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Matter(s) for Conversation and Action

Particular Matter(s)

Silent Autumn

From Arachnophobia to Arachnophilia

Inter + Play 2

Ha Chi Ki

we do not all breathe the same air

Nggàm dù

Lignes de possibles: Arachnophilia with Tomás Saraceno at the Festival La Manufacture d’idées

AnarcoAracnoAnacroArcano

Du sol au soleil

Webs of Life

Movement

Museo Aero Solar: for an Aerocene era

Interspecies Conversations

Avec qui venez-vous? Vinciane Despret in conversation with Tomás Saraceno
Prototype of Maratus volans (peacock spider), Web of Life (2020) | for a real Augmented Reality

The Art of Noticing – Louisiana Channel Interviews Tomás Saraceno

Radio Galena

Free the Air: Aerocene – Tomás Saraceno holds keynote speech at Herald Design Forum

Up Close: Tomás Saraceno in conversation with Harriet A. Washington

How to hear the universe in a spider/web: A live concert for/by invertebrate rights

Songs for the Air

Moving Atmospheres

Event Horizon

Aria
Fly with Aerocene Pacha

Invertebrate Rights for “Down to Earth”

Spider/Web Pavilion 7

Arachnomancy Cards

Acqua Alta: en Clave de Sol

On the Disappearance of Clouds

Tomás Saraceno. Aria at Cinema Odeon

Sundial for Spatial Echoes

2-Dimensional Webs Archive/Maps and Traces

Algo-r(h)i(y)thms

Tomás Saraceno at the Venice Biennale 2019
More-than-humans

Arachnophilia Community Meeting with MIT Professor Markus J Buehler

Beyond the Cradle 2019: Space and the Arts

Engadin Art Talks: Grace and Gravity

How to entangle the universe in a spider/web?

Printed Matter(s)

Webs of At-tent(s)ion

Art Basel Miami – Albedo | Hans Ulrich Obrist in conversation with Tomás Saraceno

ON AIR

The Politics of Solar Rhythms: Cosmic Levitation

Living at the bottom of the ocean of air

Sounding the Air

“ON AIR live with…”

Spider/Web Oracle Readings Program

Algo-r(h)i(y)thms

Passages of Time

Particular Matter(s) Jam Session

Solar Rhythms

A Thermodynamic Imaginary

Hybrid Webs

How to Entangle the Universe in a Spider Web
Silent Autumn
Gravitational Waves

Our Interplanetary Bodies

Aerosolar Journeys

Stillness in Motion — Cloud Cities

163,000 Light Years

Tomás Saraceno’s Cloud Cities and Solar Balloon Travel – Interview with The Creators Project

Cosmic Jive: The Spider Sessions

Solar Bell

In Orbit

Ring Bell — Solar Orchestra and the Wind Structures

Moving Beyond Materiality – MIT Visiting Artist Tomás Saraceno

On the Roof: Cloud City

On Space Time Foam

Cloud Cities

14 Billions (Working Title)

Galaxies Forming along Filaments, like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider’s Web

Observatory, Air-Port-City

Poetic Cosmos of the Breath

Flying Garden/Air-Port-City
Cloud Cities Barcelona
For millennia, humans have looked to the clouds and the behaviours of plants and animals to predict collective futures, finding messages hidden in their changing shapes and habits. Yet, in the context of the Capitalocene, the knowledge of entire ecosystems is being threatened and clouds are disappearing, replaced by toxic plumes of pollution and digital misinformation. Can an observatory in the 21st century, with its distant gaze, sense within and imagine something other than clouds in the shape of castles in the sky?
Opening on May 20th, 2022, Cloud Cities Barcelona, by Tomás Saraceno, invites participants into a space of communal encounter, discourse and critical speculation, suspended at a height of over 130 meters over the city of Barcelona and housed in the 360° observation deck of Mirador torre Glòries.
“Like droplets of water condensing along the strands of a spider’s web, cosmic and terrestrial clouds form: Clouds of neighbourhoods of gentrification; Stratocumulus entangled in webs of life; Cirrus threads of connection; Cumulus in extinction; Stratus is stillness in motion; Altostrati unlearn what we have learned; Clouds of spider/webs above Sagrada Família move from arachnophobia to Arachnophilia; Mama clouds to fall asleep; Altocumulus floats in the infinity of breath while Nimbuses are fish swimming in the air; Cloud dreams of fairer weathers… “
–Tomás Saraceno

Tomás Saraceno, Solitary semi-social mapping of EPIC 205071984 c by a solo Nephila senegalensis – two weeks and a quartet of Cyrtophora citricola – five weeks, 2016. Courtesy Studio Tomás Saraceno. Photography Studio Tomás Saraceno.

Tomás Saraceno, Installation view of Cloud Cities Barcelona, 2022. Courtesy Studio Tomás Saraceno and Mirador torre Glòries. Photography Studio Tomás Saraceno. © Tomás Saraceno
Cloud Cities Barcelona occupies an area of 130m³ and is composed of 113 cloud spaces made of 5000 nodes connecting 6km of tensile cables. Moving through the air at a height between 4 and 10m relative to the floor, or becoming enveloped by the atmosphere of the cupola’s apex, participants can open to a novel sensory experience that converts this observatory into a suspended realm from which to look inwards and outwards, to gather and dialogue, immersed in the multiplicity of worlds made manifest in the changing shapes of passing clouds. Wandering along three paths of varying levels of complexity, participants can pause to find a rotating selection of books, in an invitation to inhabit shared time and consider alternative constellations of the urban public sphere, speculative architectures, the environmental crisis, and the entangled web of life.

Tomás Saraceno, Installation view of Cloud Cities Barcelona, 2022. Courtesy Studio Tomás Saraceno and Mirador torre Glòries. Photography Studio Tomás Saraceno. © Tomás Saraceno

Webs of At-tent(s)ion, 2018. Installation view at ON AIR, carte blanche exhibition to Tomás Saraceno, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and neugerriemschneider (Berlin). Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno.
In the midst of climate emergency, war, global pandemics, racial-ecocidal capitalism, social exclusion, and the proliferation of clouds of pollution and misinformation, “Cloud Cities” is a proposal for a common imaginary for an ethical re-alliance with the environment, the planet and the cosmic web beyond anthropocentrism, his cloud-shaped sculptures, reminiscent of the geometric Weaire-Phelan structure of foam and soap bubbles, act as an invitation to engage from diverse bearings, where there is neither up nor down, no inside or outside, and all is floating. As part of this series, Cloud Cities Barcelona challenges the verticality of the observatory’s distant gaze through alternative geometries of togetherness, so as to suspend social distances and collectively consider the multi-scalar threads of relation that weave our shared but threatened world and bind our interdependent fates.
For more than two decades, Saraceno has been imagining and activating a world free from fossil fuels, in collaboration with spiders and their webs, situated forms of knowledge, and with the vibrant superorganism that is the cosmic web, building an artistic practice of unprecedented variety and scale. Informed by the groundbreaking long-term research and curiosity of the international and interdisciplinary Aerocene and Arachnophilia communities, founded by Saraceno, Cloud Cities Barcelona invites participants into a porous cloudscape of tensions in suspension, to engage in collective critical reflections, activate zones of emergence and reconsider worldwide networks of care.
Create your own cities of the air and explore Cloud Cities Barcelona at cloudcities.org.
Cloud Cities Barcelona Public Program
On May 20th, the first of a series of free moderated conversations will take place with renowned architects, curators, activists, and local thinkers to explore key issues around urban public spheres, the environmental crisis, speculative architectures, terrestrial and cosmic clouds and webs of life. The conversations will be moderated by Joseph Grima and Tomás Saraceno and will begin at 18:30 at Mirador torre Glòries.
Cloud Cities Barcelona Library
In addition, floating inside Cloud Cities Barcelona, find a rotating selection of books to consider together alternative constellations of the urban public sphere, speculative architectures, the environmental crisis, and the entangled web of life.
Cloud Cities Barcelona Publication
Edited by Space Caviar and Studio Tomás Saraceno, a publication stemming from the Cloud Cities Barcelona Public Program will be released in the second half of 2022. Through a series of conversations, short texts, visual documentation and historical references, it will provide an expanded window into Saraceno’s ongoing interest in the cultural and scientific value of clouds, situating the artwork within his broader artistic output. This publication will mirror the communal contemplations, dialogues, and critical reflections that emerge within Cloud Cities Barcelona, weaving many of the social, architectural and environmental challenges posed by cities today.