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Madrid turns its squares into a major forum for thought for four days
Madrid will once again take thought out of conference halls and bring it to squares, streets and cultural centres. The Festival of Ideas will hold its third edition from 17 to 20 September, with four days of free activities and names such as Zadie Smith, Paul B. Preciado, Édouard Louis, Rodrigo Cuevas and Pablo d’Ors.
The focus of this edition will be “Bodies”, an invitation to consider how we live in an era shaped by artificial intelligence, social change and an ever larger part of life moving onto screens. Identity, health, gender, power, borders and care will feature in conversations aimed at an audience far broader than the strictly academic one.
Plaza de España will once again be one of the main venues. Major outdoor gatherings and activities designed to pause and listen in the middle of the city will be held there, recovering the spirit with which the festival was born: making intellectual debate something people can encounter while walking through Madrid.
The list of guests combines literature, philosophy, politics, music and contemporary creation. Zadie Smith and Édouard Louis will take part in the literary events, while Paul B. Preciado will be among the voices addressing transformations of the body and identity. Figures such as Vijay Prashad, Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán, Chantal Maillard, Marta Sanz and Niño de Elche will also appear in the programme.
The festival will not be limited to conversations seated in front of a stage. There will be philosophical walks, workshops, speakers’ corners, cinema, music, dance and children’s activities, in different formats across the city. Some activities will allow entry without booking and others, due to capacity, will require advance registration.
The Círculo de Bellas Artes will again play an important role, and CaixaForum Madrid joins this year as one of the venues. There will be workshops and dialogues on issues ranging from identity to the relationship between body and mind, or the influence that environment and technology exert on us.
One of the conversations planned at CaixaForum will pose an apparently simple question: whether we are a body or simply have one. Philosopher and psychiatrist Thomas Fuchs will talk with psychologist Ramón Nogueras about how digital culture and artificial intelligence are changing our relationship with physical experience, care and mental health.
Most of the programme will be free, although some capacity-limited activities will require booking a ticket. For four days, the scene will present an unusual image in September: writers, philosophers, artists and residents sharing squares and cultural centres to discuss issues that normally remain confined to classrooms or auditoriums.