Let's shake each other up and explore culture from other perspectives

We all know that art and culture are a refuge, a transformative tool, a thermometer that measures the state of health (or lack thereof) of our society. We assume that any form of artistic expression makes us grow, makes us think, makes us feel, talk, vibrate, and, in the best cases, can even make us soar. And if not, as Dario Grandinetti said in Eliseo Subiela's legendary film, The Dark Side of the Heart : "If you don't know how to fly, you're wasting your time with me." This constant yearning to soar perfectly encapsulates our demands when it comes to consumption. It's a premise that often leads us to stressful, impulsive, and frenetic consumption, driven by the click of a button. It doesn't matter what we see; the important thing is to see everything and do it now.

And so we consume culture left and right through absolutely everything around us, and we do it faster and faster so we can be the first to talk about it, to flood social media with everything we consume, to shout from the rooftops that we've seen the latest series on Filmin, the latest play by Nil Cardoner, or that we danced all night to the concert of the umpteenth trendy band. We're capable of buying tickets to music festivals a year in advance (even without knowing the lineup), but we're incapable of remembering the name of the play we saw the day before yesterday.

Perhaps we've gradually lost the ability to enjoy art and culture at a different pace. To go to the theater and let ourselves be seduced, to be captivated. To let the lights dim and a story unfold, to feel the unique and magical moment of sharing a room, any room, with others, and to feel their breaths, laughter, tears, or moans as if they were our own. To surrender to an artistic offering that makes the invisible visible and lose ourselves in all that can happen when we open our hearts and simply let it unfold.

One of the most powerful forces art possesses is its ability to transform us, to move us so deeply that we spend days immersed in that play or scene, wanting to stay forever. And not only that, but it also, in some way, changes us.

You don't know how it happened, but it did, and you're certain that after that artistic experience, you're no longer the same. Art makes visible what isn't always visible, and it does so by striking where it needs to, stirring things up and shaking them up.

Giving voice and prominence to people living in vulnerable situations

And shaking things up is what we want to do with the Sacseig Festival , the new performing arts proposal for social inclusion, which is born from the hand of the Social Work of San Juan de Dios and uTOpia, and which you can get to know from May 11 to 14 in different spaces in Barcelona.

The Sacseig Festival gives voice and prominence to people living in vulnerable situations, not only because the performing arts are a powerful tool for empowerment and social inclusion, but also to assert that everyone has something to say and that culture belongs to us all. This festival, primarily featuring people in vulnerable circumstances, is a space to eradicate the social narratives that reduce people to imposed identity labels. Sacseig is a space to break down barriers and democratize culture by promoting diverse, high-quality artistic proposals with a social conscience.

With this festival, we want to shake up the performers, so they can define themselves from new perspectives, but we also want to shake up the audience, so they can be drawn into the vulnerabilities that affect us all. We want to shake up the venues, the programmers, and the creators, so they dare to explore uncharted territory. We want to shake up institutions and media outlets, inviting them to rethink their approach and challenge the narrative of the world around us. We want to shake up established social structures to question, debate, and transform them.

Ultimately, we want to shake you up, to encourage you to think and believe that a different way of creating and experiencing culture is possible and goes far beyond what happens on your social media feeds. The Sacseig Festival is about everything that happens within you when you discover Barcelona's new cultural and social offering.

This article was originally published on social.cat