Days to broaden coexistence

More than 150 people gathered at Infinito Delicias on February 20 and 21 to participate in Diversity as a future, a meeting promoted by the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation together with FelipaManuela. For two days, the space became a place for listening, conversation and shared thought about coexistence, with an open format that invited participation, exchange and build from diversity.

For two days, the space was transformed into a place of horizontal conversation, attentive listening and shared thought around the culture of peace and coexistence.

The format was key. Far from unidirectional logics, each block combined interventions and open conversation with the audience. It was about providing a space where many voices could meet, as in a conversation between neighbors, where the word circulates and is built collectively. Coexistence was not only a theme, but a real practice.

Language, body and representation

The first day focused on languages. The popular and mestizo origin of Castilian was recalled, emphasizing that oral culture precedes written culture and that popular song was the matrix of lyrical music. Claiming that root implies recognizing that cultural excellence is not always born from the hegemonic, but from the common.

Another of the interventions stated that talking is doing politics, we do not speak only a language, but a position in the world. Naming Castilian, questioning the idea of “Spanishness” in Spanish and interrogating the historical processes of linguistic unification opened a debate on diversity and power. Islamophobia was also addressed as a long-term phenomenon, pointing to the “memoricide” that has erased fundamental narratives to understand the present.

The conversation around the notions of Spain and Anti-Spain stressed the idea of nation as an exclusive concept. In this context, the project ¡En obras te veas! Towards the Popular University of the Midday he brought a practical dimension. From the experience of the Casa de Porras, a seventeenth-century house in the Albaicín converted into a self-managed cultural space, a model was shared that understands the institution as a work tool and as a place from which to rethink how we inhabit the university and the neighbourhood.

The second day shifted the focus to the body and memory. If on Friday the language was the territory of reflection, on Saturday it was the skins and bones. The session dedicated to skins addressed the body as a space of experience, identity and representation. They talked about imaginaries and how images build and can also transform perceptions.

The interventions invited us to question inherited stories and open new perspectives. The subsequent conversation allowed many attendees to share experiences, connecting reflection and experience.

Memory, coexistence and closure

After lunch, prepared by the UNMAR restaurant as another moment of encounter, the day continued with the block focused on memory. There was talk of cities crossed by layers of history, of situated gazes and of what remains in time. The bones functioned as a metaphor for what persists and connects us to the past.

Working with memory not from nostalgia, but from its meaning in the present, was one of the common threads. Coexistence thus appeared as a shared practice, a value that is built on a daily basis through encounter, listening and mutual recognition.

The meeting concluded with the musical session of Esteban Bove and The Gardener (Califato 3/4), which fused flamenco, electronic music and folklore. The music of the Mediterranean resonated as an example of mixture and exchange, closing the meeting with a common language.

Diversity as a future left the feeling of having inhabited, for two days, an unusual space, a place where more than 150 people could listen to each other, share and think together from the point of view of difference.

From the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation we reaffirm our commitment to initiatives that, from culture, generate spaces for meeting, dialogue and construction of the common.