The Influencers, a festival of visionaries

The confluence between art, technology and new, popular digital cultures is the subject of interest of The Influencers festival, to be held at the CCCB from October 26 to 28 which has now reached its 13th year. Political propaganda, disinformation, trolls and post-truth are just some elements on this year’s programme, which is part of the The New Networked Normal project, of which CCCB is part; although, according to the director of the centres’ exhibitions Rosa Ferré, “we have long respected the independence of The Influencers because if you talk about hacking it cannot be an institutional festival.”

In its day, The Influencers was truly visionary and the director Bani Brasadin recalls that the festival began, “when Youtube still did not exist. All of these developments have taken place since.” According to Brasadin, the content of The Influencers can be structured around three pillars, “unconventional art because art today does not take place in the studio only; guerrilla communication, a military metaphor, as a guerrilla is mobile, intelligent and faces armies; radical entertainment, which in principle can create a contradiction in terms, a paradox.” Conferences, workshops, lectures and video installations and “the Internet black market” are all on the programme.