The great ageing
Acknowledging the inevitable passage of time
We’ve gone from a time when ageing meant accumulating wisdom and knowledge, to dodging or denying (above all in Western societies) the physical decline and disease that inevitably come with the passing of time. Taking into account that scientific advances are letting us live longer and that in a few years we’ll be living on a planet with a much older population, we propose a profound reflection on what ageing means in a political, social and cultural sense. Here is a list of conferences and analyses on ageing from scientists, scholars and creators.
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 ...
"Casa de ningú" by Ingrid Guardiola
Teaser of the documentary
The documentary, coproduced by the CCCB, the Open Society Foundation and Boogaloo Films is available online at Filmin. The political question of how different communities respond to the current challenges of our ageing society is at the center of "Casa de Ningú" (I’ll See You Up There),...
Ageing Democracies?
Carlos Delclós | Susana Arias
Ageing Democracies es una iniciativa de investigación internacional sobre las consecuencias políticas y culturales del envejecimiento de la población en Europa. A través de cinco trabajos de un equipo multidisciplinar de expertos, Ageing Democracies enlaza ...
Temps de caritat (Times of Charity)
Documentary
The documentary is structured across five days, five Thursdays serving to evoke the childhood of men and women who lived at the Casa de Caritat almshouse in Barcelona (a building that is today home to the CCCB), offering a living testimony of their childhood and adolescence. In some parts, ...
Gao Xingjian's world
Soy Cámara online
A special episode dedicated to Gao Xingjian, Chinese writer, painter, and playwright. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000. In 2004, a team from the CCCB traveled to Paris and interviewed Gao Xingjian at his home. He told us about his childhood, his first contacts with literature ...
External memory
Soy Cámara online
Museums and cultural centres have the duty to manage and preserve collective memory. In light of predictions that say roughly 115 million people in the world will have Alzheimer’s by 2050, how should cultural institutions react? What can they contribute? What type of memory do we need ...
Pura Muñoz
Stem cells and ageing: can the process be manipulated?
The organism’s ageing is associated with diminished functionality in tissues and organs and a major decline in the regenerative capacity of stem cells. Hence, manipulation of stem cells favouring the balance on the side of regeneration could prevent or delay ageing. Do we know the processes ...
Miguel Chillón
Brain ageing and its therapies
Ageing, a complex biological process entailing progressive functional decline of the organism, is particularly important when it affects the brain. At advanced ages some people have memory lapses or suffer from dementia, while others maintain their cognitive capacities. Why? What kinds of interventions ...
Will an older Europe be a more conservative Europe?
Interviews with Maja Daniels, Achim Goerres, Ingrid Guardiola, Pedro Olalla, Jordi Vaquer and Vicenç Villatoro.
Through five fellowships granted to a multidisciplinary team of cultural researchers, Ageing Democracies links academic research with cultural reflection and critical debate to dismantle the myths and stereotypes about the implications of Europe’s changing demographics. This video presents the main ideas of the project with interventions by Vicenç Villatoro, director of the CCCB, Jordi Vaquer, regional director for Europe of the Open Society Foundations and Ingrid Guardiola, Pedro Olalla, Maja Daniels and Achim Goerres, Ageing Democracies researchers. ...
Pedro Olalla
Democracy's Old Future
Europe is ageing demographically. Is it also ageing politically? Ideologically? Is democracy, as an in fieri project, compatible with a form of social ageing believed by many to be synonymous with conservatism, dependency and abdication? Are these really attributes of ageing? ...