Francesc Ribera: "A national culture is not the field of illumination of a large spotlight but the area that ten thousand small lights draw"

Perifèria Cultural continues to grow and this year it will reach new areas of the Catalan Countries. What is the idea behind the project?

— The idea is very clear for us: to contribute to building a national cultural network from the strengths of towns and regions. Culture is almost always spoken about from a very centralized perspective. We aim to spread another reality, that the cultural life of the country is much richer and more extensive than what the major production and exhibition centers offer.

— Perifèria Cultural exists with the will to connect land, art, cuisine, artisanal production and audiences. Not to replace anything or compete with anyone, but to strengthen cultural circulation within the country as a whole.

This year's conceptual motto starts from a phrase by Manuel de Pedrolo: "A culture is alive to the extent that it is conflictive". What does this idea suggest to you?

— It suggests something very important to us: that culture is not just entertainment. Entertainment is legitimate and necessary. We have nothing against it. But there is another dimension of culture that particularly interests us: one that has the need to explain things.

— When Pedrolo speaks of conflict, he does not speak of gratuitous controversy. He speaks of a culture that generates questions, that forces one to think and that contributes to building a collective vision of all the intangible things that surround us. Culture is especially alive when it does not limit itself to occupying a space of consumption, but rather participates in the collective generation of a discourse about who we are, what we do, and where we are going.

Does this idea also reflect in programming?

— We have tried to build a program that includes music, theater, poetry, glosa, circus, games, cooking, or history with quality shows, but also a clear will for discourse.

— We are interested in proposals that have something to say. Artists who work with memory, with language, with identity, with social transformations, with history... Not because every work has to be explicitly political, or social and affect collective consciousness; there is also room, of course, for profound human expressions, because we believe that art acquires a special strength when it is born out of the need for expression and not for padding.

In various festival texts you talk about "critical culture". What exactly do you mean by that?

— Let's talk about what I was saying, about that culture that does not settle for existing as an empty form. We are interested in a song because it says something. A play because it raises questions. A show because it helps us look at reality from another angle. We are not opposing culture and entertainment. What we are saying is that there are proposals that aspire to something more than just having a good time or showing the technical virtues of the performance. And we feel a special connection with this cultural tradition.

— It is evident that large cultural centers have an enormous capacity for generation and attraction. It is normal: there is more population, more infrastructure, more resources, and more possibilities to sustain certain proposals. But we believe that critical culture should not be confined to where it concentrates due to these conditions. We believe it must circulate. And that it must also have the opportunity to grow from places distant from these poles.

What role do gastronomy and local products play within the project?

— For us, they are part of the same reality. Culture is not just what happens on a stage. It is also the way of making wine, working the land, preserving recipes, or keeping historical memory and popular tradition alive. That is why artists coexist with artisan producers, chefs, local entities, and neighbours. Because we want each day to explain the country where it happens and not simply be a programme moved from one place to another.

Which country traces Cultural Periphery?

— Trace a country that is not explained only in conurbations, but from the sum of many interconnected realities. We want to explain that a national culture is not the field of illumination of a large spotlight, but the area drawn by ten thousand small lights.