Manifesta and Documenta are just around the corner. And Art-Basel too.

Time passes very quickly and, once again, the big events are upon us. It seems like the opening of Frieze New York, the Berlin Biennale, or Triennale of Paris was only yesterday, …hang on, it was only yesterday. The international calendar is a never-ending list of important festivals and meeting points. However, the really big ones (if we “forget” about Venice, Hong Kong, Miami…) are just around the corner. Manifesta is still the proposal that is slightly “different”. Documenta is the lighthouse, if all goes well, for a long period of time. And so Art-Basel, with its collectors, private jets and the decisions that they make.

But, Berlin as much as Paris are complicating things. Paris, with an ex-Documenta of the stature of Okwui Enwezor, offers a context for ideas in a global society. Berlin, with Artur Żmijewski, has gone straight into action. That is to say, we already have the ideas in advance, with the reflection and distance-proximity, and the action, with the fist thumping on the table and proximity-distance. So the pressure is on for the ones still to come.

And with so many grand events it becomes harder to approach the proposals correctly and dedicate the necessary time to reconsider the content, critically analyse what’s there and in short to grow together. Also, with so many large events surrounding us, one asks whether the desire for the near-at-hand, the assumable will be reborn, for art works on more familiar terms, where it is possible to establish a dialogue, where there is a person on the other side.

In this edition of A*Magazine we take a look at Triennale of Paris at the hands of Manuel Segade, Saioa Olmo interviews the curator of the Berlin Biennale, Rosa Naharro questions gallery eventing in Madrid in reference to “Jugada a Tres Bandas” and David G Torres dwells upon the relationship between theatre and art through a piece by Roger Bernat.