Posts Tagged ‘Evgeny Morozov’

What the CCCB has in store: a foretaste of the 2017 programme

December 20th, 2016 No Comments

A new year is just around the corner and it’s time to give you a taster of what we’re cooking up at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània, what the various programming teams are working on, and the themes and the protagonists of our debates, films, audiovisual screenings, exhibitions and festivals for 2017.

We can look forward to a new season of activities organized around a central idea running through the entire programme: reflection on change. Get out your diaries and take note!

Debates about change in the present

Judit Butler lecture © CCCB. Miquel Taverna, 2015

We start the year with a major debate about Europe, a continent undergoing one of the most critical moments in its political history, with a humanitarian crisis surrounding refugees and the rise of authoritarianisms and xenophobia. 

Debates and humanistic and philosophical reflection about the present will continue throughout the year with cycles of talks about the idea of revolution and its strength today, about the role of Russia in the world in the centenary of the October Revolution, about suicide (leading cause of non-natural death among young people in Catalonia) and about privacy at a time when technology permeates all spheres of our lives.

Climate change from the viewpoint of culture

The third culture, a line of programming that brings together art, science and design, will be very present in debates like “Technology, sovereignty and globalization”, a series of talks directed by Evgeny Morozov. Composer Brian Eno is one of the first speakers to be confirmed.

Critical reflection on climate change and the destruction of the planet is one of the big themes of the year, which we’ll be addressing in After the End of the World. Curated by José Luis de Vicente, this exhibition will present multidisciplinary projects and viewpoints, allowing us to form a fairly realistic view of what our lives and the world will be like in the not too distant future (the year 2050). This year’s edition of the International Cultural Innovation Award is open to cultural ideas that offer imaginative, effective solutions to climate change. The winning project will form part of the exhibition After the End of the World.

2017, a literary year at the CCCB

The Pati de les Dones during Kosmopolis festival © CCCB. Miquel Taverna, 2013

Amplified literature: Kosmopolis is back for year nine of the amplified literature festival. Under the heading “When Everything Changes”, this literary festival presents a five-day programme bringing together established authors and new talents to address some of the principal challenges facing culture and literature in the broadest sense. John Banville, Kim Stanley Robinson, Jean Echenoz, Sophie Divry, Orna Donath, Pierre Lemaitre, Jo Nesbø, Marta Sanz and Alicia Kopf are some of the names of Kosmopolis 2017.

A few days before Kosmopolis kicks off, we’ll be opening the exhibition Photobook Phenomenon, about the relation between photography and paper publications with a deluxe group of curators: Gerry Badger, Horacio Fernández, Ryuichi Kaneko, Erik Kessels, Irene de Mendoza, Moritz Neumüller, Martin Parr, Markus Schaden and Frederic Lezmi.

The month of May sees the arrival of the sixth edition of Primera Persona, another of the CCCB’s in-house festivals in which literature, music and autobiographical narrative take the stage.

Women have a lot to say

Thewriter Taiye Selasi in Kosmopolis 2015. © CCCB. Carlos Cazurro, 2015

“Good girls go to heaven—bad girls go everywhere.” This phrase, attributed to the actress Mae West, provides the inspiration for Gandules, the al fresco film programme that takes place in August. With the title “Wild and Indomitable Women of the Cinema”, we’ll be showing films that remind us of female characters who have inundated the cinema screen throughout history. María Castejón Leorza, a film critic on the team of Pikara Magazin, will be the curator of the cycle.

The Kosmopolis festival will also be looking at literature written by women as one of the central themes of this year’s edition.

15 years of experimental cinema

In 2018, Xcèntric, the CCCB’s cinema, turns 15. Xcèntric opens an anniversary season with a programme of Val del Omar premieres and a concert by El Niño de Elche. It’ll also have a new website and a book about essential filmmakers in experimental cinema.

The CCCB continues its collaboration with established festivals like L’Alternativa, DOCSBarcelona, Miniput and the International Women’s Film Festival, as well as younger proposals like D’A and the Serielizados Fest.

Soy Cámara’s YouTube channel will continue to experiment with the genre of the video essay centring on current affairs and themes included in the CCCB’s programme. A new feature this year is a programme of live presentations, kicking off with the screening of Hypernormalisation, the latest documentary by Adam Curtis.

Posted in Sin categoría el December 20th, 2016

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Evgeny Morozov against the cyber-optimism

January 21st, 2014 No Comments

Evgeny Morozov during his last lecture

Evgeny Morozov is one of the foremost critical thinkers in the current debate about the role of the internet during the changing times we are immersed in. It seems quite clear and nobody argues with the fact that the technological changes of our age are extremely significant. The debate about who wins and who loses acquires even greater significance when new technologies alter long-established ways of doing things, such as manufacturing and working, policymaking and governing societies, and influence their cost-effectiveness. In spite of his youth, (he was born in 1984), Evgeny Morozov has come to the forefront of this international debate by using solid arguments to highlight the fact that the internet threatens the way democracy is run.

In a short period of time, Morozov has published two books (El desengaño de Internet. Los mitos de la libertad en la red, Destino, 2012; To Save Everything Click Here. Technology, solutionism and the urge to fix problems that don’t exist, Allen Lane, 2013),and numerous articles in the most prestigious newspapers and magazines. Morozov has sought to unmask and draw attention to what he considers to be the false promises which the internet (and the businesses who take advantage of it) have made us believe: its ability to solve problems and favour our independence and ability to produce, think and decide. He has been one of the most incisive writers against the cyber-optimism which guaranteed that the problems of freedom and democracy would be resolved through technological change. While his first book talks about the problems of new technological tools in tackling their promised aims, the second focuses more on the objectives and argues that the internet turns what should be public and collective into something private and individual. Furthermore, it affirms that the internet seeks to promise us a solution to all our concerns, when they are often part of our collective and individual modus operandi and way of life.

Whether we agree with Morozov’s views, there is no denying that he has carved out a place in the area that politicises and views as problematic the growing impact of the internet on our lives and power relationships. What better way to begin the Open City series than with this debate? Because it is precisely with subjects such as smart cities and the spread of smartphones that we take for granted the fact that there will be greater transparency, an increase in the citizens’ ability to decide and have control of public affairs as well as improvements in urban issues. A lively discussion is guaranteed.

Evgeny Morozov will be at the CCCB next Monday January 27th to start the series “Open City” giving the opening lecture ‘Democracy, Technology and City‘. You can watch the lecture live via streaming or follow the Twitter updates using the hashtag #ciutatoberta.

Posted in Sin categoría el January 21st, 2014

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The Barcelona Debate: Open City

January 21st, 2014 No Comments

The Barcelona Debate is back, and with it we are inaugurating our programme of lectures for the year. With “Open City”, we resume one of the CCCB’s longest-standing traditions with a series of sessions that each year proposes reflection on a different key aspect of contemporary life through a multidisciplinary approach. In recent years our debates have placed the accent on the crisis and uncertainty about the future, civic virtues, and life in common, with thinkers such as Tzvetan Todorov, Nancy Fraser, Zygmunt Bauman, Marina Garcés, Salvador Cardús, Avishai Margalit, Saskia Sassen, Eva Illouz, Orhan Pamuk, Anna Cabré and Antonio Tabucchi.

Richard Sennett CCCB © Miquel Taverna, 2009
Sennett impartirà una de les conferències del debat “Ciutat Oberta”

Why “Open City” now? The CCCB wants to take part in commemorating the Tercentenary of the siege of Barcelona by contrasting the closed city surrounded by the enemy with the open city, whose citizens do not live under a shadow that threatens their freedom.

Since its origins, the city has been associated with democracy because of its potential for liberty, equality and pluralism. In the open city, anything that is different, ambivalent or divergent, does not remain outside its boundaries, but forms part of urban life, it is the very condition of its existence. And the truth is that cities are contradictory spaces by nature: we want them to be a home, a welcoming place for meetings and exchanges, but this openness inevitably leads to uncertainty, conflict and ambiguity. In the open city there is coexistence but also friction, novelty but also risk. It is a place where there is constant tension between the desire to control and freedom, where the contradictions of the contemporary city are made manifest. For this reason, the open city is, above all, a tool for thinking; an aspiration, a utopian state, an ideal horizon. It enables us to dream about the city as a space of emancipation and imagine other ways of coexisting and, simultaneously, it provides evidence of the logic of exclusion, survival strategies and the unavoidable disagreements that are a result of life in common.

Over a nine-week period, we will be asking what makes an open city possible today, and what endangers it. Among other issues, we will discuss the risks and potential of new technologies, cultural and linguistic diversity, the boundaries between the public space and private space and the city’s real and imaginary limits.

Posted in Sin categoría el January 21st, 2014

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