Getting lost in the labyrinthine corridors of Laika studios, located on the outskirts of Portland, the cultural and gastronomic capital of Oregon, in the United States, is like taking a walk through the history of cinema. During an exclusive visit by the newspaper ARA this summer, we were struck by a total silence. Wildwood, their latest film, the sixth and most ambitious of them all, is in the final phase of post-production and the sets are perfectly lit but without a soul in sight. All the rooms are closed off by a curtain accompanied by a rudimentary sign with the name of a color that identifies each of the spaces so that the animators do not get lost. They started with the basic colors: blue, green, black. As the locations multiplied, they ran short and had to add blue 2, green 2, and black 2. On our tour, we find much more specific ones like salmon and turquoise, which complete the more than 100 locations and 130 sets used in total. Quite a feat.

My mother used to say that she had been lucky. When she met my father, the actress Kim Novak was in fashion, and with her, a type of woman with hips and a generous body. In other words, not thin. Later, she would lament that fashion had changed and that gaunt bodies had become the trend, because she knew that her daughters would have a harder time of it. I would listen to her and curse my bad luck because, at home, for years and years, I was the fat one, the chubby one, the one who didn't have the normative weight that was expected and, of course, was a person in a permanent war with her own body.

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In Son Espanyolet, the Palma neighborhood where low houses and discreet facades define a good part of the urban landscape, building anew implies knowing how to look before deciding how to intervene. The house designed by Munarq, a studio founded by architects Rafel Munar and Pau Munar, starts from the desire to be part of the neighborhood without renouncing contemporary architecture.

When Diego Luna (Toluca de Lerdo, Mexico, 1979) was just two years old, his mother, the artist and set designer Fiona Alexander, died in a car accident. Upon reading Brenda Navarro's novel Ceniza en la boca (Sexto Piso, 2022), the actor and director recognized the echo of his own experience in a character as different from him as Lucila, the Mexican teenager who migrates with her younger brother to Spain –first to Madrid, then to Barcelona– to reunite with the mother who abandoned them eight years earlier. But above all, he was fascinated by the clash of perspectives: “The daughter sees her mother's departure as an act of abandonment, but the mother feels she is making a great sacrifice for her children. As a father, I cannot stop thinking about how painful it must be to live away from one's children and start from scratch in another place. But I am also a son, and the absence of the maternal figure is a subject that has occupied my thoughts every day of my life”.

On September 22nd, the first day of Milan Fashion Week, during the Vogue World fashion show at the imposing Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, there were two people visibly uncomfortable with what they were seeing. Miuccia Prada – head designer of her eponymous brand – and Alessandro Michele – creative director of Valentino – two of the heavyweights of the global fashion scene, were clearly wrinkling their noses while the rest of the attendees applauded, enthralled by the spectacle. The reason? The appearance of four humanoid robots from the Chinese company Unitree acting as acrobats among the models, presented under the title The age of intelligence. While the audience responded with enthusiasm, Prada and Michele seemed to be among the few who did not find it amusing. Perhaps because, behind the spectacle, they saw something more than four robots doing somersaults: the irruption of artificial intelligence into a world, that of fashion, which until now had made the body, hands, tradition, and human creativity its reason for being.

Simone Risoluti is the Vatican photographer in charge of documenting all of Leo XIV's activity. Last Monday, he captured the moment when the pope was talking to the pilots of the plane that was taking him from Lourdes to Metz, on the last day of his visit to France. The scene has a touch of irony that the photographer seems to accentuate: the pope in the sky, closer to God. He is there thanks to aeronautical engineering and the work of the pilots. The ecclesiastical authority who speaks of elevating souls and guiding them to heaven in the cockpit of an aircraft. Here, faith is not as important as mechanics and technology. The scene also recalls those old jokes where all kinds of celebrities would coincide on a plane and, faced with a critical situation, everyone had to jump, but there was always one parachute missing.

On November 13, 2003, Rolling Stone magazine published its issue 935. On the cover, The Strokes, who were releasing their second album, Room on fire. Music journalist Neil Strauss was in charge of the main interview with Julian Casablancas, the visible, and handsome, face of the New York band. It had only been a year and a half since the group had exploded. They were the advanced heirs of the local scene of the seventies, concentrated in the legendary concert venue CBGB, in the East Village, and of bands like Television. The Strokes were the best reality of the new wave: they had released a majestic album, Is this it, and were the center of all eyes. Everything was going well. Or so it seemed, because Strauss, who years later published the complete interview with the singer in the book Everyone You Hate Is Going to You (Contra, 2012), found himself in front of someone decadent, exhausted, erratic, and visibly affected by alcohol consumption. The journalist described the meeting as "The worst interview of all time".

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For ninety years, the photograph Death of a Loyalist Militiaman has been attributed to Robert Capa. The image of a republican combatant at the moment of being struck down consecrated the Hungarian photographer. The precise instant it portrays, with the militiaman losing his balance but not yet having touched the ground, gives it a drama that condenses the cruelty of war. The rifle seems to slip from his hand and the barren landscape further accentuates the tragedy of the soldiers. An atrocious and lonely death. It is impossible to identify his face, and the slight lack of sharpness of the image allows one to intuit the urgency of a photographer who triggers the shutter at the same moment they are startled by the horror of the scene.

Where the Pyrenees plunge into the Mediterranean Sea, some rocks resist submergence. The water reaches great depths close to the coast, and yet, some islets protrude, like perennial icebergs. Two of these islets are found at the tip of Cap de Creus, near the lighthouse: s'Encalladora and the Massa d'Or (or Maça d'Oros).

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Can Biel is a house that is part of the life of the town, literally. From its balcony on the Plaça Major of Mieres, in that valley that Josep Pla defined as the “casserole” of the Garrotxa, the town festival proclamation is still announced. But, behind the facade and regardless of its historical function, the interior of Can Biel is today very different from what it had been for a good part of its history. Architects Pau Sarquella and Carmen Torres, founders of the Sarquella Torres studio in Banyoles, have converted that house, which had been uninhabited for decades, into an open, flexible, and transformable domestic space.

Welcome Ona, you have been alive for very few days, so few that we haven't even seen each other in person yet, but while you get to know your mother and your father and you all learn what each other is like, I felt like writing to you. You are a girl and you have had the immense fortune of ending up in an open, beautiful, and free family that will allow you to be the girl you want to be. Even so that at some point you might say that you are not sure if you are a girl, a boy, or whatever you feel like. Take advantage of the bonus because it is not always like this. You will see when you start to socialize that there are girls who are saddled with certain colors, certain decorations, certain things that it would not occur to anyone to saddle them with if they weren't a girl. You ask and do. Go for it. And as soon as you can, play whatever you feel like. Don't limit yourself to the typical game of pretending you have a hair salon, a school, a food stall, do it, if you want, but don't hold back, open your mind. Play at being the quantum physicist who finds the formula to shove Donald Trump into a black hole. Or at being the human resources director of a toy multinational who fires all the assholes. These are examples, but for real, don't hold back. I should tell you that the first extracurricular activity you should do is jujitsu, because, I won't lie to you, being a girl, being a woman, is a bit complicated when you go through the world, and self-defense would do you good. But I refuse for you to grow up out of fear. I want you to know that, in this sense, the problem will never be you. The problem will always be the aggressor's. I would advise you to sign up for the "feminist demonstrations" extracurricular, or "feminist organizations", "non-violent feminist guerrillas" or "how to be a feminist president in the 21st century"; it will be much more fun. But there is still time before you have to choose. Meanwhile, you can learn to vomit every time someone you don't know comes up to you and tells you that you are beautiful instead of telling you that you have an alert look or that you seem very clever or that you have very witty comebacks or what strength you have or what loud farts you make. Because Ona, all girls grow up hearing only that we are beautiful and pretty. This is the content of 95% of the praise we receive in childhood. And then, of course, we grow up thinking that this is what we are worth. And no, Ona, no. You are worth it no matter what your body is like, because Ona, you don't have a normative body or a non-normative body, you have the best body, the body that you care about. And when you start to talk, ask them to teach you to say: red flag, heteropatriarchy, emotional responsibility, gender pay gap your father, sorority, and words like that. I insist, you are very lucky, but you also have to know that we are a family that lives in Catalonia (Europe), we have light skin and we don't worry about money and we have access to things that many people don't have. And that it is not the same to be a girl like this, as it is to have darker skin, have less money, etc. Anyway, just so you note it down. I have only seen you for a second in a photo, but I have already realized: you have an alert look and you look like you are going to let out the loudest and most impressive farts in your town. Welcome, Ona, and long live your life and that of all girls!

This photograph is, practically, a betrayal. It is a large outdoor sound installation created by the French composer Pierre Sauvageot. It is titled Harmonic Fields, Harmonic Fields, a musical play on words that also appeals to the landscape that surrounds it. There are hundreds of instruments that no musician plays. It is the wind that makes them sound. Bamboo flutes, triangles, bells, chimes, propeller sirens, drums, and the entire bowed string family gently release their voice with the tickling of the wind that this week has blown on the hills of Baildon Moor, north of Bradford, in Yorkshire. It is a traveling event that, since 2010, has adapted to landscapes throughout Europe. Pierre Sauvageot, specializing in creations in public spaces, always experiments with landscapes and cities and encourages human interaction. Nature, everyday noises, objects, and atmospheric phenomena become part of the orchestra.In this backlit image, the silhouettes of the instruments can be distinguished as if they were an unusual plantation. Imposing trees that make the human figure look small. The woman in the photo is a wind farmer, a wind cultivator. They move slowly among the installations, activating and adjusting the sound. Sonic agriculture. It is as if they were working a field to improve a harvest that is intangible. The strength and direction of the wind determine the rhythm, volume, and the instruments that play. Nature decides whether the orchestra plays pianissimo or at what moment a gust of wind will cause an sforzando that will sound like an esoteric moan in the middle of the moors. The photograph conveys spirituality and has something ancestral about it; it looks like an offering to the gods. The music we cannot hear must be like a language to communicate with them. Laments or prayers that rise towards the sky. Music is, in principle, a human act. It is people who control the instruments and the sound. But at Harmonic fields control is ceded to nature and left in the hands of the wind force.Photography represents precisely what it cannot show. The wind is invisible, but we sense it in the image. It is the great absent protagonist. Sound cannot be photographed, and yet, we notice its presence through the artifacts and the landscape. The sky, the clouds, and the elevated and free exposure of the instruments allow us to perceive this air that traverses the space. The image is a betrayal precisely because the creator advised against photographing his Harmonic Fields. The composer has always wanted to keep his work against the primacy of the gaze to prioritize listening. But, on the other hand, the installation has such an indisputable and powerful visual presence that it makes capturing it with a camera inevitable. We cannot prick up our ears, but the image helps us imagine the sound. Photography forces us to listen with our eyes.

Basketry is an ancestral practice with origins in the Neolithic, or even before. It was born from the need to transport and store food. In the Iberian Peninsula, remains of basketry and ropes up to 9,500 years old have been found (specifically in the Cueva de los Murciélagos, in Granada). The Romans first, and the Muslims later, contributed new techniques that were perfected until its golden age, from the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th, when the trade became professionalized and became a pillar of the rural economy.

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Returning from vacation does not just mean resuming schedules, routines, or obligations, but also recovering a much more serious, prudent, and restrained way of dressing. During the holidays we allowed ourselves to wear bright Hawaiian shirts, show off loose hippie dresses, wear shorts all day long, or go in a bikini and sarong to buy an ice cream at the beach bar. Through clothing, we experience a pleasant sense of freedom and comfort that we rarely enjoy during the rest of the year. But why does all of this end in September?Now it is time to make an appointment at the hair salon urgently. If until now we haven't worried that the hair dye color was a total mess, upon setting foot on solid ground it becomes an unavoidable priority to recover the brown shade of number 4.0 before our colleagues see us. Also, the thin-strap tank tops or minishorts are over: the body becomes more gaunt and now it is time to cover it with fabric again. And if our feet have enjoyed almost absolute freedom thanks to flip-flops, now they must be covered and put back in order. Even Crocs have allowed us to enjoy the comfort of putting on and taking off our shoes without even bending over. But now the laces return to contain our feet and, with them, a small example of the bodily discipline that runs through us during the year.

Last Sunday, at the US Open, a new disturbance in the stands once again made the crowd the protagonist of the tournament. This time it was a spectator excessively uninhibited by the effect of some substance. Witnesses pointed to excessive alcohol consumption. In the image, a security guard approaches the individual to remove him. The man in the blue shirt, gesticulating, berates tennis player Jakub Mensík. The Czech was facing the American Learner Tien in the third round. Reuters photographer Jerry Lai captures the moment when some spectators, indignant, point at the individual so that he is expelled. Since the tournament began, players have criticized the public's behavior: Sabalenka, Mensík, Osaka, Mannarino, and Boulter have complained because the commotion in the stands breaks their concentration for the game: groups of influencers recording promotions and choreographies during the matches, fans making noise to distract their favorite player's rival, smokers ignoring the venue's prohibitions, or people moving up and down among the public to get cocktails. In the background, the stench of marijuana that spreads through Flushing Meadows and that the New York breeze carries to the court.

Laura Freixas has just published Mi madre en el espejo (Tres Hermanas, 2026), a family and personal portrait. In the intimate sphere, her love for culture and a rebellion that does not accept passivity were forged: one becomes a feminist when she sees injustice and wants to change it. Her firm positions in the movement have brought her headaches, and we talk about this in this talk to get to know the writer and her yearnings.The book begins with a quote by Annie Ernaux that says: "To relive it all but without the pain, that only exists in writing". I do not believe you have taken this journey without pain, despite the writing.