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Manifesta, the European Nomadic Biennial, has for 30 years moved across Europe, establishing itself as one of the world’s most influential cultural events. Every two years, Manifesta arrives in a new European host city to explore its unique cultural, urban, and environmental landscapes, working closely with local communities to envision a sustainable and inclusive future.

Evolving from a contemporary art biennial into an interdisciplinary platform for co-creation, Manifesta now operates as a catalyst for social, urban, and cultural transformation. This model, rooted in collaboration, engages artistic practices with critical urban planning, community building, environmental concerns, and local identities. By joining forces with grassroots organisations, artistic communities, citizens, and institutional partners, Manifesta has deepened its impact, supporting cities seeking stronger socio-cultural inclusivity.

Manifesta 15, hosted across 12 cities in Barcelona’s metropolitan region, takes place from September 8 to November 24, 2024. Over 12 weeks, the biennial aims to reshape the relationship between art, culture, and society through a focus on socio-ecological change. Set in symbolic venues and engaging deeply with local communities, this edition offers fresh perspectives on the area’s evolving histories and identities. It is the first Manifesta edition to be hosted by a metropolitan region of this scale, covering 3,000 square kilometres and serving 5.1 million residents.

The bid for Manifesta 15 was spearheaded by the Barcelona City Council, with support from 11 neighbouring cities. This collaboration reflects the region’s commitment to cultural decentralisation and the development of social and artistic networks beyond central Barcelona. Over the past decade, Barcelona’s urban landscape has faced significant challenges, from coastline gentrification and real estate expansion to industrial transformation. With natural expansion limits due to geographic barriers, rural and protected areas have become vulnerable to economic pressures. Manifesta 15 aims to bring new cultural infrastructures to these areas, sparking dialogue on the social and environmental shifts facing the region.

In the pre-biennial research phase, led by Manifesta’s Creative Mediator Sergio Pardo and Director Hedwig Fijen, collaborative studies focused on key topics: Balancing Conflicts, Cure and Care, and Imagining Futures. These themes align with three significant locations—the Llobregat Delta, Collserola Mountain Range, and Besòs River—around which the biennial’s programming was structured. This research, conducted with international artists, architects, and local experts, uncovered hidden archives and stories, forming a rich foundation for a multi-city biennial centred on local histories and ecological futures.

Hedwig Fijen, the Founding Director of Manifesta, provided an in-depth overview of this year’s edition to .ART. Responsible for every facet of the biennial’s organization, Fijen oversees the selection of host cities, curatorial direction, and thematic development:

“The pre-biennial process which lasted one year, was giving us directions on what this biennial should be dealing with. In the pre-biennial, my colleague from the Educational department and myself, we have each invited five collectives who did the research, which normally is done by an architect. We invited 10 collectives to help us identify exactly the point of view of how cities like Barcelona are an example of how European cities can deal with eco-social transitions. If we want to make the city more green, then immediately gentrification is going to be part of the social transition. If we want to beat mass tourism, it will hurt the economy and people might lose their jobs. So that’s why we talk about eco-social transition. Those ten collectives did a lot of work. There were several invited external experts, but we did the work all together, as a team. There’s so much support structure within Barcelona: by politicians, by colleagues, by other members of the community. And of course, you can always find one person who says it doesn’t make any sense, but I think it is something which a large group of people researched and transformed into a call to action. 

At first there was an idea of what is going on in the world after Covid, which every city is facing, balancing conflict between growth and degrowth, still imagining something positive which can transform it. How do we heal the Earth? How do we take care of all kinds of untold stories? There are different perspectives from feminism, ecofeminism, non-human actors, etc. 

Every 100 years the city needs something to transgress its border. Barcelona is looking into the way to transgress the natural boundaries: there are the two rivers, mountains and the sea. That was exactly the point where the city asked: can Manifesta help to think about a system of venues, not of exhibitions? The venues had to symbolise this transgression. What do you do if you go over the river on one side? What do you do if you go over the other river? Where does the perspective of the centre is going to be changed? How is it shifting? Currently the centre for everybody is Rambla. But if you look at the compass, the centre is the Three Chimneys. So this is more about the vision Manifesta has. Can we do something to shift people’s minds? Maybe in the next 50 years, a new centre is going to be built around the Three Chimneys. This is a long-term perspective. 

We were thinking about artists, collectives. There were typical artists, who produced artworks, but there were also collectives who did research. For example, one collective called the Embassy of the North Sea (*The Embassy of the North Sea, founded in The Hague in 2018, listens to and involves the voices of plants, animals, microbes, and people in and around the North Sea. Founded on the principle that the sea owns itself, the Embassy makes political space for sea-emancipation through connection, imagination and representation. Founded on the principle that the sea belongs to itself, the Embassy of the North Sea – an international collective of artists, lawyers, ecologists and scientists – makes political space for the sea’s emancipation through connection, imagination and representation.the Embassy studied the impact of pollution, desalination and the presence of introduced species in the wetlands and rivers of Barcelona) and the Parliament of Trees (*Parliament of Trees, an architectural installation by Elmo Vermijs, who works on the interface of art, architecture, and land(scape). The installation was first presented within the project Amstelpark – Trees tell their story, which took place in Amsterdam and brought scientists, lawyers, scholars and artists together to jointly investigate how trees, forests and their ecosystems can be given an equal voice in society and hold those who threaten them to account. The project questions the fundamental rights of more-than-human entities in our society. What if trees would have the right to sue their local polluters?), who made a lawsuit against the airport. 

There were all kinds of projects which were not typical art exhibitions or typical curation. For many people it was difficult to see and understand. And also this is sometimes difficult for us to communicate because of some key questions, which I try to ask during each Manifesta, because we are nomadic: Where are we? What is happening here? What is underrated or underrepresented? 

Our Education Department found out that 100 years ago the attention for ecological transition was super big. In 1924 there was a school for children, which taught them to understand the changes in the sea, water, fishes, sand, and temperatures. We wanted to rebuild it – Escola del Mar. And we wanted to learn what has happened in these 100 years that we’re not still not there. Don’t we need another school at the sea? 

There was a long discussion two-three years ago about not having Black archives and no attention for Colonial histories. In the Netherlands it is a big topic. I invited a curator and researcher Tania Safura Adam to come here to see the black archives, to talk with people in all the museums, and to see where the decolonization can start. I think that needs more attention at this moment, because that could really break the boundaries to continue. That was part of my call to action in the press conference where I said: Let’s not only put a painting on the wall, but also think about how these elements, which we found during these three years of collaboration with local partners could be brought to a next step. 

What we heard from all the partners, especially in the metropolitan area, was that they don’t have a budget. So my first call to action was to ask local politicians to give museums in small villages bigger budgets, so that they can cater to local audiences. Second one was:  take art seriously, it’s not a hobby. Or make sure that there is a connection between the two rivers, why don’t you build the Barcelona School for the sea in Barceloneta? There were concrete translations from our research into realistic proposals. At the end of Manifesta we’re going to hopefully discuss them with the politicians and see if they are willing to fill that in. 

We were analysing our ethic code, our green code, our diversity code. We have all kinds of laws within Manifesta, which are legal binding conditions. We live mostly in apartments which are not part of the gentrification idea. We almost don’t use paper. Our toilets are green. We have no water system except for the water purification. We had bicycles for everybody. We focus on public transport. We worked on putting solar panels on the roof of the Three Chimneys. It was almost done, but bureaucracy killed it. Then we said – let’s work with the ten other biennales, because there’s over production and it doesn’t make sense that each biennial is producing so many new works. Not always it went exactly as we wanted it, because sometimes artists wanted to make a new work, but the discussion amongst biennales has started. Is there a possibility for Liverpool, Berlin, Helsinki, Leon, Sao Paolo, Sydney, Thailand biennales to work together? Can we collaborate? We were not promoting Manifesta abroad, we were not doing advertisement campaigns aiming at reducing the amount of people arriving by plane. Also we said to some artists that it’s not super necessary to fly. There are 5 million people living in this residential area and another 7 million – in the larger inter region –  this is the audience of Manifesta”.

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