CaixaForum reflects on how the pandemic has changed the world

Eight months after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, CaixaForum presents Off-axis. Displacements of a pandemic', a cycle of dialogues that reflects on how the world has changed after the appearance of the COVID-19, what scenario we have left behind and how we can imagine the world that awaits us. 

The pandemic has metaphorically shifted the axis of the Earth, has moved it, and with that movement, the consequences have been literal and very palpable. Off-axis wants to identify and analyze the doubts and questions that this displacement has generated and, from these cracks, the present we have and the future that will come. 

The relations and links, the inequalities between the north and the south, communication and control with technologies that we no longer control, education and uncertainty, the ethics that we build from chaos and fear, and the narratives of the future we can weave. These are the six axes through which the cycle is structured. And it does so on the basis of the reflections of writers, artists, philosophers and journalists in dialogue: diverse voices that are known to be off-axis and that, precisely because of this, can help us to shape a challenging future.

What ethics do we create with COVID-19? 

Dialogue now available in the CaixaForum Digital Agora 

Begoña Román and José Ovejero 

The COVID-19 crisis has generated a new language that has dismantled concepts such as freedom, the common good and responsibility. 

Who is filling them with meaning? Are we redefining them to create a new ethic which opens up another stage of that which defines us as a society? Ethics professor Begoña Román talks to writer and essayist José Ovejero to get to work on some of the great questions of ethical philosophy which, with the pandemic, are becoming more tense and shifting. 

What challenges and opportunities do technologies open up in the world of COVID-19? 

Thursday September 24th 

Marta Peirano and Remedios Zafra 

How have we changed our way of communicating and working, and how will we do so from now on? Why is it so important to reflect together on work-life balance and care in times of the pandemic? Are the boundaries between public and private space becoming blurred? Both the essayist Remedios Zafra and the journalist Marta Peirano, both specialised in reflecting on the Network and cyberspace, deal with questions on culture and technology from some of the pillars that this crisis has cracked, such as work, precariousness or privacy.

How does the pandemic shift the north-south axis? 

Thursday October 1st 

Moussa Bourekba and Patricia Simón 

With the COVID-19 crisis, the West has staggered as if it has discovered for the first time that vulnerability is also present. But how do those who have long thought about the fragility of lives and North-South inequality read this crisis? The journalist Patricia Simón, who specialises in human rights, talks to Moussa Bourekba, a CIDOB researcher and expert on migrations. Together they reflect on the extent to which it is urgent to rethink the idea of globalisation, or how the crisis we are experiencing reformulates the notions of borders, memory and time. 

What is the meaning of school? 

Thursday October 8th 

Josep María Esquirol and Carlos Magro 

Why should we defend school, today more than ever? What are the time and space it offers to pay attention to what is happening in the world? What has confinement revealed about the need to keep it open? Why is it so important to go to school, to be able to go there? In what sense does the debate that COVID-19 has sparked off allow us to rethink its meaning in its most substantial aspect? And, above all, why is this a particularly good time to ask ourselves these questions? In this conversation, the philosopher Josep María Esquirol and the education expert Carlos Magro resume a debate that has never ceased to be topical, with the desire to point out, in dialogue, what is the necessary education for us.

How does the virus transform the way we relate to each other? 

Thursday October 15th 

Itziar González and Moha Gerehou 

We are talking about ties and public space. How can we give new meaning to the word contagion? How far can we avoid contact with others if we are interdependent and vulnerable bodies? What alternative city should we propose so that we can meet again? How do we recover public space? Where is the space for protest, vindication and demonstration when the streets can be a source of contagion? The architect and activist Itziar González talks to the journalist, and also activist Moha Gerehou, to try to answer together questions centred on the idea of relationship. Here is an opportunity to think about the links that divide us and bring us together. 

How do we build the narratives of futurability? 

Thursday October 22nd 

Teresa López-Pellisa and Marta Sanz 

Are we prisoners of the stories of the end, of twilight and apocalyptic thoughts? Are there other horizons that allow us to think of a common future? What is the role of memory in escaping from a present we do not want? And what is the role of science fiction? The writer Marta Sanz and the researcher Teresa López-Pellisa engage in a conversation that shows to what extent creation is the place where we can find, if not the answers, then the questions that allow us to make memory and imagine an alternative future, one that is perhaps more our own. 

Off-axis: face-to-face closing. What now? 

Wednesday November 4, 2020 CaixaForum Barcelona 

The series concludes with a commitment that is, at the same time, a celebration: a face-to-face meeting with the philosopher Begoña Román, the researcher Remedios Zafra and the journalist Patricia Simón, three of the protagonists of 'Fuera de eje' (Off-axis) who, at CaixaForum Barcelona, will transform the dialogue into an open and shared debate, moderated by the philosopher Albert Lladó.