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_ What is your view on Manifesta’s role?
Manifesta is characterized by two basic qualities which distinguish it from other cultural manifestations taking place in Europe, qualities which must always be present to conceptually define each new Manifesta program. Manifesta is nomadic and European, two aspects which are at once complex and very interesting.
Its nomadic nature enables it to confront a different city and country on each new occasion (sometimes within the EU, sometimes outside its borders), locations which in turn welcome other cultural proposals stemming from other countries. This nomadic feature should promote the development of the local/global („glocal“) relationship that all cultural endeavours must bear in mind. Close ties and dialogue should be established with the political and socio-cultural climate of the venue chosen, and with other socio-cultural and political situations (sometimes quite different ones).
Its European condition, another of its distinguishing factors, is also an essential and very polemical feature in a globalized world. There are two interesting themes regarding this „thinking about Europe“. The first one (let’s call it internal) is related to the determination to build a common alliance among the countries that make up Europe (which is proving to be extremely difficult), depending upon a given geographical and historical situation, defined in cultural terms by the place Europe occupies within Western civilization. The second theme (which we could call external) refers to the fact of it being a destination for other people arriving from different social and political realities which are changing the face of Europe and do not only stem from its colonizing past.
The transfer of these social issues to a cultural field such as that in which Manifesta is inscribed could take place through proposals that rethink the dichotomy public space/private-domestic space; the changes in family relationships and new developments in the public sphere; possibilities of personal communication and social hybridization in a hyper-technological society; reflections on memory (and archives) as a way of constructing individual narratives; landscape issues; travel and its multiple derivations; the urban issue and its relationship with physical habitats (dwellings) and a long et cetera.
Finally, I believe that the very structure of Manifesta should promote the possibility of conceiving new vehicles of communication for artistic practice that relate this to a broader cultural reality. Bearing in mind the success of various artistic experiences which have borne fruit at previous Manifestas (such as collaboration with television companies, the creation of archives, the upkeep of a web site, etc.), I think work should proceed along the same lines in the search for new formats, both exhibition-wise and with regard to the communication of contents. In this sense I believe that the internet still has a tremendous potential, perhaps more in the field of communication than in that of creation.

_ Which issues or themes are you currently most preoccupied with?
To be more specific, for the past few years I have been working on the abovementioned subject of memory, archives and collections as a mode of constructing stories (as exemplified in Archive Cultures, a new exhibition and book due to appear in Valencia, Spain, this September; Matt Mullican; Hans-Peter Feldmann due in November this year) and their connection with the concepts of site and non-site initially defined by Robert Smithson and redefined by younger artists (Renée Green; Rainer Oldendorf; Juan Fernando Herrán, from very different points of view). I am also working on themes related to the construction of non-conventional subjectivities (Eulàlia Valldosera and her links to the feminine and the familiar, among other examples).
At present I am working on a Federico Guzmán project entitled Inside-out. El jardín del Cambalache, designed for the roof terrace of the Fundació Tàpies, a project centred on plants as a vehicle of cultural and historical communication. I am also setting out on an important venture based in Barcelona, in collaboration with other institutions and freelance curators, on the subject of culture and tourism (in its multiple derivations, one of the most significant of which is without doubt landscape), a theme which has interested me for quite some time.
From the point of view of the discursive articulation of these contents, I intend to give priority to decentralized workprocesses by forming teams, and to combine exhibitions with lectures and workshops, museum and street activities, and to use the mass media (radio, television, internet).