Organized By The Biennial Project
V70 Campo Arsenale, Castello 2385 Venezia, Italy (45.434460, 12.349720)
The path to a successful art career can be a twisting one, but one commonly traveled route is the artist residency. Not all residencies are created equal, and while some may help artists get a leg up in the art world, programs can be grouped several ways. There are hundreds of residencies out there, but only a few highly prestigious programs are invitation-only like those of Artpace, the Walker Art Center, UCLA’s Hammer Museum or — The Biennial Project Residency Project. However, unlike many other residency programs The Biennial Project Residency Project selects only one individual to take part in our program at any one time. This years Biennial Project Artist in Residence for 2015 is Tom Estes www.TomEstesArtist.com. The Venice Residency takes place in the heart of the historic city of Venice -- an "open-air" museum with a cultural and artistic heritage of inestimable value. The residency also takes place during The Venice Biennale — which has for over a century been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. The territory of Venice, which includes the lagoon, the islands and the mainland, is also very complex, due to its different social, economic, cultural and environmental aspects. Venice has always had to defend itself and its lagoon "against sea, rivers and men" (C.Sabbadino, XVI century). Along with an invasion of tourists, the historic centre is subject to flooding tide events (“acqua alta”), whose frequency and intensity have considerably grown during the last decades. An event occurred in 1966 in which the highest water levels in the history of Venice risked losing the city forever. Nowadays the city defense is not only a matter of protecting lives and economic assets, but also of conserving its cultural heritage, recognized by UNESCO as a relevant to the world’s patrimony. For those of you who don't know, The Biennial Project, the hosts of this event, have the collaborative goal that artists’ explore the nature and understand the perception of biennials within the art world and, and in so doing, develop a collective body of work that will be exhibited in as many biennials as possible. This year the President of la Biennale di Venezia, Paolo Baratta, accompanied by the curator, Okwui Enwezor, met with the representatives of the 53 Countries participating and determined this years theme for 2015. A "Parliament of Forms" rather than one overarching theme was chosen. The title and theme which is 'All the World’s Futures' is informed by a layer of intersecting "Filters" or a constellation of parameters that circumscribe multiple ideas, touched upon to both imagine and realize a diversity of practices. The Biennale will employ as a Filter, the historical trajectory that the event itself, over the course of its one hundred and twenty years of existence has run over.A Filter through which to reflect on both the current “state of things” and the “appearance of things.. In the search for a language and method for an exhibition in Venice, The Biennial Project and Artist in Residence Tom Estes have settled on the nature of the exhibition as fundamentally a visual, somatic, aural, and narrative event. In so doing, we have ask how an exhibition of the scale and scope of the 56th International Art Biennale can be addressed in its format and refresh it with the potential of its temporal capacity. In this search the concept of liveness and epic duration serve two complementary purposes: they suggest the idea that All the World’s Futures is both a spatial and temporal manifestation that is relentlessly incomplete, structured by a logic of unfolding, a program of events that can be experienced at the intersection of liveness and display. The exhibition staged by Estes will be a dramatization of the space of as a continuous, unfolding, and unceasing live event. In doing so the performative work of Artist in Residence Tom Estes will activate works that are already existing but also invite contributions that will be realized especially for the 56th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia. This Residency in Venice, also takes into account the historical ground of la Biennale in the Giardini as a metaphor through which to explore the current “state of things,” namely the pervasive structure of disorder in global geopolitics, environment and economics. The original concept of the garden derives from Persian antiquity. It conceives of the dimension garden as paradise, an enclosed space of tranquility and pleasure, which over several millennia has been transformed into an allegory for the search for the space of order and purity. For the 56th International Art Biennale in 2015, the exhibition returns to the ancient ground of this ideal to explore the changes in the global environment, to read the Giardini with its ramshackle assemblage of pavilions as the ultimate site of a disordered world, of national conflicts, as well as territorial and geopolitical disfigurations. Proposals that take the concept of the garden as a point of departure will be worked through by the artist who has been invited to realized new sculptures, films, performances, and installations for All the World’s Futures. The Resident artist wlll be available at his centrally located self-contained live/ work space along with an exhibition/ Live Art Performance that will take place on May 4th. The Artist will be in residence and open for studio viewings between the 3rd and 8th of May V70 Arsenale Address: Campo Arsenale Castello 2385 Venezia, Italy Please RSVP to confirm your visit at [email protected] The Biennial Project Residency Project Performance will take place in the gallery from 5:00 on May 4th, 2015, followed by a Champagne Reception organsed by The Biennial Project at VIA GARIBALDI 1791 Sestiere Castello Venezia, Italia https://www.facebook.com/events/814231211991844/permalink/814554608626171/