Manifesta 15 announces the first participants in its pre-biennial period
Manifesta 15 Barcelona has created a new framework for social and ecological research, initiatives and interventions, run by 10 participants. These individuals and groups have already begun their research throughout Barcelona’s metropolitan region. Although there are still over 12 months remaining in this pre-biennial period, the selected participants are investigating specific thematic components of the three interconnected nodes identified by the Manifesta 15 team, throughout river Besòs, the Llobregat delta and the Collserola mountains.
The teams taking part in this pre-biennial process are: Arquitectes de Capçalera (ES); Embassy of the North Sea: Sheng- Wen Lo (TW), Leon Lapa Pereira (DE) and Harpo ‘t Hart (NL); On-Trade-Off: Georges Senga (RDC/ NL), Jean Katambayi Mukendi (RDC), Pelagie Gbaguidi (BJ/BE), Alexis Destoop (BE/AU), Marjolijn Dijkman (NL/BE), Maarten Vanden Eynde (BE) and Femke Herregraven (NL); Elmo Vermijs (NL); Lara Schnitger (USA); radio SLUMBER; Massa Salvatge (ES); INLAND (ES); Anaïs Florin (FR) and Diversorium (ES).
This research is being carried out in collaboration with local experts and communities and will lead to new, alternative ways of drawing attention to the climate emergency, while identifying some of the most urgent ecological and social transformations needed by the municipalities taking part in Manifesta 15.
The socio-ecological nodes of the metropolitan region connect with their immediate surroundings and coordinate the most noteworthy issues from the participative process, such as jointly imagining a shared future, how to manage imbalances and how to care for ourselves and our natural environment.
The twelve research participants are collaborating with local communities and specialists, who will help to coordinate the most noteworthy problems in this eco-social process.
The three identified issues are interrelated and cover various areas of society, which is why the Manifesta 15 team has invited professionals from outside the world of art, who work in the fields of science, law, architecture, human rights, activism and education, to take part.
in its last four editions. Manifesta has grown from being solely an art biennial to become an incubator for social and ecological change. By creating new collective processes, the biennial is able to focus on developing more sustainable initiatives and symbolic interventions, which can be of greater benefit to the host cities and their communities. Instead of following the usual model of creating a series of exhibitions, Manifesta is continually reinventing and transforming itself, in order to promote research that offers alternative perspectives and is able to tackle specific problems through inter-disciplinary creation and activism, producing a lasting legacy.
The results emanating from this research period will form the basis for the biennial’s conceptual framework and will be presented in the autumn of 2023. The cornerstones of the conceptual framework will form the basis for the open call for local projects which will commence in September 2023.