The Contemporary Culture Center of Barcelona (CCCB) is 30 years old and is celebrating with a weekend full of free activities and two works of art generated with artificial intelligence. The CCCB has become a “place for reflection on the present and the future, which supports and disseminates local creation and is part of global cultural and museum networks”, stated its director, Judit Carrera, in a press conference Its purpose now is to be “a center that can raise the great challenges of our time and anticipate the challenges to come”. That is why they have launched an international artists’ residencies program, financed by the Mir-Puig Private Foundation, which between 2024 and 2026 will bring nine creative and intellectual personalities who will spend three months in Barcelona to collaborate with the CCCB and “favor their integration into Catalan and Barcelona cultural life”.
The first residents
The first residents will be the investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, author of books such as Do not say anything and The Empire of Pain, and the journalist, writer and ecological activist Eliane Brum, the most recognized reporter in the history of Brazil, who lives in the middle of the Amazon to narrate what happens there. Radden Keefe, who is coming in June to talk about the legacy of George Orwell, said in a video that he is worried about the future of journalism. “The press sector is under threat from the rise of artificial intelligence, the return of authoritarianism and the way the rich and powerful, the super-elite, can manipulate or silence the truth.” And in the face of the current news landscape, he asks: “What would Orwell do?”.
Brum is an advisor to the Amazon exhibition. The ancestral future, which will be inaugurated on November 12, and during his stay in Barcelona he will give talks in which he will explain his vision of the world. In a live connection from Altamira, in the heart of the Amazon jungle, he highlighted: “We are very close to the point of no return if the Amazon stops functioning as a jungle, absorbing carbon and regulating the climate. The world it is at war against nature. I chose to be on one of the frontiers of this war, next to the peoples of the jungle. It is important that their world listens to us because we share the same problem: climate collapse. I appreciate the CCCB the possibility of creating bridges with us. I want to dialogue with schools, universities and immigrants.”
Nature at the center
For her, it is urgent to change the concepts of what is center and periphery, because “on a planet in climate crisis where species are becoming extinct, nature must be put at the center: the Amazon, the oceans, other tropical forests and all the biomes. The center of the world is where the life is, not where the markets are.”
A weekend of celebration
The 30 year celebration will start tomorrow with a DJ party and open days this weekend to visit the IA exhibition. Artificial intelligence, already visited by more than 85,000 people (booking recommended). Friday and Saturday you can visit until 11.00 pm. “Something we would like to be able to do always,” the director pointed out. On Saturday, Judit Carrera will offer the conference Living in times of confusion with Carolin Emcke and Ricard Solé.
