Conceptual Framework
Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana, the European Nomadic Biennial, will celebrate its 15th edition from the 8th of September until the 24th of November, 2024. Known for its innovative approach to exploring urgent global issues through artand architecture, Manifesta 15 will focus on the metropolitan environment, addressing pressing concerns such as climate change, social inequalities and economic injustices.
The biennial will serve as a platform for artistic reflection and action, showcasing diverse perspectives on these crucial challenges. It will expand far beyond Barcelona's iconic city centre, incorporating the natural boundaries of mountains, rivers, and the sea to explore the metropolitan region's interconnectedness. Manifesta 15 aims to be a catalyst forpositive change, using urban and artistic interventionsto identify and address urgent needs for social and ecological transformation.
Renowned architects, artists, researchers, and urbanists will participate in this edition, focussing on the region's opportunities for decentralised structure, natural resources and mobility networks.
Manifesta 15 deviates from the centre of Barcelona and brings together the 11 surrounding cities in the metropolitan region, aiming to create a cohesive cultural infrastructure whilst exploring eco-social issues that challenge dominant global narratives.
Manifesta 15 takes on the challenge of expanding from a city perspective to a regional scale of more than 5 million inhabitants in the commitment to develop a decentralised and collaborative approach to cultural and knowledge production. The year of pre-biennial research conducted across the region by 10 commissioned local and international researchers and artistic collectives resulted in the surfacing of site-specific thematic components.1 These include themes such as growth and degrowth, the custody of the environment, healing and repairing, as well as identifying the ecological and social transformations needed in the interconnected nodes mapped by the Manifesta 15 team: along the Besòs river, the Llobregat delta and the Collserola mountain range. This research emerged from a collaborative process involving workshops, community programmes, scientific investigation, and archival studies on topics ranging from historical pedagogical movements to eco-feminism and biodiversity.
Manifesta has transformed itself over the past four editions from a pure artistic project into an incubator for social-ecological change. By creating new decentralised processes, both in a geographical sense as well as in a creative mediation sense, the biennial focuses on developing and implementing more democratic collaborations which have a beneficial impact on the inclusion of different voices and the legacy of the biennial. At the same time, Manifesta 15 has commissioned New York-based Spanish architect Sergio Pardo to critically analyse the extensive urban research that has already been conducted about Barcelona spanning the past four decades.
The collective pre-biennial research has brought to fruition a conceptual framework in which new forms of interventions, collaboration, activation, and co-production were identified for these regional areas. Manifesta introduced a geographical framework of hubs for interdisciplinary, ecological thinking and cultural production in all the twelve metropolitan regions as a way of working. The ecological aspect of how to thematically connect the 12 cities has become increasingly urgent, especially as Catalonia announced in January 2024 the emergency led by three years of draught and empty water reservoirs. Manifesta 15’s first Creative Mediator Sergio Pardo,in his regional analysis, highlighted the environmental implications on our society and the potential of cultural practitioners and the biennial to create positive change:
“The health of our democracies hinges largely on how we nurture, activate, and articulate our connection to the environment. This allows us to anticipate pressing demographic and environmental changes in our globalized world. To achieve this, we need new dynamics, innovations, and a kind of "grounded activism" that can demand legislative changes.
Without a vibrant space where people and nature connect – the public space of the city – it's impossible to spark cultural processes for change. Can we, as citizens, promote these changes or, at the very least, participate actively in a new legislative framework through transformative socio-climatic actions?
It often feels like the sense of "caring for another" has faded. When did our human nature stop acting like this? It likely happened over many decades, amidst accelerating changes in every aspect of our lives, while everything became standardized: language, consumption, housing, land commodification, and the dissolution of traditional city boundaries. The logic of change dictates our emotions, making us believe nothing can be different. Social democracies are crumbling, the welfare state is weakening, and this is linked to the challenges democracies face.”
Using the collective pre-biennial research as the departure point, the concept of the programme of Manifesta 15 will be developed across three thematic clusters in the metropolitan region. The nodes of the Besòs, the Llobregat delta and Collserola, called to concentrate on the artistic research practices of Manifesta 15, present some particularities that distinguish them from the rest of the territory of the metropolitan area. These are areas that geographically delimit the city and where the great urban transformations that will define the way of life of future generations are taking place.
The three distinct locations – Besòs, Llobregat, and Collserola, which are distinct from the centre of the metropolis – will transform into expansive "worktables" for artists and collectives in Manifesta 15. These nodes represent a deliberate choice to engage with the urgent challenges and contemporary debates shaping the future of cities. Specifically, the nodes will allow an investigation of themes such as the immediate climate emergency, as well as the reactivation of emancipatory social movements, such as collectivism and eco-feminism.
Besòs and Llobregat, aligned by rivers and gazing towards the Vallès and the "lung" of the metropolis, Collserola mountain, offer a unique canvas for exploring solutions to pressing socio-environmental challenges. This commitment to a periphery often overlooked lies at the heart of Manifesta 15, highlighting the struggles and potential of medium-sized cities facing global issues like climate change, economic disparities, and neocolonial practices.
The Manifesta 15 clusters bring together projects at multiple venues in multiple cities around three leading themes of the biennial: Imagining Futures, Cure and Care, and Balancing Conflicts. The journey of each cluster commences at an extraordinary historical venue which symbolises its overarching theme. The monumental Tres Xemeneies (Three Chimneys) located on the coastline in between Barcelona, Sant Adrià de Besòs, Santa Coloma, Mataró and Badalona will host the departure point for the theme of Imagining Futures.
1. Cluster Imagining Futures
Main venue: The Three Chimneys (Tres Xemeneies)
THE INDUSTRIAL RUIN AS A SPACE FOR IMAGINATION AND TRANSFORMATION
Context and history
The Besòs axis includes the municipalities of Badalona, Montcada i Reixac, Sant Adrià de Besòs, Santa Coloma de Gramenet and the Barcelona districts of Nou Barris, Sant Andreu and Sant Martí. This territory is located along the lower basin of the Besòs River, from the gorge formed by the Coastal Range to its delta plain and mouth at the sea.
Currently, one million people live in this area, corresponding to 30% of the population of the metropolitan area of Barcelona and 12% of the whole of Catalonia. With an area of more than 80 km2, Besòs is divided into 98 neighbourhoods constituting the most complex and diverse social landscape in all of Catalonia. The lack of an integrated vision of the territory, aggravated by a long history of disorderly urban growth, has made Besòs a fragmented territory, without a defined urban development project.
Historically, Besòs has suffered from the persistence of high levels of urban vulnerability in certain neighbourhoods, recently aggravated by the impact of the economic crisis and the lack of investment in relation to other metropolitan areas: it concentrates 16 of the 25 most vulnerable neighbourhoods in the area of the metropolis. The existence of processes of exclusion and social segregation has traditionally made it a stigmatised territory.
However, today’s Besòs is a territory with great potential for the future, due to its centrality and accessibility concerning the great metropolitan region of Barcelona and its potential to become a productive and knowledge corridor, a welcoming space where diversity can be transformed into wealth.
El Besòs is key in accessing Barcelona from the Maresme and Vallès, and today it constitutes the main entry and exit corridor of the city to the north, which translates into a large concentration of road and railway structures of high strategic value.
The existence of processes of social segregation has been a scourge that has been reinforced by the polluting footprint that the industry has dumped for decades in the bed of the Besòs river, its delta and the coastline adjacent to its beaches. An industry whose symbol is outlined on the horizon of Barcelona, the Three Chimneys of Sant Adrià. The old thermal power plant made it possible to flow electricity to the entire metropolitan region. The Factory, as many residents called it, achieved an unusual production capacity in thermal power plants of the time, comparable to that of a nuclear power plant. An industrial achievement with its consequent collateral damage, as that concrete giant, now a symbol of the Barcelona skyline, punished its surrounding residents for several decades. The Factory made a serious impact on the environment which led to the declaration of Sant Adrià as a "contaminated atmospheric zone" in 1983. Sant Adrià was the place that suffered the greatest impact, as it was the municipality that took away a good part of the slums in Barcelona, the incineration of waste from the metropolitan area or the largest treatment plant in Europe.
New relational use
Standing before the Three Chimneys lies a 2km stretch of coastline. Here, an outdated "sun and beach" tourism model presents an opportunity for revitalisation. Envision a new neighbourhood brimming with social housing, diverse economic activity, and a park-delta revitalising the river. At its heart lies a post-industrial ruin, awaiting a transformation filled with new purpose and meaning.
This revitalisation, together with the nature and history of the region of the Besòs, demands new models built around people's capacity to energise urban spaces, and as such offer an alternative way of imagining futures. It is also a chance to confront Barcelona's colonial past, intertwined with years of booming textile industries – highly polluting enterprises whose wealthy protagonists, despite self-proclaimed "philanthropy," built their fortunes on the slave trade. While seemingly erased, this legacy resurfaces subtly in exploitative labour practices and neocolonial consumption patterns, often disregarding basic human rights.
The Three Chimneys being the focal point of the Manifesta 15 cluster Imagining Futures allows an exploration of urban and social regeneration within the vast space vacated by the power industrial facilities. Embracing creative and transformative eco-social approaches in coastal spaces can strengthen the value the sea holds for Catalonia's residents while promoting initiatives that leverage sustainability, a blue economy, enhanced habitability and greater openness and accessibility to the sea.
2. Cluster Cure and Care
Main venue: The Monastery of Sant Cugat del Vallès
THE GREAT LUNG OF THE CITY: AN INCUBATOR WHERE TO CARE AND BE CARED FOR
Context and history
The Collserola massif forms part of the central sector of the Catalan Coastal Range. The limits are precise: to the east it limits with the Besòs river; to the west, with the Llobregat river; the streams of Sant Cugat and Rubí are the limit on the north-western side, and the plain of Barcelona, on the south. It is called the metropolitan Central Park: it is surrounded by 9 municipalities with almost 2 million inhabitants living along the 190 km2 of urban areas and 3.5 million visitors annually.
Collserola was declared a natural park in 2010: its almost 8,300 hectares constitute a fundamental system for the ecological functioning of this matrix of open spaces in the metropolis. In addition, it is a huge space of proximity that provides the city with numerous ecosystem services, and at the same time, it is the centre of biodiversity where some 940 species of animals can be found. 66% of its surface is protected habitats. Thanks to the ecosystem processes it hosts, Collserola is a reservoir of health and natural cycles, which substantially improve the quality of life of the citizens of the metropolitan area.
Nature as symbolic capital
Collserola and the area of el Vallès stands apart from other metropolitan open spaces in its unique juxtaposition of ecological significance and social use. It has a unique identity in the local geography, becoming an irreplaceable space for social use and contact with nature. It plays a vital role in the city's health and metabolic processes, functioning as its lungs and filtering system. The Monastery of Sant Cugat, with its historic symbol of spirituality, caring, giving and reflection, will be the principal venue for the theme Cure and Care.
Sant Cugat del Vallès: Monestir de Sant Cugat
The Monastery of Sant Cugat is a Benedictine Abbey that was founded in the 9th century. Completed in the 14th century, the monastery, one of the most significant in the region, includes Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque elements. It became an epicentre of power and culture in the 11th century, a time when the monks lived following the Benedictine lifestyle whilst also managing extensive properties in the area.
Its most notable feature is a Romanesque cloister which dates to the 12th century and houses the Museum of Sant Cugat. With a length of more than 30 metres, it has a square plan with semi-circular arches supported by pairs of columns which present finely decorated capitals.
3. Cluster Balancing Conflicts
Main venue: Casa Gomis/La Ricarda
SUSTAINABILITY OR MODERNISATION?
Context and history
The Llobregat Delta area, in which part of the city of Barcelona, El Prat and L'Hospitalet are situated, is an inseparable part of the central urban continuum of the metropolis, as well as of the Delta, understood as a geographical and environmental unit. Like all the major deltas of the Mediterranean, it has great ecological value. For centuries, the delta was occupied by large tracts of wetlands and there were frequent floods.
Starting in the 16th century, areas of the marsh began to dry up and rainfed crops were introduced. In the 19th century, irrigation canals were built. The demolition of the walls of Barcelona, between 1853 and 1873, with the rapid occupation of l'Eixample and the growing industrialisation of the area, to which new communication infrastructures such as the railway were added, accentuated the proto-industrialisation of the delta. An airfield was established in 1916 and a free port two years later. The port of Barcelona and El Prat Airport are the two polarities that have conditioned the territorial and economic development of the delta environment and, by extension, of the great metropolis. These transport nodes show the social conflict generated by the expansion of these infrastructures within the natural environment.
An area of great environmental value
Today the city of Barcelona is fully committed to the current regeneration of its urban model, which incorporates the challenges of the future in a densely built area and which urgently has to address the improvement of what already exists: people's health, the aging of the population and buildings, access to decent housing, socio-spatial justice, the change in mobility, tourism monoculture, urban metabolism and, above all, how to deal with the climate emergency. In this sense, the Delta del Llobregat is paradigmatic: it has suffered the irreversible substitution of natural spaces (wetlands, vacant lots, and other habitats, with the communities that inhabit them), by infrastructures and urbanised areas, so that its environmental balance has been distorted.
Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana will put into play these casuistries that often lead to that false dilemma between sustainability or modernisation. Artists and groups from different backgrounds have made these confrontations visible and proposed alternative sustainable solutions for the environment without undermining the modernisation requirements of certain urban infrastructures that allow us to connect with the rest of the world. It is urgent to be able to make visible the fact that any transformation in this area, due to its condition as an integral and habitable part of the metropolitan city, requires sustainability and the correction of the dysfunctions of the current models that ignore ecological criteria.
Metropolitan Barcelona is redefining its relationship with the sea through multiple projects to regain a territory that was boldly recreated during the 1980s, but which has gradually been subjected to great pressure from the market and the tourism. A process that derives from the enormous success that the city experienced and that today is trying to recover, not only from the social perspective of the neighbourhoods, but also from an environmental approach to the pressing climate emergency.
In this paradigm shift, two key points are the deltas of the two rivers, the Llobregat and the Besòs, which flank the city, and which have been channelled and pressured due to the multiple development plans that dispute the valuable adjoining land. In the epicentre of this territory, an architectural and landscape jewel of the modern movement that survives and capitalises on this interesting debate still stands: La Ricarda or Casa Gomis.
In the Llobregat, large-scale economic and ecological issues collide, presenting challenges on a national level. The debate revolves around navigating diverse interests. First, in terms of infrastructure,balancing plans for the airport and port expansion with preserving fragile wetlands. Second, on land use, reconciling the resilient agricultural park with the economic engine of the free zone and city airport.
These projects spark heated and politicised discussions, prompting a reevaluation of our urban model in a global context. The debate goes beyond abstract threats of neocolonialism; it delves into the specific realities of consumption and the implications for our nation and planet.
Casa Gomis, a privately owned villa in El Prat de Llobregat, serves as the starting point for exploring this theme of "Balancing Conflicts". Built around principles of rationalist architecture, it stands amidst the natural landscape, reflecting the tension between human development and natural preservation.
Casa Gomis
Casa Gomis, also known as La Ricarda, is a family house located in a protected natural environment which is next to the Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport. Built between 1947 and 1963 by the renowned architect Antoni Bonet Castellana in close collaboration with its owners, Inés Bertrand Mata and Ricardo Gomis Serdañons, the house follows the principles of Rationalist architecture, known in Northern Europe as Modernist architecture. It was declared a Cultural Interest Asset in 2021.
Ricardo Gomis was a founding member of Discòfils Associació Pro Música (1935) and a member of CLUB49, a collective made up of people from the cultural and avant-garde scene of Barcelona. Joan Prats Vallés was responsible for promoting and supporting most of the projects, carried out by artists such as Antoni Tàpies, Joan Miró and Joan Brossa. He was also the contact person for all the international artists who came to Barcelona during the post-war period. Consequently, Casa Gomis was a place of meeting, exchange and experimentation, until CLUB49 disappeared shortly after the death of Joan Prats Vallés. Casa Gomis is immersed in a large plot of land in front of the La Ricarda pond and the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded by a pine forest. Linking to the theme of Balancing Conflicts, Casa Gomis and its surrounding areas are subject to the ongoing dialogue concerning the expansion of industries and the protection of the natural environment, as well as the house itself.
Gustavo Gili
The former Gustavo Gili publishing house is currently Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana’s headquarters in L’Esquerra de l’Eixample district, Barcelona.
A remarkable example of Catalan architecture from the 1950s, the building was designed by the architects Joaquim Gili and Francesc Bassó, members of Grup R. The publishing house Editorial GustavoGili is well-known for being the first to publish authors in the field of visual culture, such as John Berger, Milton Glaser, Rem Koolhaas, Bruno Munari, Joan Fontcuberta and Ellen Lupton, in Spanish.
This architectural work, that follows a rationalist style (a movement focused on neatly combining design and functionality), was awarded the FAD Prize for architecture in 1961. Used as a publishing house until 2016, the building is characterised by the use of symmetry and geometrically defined structures with low ornamentation.
The former Gustavo Gili publishing house, in Barcelona, will function as the nucleus of Manifesta 15, presenting archival projects which focus on the colonial past and its repercussions, the counter-culture movements during the rise and fall of the Francoist dictatorship and the Catalan educational renewal histories. Currently a wide array of pre-biennial events organised by Manifesta 15 have been taking place in the Gustavo Gili.
Connecting the Metropolitan Region by a global collaboration of biennials
The biennial programme in each of the participating metropolitan cities will include interventions, exhibitions and projects in emblematic venues proposed by the local artistic representative (the Manifesta 15 + programme). In dialogue with this programme, Manifesta 15 has invited leading international biennials and cultural organisations to collaborate in co-producing or showcasing prominent works from their recent commissions. In addition to the array of venues per metropolitan city, each city will also host a festive Focus Week spanning across the 12-week biennial period. The Focus Week will celebrate the local cultural wealth of each city and will include a specific public programme commissioned for Manifesta 15.
Within the three clusters (Imagining Futures, Cure and Care and Balancing Conflicts), Manifesta 15 has extended invitations to 11 Metropolitan cities to collaborate in addressing pressing questions. The aim is to employ the model of decentralisation positively, involving the reallocation of alternative artistic venues, implementing alternative decision-making processes and examining their own history.
For these Metropolitan collaborations, Manifesta 15 focusses on the connection with international biennials, of which there are more than 140 available globally, to instigate a collaborative structure. Instead of travelling to each biennial, Manifesta 15 aims to reduce art tourism and carbon footprint by co-producing works together and inter-acting more in-between biennials. Manifesta 15 has started to work with more than 10 different biennials across the world to collaborate on the exchanges of works and co-developing projects together. We are expecting more to join in the upcoming months.
Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana +
The Manifesta 15 + programme is the artistic programme across the metropolitan region conceptualised and executed by the artistic representatives of the metropolitan municipalities. The interdisciplinary programme is aimed to amplify the metropolitan perspective of Manifesta 15 and showcase the wealth and diversity of culture in the region. In addition, the programme will add more cohesiveness to the Manifesta 15 metropolitan programme which will be consolidated in each focus week.
Education and Mediation programme
Having the principle of mediation at its core, the Education and Mediation programme aims at making the biennial respond to the interests and needs of non-professional audiences, creating spaces in contemporary culture(s) where more people recognise themselves. The programme goes beyond conventional institutional categories and proposes projects with a foreseen legacy, that combine research, artistic practice, pedagogy, mediation and community work. It can be described as educational, curatorial, or artistic, yet they are always developed through a collaborative process and owned by all involved parties.
The Education and Mediation programme evolves from a collaborative research process shaped by encounters with various local actors. This research delves into previously overshadowed or overlooked aspects of local educational and cultural histories and practices.
For Manifesta 15, the research delves into the educational renewal movements in Catalonia, occurring both before and after Franco's dictatorship. These diverse histories of Catalan pedagogical contexts play a crucial role in comprehending the impact of education and pedagogy on eco-social transformations.
The research departed from Escola del Mar, a public school situated in a wooden pavilion on Barceloneta beach. Established in the early 1920s, it served as a mixed school for children from working-class families, embodying a hierarchical yet democratic model. Following the pedagogical project of learning with joy, the classes predominantly took place outdoors and included a lot of time dedicated to free play and swimming.
Escola del Mar, alongside with Escola de Bosc, and Vil·la Joana - the first special education school in Barcelona - opened in the first decades of the 20th century and still work today. These schools, a direct legacy of Escola Nova (Catalan New School), fought to enable access to education for children from working class families, while at the same time considering nature as a space for learning and care.
Additionally, the research delves into the histories of Batec teachers collective (1930s) and Escoles en Lluita, a social movement in Barcelona in the late 1970s that sought to establish alternative educational spaces emphasising the significance of social justice, community organising, and activism as integral parts of the educational process.
Four Spanish collectives and individual artists were invited to conduct the research through these (existing) archives. The collaborative agency INLAND explores the histories of Escola de Bosc. The Collective Massa Salvatge focuses their research on the work of Batec, a collective of teachers who envisioned a different school that is “more satisfying to live in and prepares a more humane and supportive generation.” Anaïs Florin gathers an archive of Escoles en Lluita, and Barcelona-based DIVERSORIUM project engages with the archives of Vil·la Joana, a municipal school in Collserola Parc that hosted classes for students with physical and mental diversities under the name of “abnormal education.” The research of the collectives is currently being activated through a public programme of workshops, gatherings, reading groups and performances, and will result in artistic projects presented in the biennial.
During the biennial, Fora per fer escola will take on various shapes such as exhibitions, artistic projects, publications, professional networks, physical spaces, mediation, and public programmes.
Manifesta 15 Artistic Team- a new form of de-centralised curation
As part of the decentralised methodology of this edition, Manifesta 15 is based on the inclusion of a wide array of cultural practitioners each with their professional background. Together with the Manifesta 15 team and under the artistic direction of Hedwig Fijen, the artistic team activates, develops and produces part of this large-scale biennial project. This collective bottom-up, democratic approach started with the appointment of some key urban specialists who worked with the Manifesta 15 team on the basic parameters of the model of the biennial critically addressing and imagining the urgent social-ecological challenges whilst helping to shape perspectives of how to face the future of the region. In this perspective, regional urban specialist Josep Bohigas and Sergio Pardo, the first Creative Mediator played a crucial role.
The second phase was identified by the appointment of 10 collectives both by the director and the education team to work on topics such as climate crisis and the impact the crisis has on the sea, drought, health and wellbeing, as well as a protection of existing ecosystems. Thanks to these researchers the conceptual framework was shaped by their findings. Additionally, Manifesta 15 was interested in exploring the healing processes which are related to the impact of the colonial histories, the counter-culture movements during the rise and fall of the Francoist dictatorship and the Catalan educational renewal model. These archives will be hosted in the so-called ‘brains’ of the former publishing house Gustavo Gili, creating a historically relevant and urgently accessible genealogy of the last 100 years of Catalan history.
Manifesta 15’s Artistic Team is comprised of Portuguese Artistic Creative Mediator Filipa Oliveira, as well as eleven artistic representatives from the eleven metropolitan cities: Ariadna Amat Garcia (Badalona), Penélope Cañizares Bellido (Cornellà de Llobregat), Cristina Castells Tort (El Prat de Llobregat), Raquel Morcillo (Granollers), Mireia Mascarell (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat), Gisel Noè (Mataró), Óscar Abril Ascaso (Sabadell), David Linares Ramos (Sant Adrià de Besòs), Joan González Cano (Santa Coloma de Gramenet), Andreu Dengra Carayol, (Sant Cugat del Vallès), Imma Vilches García (Terrassa), under the guidance of Manifesta 15’s director Hedwig Fijen. The artistic representatives are playing a key role in the mediation of the local audiences and composition of the programme for the Focus Week when a specially designed mobile structure attends each of the cities. In addition to the transdisciplinary programme that will be brought together by the Manifesta 15 Artistic Team, institutional collaborations with key cultural organisations in Barcelona are being developed.