The symposium will take place on 16 April at Riga Art Space. It supplements the international exhibition "Re: visited" which is one of the events of the official Riga 2014 European Capital of Culture programme and is on view at the Riga Art Space until 27 April. The exhibition, organised by the LCCA, questions the current role of art biennials.
The symposium offers the opportunity to acquaint oneself with the experience of various art biennales, their visions, influences, specifics of organization, gains and losses. The symposium participant will gain an impression of the dynamics of the development, tendencies and prognoses of this popular type of art event. The discussion will involve an examination of the opportunities presented by biennales, an analysis of their shortcomings and a consideration of possible solutions.
“How should we understand this relatively recent phenomenon of the rapid spread of biennales? As a component of the recreation and tourism industry, which feeds the demands of consumer culture for the festivalization of culture and new Disneylands, which deform the natural development of the artistic process? Or as precisely the opposite: seeing that the biennale becomes an experimental platform; an alternative to the museum, allowing a more elastic development of the artistic process and possessing the ability to rapidly react to the most important trends and current events in art and society?” asks Solvita Krese, director of the LCCA and curator of the show.
The symposium „The Rise and Fall of Art Biennials” will take place on 16 April at the Riga Art Space.
The programme:
12:00 Introduction by Solvita Krese, curator of the Re:visited;
12:10 Marieke van Hal, director of the Biennial Foundation (the Netherlands);
12:45 Ekaterina Degot, co-curator of the Bergen Assembly and the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art (Russia);
13:45 Jonatan Habib Engqvist, curator of the exhibition (I)ndependent People in the framework of the Reykjavik Arts Festival 2012 (Sweden);
14:20 – 15:20 Lunch;
15:20 Power Ekroth, co-curator of the 7th Momentum Biennial and the Turku Biennial 2013 (Sweden / Norway);
15:55 Aigars Bikše, artist, curator of the Sculpture Quadrennial (Latvia);
16:30 Virginija Januškevičiūtė, curator of the Baltic Triennial of International Art (Lithuania);
17:05 Ann Lislegaard, artist (Norway).
18:00 – 19.30 Discussion.
Moderators: Solvita Krese, director of the LCCA, and Inga Lāce, project director of the LCCA
The Riga Art Space is located at 3 Kungu Street, Riga.
The symposium and exhibition are organised by the LCCA in collaboration with the foundation Riga 2014. Supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation, the Riga City Council, LLC Rīgas Nami, Corstjens Worldwide Relocation Group, Ergo, TNT, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Riga, Kolonna, Green Print. Media partners: IR Magazine, Rigas Laiks, Studija, Veto Magazine, Arterritory.com, RigaThisWeek.com, Easyget.lv, EchoGoneWrong.com, Clear Channel.
The symposium is organized as a component of a short-term network project with “Snowball Cultural Productions”, Göteborg, Sweden, and the curatorial platform “Rakett”, Bergen, Norway. The short-term network is supported by the Nordic Culture