This bienal programme aims to break down and analyse the complex reality of our globalised world through a project focusing on “modern stimulants”, by including talks, public debates, seminars, exhibitions, concerts and publications.
Spider web drawings under the influence of various psychoactive drugs by the common house spider (Araneus diadematus).
Related to the history of the construction of the former tobacco factory in the city, now remodelled as the International Centre for Contemporary Culture, the project Stimulants: circulation and euphoria takes up as astarting point stimulants such as such as tobacco, coffee, sugar and cocoa,
in an attempt to explore contemporary culture and thought.
These goods occupy a prominent place in our societies since the deployment of long-distance transatlantic trade routes. The conquest of these products leads to both the possibility of accelerating the human body (increasing the labour force) and generating new leisure derived from its recreational uses. Thus, the study of modern stimulants allows us to weave a plot in which the search for the exotic and food diets is related to the rise of industrial labour and the exploitation of natural resources, or colonialism and the birth of new theories of awareness in the modern world.
Stimulants: circulation and euphoria will launch into the public space these and other issues through various programmes that will run until the end of 2017 and will include talks, public debates, seminars, exhibitions, concerts and publications.
Download the leaflet:
Stimulants: circulation and euphoria