02.09.2015 Press Release HOW TO GATHER? ACTING IN A CENTER IN A CITY IN THE HEART OF THE ISLAND OF EURASIA Moscow Biennale announces participants and the preliminary schedule. The 6th Moscow Biennale will be a 10-day gathering from September 22 to October 1, 2015, at Pavilion No.1 in Moscow’s VDNKh (the Exhibition of Achievements of the People’s Economy). Curators: Bart De Baere, Director of MUHKA, Antwerp; Defne Ayas, Director of Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Nicolaus Schafhausen, Director of Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna. For the duration of 10 days, the 6th Moscow Biennale aspires to be a think-in involving all participants and visitors present, hosting art and cultural workers to provide a means for artistic and critical reflection to be exchanged through thinking in action. Driven by the questions of how to gather, how to live together and how to activate new capacities for the future, in collaboration with more than 70 Russian and international artists and thinkers on site, the program aims to re-articulate current dimensions of art presentation. The 6th Moscow Biennale is a declaration of intent and an invitation to engage. It unfolds as a space of gathering, in which diverse forms of thinking enhance the understanding of what art can be. Counting on the commitment of its participants, the program invites visitors to fully and actively participate in a common undertaking to articulate their experiences of creative and intellectual practice. Using an infrastructure developed for this purpose at VNDKh Pavilion No.1 (designed by Fedor Dubinnikov (MEL | Architecture and Design), participants and visitors are to engage in an exchange between individuals and commonality, Moscow and the world, the so-called East and the West. The biennial includes a media machine as part of its infrastructure to document, edit and reflect upon on the spot. After the 10-day gathering, different archival formats will follow up on the biennial, including a feature documentary by Singaporean film director Ho Tzu Nyen, a website with annotated documentation, a book, and a documentary exhibition from October 3 to November 1, 2015 at the biennial’s site. Participants Over the period of 10 days between September 22 and October 1, 2015, the majority of participants will be present in Moscow to engage in planned events and unpredictable encounters; they will let the biennial happen in the moment: System thinkers Rem Koolhaas (architect), Saskia Sassen (sociologist), Ulrike Guérot (political scientist), Mariana Mazzucato (economist), Eyal and Ines Weizman (architecture theorists), Ackbar Abbas (professor of comparative literature), Evgeny Gontmakher (economist), Yanis Varoufakis (economist) and Pascal Gielen (sociologist, art theorist) will offer their take on the question of How to gather? Artists such as Babi Badalov, Sergey Bratkov, Honoré δ’O, Els Dietvorst, Fabrice Hyber, Elena Kholkina, Li Mu, Augustas Serapinas, Luc Tuymans, Peter Wächtler, Anastasiya Yarovenko, Qiu Zhijie and Constantin Zvezdochotov will realize works on site.
Recurring daily statements and performances by Saâdane Afif, Ricardo Brey, Vaast Colson, Gabriel Lester, Leon Kahane, Alevtina Kakhidze, Andrey Kuzkin, Taus Makhacheva, Mian Mian, David Polzin and Suchan Kinoshita, u/n multitude and Anton Vidokle are spread over every full day, whereas special open meetings with Burak Arikan, Simon Denny and Maya Van Leemput, among others, may trigger more intimate dialogues between invited artists, theorists and the public through a diversity of possible offers formatted in divergent ways. Birdhead, Ives Maes, Otto Snoek and Maarten Vanden Abeele will develop a photography-based vision of the state of Moscow today over the whole period, and every day one artist will be a focus of attention through an extensive video program including contributions by Maria Thereza Alves and Jimmie Durham, Keren Cytter, Ieva Epnere, Evgeny Granilshchikov, Nastio Mosquito, Chan-Kyong Park, Jon Rafman, Meggy Rustamova and Lu Yang. In a changing rhythm, one-time events such as keynotes and performances not only touch upon the biennial’s lead topics, but also offer inroads for the program as a whole: Preliminary schedule Tues., Sept. 22 Wed., Sept. 23 Thu.,Sept. 24 Fri., Sept. 25 Sat., Sept. 26 Sun., Sept. 27 Mon., Sept. 28 Tues., Sept. 29 Wed., Sept. 30 Thu., Oct. 1
Rem Koolhaas (architect), Saskia Sassen (sociologist) Rana Hamadeh (artist), Michelangelo Pistoletto (artist) Ulrike Guérot (political scientist), Inventing Ritual by MadeIn (performance) Mariana Mazzucato (economist), Hanne Lippard (artist) Ackbar Abbas (professor of comparative literature), Donna Kukama (artist) Ilya Budraitskis, Tom McDonough, Maya van Leemput, Lee Weng Choy Eyal and Ines Weizman (architecture theorists), Anna Jermolaewa (artist) Pascal Gielen (sociologist, art theorist), Katja Novitskova (artist) Evgeny Gontmakher (economist) Almagul Menlibayeva (artist), Yanis Varoufakis (economist)
Further contributions by: Flaka Haliti, Isa Genzken, Liam Gillick, Alexander Komarov, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Studio for New Music Ensemble Moscow, Alexander Ugay, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, and Johanna Van Overmeir. The Moscow Biennale is the epicenter of a vast effort by the Moscow art scene that includes more than a hundred exhibitions throughout the city, structured within the categories Special Guests, Special Projects and a Parallel Program, ranging from a Louise Bourgeois survey show and a new project by Anish Kapoor, up to group exhibitions that present diverse perspectives on the Moscow and broader Russian art scene. Only on the grounds of VDNKh are there three major exhibitions, besides the Greater Caucasian Pavilion, which will be built by The Unbound art collective, invited by the biennial as a fourth, autonomous curator. For updates and further details on participants and schedule please check: www.6th.moscowbiennale.ru The 6th Moscow Biennale is organized by the Moscow Biennale Foundation and is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Government of Moscow, and VDNKh. The commissioner of the biennial is Joseph Backstein. The biennial takes place from September 22 to October 1, 2015, at VDNKh. Afterwards, a documentary exhibition about the Biennale will run at the same location from October 2 to November 1, 2015. Rietumu Bank is the general sponsor of the 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. Rietumu is the leading private bank and one of the biggest patrons of the arts in Latvia, known also for its support of Latvian-Russian cultural links. Images: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3l7koqgm1llcf1q/AACSUBGZ2qc1pfJiEB5iUT_Za?dl=0
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