Kosmopolis 2013

The science that creates laws based on quantifiable regularities; the science fiction that goes beyond the limits of those laws; the infused science that has no laws. And the humour that debunks it all.

These are the thematic focuses of Kosmopolis 2013, which will return to the CCCB from 14 to 16 March next year, and whose programme we will be finalising in the coming months. K13 will continue committed to amplifying the concept of literature and extending the field of the word – printed, spoken and electronic- , defining a creative world in which the imagination erodes the divisions between genres and assumes the mutation of formats for reading and writing, overcoming – one after another – the successive deaths foretold.

At this next event we will once more be taking up the relationship between science and science fiction on the trail of two inspirational pieces of news: the arrival of the Curiosity rover on Mars and the probable (or improbable) discovery of that elusive particle, the Higgs Boson. Writers, scientists and artists ready and willing to share, discuss and experience the cross-pollination of knowledge as a sign of the times.

We will also pay special attention to humour as a necessary medicine in these turbulent times. A humour that advocates a literature of joy, which transcends seriousness, vanity and cynicism and which, in its different variants, subverts reality and unmasks it.

Finally, when contemplating this next event, it is impossible to overlook the crisis that is challenging culture, mutilating it and stirring its foundations. The programme for K13 will reflect this reality, with the conviction that the cultivation of arts and sciences creates inhabitable worlds. For that reason we are recovering the lemur as the symbol for Kosmopolis: an almost imaginary real being that is as much a species in danger of extinction as a metaphor for literature and for our never-ending need for amazement, knowledge and hope.