Inmortality, eternal youth and death

Three speakers with disparate perspectives will share their ideas on immortality, eternal youth and death, as part of the public program "Mortals of the World, Unite!", curated by Amaia Sánchez-Velasco and Jorge Valiente Oriol of Grandeza Studio as part of their situated research project “Revisiting Titono: Tentacular Geographies of Eternal Youth”.

The public program "Mortals of the World, Unite!" continues with a round table on "Immortality, eternal youth and death" that will take place on Thursday, July 11, 2024 at 18:00h in the Clima Fitness space of Matadero.

This event will address immortality, eternal youth and death from different perspectives, addressing the social, ethical, scientific, environmental, aesthetic, technological, political and philosophical challenges associated with the quest to extend human life in a context of climate crisis, war and migration.

The participants will be María A. Blasco (biomolecular researcher and author of Morir joven, a los 140 together with Mónica G. Salomone), Igor Bragado (architect and author of Death Report and Planet Fitness: Anthropo-Frontierism and the Survival of the Fittest together with Miles Gertler) and Albert Cortina (co-author and coordinator of the book ¿Humanos o posthumanos? Singularidad tecnológica y mejoramiento humano, among others).

In this meeting, the three researchers will give 30-minute presentations on their research. Their interventions will be followed by an hour-long round table, moderated by Amaia Sánchez-Velasco and Jorge Valiente Oriol (from Grandeza Studio), whose objective will be to open relevant questions (rather than give convincing answers) capable of articulating and activating processes of critical and speculative thinking around youth, aging and death.

These are some of the questions that will be addressed at the meeting: What does eternal life mean? What ontologies and epistemologies of the human are emerging from the scientific-technological developments that seek to extend life? What new extractivisms and transformative economies of territories and bodies are emerging in the environments of this new frontier of knowledge? Under what assumptions is the post-human or transhumanist becoming imagined? What are the implications of the lengthening of life on a planet of limited resources and growing population? Is transhumanism the transposition of the old social classes into the new biological classes? Which bodies have the right to extend their lives and which do not? What does the right to mourning -or grievability, to quote Judith Butler- mean in a necropolitical regime that simultaneously normalizes and sidesteps the confrontation with death?

The proposal enters in dialogue with the exhibition "Clima Fitness: Rituals of Adaptability", a project developed between Maite Borjabad and Common Accounts and hosted by Intermediae Matadero in Nave 17, Nave Una.

Igor Bragado is co-director of the conceptual design studio Common Accounts, based in Toronto and Madrid. Founded with Miles Miles Gertler, the studio opens the disciplines of architecture, visual art, and academia to planetary, psychic, and physiological scales. Common Accounts invests in the immediate present, studying situations where design intelligence is abundant, but under the radar of design disciplines, often with an eye to the future seconds from now.

Maria A. Blasco is scientific director of the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas and head of the Telomeres and Telomerase group. Maria A. Blasco is a molecular biologist dedicated to studying the role of telomeres and telomerase in cancer and aging. Her studies have been published in the most relevant scientific journals such as Cell, Nature and Science.

Albert Cortina Ramos is Director of the DTUM Study. Professor and researcher in ethics applied to urban and regional planning at the Department of Geography of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and at the ETSAV of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Consultant in environmental intelligence, urban habitat, landscape management, citizenship and governance. Promoter of the SMD Project (singular, better and diverse). Co-author and coordinator of the book ¿Humanos o posthumanos? Technological singularity and human enhancement (Fragmenta Editorial, 2015).

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