Zadie Smith (pictured. Photo: Alex Cameron), Perejaume, Wajdi Mouawad, Las hijas de Felipe… Surely some of these names make your ears prickle, because they are well known in the field of plastic arts, literature or stage. All of them are part of the list of guests invited to the discussions and debates that will form part of the Biennal del Pensament (Biannual of Thought), which will be held under the slogan “L’endemà de tot (“The end of everything”), from 8 to 13 October, in Barcelona.

The Biannual of Thought is a project of Barcelona City Council, organised by the Barcelona Institute of Culture, which brings together well-known names in culture and thought in a series of round tables, dialogue sessions and talks prepared by a trio of professionals from different fields and with the participation of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). The city thus becomes a large public square open to debate and the exchange of ideas.

The programme of the Biennal de pensament 2024 is part of the participatory platform European Capital of Democracy (a year of activities on democratic innovation and participation) and, therefore, the workshops, debates and conferences of the Biennial will focus on the challenges facing the cities of our time, but also on the future of democracy. Great names from the Barcelona, Catalan and international cultural scene will speak on these issues. Thus, among those invited to the Biennial will be the visual artist, writer, thinker and a thousand other things, Perejaume (pictured). This artist and poet has given life to his own artistic system, critical of globalisation, which has a lot to do with the forms of rural life. His commitment to degrowth is already clear in the titles of the last two exhibitions he has been involved in: one was entitled “Stop making an exhibition” and the other “Ai, Perejaume, if you saw the mountain of works that surround you, you wouldn’t do another one!

Also attending the Biennal will be the anthropologist and economist Jason Hickel (in the photo), who has spoken in his works on global economic policy, the economics of inequality and ecology, as well as on anti-colonial struggles.

Begoña Roman, lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona, will talk about Kant on the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth. What are the limits of knowledge? This is the question asked by this expert on the German philosopher, who will review the essential ideas that structure his system of thought. Oyèrónké Oyèwùmi (pictured) is a lecturer in sociology, gender and African studies at Stony Brook University in New York. She is a specialist in gender, race, colonialism and globalisation.

The programme will also include interventions by Las hijas de Felipe, that is, Ana Garriga and Carmen Urbita. They are the authors of a podcast that talks about the Baroque and which makes it very clear that everything that is happening to us today happened to someone else between the 16th and 17th centuries.

You will find even more outstanding names in contemporary culture, many of them invited by the CCCB. Among these guests is Herta Müller, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. She is a German novelist, poet and essayist who was born in Romania and has spoken in many works about life in Ceausescu’s Romania. 

From the world of the stage comes Wajdi Mouawad, an author well known in Barcelona who has written Incendis, among many other texts. An accomplice of director Oriol Broggi, his works have been seen on many occasions, the latest being Tots ocells, as part of the Grec 2024 programme at the Teatre la Biblioteca.

The Brazilian journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker Eliane Brum, whose reports have won her all kinds of international awards, and the writer Zadie Smith, a British writer and essayist who you may know from works such as the multi-generational and multi-ethnic novel Dents blanques or the ironic look at today’s world that is Sobre la belleza (On Beauty) are other invited guests.

These are just a few of the many guests who will be taking part in the Biannual of Thought 2024 between October and November. For more information, please visit the website.