| Fundación Épica La Fura dels Baus anticipates the future with its contribution to the European Performing Science Night |
This prestigious initiative can change, through research, the development
of human relations for the next 500 years.
Inspired by the stimulating scientific challenges proposed by a group of experts, 30 creatives (artists, scientists and technologists) will participate from 13 to 25 September in the European Performing Science Night 2021. This is part of the European Researchers’ Night. With the help of the La Fura dels Baus Epic Foundation, they will be part of a co-creation workshop aimed at shedding light on key issues such as: the stigma of those affected by viruses, the differential impact of climate change by territory, or trust – the confidence that arouses in the individual to share interests with members of his own tribe and the sources that they consider true at the time of informing themselves.
The president of the La Fura dels Baus Epic Foundation, Pep Gatell, comments on this visionary initiative that “we cannot predict the future, but we can learn to anticipate it. The work of the Epic Foundation with collaborators who are experts in technology and science offers us the ideal play space to achieve this. One of our challenges is to anticipate a changing and spectacular future that awaits us, that will happen yes or yes and our task is to make representations of it for a new rebirth to emerge, changing the development of human relations over the next 500 years”.
In The Researchers’ Night gives its participants the opportunity to show the diversity of science and its impact on the daily lives of citizens and aims to motivate young people to embark on research careers. These activities highlight the contribution of experts to society by showing their work in an interactive forum. The co-creation workshop will culminate in a multidisciplinary experiment, allowing researchers to extract data and parameters that will be useful for their studies.
The challenges they will face have been devised by experts belonging to the institutions associated with the Foundation: Institute of Neurosciences of the Universitat de Barcelona, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP) and the Laboratoire Parole et Langage (CNRS, ILCB and Aix-Marseille University).
The workshop is attended by researchers and creatives aged between 19 and 50, with a similar number of men and women and representation of non-binary identities. Although the majority reside in Spain, several come from different countries in Europe, the United States and Latin America. Divided into three main categories – artists, scientists and technologists – their specialties cover performance, dance, music, architecture, design, visual arts, meteorology, microbiology, neurology, nanotechnology, programming, circus, virology, chemistry and mathematics. Almost 200 proposals were submitted to the call, mostly from women, distributed mainly among artists, scientists and technologists, in that order.
Virus behaviours and the stigma of those
infected are two key topics
Of particular interest in the current situation is his analysis of the behavior of viruses: the creation of stigmas due to infection and the emotional and physical changes that affect the people affected and those around them. Alternatively, actions will be recreated to disseminate knowledge about viral transmission and immune system defense mechanisms. One of the activities linked to this topic, for example, is to compare the behavior of particles in isolation and how they change their way of acting with what happens when we isolate humans and find similar patterns.
Another of the most interesting challenges proposes to anticipate some situations and scenarios caused by climate change that seeks answers to the question: In three to five years, how will we be? The research group, in this case, studies the impact of policies and discourses on the climate emergency and how they really affect the fight against it. Why in different parts of the world does climate change seriously affect human life and not in others? Are we experiencing climate change in the same way in all territories? Possibly when it affects everyone equally it is too late to achieve survival on the planet of the human race. Should we become TRANSHUMAN-POSTHUMAN beings? Will we be ready for it?
Finally, the challenge of investigating the Trust is also noteworthy. In this case, the group takes into account such interesting parameters as trust. Why do we trust some people and not others? How do we set the confidence parameters? How is trust or mistrust articulated? Do we believe more in the news or neighborhood rumors? A scientific study provides a theory that assumes that humans tend to have more confidence in a group if we establish objective relationships with it. For example, complicity is observed between iPhone or Android users; football or gastronomy fans or lovers of the same experiences as enjoying the beach or the mountains. From there, participants are subdivided into subgenres and more coincidences are sought — poetry or prose; dogs or cats; black and white or color; discipline or chaos…etc. Starting from the scientific theory called the cows that go to their corral, it is shown with various activities that when the individual is part of a tribe he trusts the people who make it up and distrusts the rest.
The public, protagonist of the daytime activity of the
European Performing Science Night
Open to the general public, the daytime activity of the European Performing Science Night (EPSN) will take place on September 25 at L’Antic Escorxador in Badalona. This includes exhibitions, interactive experiences, and talks aimed at promoting the values of science and demonstrating the impact and attractiveness of researchers’ work, to motivate young people to embark on research careers. EPSN proposes a tour through experiments carried out by various research centers that will show their results to the younger and more demanding public.
The project, which includes actions developed under the European Performing Science Night 2021, has received funding from Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions in the European Union’s H2020 program under funding agreement 101036143-EPSN 2021.