DE VICENTE
JOSÉ LUIS
José Luis De Vicente is a curator, cultural researcher, and artistic director based in Barcelona and working internationally. His work explores the space between social innovation, new ecological practices, and the aesthetics and politics of computation.
He is the cofounder of FAST, a brand new transdisciplinary creative unit addressing current and future challenges through the convergence of culture, technology, architecture, and design. We imagine and materialize hybrid, wide-ranging experiences that foster a freer, more sustainable, and inclusive world, in response to the rapidly shifting conditions of the 21st century.
Before this, he served as the artistic director of Barcelona’s Design Museum, DHUB, and was the founder and artistic director of Sónar+D, a culture and arts program of the acclaimed Sónar Festival.
He has curated more than 25 exhibitions in institutions across the globe, including museums and cultural centers such as CCCB (Barcelona), ArtsScience Museum (Singapore), Somerset House (London), MIT Museum (Cambridge, US), Museo Reina Sofia and Espacio Fundación Telefónica (Madrid), among many others. These include the internationally touring exhibition “Big Bang Data”, presented in more than 10 cities. “Radical Curiosity: in the Orbit of Buckminster Fuller”, a reinterpretation of the legacy of the visionary architect; “After the End of the World”, a spatial essay on the trauma of the climate crisis, and the permanent installation “Mirador Torre Glories”. His most recent projects include “Atmospheric Memory”, an immersive art environment by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, presented at Powerhouse (Sydney), “The Ocean Speaks: New Ecologies and New Economies of the Seas” at DHUB in 2024, and "Echoes of the Ocean" at Espacio Fundación Telefónica.
De Vicente has lectured internationally on digital aesthetics and politics, cultural laboratories, and the impact of the arts on the ecosystems of innovation, including forums like Ars Electronica, Transmediale, the COP25 Climate summit, the Venice Biennale, the New European Bauhaus festival, Mutek, Primavera Sound, and many more.
His work has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, BBC, Wired, El Pais, La Vanguardia, Monocle, Domus, Creative Applications, BoingBoing, and others.
He is a faculty member of Columbia GSAPP, Columbia University (New York).
18 SEP @ 16:00
Dramaturgies of the Anthropocene: A Social Imaginary for Emerging Spaces of Planetarity
PRESENTATION 4
Human lives today are entangled with a new cast of planetary actors—many of whom we lack traditions to represent. We need to imagine a contemporary world that includes myths and stories of anthropogenic cloud formations, jellyfish thriving in warming seas, whale migration corridors, satellite constellations mistaken for stars, face recognition systems on city streets, submarine cable hubs, and AI chatbots.
This list is always evolving—but it invites us to imagine a theater play still in need of its scenography.
Though these forces operate on scales beyond our reach, design holds the power to update our worldview. It can shape new rituals, create symbols, and build the institutions and imaginaries of tomorrow.
This presentation is a narrative journey through objects, systems and spaces produced in collaboration with design and architecture studios, creative technologists and artists in the last decade through my work in exhibitions, festivals and other cultural devices.