The city, creation and the planet mark the CCCB's programming for 2024

The director of the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB), Judit Carrera, advanced next year's program at a press conference on Tuesday: "an ambitious project, with a vocation of openness and centrality articulated from three major thematic axes: the city, creation and the planet".

After dedicating monographic exhibitions to European, African and Chinese cities, the CCCB focuses on the cities of the United States. Suburbia opens on March 19. The construction of the American dream, edited by Philipp Engel. The exhibition, which incorporates works by creators such as Bill Owens, Weronicka Gesicka or Elías León Seminiani, "tells a cultural history of the American suburb, at the antipodes of the European city", in the words of Carrera. " Suburbia - according to Jordi Costa, head of exhibitions at the CCCB - analyzes the political, racial, gender and ecological implications of these spaces that have reached us through the films of Steven Spielberg or the stories of John Cheever and Richard Yates".

Santiago Yahuarcani amb màscara al seu taller a Pebas, Perú. Foto: Andrés Cardona/ VIST

Regarding the field of creation, on July 17, a large retrospective dedicated to Agnès Varda (1928-2019), photographer, filmmaker and artist, forerunner of the Nouvelle Vague, and author of forty films, including Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), Sin techo ni ley (1985), Los espaigadores y la espigadora (2000) and Caras y lugares (2017). Carrera paraphrased Varda, who "used to say that the three pillars of his career were inspiration, creation and the will to share, a motto that we will make our own by 2024". The exhibition, which is completed with a program of screenings in collaboration with the Filmoteca de Catalunya, is produced by the Cinémathèque française with Ciné-Tamaris, and is curated by Florence Tissot with the assistance of Rosalie Varda and the Imma Merino's advice for her adaptation to Barcelona.

To talk about ways to live on the planet and the current climate crisis, on November 12th, the Amazon opens its doors. The ancestral future , edited by Claudi Carreras. Amazons addresses the strategic importance of globally preserving the Amazon region, the largest rainforest on the planet, home to more than thirty million people from eight different countries. Costa clarified, for his part, that "it is not an apocalyptic look or a requiem for the Amazon". The exhibition brings together a set of creations expressly commissioned from indigenous artists and collectives who will work in situ in the city, such as MAHKU (Brazil – Huni Kuin), Rember Yahuarcani (Peru – Uitoto) and Elías Mamallacta (Ecuador – Kichwa).

In addition, until March 17th you can visit IA: Artificial Intelligence, curated by Lluís Nacenta, about the history, operation, creative possibilities and ethical and legislative challenges of AI that includes twenty interactive art installations. The exhibition, inaugurated in October, is on its way to becoming one of the most visited in the centre. In this sense, with regard to the public of the various exhibitions and activities, the management communicated that this year around 366,000 people will have passed, the highest figure since the pandemic, 12% more than in 2022 and 40% more than of 2021.

Weronika Gęsicka. Untitled #52, from the Traces series. Cortesia de l’artista i de la Galeria Jednostka, Warszawa

Mediation and debates

The exhibition program is complemented by a vast mediation and research project, with an eye on the Raval neighborhood, where the center is located, and a complete agenda of cycles of debates and seminars around scientific, urban, political and social thinking , among which stands out a monograph on Frantz Fanon, father of postcolonial theories, and a tribute to Immanuel Kant, whose 300th anniversary is being celebrated, in a critical review of the Enlightenment. Carrera underlined "the determination to export knowledge and how the CCCB aspires to be a bridge between Catalonia and the world". He also advanced some of the names of confirmed international speakers: Adania Shibli, the Palestinian writer who was canceled in this year's edition of the Frankfurt Fair, Helga Nowotny, one of the forerunners of the intel... artificial intelligence, and Margaret Crawford, professor at Berkeley and one of the great American urban planners. To carry out all this programming, the CCCB has a budget of 15,554,672 euros, this represents 13.9% more than in 2023. According to Carrera, "it is the highest amount in the history of the institution and will allow to recover the ambition of the project prior to the crisis of 2008".

At the end of February, the center celebrates its thirtieth anniversary with a series of activities specific to the occasion that will be announced at the beginning of the new year.