Following a week of speculation and concern over the mounting coronavirus outbreak, organizers for the 17th Architecture Biennale in Venice have announced that the event will proceed as planned.
In a livestreamed announcement broadcast via the Biennale's website, Paolo Baratta, President of La Biennale di Venezia, explains that one of the main goals of the vent is to bring architecture into the front and center of public discourse. "Architecture," Baratta explains, "makes us more aware individuals, it makes us citizens, not just consumers."
He adds, "The space we share, the place where a civilization has developed gives us the possibility to consider welfare in a much more complete way [...] it helps us donate to ourselves some happiness."
The announcement comes as other major trade shows and events postpone or cancel their proceedings. The Salone del Mobile in Milan, for example, pushed back its opening date earlier this week from May to June 16th. The 17th International Architecture Exhibition, however, will make its debut on May 23, as previously scheduled, with a preview showing of the exhibitions slated for the two days prior.
In describing the aims of the event, Baratta explained that Hashim Sarkis, curator of the exhibition and dean at the MIT School of Architecture and Urban Planning, had established "a broad-ranging gaze" for the event. The exhibition theme, How will we live together?, is developed, according to Sarkis, as "an open question, not a rhetorical one" that aims to tap into "architectures inherent optimism" while "highlighting architecture as collective form."
Baratta added, "We live in a time characterized by a feeling that we are no longer being assured an increasingly wide spread progress, but instead we are feeling like victims of the changes progress entails. This is a very sensitive movement, as many people can take advantage of suffering and frustration to impose restrictive visions, to impose and formulate ultra defensive campaigns, short term visions based on fears."
8 Comments
How will we live together? is so literally befitting theme in this present world.
I hope they sifted this exhibition critically to have the neoliberals spelled out and confronted. That would be a timely direction which has been so missing from this biennale over the years. But, I know I am dreaming. Low attendance would be ironically revealing, can we live together?
Would you expound upon the criticisms you would levy at Neoliberals? I assure you this is not bait, I would like to hear them enumerated. Many of my friends and colleagues state they have problems with Neoliberalism yet fail to adequately explain what it is they find so distasteful.
Ok, I mean what it widely means. I am weary of its free-market manipulations, exploitations, and abusive operations. Simply told, here are just the basics from an old article from the Guardian called "Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems" by George Mambiot... I am not an expert on the critique of neo-liberalism per see but there are many many books and expanded definitions of neo-liberals and the isms. In the past of Venice arch biennales, many projects, ideas, and architects became tools of the global corporatism, knowingly or unknowingly or both, provided content to the unregulated powerhouses. The themes of the biennale, Freespace, Reporting From the Front, Elements of Architecture, Common Ground, etc. although meant well, often gave way to distant commentaries and the sponsors' corporate goals. In the West, business as usual and architecture is exclusive. Even the criticism are digested by these conglomerates.
There's also this which really gets into counter article, article... "Debunking George Monbiot’s Piece on Neoliberalism" https://medium.com/@JSlate__/debunking-george-monbiots-piece-on-neoliberalism-98f84acc49f9 whichever suits your preferences...
Thank you. I look forward to reading the articles.
There's also this which really gets into counter article article...
"Debunking George Monbiot’s Piece on Neoliberalism"
https://medium.com/@JSlate__/debunking-george-monbiots-piece-on-neoliberalism-98f84acc49f9
whichever suits your preferences...
I'm a bit tired of politically-themed architecture shows, unless it is backed by tangible design innovation or ideas.
Architecture exhibitions have always been political.
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