manifest, the European Biennale, which changes location every two years, will celebrate its 15th editionof the September 8 to November 24 of 2024 in Barcelona. After passing in 2022 by Prishtina (Kosovo) will arrive in the Catalan capital for, among many other objectives, “reconquer Barcelona, recover it” approaching citizens not only through art and culture, but also through social and ecological change, announced this Tuesday its founding director, Hedwig Fijen.
This new edition, the largest of the 14 previous ones, aims to “observe the world through the eyes of Barcelona”, Fijen has explained, to focus on the socio-ecological transformation needs of the Barcelona metropolis. Manifesta 15 plans to generate a set of crucial questions that have already been put on the table to be investigated and that will lead to the presentation of artistic and innovative projects together with cultural professionals from different regions and disciplines.
The starting point for Manifesta 15 is the urban research on Barcelona carried out in the last four decades. He Spanish architect Sergio Pardo, the first Creative Mediator who will collaborate with the local Manifesta 15 team, believes that in order to promote the metropolitan area of Barcelona it is not necessary to turn it into a city like the one for the Olympic Games – “it looked like it was for sale” – but rather “you have to start with take care of nature and create measures that can help improve the changes”, added Pardo.
The connections and social nodes in which the Biennial will carry out its research will focus on three specific territories: the Besós river, the Llobregat Delta and the Collserola mountain range. And the activities will be present in 10 cities in the metropolitan area: Badalona, Cornellà, Granollers, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Mataró, El Prat, Sabadell, Sant Cugat, Terrassa and Santa Coloma de Gramenet.
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These three nodes represent the urgent need to decentralize and relocate cultural ecosystems towards the metropolitan regions, one of the main objectives of the project. These locations are good allies to consider contemporary debates such as the balance between the new infrastructures and the natural environment such as “Collserola, Barcelona’s green lung”, explains Prado. And in Besós “where 15 of the most vulnerable neighborhoods of the city are located”, he adds, it opens multiple doors to create socio-cultural collaboration initiatives in the metropolitan region.
Manifesta 15 has a public investment of eight million euros with the participation of the Ministry of Culture, the City Council, the Barcelona Provincial Council and the Generalitat. The central headquarters of the biennial is located in the former Gustau Gili publishing house.
