Moving Earths

Performative lectures are a subgenre of the performance which was a feature of the programme of Katharsis 20/21. This year, we return to this genre, which is being presented in the Espai Lliure, in order to continue our investigation of how we can convey knowledge through an artistic experience. With local and international artists and theorists, we will be seeking how to combine our intellect and sensitivity to bring to the spectator a wisdom that needs to be conveyed through the aesthetic enjoyment that the theatrical experience gives us. We seek to answer the questions by experience.

Where to land?
When in 1609 Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope at the sky, he discovered mountains on the surface of the Moon, making it another Earth, and the Earth a star among others. He thus upset the cosmic, but also political and social order of his time. Four centuries later, the role and position of our planet is once again being overturned by the new sciences that reveal how human actions make it react in unexpected ways. Galileo had taught us that the Earth is in motion. Researchers James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis discover an Earth "in motion" in another sense: they describe a planet where space and time are the products of the actions of living things. They are forcing us to change our view of the world and our understanding of the cosmos. And, once again, the whole organization of society seems to be called into question.
Whereas in 1609 we had to absorb the shock that "the earth moves", in 2020 we have to accept the much more surprising shock that the earth trembles and reacts to human actions to the point of disrupting all our development projects.
We invite the audience to evaluate the hypothesis of a parallel between the era of the astronomical revolution and ours. Are we experiencing a world transformation as profound and radical as that of Galileo's time? One thing is certain: we no longer know exactly what planet we live on, nor how to describe it. It is not a single, fixed and stable Earth, but a multitude of planets that lie before us, and which we must explore to find out which one to land on.
Between philosophy and theatre, this production claims to be a mix of genres: we think it is well suited to the current period, in which changes in ideas about the world are accompanied by changes in representations of that world. It is this aesthetics of science on the stage that we have been pursuing together for more than ten years.
_Bruno Latour