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Biennial of Thought

Biennial of Thought 2022

The CCCB will take part in the Third Biennial of Thought, a festival of ideas sponsored by the Barcelona City Council with the participation of entities and agents from all over the city.

In this year’s Biennial, the CCCB presents a programme which, combining languages and disciplines, offers a critical gaze on some of the crucial aspects of our present. In a year marked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, thinking about war, violence, and the future of Europe, and also the growing presence of various types of authoritarianism everywhere, is a core feature of the programme. Moreover, it will make the most of the fact that the Biennial coincides with 12 October (Columbus Day) by inquiring deeply into the legacy of colonialism today and how its imprint is critically reinterpreted in different parts of the world. Since science has an essential role to play when we are thinking about the world, and as the exhibition “Brain(s)" is currently being shown at the CCCB, this year we also explore neuroscience and the mysteries of the human mind.

The Biennial of Thought 2022 also has a very special focus on young people. Besides lectures for secondary school students that will be taking place throughout the week in collaboration with dozens of institutions around the city, the CCCB will also present the first Bivac festival, which has been designed by and for young people as a means of giving centre stage to the perspectives and voices of the new generations.

As on other occasions, the Biennial is a week full of words, music, and poetry as ways of thinking about the world and the different futures opening up before us. This year’s Biennial will include for the first time the cities of Valencia and Palma, thus extending its scope and reach. Moreover, the programme has the support of a large network of collaborating institutions and entities, amongst which we would like to highlight the artistic manifestation, Encuentros de Pamplona 72-22, with which the CCCB is sharing some of the Biennial’s participants.

This activity is part of Biennial of Thought

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Dancing with Memory

An audiovisual performance

The artist and activist Nzé Ramón Esono Ebalé presents an artistic intervention in which he engages with personal memories and that of his birthplace, Equatorial Guinea, in order to construct his critical reflections on the colonial past and its legacy today.

Watch the video

Anne Waldman

"Star at Midnight", poetry recital

The poet, a living legend of American poetry and an international reference in oral poetry, performs with local artists in a single session that sets out to claim poetry as a tool for conveying ideas and for new ways of acting.

Watch the video

Previous activities

Dancing with Memory

An audiovisual performance by the artist Nzé Ramón Esono Ebalé

Anne Waldman

"Star at Midnight", poetry recital with Eduard Escoffet, Adriano Galante, Los Sara Fontán, and Pablo Volt

Kenneth Roth

The Battle for Human Rights

Masha Gessen and Carolin Emcke

New Fascisms

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Óscar Martínez, Jairo Videa and Juan Daniel Treminio

A Country without Journalists

Cristina Rivera Garza, Lina Meruane and Gabriela Wiener

Braiding: Saints, Weird, Mestizas

Regarding the Pain of Others

A reading set to music with Carlota Subirós, Clara Aguilar, and Yolanda Sey

Antonio Damasio and Anil Seth

The Mysteries of Consciousness

Urbanauts

A Theatrical Itinerary and a Game with Girls and Boys from the Raval

A morning with Carolin Emcke

A right has never been won forever

Seven cinematic views of Barcelona

Presentation of "City Symphonies" at the Biennal de Pensament

Bivac. Correspondences

With Clara Roquet, Pol Jiménez, Mans O and Aixa de la Cruz

Bivac. Celebration of an Ending

With Alba Rihe and Wekaforé

Bivac. Encounter under the Elements

With Míriam Hatibi, Bittah, Carme Arcarazo, Gemma Ferreón, Yaiza Berrocal, Cristina Daura, Elisa Levi, Meryem El Mehdati, Personaje Personaje, Oyirum and Març Llinàs

Jane Mansbridge

The Art of Listening

Achille Mbembe

Sharing the World

Andrey Kurkov and Simona Škrabec

Another Ukraine

Lucrecia Martel and Carla Simón

Stop to Observe, Love the World

Melange Music

Concert by Julieta Laso and Elbi Olalla

Jamaica Kincaid and Míriam Cano

Rebel Memories

Svetlana Alexievich

The Voices of Europe

A morning with Marina Garcés

The time of promises

Bivac. Camp

Yuval Noah Harari and Rutger Bregman

Shared Futures

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