The 7th edition of the Panoràmic festival reflects on the concept of "face"

Panoràmic, a festival of Cinema, Photography and more celebrates its 7th edition simultaneously in Granollers and Barcelona from October 19 to November 26. This year's theme of the festival is linked to the idea of "Rethinking the face", a desire that has had its goals in every era: from the appearance of photography to the recent and controversial facial recognition systems.

The festival, which aims to be a meeting point between the still image and the moving image, with disciplines ranging from photography to cinema, video, installation and other contemporary visual practices, will, as always, feature exhibitions , screenings, debates, workshops and conferences in different cultural spaces in the two cities.

In the exhibition area, Panoràmic will schedule 19 exhibitions. Highlights include Truth is Dead, by multi-award-winning British artist Alison Jackson, who explores the cult of celebrity culture through realistic documentary photographs she herself recreates with body doubles of celebrities and public figures such as Donald Trump, the British royal family, Marilyn Monroe or Elthon John – the artist's biggest exhibition in Spain; an exhibition with 30 Screen Tests by Andy Warhol, short, silent, black-and-white film portraits showing personalities of the New York cultural scene in the mid-sixties such as Allen Ginsberg, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Marcel Duchamp or Salvador Dalí - the most extensive one shown to date in Spain -; and the collective exhibition El rostre infinit with the surgical performances of the ORLAN media, the distorted photographs of Juan Urrios - from the Ortopédia series (1992)-, and the critique of the capacitist system by the young artist Helena Vinent.

In addition, the festival will exhibit the first exhibition made from robot portraits of the Scientific Police of Mossos d'Esquadra; an exhibition about Riot Grrrl, the American feminist movement born in the early nineties, with historical material from the Gelen Jeleton archive which collects material produced by underground female artists, and a display of photobooks around the face.

Panoràmic Lab , the space dedicated to digital arts and their political and social connection, will have Zach Blas, with a project that protests against biometric facial recognition and against the inequalities that this technology spreads; artist duo Varvara & Mar question AI's analysis of human emotions in Keep Smiling, an interactive online experience in the form of a job interview conducted by an algorithmic agent; Pilar Rosado will turn the visitor into the artist of his exhibition by transforming the image of his face into a new alternative version through intelligent algorithms; Jordi V. Pou reflects on the role of photography and the inevitable oblivion into which we will all fall, and Erik Estany questions how current viewing technologies and new models of seeing shape our perception of reality.

Panoràmic file , the project that invites artists to work with historical archives in Granollers and Barcelona with the aim of activating their funds and making them visible, will have interventions by Pere Llobera in the photographic archive of the Center Excursionista de Catalunya ( CEC); Núria Nia in the Municipal archive of Granollers; Álvar Calvet at the Ethnography and Folklore Archive of Catalonia, and Fernando Colin Roque at the Casa Planas archive (Mallorca), with a science fiction essay that explains the relationship between a human and an artificial intelligence from the seventies until today in Mallorca.

In the area of audiovisual screenings , the festival will schedule film forum sessions with the screening of Miss Universe, by Juana Dolores, accompanied by a discussion with the artist; the screening of documentaries such as Don't need you, Herstory of Riot Grrrl, by Kerri Koch, and Brujas, by Carmen Rojas Gamarra, which delve into the roots of the Riot Grrrl movement; the screening of "Unicornios", by Àlex Lora (2023) and the classic El Hombre Elefante, by David Lynch. It will also screen the six finalist projects of the OPEN Panoràmic artistic call, and organize the cinema-concert session 13 Most Beautiful...Andy Warhol's Screen Tests, where the experimental music producer Nad Spiro will set the soundtrack to the film portraits of Andy Warhol, on October 5 at the Filmoteca de Catalunya.

In collaboration with the KBr Photography Center - MAPFRE Foundation, the festival organizes a cycle of conferences, directed by Joan Fontcuberta, which will include lectures by the artists Alison Jackson and ORLAN, and the philosopher and essayist Marina Garcés, around of the theme of this year's festival.