Hay Festival Colombia Digital

An important talk on burning issues, with three proposals for the future to build a better world, by participants in the festival who, from their respective trenches and countries, raise problems and solutions needed for a world in crisis. With educator and writer Elisa Guerra (Mexico), environmental activist and feminist Yayo Herrero (Spain) and social leader and activist Paula Marcela Moreno (Colombia), in conversation with Hay Festival Director Cristina Fuentes La Roche.

From her experiences of racism and inequality, Indhira Serrano (Colombia) will talk with Juan Mosquera Restrepo about how to overcome exclusionary imaginaries for racialized people, launching a message of self-acceptance, respect for differences and pride in Afro-Latino heritage. Serrano was a model, which gave her an insider's view of how the media influences people's self-perception. In addition, since 2015 she has been developing a series of conferences and workshops entitled Reconstruyendo imaginarios (Reconstructing Imaginaries), where she reflects on the relationships we have with money, education, our partner and power.

The influential social leader Paula Marcela Moreno (Colombia), former Minister of Culture and president of the corporation Manos Visibles, presents her book Soñar lo imposible (Dreaming the impossible), the story of social leaders who have built from within civil society and offered their talents to create a better country. A conversation with Adriana Villegas Botero in which she will also discuss racism, identity and feminism in the context of present-day Colombia.

This event invites us to explore reality and imagination from the perspective of speculative architect and filmmaker Liam Young. The artist will give a performative talk that, through his words and images, will transport us to real and imaginary worlds that invite us to examine our present and rethink our future. The talk will incorporate an exploration of the use of Artificial Intelligence through a conversation between Liam Young and young researcher Piera Riccio.

Artist Liam Young (Australia, 1979) works in a hybrid space where architecture and design, film, science and fiction intersect to generate powerful audio visual pieces that envision the risks and potential of new technologies. At a time when technological transformation seems to be happening faster than our ability to understand what the effects might be, the worlds that Young constructs invite us to explore their possible outcomes. In his own words, we don’t need more charts and graphs to show us what’s going wrong with the world, we need to dramatize data to get people emotionally engaged.

Liam Young's work has been exhibited in some of the world's leading exhibition spaces, including the MET, MoMA, the Royal Academy and the Venice Biennale. His pieces have also been broadcast on BBC and Channel 4 and he has been nominated for BAFTA awards. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton University and MIT and was on the faculty of the Strelka Institute until its closure.

The young researcher Piera Riccio is working on her doctoral thesis in the field of Artificial Intelligence, with the European ELLIS programme at the University of Alicante and a grant from the Banco Sabadell Foundation for the promotion of young talent. Riccio’s doctoral thesis deals with the social implications of the use of Artificial Intelligence algorithms in social networking platforms and how they are defining the flow of information in our society, thus establishing new paradigms of mass communication.

Volver a Contar: Latin American Writers in the British Museum Archives is an international collaboration between the British Museum and the Hay Festival, which explores 10,000 years of human history in the Americas. The project has involved inviting a group of writers to explore narratives about the past by means of a collection of Latin American objects never seen by the public in the British Museum. Carlos Fonseca (Costa Rica and Puerto Rico), author of Austral; Lina Meruane (Chile), author of Sistema nervioso and Cristina Rivera Garza (Mexico) author of El invencible verano de Liliana will talk to the journalist Andrea Aguilar (Spain) in order to present this anthology of short stories published by Anagrama, which mingles rigorous research and fiction in order for us to better understand our history and try to resolve the gaps in the historical narrative.

Event in Spanish

After this event, Anagrama will offer a drink to celebrate the launch of the Volver a contar anthology

Ai Weiwei, one of China's most internationally renowned artists, both for his creative activity and his political activism, will come to the Hay Festival in a streamed event. His memoirs, entitled 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, explore themes that touch on the very core of the Hay as a Festival of creation and thought: freedom of expression and activism, cultural and political history, as well as his creative life. His is a career that has not been limited to the visual arts, but encompasses other fields such as architecture (he participated in the design of Beijing’s National Stadium), music and film. In the book, the artist recounts his life in the United States from 1983 till 1993, and his rise to the status of superstar in the world of art.

Ai Weiwei will be in conversation with Anne McElvoy, British journalist and executive editor at The Economist, who has previously served as policy editor and head of audio. The Economist Ask, the bi-weekly Thursday programme/podcast conducted by McElvoy, has brought together hundreds of leading newsmakers from around the world.

Event in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish.

Currently Budapest has Europe’s largest and most ambitious urban cultural development, the Liget Budapest Project. An urban and cultural development plan that has transformed the Hungarian capital, involving internationally acknowledged architects, like Sou Fujimoto or Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA). With five new buildings and half of the park area completed and three more to go, the project’s visionary, Laszlo Baan, also director of the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, will be at the Hay Festival to explain and elaborate on the project, and how it relates to comparable projects in Europe.

Isabel Fuentes, PhD in Museology of Natural and Human Sciences, has spent twenty years working in scientific communication and cultural management in institutions such as the Residencia de Estudiantes, the National Museum of Natural Sciences and the La Caixa Foundation. She is currently the director of CaixaForumand an expert in the transformation that a museum can bring about in the city inwhich it is installed.

Baan and Fuentes will talk with Miquel Molina, journalist and writer, assistant director of the newspaper La Vanguardia.

Event in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish and vice versa

Patronage of different kinds is one of the major forms of promoting and protecting creative works. Three outstanding cultural figures who understand its importance, both in the public and private spheres, come to the Hay Festival Segovia. They are Antonio Filipe Pimentel, Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, also in the Portuguese capital, who will talk about private patronage; and the ambassador Antonio Monteiro, Chair of the Millennium Bank Foundation, who will talk about support for public institutions and private creators through his foundation.

Prince Lorenzo de’ Medici, a direct descendent from a branch of the historical family of patrons, will moderate this event.

Event in Spanish

Culture is undoubtedly one of the main engines of change in a society. The directors of two of the country's most important cultural centres will return to the Festival they both know so well to debate this idea. Valerio Rocco has been director of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid since 2019 and was previously vice-dean of Research, Knowledge Transfer and the Library at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where he teaches History of Modern Philosophy. Isabel Fuentes, PhD Museology of Natural and Human Sciences, has spent twenty years working in scientific communication and cultural management in institutions such as the Residencia de Estudiantes, the National Museum of Natural Sciences and La Caixa Foundation. She is currently the director of CaixaForum.

Event in Spanish