied by live music from the LaboratoriA group and a conversation with the artist Pedro G. Romero.
Oriol Sauleda, Marcel·lí Bayer and Alexandra Garzón
The Only Thing I Need Is to Imagine
Accompanied by the musician Marcel·lí Bayer and the video creator Alexandra Garzón, Oriol Sauleda takes us on a trip through the cosmos with words alone. Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for a recital with an ascending lexicon and constellations of metaphors. A unique ...
Kameron Hurley and Víctor García Tur
Feminism in the Age of Geeks
The standpoint of gender has changed science fiction and Kameron Hurley is overturning paradigms and enriching the genre in many directions.She speaks with Víctor García Tur, winner of the Sant Jordi Prize with his L’aigua que vols (The Water You Want ...
Hervé Le Tellier and Pablo Martín Sánchez
Parallel Universes
Speculation is the departure point for many great stories. Ever since the Iliad, starting from a hypothetical “and if…” and exploring parallel universes, possible futures, and uchronian pasts, have allowed us to test the contradictions of our world. In today’s ...
Dani Orviz and Crisal Rodríguez
Poetry Slam
The poetry slammers Dani Orviz and Crisal Rodríguez recite two creations inspired by the great themes of this Kosmopolis, namely our interplanetary future and coexistence among companion species.
Fatoumata Kébé and Albert Forns
The Moon Is a Novel
With L’altra cara de la Lluna (Once Upon a Moon: History, Myths and Legends – Angle Editorial/Blackie Books), Fatoumata Kébét pays tribute to our satellite, offering a cultural history of the Moon that reads like a gripping novel. This brilliant French astrophysicist talks with the writer and journalist Albert Forns, ranging from the myths and legends that different civilisations have devoted to the queen of the night through to the space race and the influence the Moon has had in films, songs, and even the expressions we use. ...