Terrafilia Fest

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza and TBA21 launch the first edition of Terrafilia Fest, a new annual gathering that brings together experimental art, critical thought, and ecological activism to challenge exhausted worldviews and foster unorthodox yet urgent forms of knowledge and action.
 

Conceived as a speculative counterpart to the exhibition Terrafilia (on view until September 24), the festival unfolds as a collective platform for imagining new forms of planetary intelligence in response to the ecological and sociopolitical challenges of our time. 

In the midst of the current global (dis)order—marked by climate collapse, the erosion of democratic frameworks, and the persistence of extractivist and colonial paradigms—Terrafilia Fest convenes artists, thinkers, and activists from diverse contexts to explore alternative ways of inhabiting the world.

Through a program of performances, workshops, talks, screenings, and experimental encounters, the festival rehearses new forms of cultural practices as tools for critical imagination, radical solidarity, and ecosocial transformation.

Confirmed participants include:

• Malcom Ferdinand (France), philosopher and author of A Decolonial Ecology, who will address the intersection of environmental justice and historical repair through the case of chlordecone pesticide contamination in the French Caribbean.
   
• James Bridle (UK/Greece), a writer, artist, and technologist. Author of New Dark Age (2018) and Ways of Being (2022), Bridle examines how digital and networked realities infiltrate the material world, expanding notions of planetary intelligence.
   
• Libby Heaney (UK), artist and quantum physicist, internationally recognized for her pioneering work in quantum art. Through immersive installations and emerging technologies, she explores the political and aesthetic implications of quantum computing and the limits of perception.
   
• Frédérique Aït-Touati (France), theater director and CNRS researcher, whose work merges narrative, science, and cartography to rethink our relationship with the planet. Projects like Terra Forma propose mapping Earth through fiction, ethics, and imagination.
   
• Yina Jiménez Suriel (Dominican Republic), curator and researcher whose practice links diasporic imagination with processes of reconciliation and transoceanic memory.
   
• Zheng Bo (Hong Kong/Taiwan), ecoqueer artist whose work investigates aesthetic and political forms of interspecies relationality from a non-anthropocentric perspective.
   
• Riar Rizaldi (Indonesia), filmmaker and researcher who explores cosmologies of the Global South through the intersection of contemporary science and local mysticism.
   
• Las Huecas (Spain), the Barcelona-based dramaturgical collective (Júlia Barbany, Núria Corominas, Andrea Pellejero) known for blending satire, metaclown, and absurdity into a distinctive theatrical language.
   
• Klara Kofen and Cameron Graham (UK), an experimental performance and research duo who creates multimedia, genre-defying music theatre exploring ecological, financial, and cosmic temporalities.
   
• Megane Mercury (Spain), multidisciplinary artist based in Barcelona. A vocalist, model, audiovisual creator, DJ, and storyteller, Megane explores queer, race, and dissident identities across pop-queer music and visual media.
   
• Skye Arundhati Thomas (India), writer, editor, and curator whose work intertwines contemporary politics, South Asian histories, and aesthetic form. She has recently co-edited the anthology Palestine is Everywhere.
   
• Tommaso Calarco (Italy), a leading quantum physicist known for pioneering quantum optimal control methods, co-author of the European Quantum Manifesto, and coordinator in the EU’s Quantum Flagship programme. 
   
• La cuarta piel (Spain), a worldwide distributed collective focused on designing ecologies of care through participatory methods.

Terrafilia Fest positions itself as a testing ground for disruptive thought and situated creation, embracing formats and approaches that transcend disciplinary silos and foster collaboration across multiple knowledge systems, bodies, and territories.

Terrafilia Fest is organized by TBA21 and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, with the collaboration of WIELS Brussels, Festival de las Ideas, and the Complutense University of Madrid.