Where Rambla de Catalunya meets Gran Via, The Thinking Bull sits with his back hunched to the traffic, lost in his memories. Perhaps he is remembering the scenes at the Plaça de Catalunya behind him and contemplating the future. Thousands of protestors forcibly evicted by a bullish police force in 2011. And yet so much protest has happened since then. The bull’s back is turned; is this his own protest or is it resignation? Does he believe, in his quiet contemplation, that the time of the bull is coming to an end? In a city full of iconic buildings and well-known streets, this simple translation of an easily-ignored sculpture places it not just at a traffic intersection, but at a cultural intersection too. To translate El toro pensador is not just to re-name it, but to tentatively reveal it within the story of contemporary Barcelona.

Yet such a translation is always many-layered. Climate change poses risks to the city, with rising temperatures, water shortages and coastal flooding an increasingly likely feature of Barcelona’s future. With such an anthropogenic disaster looming, does the anthropomorphism of The Thinking Bull reflect the anthropocentrism that has led us to dominate and manipulate the natural world at great cost? Just behind the sculpture is a statue of Joan Güell i Ferrer, the wealthy slave-trader whose money helped kick-start the development of the Eixample district. That was once a future to contrast with the city’s walled past. Now the future seems equally uncertain, and the pathways to reach it just as ethically fraught.

The Charge of the Bull: a Labyrinth in Barcelona is an interactive, virtual storytelling experience through the streets of Barcelona. Labyrinth is a project that explores the meaning of city spaces by uncovering complex stories told through the physical features of a place. Walking between a series of locations, translations of spaces - such as the above at el toro pensador - are woven into an uncertain, emerging narrative that invites participants into a series of questions, designed to embroil them in the ecology of the city.

This Labyrinth utilises Google Earth and so requires a web browser (ideally Google Chrome) or the Google Earth app if using a mobile device. To enter the Labyrinth - and for further instructions on how to do so - visit https://labyrinth.city/iatis 

 

On Wednesday 15th September, 18:00 there is a Q&A with Matt Valler, the designer of this Labyrinth. Matt is a PhD researcher in Translation Studies at Queen's University Belfast. His interests are the translation of place and the materiality of narrative time. When he is not engaged in academic study he is designing Labyrinths in major cities around the world.