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13/9/2004

Kosmopolis 04

Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona CCCB, Barcelona

International Festival of Literature
14 to 19 September 2004
Barcelona - CCCB

The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) presents the second Kosmopolis. International Festival of Literature, from 14 to 19 September 2004. This meeting point proposes other ways of seeing and experiencing the literary world without ideological jargon or disciplinary borders. For six days, it will bring together the various actors involved in literature, in the main spaces of the CCCB.

Kosmopolis 04 addresses such varied themes as War and Peace in literature, science fiction, the noir novel, the third culture and literary canons, in such different formats as exhibitions, readings, debates, installations, recitals, performances, video clips, concerts, lectures, films and actions.

The second outing of this biannual festival will include, among others, Gao Xingjian, Ismail Kadaré, Mario Vargas Llosa, Amos Oz, Emili Teixidor, Eduardo Mendoza, Robert Coover, Yasmina Khadra, Enrique Vila-Matas, Theodor H. Nelson, Frank T, Miquel de Palol, Michel Rio, Suso de Toro, Julià de Jòdar, Nuha Al-Radi, Joe Haldeman, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Shamshad Khan, Javier Cercas, Lluís Llach, Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond, Zoé Valdés, David Trueba, Drago Jančar, Jenny Matthews, Predrag Matvejević, Jorge Wagensberg, Peter Mayer, Bruno de La Salle, Barbara Nadel and Kevin Fitzgerald.

Kosmopolis is a biennial literary encounter that is as old as the new century. It has been conceived as a laboratory-cum-fiesta, a space open to all genres and literatures with a work programme to be developed over the coming years. The project is a natural consequence of the Cities and Their Writers exhibition cycle begun at the CCCB in 1995.

The goal of the second edition, KO4, is to consolidate an event that, while contaminating and letting itself be contaminated by the arts and sciences, puts literature centre-stage; a state-of-the-art festival orientated towards revising the varying formats in which literature can be presented in public.

Kosmopolis is a pluralist encounter which condenses and amplifies the emotion, pleasure and knowledge that the incessant search for meaning leads to, the mutations we are present at in our way of creating worlds, the creative energy and critical hope necessary to glimpsing new territories of sensibility.
Juan Insua
________

The programme of Kosmopolis 04 is divided up into the following exhibitions, sections and spaces:

EXHIBITIONS / INSTALLATIONS

1.
THE WORLD OF GAO. A look at the plural work of Gao Xingjian
Outline and direction: Cristina Carrillo and Juan Insua
Dates: 15 September to 28 November 2004
Venue: Hall 1

A small-format exhibition devoted to the creative world of Gao Xingjian, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (2000). The show attempts to reflect the varying registers of a novelist, painter, poet, essayist and playwright resistant to fashion and classification. A multi-facetted artist who has explored the great themes of life and the human soul, situating himself at a crossroads which reconciles (and erodes) the East-West dichotomy.

The exhibition brings together a selection of forty works, a selection said to be the artist's 'most personal' of all. The opera La Neige en août, inspired by the founder of Zen Buddhism, is also being presented, along with an exclusive interview with Gao Xingjian produced especially for this exhibition. A choice of texts, unpublished photos and the manuscript of Soul Mountain complete the material on show.

2.
JULIO CORTÁZAR. Travels, images and other territories
Outline and direction: Rocío Santa Cruz and Juan Insua
Dates: 15 September to 14 November 2004
Venue: The Aparador at the CCCB

The aim of this exhibition is to penetrate into the personal and literary world of Julio Cortázar via his travels, his letters and his incursions into photography and film, disciplines the author of Hopscotch gave special importance to, comparing them to the short story and the novel.

The show has been conceived as an exploration of the Cortázar archive, belonging to Aurora Bernárdez, and at the same time as an artefact or device enabling the transgressive ambition of the Cortazarian oeuvre to be come across, along with his taste for the irruption of the fantastic in the everyday world and his playing with the several genres.

The exhibition includes the photographs from Prosa del observatorio, taken by Cortázar himself on his trip to India and then retouched by Antonio Gálvez, the original of Muñeca rota and Los autonautas de la cosmopista, as well as travel photos, unpublished portraits and a set of letters sent to writers, friends and editors.

3.
HYPERIMENT. Hypertext brought into play
Outline and direction: Juan Insua and David Casacuberta
Dates: 15 September – 28 November 2004
Venue: Hall 1

For more than two decades hypertextual fiction (hyperfiction, interactive or non-linear fiction) has been for some people a new form of art that affects our way of reading, creating and conceiving literature. For others, though, it's a field strewn with doubts in which we don't always find what we've been told we would.

Hyperiment isn't an exhibition, it's an experimental space which brings the different conceptions, genealogies, dilemmas, treatments and promises of the Hypertext as a cognitive and creative tool into play. It can be visited as a hybrid environment inspired by the changes that classrooms, laboratories and libraries (as spaces for learning and research) and the mutations of public places devoted to intelligent leisure are undergoing.

The participants confirmed are: Robert Coover and Theodor Holm Nelson.
_________

THEMES

4.
WAR AND PEACE
As a complement to the exhibition At War, which is to take place at the CCCB from May to September 2004, Kosmopolis O4 presents a cartography of an omnipresent theme in the literatures of West and East: war in its many guises, including the 'war of texts', 'psychic war,' the 'endless war' that can take place in every mind. And the exact opposite: possible and impossible peace, a peace that's necessary and lacking, peace as perpetual utopia, as an intimate and also planetary voice.

The participants confirmed are: Ismail Kadaré, Mario Vargas Llosa, Eduardo Mendoza, Amos Oz, Nuha Al-Radi, Jasmina Tesanovic, Farouk Mardam-Bey, Javier Cercas, David Trueba, Javier García Sánchez, Dusan Velickovic, David Rieff, Migjen Kelmendi, Ozren Kebo, Predrag Matvejević, AleÅ¡ Debeljak, Eduard Sanjuán, Jenny Matthews and José Eduardo Agualusa.

5.
SCIENCE FICTION. An experimental mythology (2)
In this second instalment of the genre the creation will be analysed of present and future ecological models which take not only the Earth into account but other worlds too; the control and use of artificial extensions to the human body (robots, machines endowed with artificial intelligence): the manipulation of the genetic code of different species for political and economic ends. The theme of war in future settings will also be addressed, along with the recreation of what would have happened were other historical variables to have intervened.

The participants confirmed are: Marcial Souto, Joe Haldeman, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Elia Barceló, Javier Negrete, Juan Miguel Aguilera and Miquel Barceló.

6.
THE NOIR NOVEL. The game of truth
During the 1980s Spanish culture was to discover that the noir novel, a literature of transgression and indictment, of the analysis of urban fears and the functioning of justice, was the genre that best described our society. And many authors were to emerge, authors who engaged with the game of truth and lying, with the cruelty necessary to reveal all kinds of guilt, with the paranoia of the persecuted. Later, and for as yet unexplained reasons, interest in the world's most popular literary genre waned. Now that we're present today at the rebirth of the genre, we propose to analyse and debate it with the accuracy necessary for it to remain forever in our midst.

The participants confirmed are: Andreu Martín, Yasmina Khadra, Barbara Nadel, Mariano Sánchez Soler, Alicia Giménez Bartlett, Suso de Toro and Juan Madrid.

7.
TOWARDS THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CANON. Authority versus diversity
This activity brings together a set of creators who discuss the function of the canon in the construction of literary judgement. The proposition attempts to question the validity and potentiality of the canon in times of a certain mistrust of hierarchies, of a valorisation of diversity and a democratisation of aesthetic criteria.

Participating in the colloquium are a number of important Catalan writers and critics who confront the dilemmas above according to their own tradition and also their contact with different global tendencies.

The participants confirmed are: Hèctor Bofill, Emili Teixidor, Miquel de Palol, Xavier Bru de Sala, Ponç Puigdevall and Julià de Jòdar.

8.
TRANSATLANTIC WORKSHOP. The 'cultural baggage' of dialogue
The very notion of a 'workshop' as a fluid space in which innovatory forms are contrived presupposes the activity of the reader or spectator as a person ready to dialogue. Structured in three sessions, the theme of the workshop will be 'cultural baggage'; that is, the basic, portable culture which bears witness to the subject's shuttling back and forth between Europe and America. That baggage or knapsack turns the traveller into the interlocutor par excellence capable of displaying the novelties from the other side of the pond, a vision honed in change and exchange.

The participants confirmed are: Julio Ortega, Beatriz de Moura, Enrique Vila-Matas, Francesc Torres, Frederic Amat, Juan Francisco Ferré, Eloy Fernández Porta, Germán Sierra, Flavia Company and Imma Monsó.

9.
BEYOND THE TWO CULTURES
The progressive understanding between 'men of letters' and 'men of science' prophesied by C.P. Snow in the 1960s may become a debate of the first order in this new century. The American publisher and writer John Brockman posits a 'third culture' in action featuring scientists who occupy the role of traditional intellectuals. In the European ambit the transition from natural science to the humanities was attempted in the Renaissance, yet divisions and preconceptions remained. There are no definitive maps for these territories. Kosmopolis O4 addresses the challenges and dilemmas of an emerging third culture that affects the relations between scientists, artists and intellectuals

The participants confirmed are: Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond, Jorge Wagensberg, Margery Arent Safir and Michel Rio.

10.
CAFÉ EUROPE – HAVANA
Despite their singularities the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Cuba have reciprocal cultural and literary influences in common, influences resulting from the interrelations of the Western canon and also from the Communist phase in which solid political ties and cultural and economic exchanges were established.

Café Europe-Havana proposes an encounter between the creators of 'both worlds' in an atmosphere that recreates the tertulias, or literary gatherings, of the artistic avant-gardes. Writers and intellectuals from Cuba and Central and Eastern Europe will describe how they see things at the start of this new century. The role of translations, the frontiers of the imagination, the organisation of the book market, 'hidden geographies,' and the Communist and post-Communist contexts in relation to the literary work are some of the themes to be addressed in the two sessions of the encounter.

The participants confirmed are: Drago Jančar, Zoé Valdés, Juan Abreu, Ramón Sánchez Lizarralde, Carles Torner, Krzysztof Czyzewski, Jorge Ferrer, Carlos Aguilera and Dmitry Prigov.

11.
A SPECIAL LOOK AT INDIAN LITERATURE (1)
K04 begins an exploration of India's vast and complex literary tradition with a special session devoted to the Mahâbhârata, its most representative work. This special is completed by a dialogue about the various forms to have been taken by the passion of love in Indian art and thinking.

The participants confirmed are: Felicity Hand, Agustín Pániker, Òscar Pujol and Makarand R. Paranjape.

12.
ORAL HERITAGE (2)
Presentation of the masterworks of Humanity's Oral and Immaterial Heritage (UNESCO), plus an introduction to the philosophical tale and a vindication of live storytellers constituted one of KO2's chief bets. We shall go on promoting that extraordinary legacy with the presence of its current major exponents.

The participants confirmed are: Bruno de La Salle, Nicolás Buenaventura, Elisabeth D. Inandiak and Didik Nini Thowok.
________

SPACES

13.
KOSMOPOLIS PATIO
In the first edition of the Festival we presented a multimedia installation which transformed the CCCB into a lofty blue house impregnated with literature. For this second edition, with more daylight hours, the Kosmopolis Patio will become a most unusual public forum. A space for swapping stories, tales, poems, books, ideas… A rendezvous for imagining and sharing the new innovations and trends of the hybrid, cosmopolitan city.

The activities planned are: bookcrossing, book-gathering, live storytelling, hip-hop sessions, speakers' corners, among others.

14.
PROTEUS HALL
Proteus, the ancient mythological deity who was able to change shape at will and who has become a prime symbol of artistic creativity, defines this Festival space. A setting where traditional formats-readings, recitals, performances, concerts, et cetera-coexist with new inter-generic hybrids. The first Kosmopolis demonstrated that 'cohabitation' is a desirable exercise and that a renewal of formats, especially the more inert ones, is needed.

The participants confirmed are: Lluís Llach, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Kevin Fitzgerald, Michel Azama, Christian Renault, Shamshad Khan, Frank T, Josep-Maria Balanyà, Agustí Fernández, Riadh Ahmed and Jordi Cornudella.

15.
CHANNEL ALPHA
A Festival space devoted to imagining how a TV channel drawing its inspiration from literature would be. The good reception this idea has had allows us to conceive a new programming with works hitherto unseen in Barcelona, literary creations on an audiovisual support, live interviews and a convocation of pilot shows devoted to literature.

First showings on Channel Alpha
Serbian Epics Paul Pawlikowski, 1993, 50'
Qaeda Quality Question Quickly Quickly Quiet Lenka Clayton, 2003, 20'
The Edge John Brockman, 1999-2003
Story Dana Ranga, 2003, 87'
Aldous Huxley Oliver Hochenhull, 2003, 67'
En marge Benoît Henon, 2003, 26'
Jetzt im Kino Matthew Noel – Todd, 2003, 12'
Shooting Rhymes and Cutting Verses 2003, 63'
Roland Barthes: TV Degree Zero Terry Braun, 1990, 40'
The Jodorowsky Constellation Louis Mouchet, 1990, 91'
Julio Cortázar, apuntes para un documental Eduardo Montes-Bradley, 2002, 77'
Thomas Pynchon – a journey into the mind of [p.] Fosco Dubini & Donatello Dubini, 2001, 90'
John W. Campbell's Golden Age of Science Fiction Eric Solstein, 2002, 25'
Oral heritage UNESCO, 2003, 90'
Dashiell Hammett, detective, writer Joshua Waletzky, 1999, 52'
James Ellroy's Feast and Death Vikram Jayanti, 2001, 90'
Brook par Brook, portrait intime Simon Brook, 2001, 72'
Bela Bela. What Keeps Mankind Alive Marjoleine Boonstra, 2001, 70'
Irgendwo Dazwischen Mario Jandrovic, Heermann Peseckas, Ulrike Ramsauer, 2002 53'
La délivrance de Tolstoi Frédéric Mitterrand, 2003, 91'
We are not your monkeys Anand Patwardhan, 1996, 5'
Kali, des livres et des femmes Patrick Casals, 2002, 27'

Hip-Hop Report
Freestyle. The art of rhyme Kevin Fitzgerald, 2003, 57'
Kanakster, Ich Lebe Für Hip Hop Klaus Sanders, 2001, 56'

Hyperiment
Hyperland
An Overview to the Xanadu System Ted Nelson
The reading room Stephen Connolly 2003 3'

16.
VERBARIUM
This is the area of the Festival devoted to exploring the relations between literature and the arts of space and cyberspace. In KO4 the sector is structured along with The world of Gao, an exhibition dedicated to the many-sided art of Gao Xingjian, and Hyperiment, an experimental space that brings the Hypertext and its various conceptions, dilemmas and promises into play.

17.
PAN KLUB
In line with KO4's thematic thrust, the readers' clubs co-ordinated by the Barcelona Consortium of Libraries will encourage contact between authors and their readers. The exchanging of experiences, begun in KO2 with the UK's Opening the Book, will also continue. The objective is to activate a European and American network of groups and institutions dedicated to the creative fomenting of reading and to understanding the changes it is undergoing in the society of knowledge and information.

The activities planned are: a reading club centring on the novels of Pepe Carvalho, the character created by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, directed by David Castillo; a reading club on Pablo Neruda; exchanges between professionals in the world of reading; Editing Editors with the presence of Peter Mayer; and Granta under debate, with Ian Jack, Valerie Miles and Aurelio Major.
________

Festival credits

Concept and direction
Juan Insua

General co-ordination
Bàrbara Roig

With the participation of the Technical, Cultural, and Communication Services, Administrative, Audiovisual, Exhibition, and Documentation Centre of the CCCB.

Advisory team
Julio Ortega
Andreu Martín
Bashkim Shehu
Rolando Sánchez Mejías
Marcial Souto
David Casacuberta
O. Sylvia Oussedik Mas
Felicity Hand
Maria Farràs

FURTHER INFORMATION & GRAFIC MATERIAL
Press Service - Teresa Roig
Tel. +34.93.306.41.48

Place
Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
Montalegre 5
08001 Barcelona

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