Under the title The Other Side, ten artists explore the unconscious and altered states of consciousness in an immersive and passable exhibition that can be visited at the Santa Mònica until 2 June. What do we mean when we talk about the other side?

To begin with, to be able to travel to "another" side presupposes that we start from a familiar and recognised place, it presupposes that there is a side of our own, and that we have the capacity to go out to cross or at least glimpse something unknown. This assertion, however, raises many doubts from multiple perspectives: is this familiar place real, or is it an illusion constructed by language? Is this supposed other side really an external otherness or is it rather something that is part of us? And if so, if this other side were part of us, then why would we perceive it as other and not as our own?

These questions are fundamental to psychoanalysis, since they insist on grasping that ineffable thing that Freud called the unconscious. But they are also crucial in many other areas of research. Delving into how we construct these parallel realities, and how we move between them, is an interest shared by gender studies, cybernetics, anthropology and art.

In this conversation, Miquel Bassols, psychoanalyst, will discuss the concepts of The Other Side and transit with Miquel Missé, Eurídice Cabañes, Josep Maria Fericgla and Nuria Martínez-Vernis.

From a crossover between these multiple perspectives, the conversation will revolve around the occidental construction of gender, avatar, death and creation. Are all these constructions solid, static places from which we can orient ourselves? Or, on the contrary, are they mirages that prevent us from perceiving that our nature rests in constant traffic?

Activity in the framework of the exhibition The Other Side

Moderated by: Miquel Bassols 

With the participation of Eurídice Cabañes, Josep Maria Fericgla, Miquel Missé and Núria Martínez-Vernis

Eurídice Cabañes (Valencia, 1983) is co-director of ARSGAMES, an international organisation with 16 years of experience focused on video games as a tool for social transformation. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid with a thesis entitled La Tecnologia a las fronteras. (Technology at the frontiers). Professor at several universities in Spain and Mexico, with more than 60 publications including articles, books and more than 140 conferences. Founder and director of the Fábrica Digital El Rule (currently Laboratorio de Tecnologías) of the Secretaría de Cultura de la CDMX (2016-2018) and collaborator with the Centro Multimedia del CENART (2013-2015), curator of exhibitions including Videojuegos, los dos lados de la pantalla de Fundación Telefónica Madrid 2019 and touring several cities in Mexico in 2021 and 2022 with more than 200,000 visitors. Selected as one of the 100 Game Changers in 2020 by Gameindustry.

Josep Maria Fericgla (Barcelona, 1955) holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Barcelona, is a writer, teacher and researcher. He has also studied psychology, music and drama. Founder of the Can Bent Vives campus and the J.Mª Fericgla Foundation. Specialist in cognitive anthropology, ethnomusicology, shamanism and ethnopsychology. Researcher of expanded states of consciousness and the cultural use of entheogens. Pioneer in Europe in the use of ayahuasca in psychotherapy. He has received several official awards for his scientific work. Author of numerous books and scientific and popular articles. He has been a lecturer at the Universitat de Barcelona, the Universitat de Salamanca and several American universities. For almost four decades he has been conducting workshops based on the expanded states of consciousness propelled by holorenic breathing, as well as offering psychotherapy using tools such as the analysis of amos, the use of the R. Hartman Values Test, the analysis of projective drawings and psychodysseptics. Creator and director of IfopEEC, the first university master in the world dedicated to training in expanded states of consciousness and its applications. www.josepmfericgla.org 

Miquel Bassols i Puig (Barcelona, 1958) is a psychoanalyst from the Escola Lacaniana de Psicoanálisis and the École de la Cause freudienne. He teaches at the Institut del Camp Freudià. Doctorate from the Département de Psychanalyse de Paris 8 with a thesis on "L'amor, la paraula i la lletra a Ramon Llull". Former president of the Association Mondiale de Psychanalyse (2014-2018).
Published books: La psicoanàlisi explicada als mitjans de comunicació (Barcelona 1997), Llull con Lacan. El amor la palabra y la letra en la psicosis (Gredos, 2010), Lecturas de la página en blanco. La letra y el objeto (Miguel Gómez Ediciones 2011), Tu Yo no es tuyo. Lo real del psicoanálisis en la ciencia (Tres Haches 2011), Lo femenino, entre centro y ausencia (Grama, 2017), Una política para erizos y otras herejías psicoanalíticas (Grama, 2018). Autoritat i autoritarisme. Una lectura des de la psicoanàlisi (PUV, 2020). Boscúria. La natura perduda de les coses (Símbol editors, 2021). Translator of Lituraterra, by Jacques Lacan (Días Contados, 2021).

Miquel Missé (Barcelona, 1986) is a sociologist, expert in gender, sexuality and LGTBI policies. He is currently involved in different lines of work ranging from research, consultancy, pedagogy and communication with the aim of promoting a gender-critical culture. He works as an independent consultant and trainer advising public institutions in the field of sexual and gender diversity policies. And he is a lecturer in several higher studies of gender and sexuality. He collaborates as an external researcher with the Line of Studies on Intersectionality and Sexual and Gender Diversity at the University of Vic-Universitat Central de Catalunya. Among his research, he has addressed the trans issue from different fields. She has carried out her latest work Adolescències trans. Accompanying gender exploration in times of uncertainty. It was produced jointly with the researcher Noemi Parra and commissioned by Barcelona City Council in 2022. At the same time, he works as a curator and content advisor in multiple artistic and cultural projects. His latest published book entitled A la conquista del cuerpo equivocado (EGALES:2018) has been translated into Catalan (A la conquesta del cos equivocat) and English (The myth of the wrong body. Polity books, 2022).

Nuria Martínez-Vernis (Barcelona, 1976) is a Catalan poet. Her first book of poems, L'acròbata tampoc no en sortirà il·lès (2000), was awarded the Amadeu Oller Prize and the Anna Dodas Memorial Literary Prize. With his second book, Quantes mentides fan una sola veritat (Proa, 2004), he won the Josep M. Lopez-Picó Prize. He is a member of the group Cataclístics, which experiments, researches, learns and mixes artistic disciplines. His third book is Deix on dir (2011).