In the earliest ages, in that brief childhood or youth that all of us should have experienced, we should have been able to identify a shared restlessness, a captivating way of doing things. It is driven by a natural, persistent curiosity—one that describes that moment when a child consults and needs to figure out exactly what something is, how it should be understood, or even how it should be represented. At that point, in those precious moments, could we say that a form of scientific instinct stimulates childhood to correctly resolve what lies beyond?

The child would have spent hours and hours, strangely persistent and continuous, imagining, something everyone might have seen or lived through. The truth is that the contact between an existence that is still tender, childlike, and inexperienced, and the sudden appearance of a continuous succession of phenomena year after year, should stimulate doubt, questioning, and an enjoyable, satisfactory, and constantly unending curiosity. Yet, we might say that certain elements seem to socially block that curious disposition, that universally shared way of living life not only as a spectator but also with a drive that could be considered impertinent when it involves imagination and does not ask for permission to do so. Welcome impertinence.

At what point does imagining become strange, a challenge? We have all felt moments in that way, following that same natural inertia or personal necessity, we might say, to imagine.

The Catalan language is fortunate to use the term Poder (Power/To Be Able) in two senses: one referring to a recognized type of permission, a capacity socially accepted for doing something, and the other referring directly to the capacity itself—the inherent force to act or realize. Thus, Poder-Imaginar (The Power/Ability to Imagine) would become a type of socially agreed-upon permission to imagine which de facto generates power. Children do not ask permission to imagine, because they possess the power (capacity) to do so.

Years later, it would seem that distance allows us to reason more clearly, more judiciously, or perhaps more in line with reality. Perhaps still with enthusiasm, but also with a certain disenchantment or brake—a accumulated prudence when inferring imagination into that whole experience. But why are there successes and disappointments? Is there a single, stable reality? Is imagining not itself a sense that everyone can enjoy?

From this perspective, we could identify two particularly important contemporary factors for reflecting on the major events we are experiencing. While these factors may be external to the individual, they prove to be absolutely decisive because they both clearly stimulate a progressive and continuous disintegration of that empiricism which, for centuries, had been granted reality and, consequently, held arbitrary sway over cultural and artistic objects.

First, we should consider reflecting on the speculation with physical territory, where material reality is valued. Second, we must also consider the speculation regarding that valuable capacity to imagine, which stimulates human societies and provides tools for adaptation.

Firstly, then, we could refer to a speculative use of territory that affects our immediate environment, altering the prices of physical spaces where cultural or artistic proposals should be able to develop—in workshops, exhibition spaces, or official museums. Consequently, this also affects the consumption of any service or activity.

Thus, could we reason the urgency of applying fiscal measures to reduce the tax burden on galleries, artists, or patrons, for example? And by offering alternatives to face the costs of activity, would businesses be allowed or disallowed to discuss accepting a quantitative computation that always grows to the detriment of quality?

In this way, perhaps, could we partially avoid having activity judged solely by commercial criteria—criteria which, relying only on the relationship between supply and demand, become clearly detrimental in a sector especially sensitive to the abuse of market trends?

To answer seriously, one must first reflect on the structural benefits that stimulating culture and creativity would socially contribute. Considering, for example, that although creativity neither responds to nor satisfies any immediate need, its absence might incapacitate us against any small dose of improvisation, adaptation, change, or crisis. The term crisis is particularly useful for continuing this reflection.

Secondly, setting aside the structural function that the use of imagination might provide to adapt human needs to urgencies, and also the evident harm that real estate speculation has caused to the quality of the economy and society—directly associated with this first factor—we can observe the entry into the sector of the temperament, practices, and subservience characteristic of commerce. We must then debate where the particular sensitivity of culture and art would stand and how much space could still be granted to it. Thus, disregarding results, prices, quotations, or sales lists, we must reflect on how the practice of imagination could be valued and socially stimulated.

In fact, we should consider whether this increase in costs associated with the activity itself, correlated with an increased tax burden, has not precisely stimulated speculation. But the solutions are obviously complex because the current circumstance is complex. Therefore, the higher the taxes, the more speculation is probably necessary? Where does imagination stand then? Or, more specifically, in what other way can an economy generate the added value that would allow it to cover the costs of so many necessary aids and services to guarantee a complex civilization alien to barbarism? Would we know how to escape a crisis without first having to return to the easy and natural law of the jungle?

Perhaps we are already detailing the effects of the debt the system accumulates when it covers its excess costs with more debt. But what interests us is debating whether the implementation of deeply commercial practices in the culture and art sector has not altered the meaning and structural function that arbitrates and explains the presence of imagination in human behaviors. Speculation in the sector may not only signify arbitrary price increases; it may also socially normalize the trafficking of a prior permission to imagine, granted by friendship, political affinity, or simply among those people who, far from any strictly cultural or artistic criteria, loyally conspire and reinforce prices and sales.

These practices, perhaps economically necessary to cover costs in a system that taxes activities ever more heavily, would socially become the true speculative engine concerning the act of imagining. By devaluing a large social sector, they would have alienated imagination, pushing it away from the daily life of the citizenry. This suggests that the trafficking of cultural and artistic objects might also be one more factor in understanding the intense failure the system is describing.

This reflection, perhaps due to naivety or perhaps due to the clarity granted by remembering childhood, should evidently be attributed to the still-living memory of that early stage of imagining—when one freely and spontaneously enjoys that impulse to respond to or understand everything that appeared beyond. This comes from an attitude of scientific inquiry that is still imprecise, but evidently impertinent because it is natural and requires no permission.

And so we would have persisted, happily, on a path that would evidently have been difficult and little understood. But one that would ultimately have been achieved with effort, persistence, and based on a firm personal commitment sustained by imagination, creatively. It is done by disregarding standards and inventing a respectable and respectful way of understanding and explaining. It is always about treating culture and art as a source of scientific knowledge for the adaptive capacity of complex communities, far from a commercial disposition.

Finally, we would thus consider the influence of these two structural factors mentioned for presenting imagination. In this way, we would also emphasize that while the current text largely seems to describe a particular temperament and disposition, these two structural factors might suggest, universally, an interesting and very current process of disintegration of the cultural and artistic object. This dynamic would describe a change of model, visible in new creative formats and methodologies, which the power of imagination would propagate, adapting the cultural and artistic object to a new visibility.

However, we should not only consider these two factors when narrating the conditions the sector currently has to endure. It would be especially interesting to note that in a time not too distant from the present, these two factors will perfectly explain the abandonment of liberalism and the new state protectionism.

If we use our imagination, we could agree that, firstly, the inflationary pressure on goods and real estate on Planet Earth will accelerate exponentially once the human presence on other planets like Mars is normalized and systematized. It is an undeniable fact that if there is no public regulation of any kind, living on Planet Earth will be much more expensive still, because those who cannot afford it could live on another planet.

And secondly, using imagination again, we could also consider that when Generative AI solutions are fully implemented, this technology will subsequently, and very likely de facto, entail a privatization of imagination.

Jordi Güell, 28/09/2025