Cultural autumn: who are we going to talk about when the cool weather arrives
It would be audacity to think that this guide can summarize what is coming. The publishing, cinematographic or musical novelties are endless —this year is no exception, despite the supply crisis and the paper shortage—and any attempt to put order or enter them will be mediated by the gaze of the writer. With this warning in mind, the cultural sector proposes, in the last quarter of the year, the following topics of conversation; what is finally talked about, that is another story.
the late novelist Almudena Grandes He left his last work unpublished, Everything is going to get better. A political book set in the near future of Spain in which a citizen group wins the elections. In reality, behind this new political party there is a businessman who directs it in the shadows and who will cut rights but will stimulate the "freedom" of consumption and capital accumulation. It is not difficult to situate ourselves in that scenario and once again, although she is no longer here, Almudena Grandes will help with her literature to build a critical view of the present.
While the chapters of The House of the Dragon drop every Monday, several albums will come out every week that will try to reign, probably without success, as Rosalia has done in the hottest weeks of 2022. Beyoncé left her cape on the ground this August and Taylor Swift has announced that she plans to walk over it with Midnights, which will be her tenth album and, as announced at the MTV gala VMA —picking up the award for best music video for which he wants to compete for the Oscar for Best Short Film (ten minutes long)—, will be published on October 21. Only Rihanna can overshadow him, who in February promised a new album before the end of the year but that remains to be seen.
British bands Arctic Monkeys and Muse, who are spending the summer sunbathing in Spain, depending on where the festivals take them, will have something to say. Those of Matt Belamy have already done it before the end of the season with a dystopian and ecological work, and those of Alex Tuner will do it in October with The Car, already anticipated by the baladon There'd Better Be A Mirrorball. That same month, and if one wasn't enough, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released their second album in a year, Return Of The Dream Canteen, because perhaps with the previous one, Unlimited Love, they didn't pay much attention to it.
After the saturated festival summer, although while the good weather lasts there are still proposals in the queue, smaller format concerts and big tours arrive. The sector is asking the public to turn to music and not keep the good habit of buying tickets in the same closet as flip flops and sarongs. Fans are waiting with their tickets saved for a long time in a drawer for Arcade Fire, Sigur Rós, Black Crowes, Aitana and Franz Ferdinand in September; Rigoberta Bandini (he said he was retiring but for now it continues), Izal (which does take an indefinite break) in October; and The Cure, Backstreet Boys (yes, your adolescence is back) Bon Iver, Alt-J and Lil Nas X in November. Furthermore, during the three months, Joan Manuel Serrat will say goodbye little by little in different scenarios to end, just before Christmas, on December 22 and 23 at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona.
Above, the concept of a terrible future appeared on Muse's new album. To a large extent we are living in a present that was dystopian in the past, so it is difficult to surprise the public. But David Cronenberg, in that sense, is a guaranteed success. Crimes of the Future, with Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux present a live show of body surgery, in a film along the lines of their acclaimed Crash.
Olivia Wilde's new film, Don't Worry Darling, which will premiere in the next few days at the venice festival, takes the viewer to a retro-futuristic dystopia written by Katie Silberman, also a screenwriter for Wade's other film, Super Nerds. The series written by Rodrigo SorogoyenBlackout (Movistar Plus+), takes us to a scenario that we can perfectly imagine these days: living without electricity.
Above all, it will happen in 2023, but the Picasso year —in the 50 years since his death— seems to start already in the last quarter of 22. A great display of exhibitions, especially in France and Spain, will approach the painter from all possible angles. They give the starting gun to the splendors, the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
With the permission of the Malaga native, the art world will also talk about Paul Klee, since the Miró Foundation brings the exhibition Paul Klee and the secrets of nature in October about the fascination he felt in his observation of the natural environment.
If a story works, why not drag it out as long as it will? The Marvel universe proposes, in this sense, Black Panther and James Cameron with that of Avatar.
Here is an easy prediction: Santiago Segura will get entire families to go to the cinema at Christmas to see a summer movie in the same way that he got them to go see a Christmas movie in summer. At full train 2: now it's them opens on December 2 and now it's the mothers, as it seems evident in the title, whose children will escape on a train.
The fascination of knowing what happens in the intimacy of the artist, of the creator, can be fed with the Diaries and notebooks 1941-1995 (Anagram) of the writer Patricia Highsmith, an unprecedented revelation that ventures as "devastating" and "literary event" . And, in today's very abundant genre of memoirs written by musicians, Bono (U2) brings Surrender (Reservoir Books), about his childhood in Berlin. Also promised as a "visual and written diary" is Stranger Than Kindness, the book by Nick Cave that he will publish in September Sixth Floor.
Morbidity can move movie fans to see El Critico (TCM), a documentary about Carlos Boyero that will premiere at the next San Sebastian Film Festival and that promises to illuminate the chiaroscuros of the character. Brett Morgen will try to unravel David Bowie in the movie Moonage Daydream with an experience that is more hypnotic and psychedelic than didactic, which precisely will help to get closer to the great pop and glam star.
The Swedish cartoonist Liv Strömquist, with whom we spoke on her last visit to Spain, has a new comic titled In The Mirror Room (Reservoir Books, Catalan edition by Editorial Finestres) where she argues that the new magic mirror like the one used by the Snow White's stepmother is the screen and the question about beauty is answered by the number of likes. An interesting way to accompany this reading is to go see the exhibition Graphic Constellation with which the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) will tour, starting in December, the universes of nine avant-garde young female comic authors.
In a Spanish film, La materernal de Pilar Palomero, we will see part of that life that Strömquist talks about, in the character of the young protagonist. And in another film, Manticora, the new film by Carlos Vermut, the central character is a video game and virtual reality programmer who will lead us into a story of monsters.
To end the readings with a bitter laugh, we should listen to what Asunción, the television that speaks, has to say about all this. A graphic novel by FUM that will be published by Pepitas de Calabaza.
Music historian Jennifer Otter Bickerdike is the author of the definitive biography of Nico, the book to read to get as close as possible to understanding the singer who accompanied The Velvet Underground in their moment of glory. The translation of You are Beautiful & you are Alone (Contra) is complemented by a prologue by Rafa Cervera.
A good companion to this reading will be the collection of essays on music written by women and edited by Sinéad Gleeson and Kim Gordon (ex Sonic Youth) about pioneers, transgressors or provocateurs. It is titled Music, Teacher (Libros del Kultrum) and comes with a foreword by singer-songwriter and steel guitar expert Heather Leigh.
Followers of Bob Dylan and folk in general have his book The Philosophy of Modern Song (Anagram) just around the corner, a collection of essays on songs by artists like Elvis Costello or Nina Simone.
Sara Mesa will have a new book about the relationships and contradictions of the members of a family unit: La familia (Anagrama) and also Aixa de la Cruz, Las heiresses (Alfaguara), where four granddaughters go to the town where they have inherited the house of his grandmother, who has committed suicide. The family as a space of madness, with the maternal figure at the center, under the siege of violence, are the pillars of the novel by Mexican Emiliano Monge Just before the end (Random House) to be published on September 15. He will also reflect on the family the Cervantes Sergio Ramírez Award with That day fell on Sunday (Alfaguara).
Juan Diego Botto directs Penélope Cruz and Luis Tósar in his first film as directorOn the Margins, which is competing in Venice and opens later, and which deals with how families fight against evictions.
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao will be 25 years old and will celebrate it with an installation by Yayoi Kusama. The celebration of the centenaries of Passolini, Victor Gassman and José Hierro will continue to feed editorial news and film screenings. Discos Amsterdam (Valencia), one of the longest-running record stores in Spain, headed by music critic Juan Vitoria, turns 40 and will celebrate it with concerts in October and November.
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