The 'Diversorium' project will participate in the pre-biennial research phase of 'Manifesta 15 Barcelona'.
The results presented after this research phase will form the basis of the conceptual framework of the biennial and will be presented in autumn 2023.
The art biennial Manifesta 15 Barcelona has invited the project ‘Diversorium’Barcelona's concomitance that seeks to generate spaces for people with and without disabilities to meet through dance, partying and enjoyment, to form part of the new framework for social and ecological research that will be developed in the metropolitan region of Barcelona as part of the pre-biennial phase of this European artistic event.
Over the past four years Manifesta has evolved from a purely art biennial to an incubator for social and ecological change. By creating new collective processes, the biennial can focus on developing more sustainable actions and symbolic interventions that can be beneficial to the host cities and communities in which they are embedded.
For this reason, instead of following the usual model of creating a series of exhibitions, Manifesta is rethinking and transforming its model to promote research that offers alternative perspectives and can tackle specific problems through interdisciplinary creation, activism and creating lasting legacies. With this in mind, and with more than a year to go until the official opening of this ‘European Nomadic Biennial’, the ten selected projects, including ‘Diversorium’, will investigate specific thematic components, in close collaboration with experts and local communities, that will lead to new and alternative ways of drawing attention to the climate crisis and identify some of the ecological and social transformations needed in the region.
The results presented after this research phase will form the basis of the conceptual framework of the biennial and will be presented in autumn 2023.
This phase, which in the last three editions of Manifesta has been directed by an urban planner or a creative mediator, will be directed in 2023 by a diverse group of individual or collective researchers. To this end, various professionals have been invited, not only from the art world but also from other disciplines in the fields of art, science, law, architecture, human rights, activism and pedagogy, among others.
Specifically, the research carried out by ‘Diversorium’ - with the mediator Veronica Valentini and the commissioners, Maria Oliver and Antonio Centeno, from the Office for Independent Living in Barcelona (OVI) - will focus on a research project exploring the Catalan movements of educational renewal.
These movements are significant for understanding the role of education and pedagogy in the histories of eco-social transformations that took place before and after the Franco dictatorship in Spain.
The project aims to shed light on how these historical movements have contributed to social change and what they can teach us today.
