Biennale Architettura 2023

URUGUAY PAVILION

18th International Architecture Exhibition

– La Biennale di Venezia

En ópera: escenarios futuros de una joven Ley Forestal

In Opera: Future Scenarios of a Young Forest Law

PRESS PREVIEW: 18 – 19 May 2023

OPENING: 18 May 2023 | 1.30pm RSVP*

Curators: MAPA+INST – Mauricio López, Matías Carballal,

Andrés Gobba, Luciano Andrades, Silvio Lagranha,

Sebastián Lambert – and Carlos Casacuberta

Commissioner: Facundo De Almeida

20.05 – 26.11.2023

Giardini della Biennale

https://enopera.uy/About

@inst___inst___inst

Pavilion-of-Uruguay_credits MAPA+Inst

In Opera:
Future Scenarios of a Young Forest Law

Since the birth of its Forestry Law, Uruguay, “a country with four cows per capita”, has experienced unprecedented changes. For the first time, its exports from the forestry industry exceed those of meat, while its landscapes are being transformed.

“In Opera” is a story told by this young law through a peculiar multi-authored opera staged in the Uruguay Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. The law looks in the mirror and sings to us in an attempt to understand what is going on around it and why it does not receive the same attention as other regulations. In the piece, it shares the stage with the spaces, territories and bodies around the wood in Uruguay, along with musical interventions by a new generation of Afro-Uruguayan artists that interrupt the lyrical narrative.

Thus, the Forestry Law is revealed as an active text that is part of a trans-scalar assemblage -legal, spatial, environmental and social- that can derive in the construction, symbolic and literal, of other multiple futures. When most of Uruguay’s abundant new forests end up being exported abroad as cellulose pulp, how can we imagine Uruguay as a laboratory for fairer and more inclusive wood futures?

To collectively seek answers, the opera is complemented by a publication that explores the multiple scales affected by the law based on an extensive series of interviews with forestry stakeholders; an overview of the present of timber construction in the country; and a series of parallel programming in Uruguay that will broaden a situated view into the future.

Photo: Matilde Campodónico

About the curators MAPA+INST and Carlos Casacuberta

MAPA

MAPA is a creative studio whose field of action is architecture. It is a practice focused on creating new material, digital, natural and cultural realities in a sensitive and disruptive way.

The studio carries out works and projects of diverse scales and complexities in various parts of the world. It develops explorations linked to prefabrication, construction in new wood technologies and landscape, through projects, works, prototypes, workshops, theoretical inquiries and exhibitions.

MAPA has active offices in Montevideo, Porto Alegre, Garzón, São Paulo, Buenos Aires and Berlin. Their works have been recognized in several awards such as the Buenos Aires Biennial of Architecture, the Premio da Associação Paulista dos Críticos de Artes, Interior Design Magazine Best of the Year Award, Dezeen Award, the IX and X editions of the Iberoamerican Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, and the Mies Crown Hall Americas

Prize of the IIT College of Architecture, in addition to having been winners of several architectural competitions.

MAPA has participated in conferences at universities and cultural institutions in Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and Finland and has been published in TIME Magazine, Financial Times, Wallpaper*, Dwell, Interior Design, Azure, Wired, Elle, Arquitectura Viva, Casa Vogue, and by the publishing houses Taschen, Thames & Hudson, Gestalten and Arquine, among others.

INST

INST is a dissemination of the cultural dimension of architecture initiative. It is a space for trans disciplinary reflection and experimentation with new media and forms of communication.

INST carries out research, exhibitions and publications, among other activities, in collaboration with various architectural and cultural references.

INST is a project of the creative studio MAPA.

Carlos Casacuberta (Montevideo, 1964) is a musician, performer, composer and producer.

He is a member of the Uruguayan hip-hop and alternative rock band called Peyote Asesino, with whom he has released the albums El Peyote Asesino (1995), Terraja (1998) and Serial (2021). The latter won the Graffiti 2022 award for best hip-hop album, as well as band of the year. As a solo artist he has released the albums :carlos (2006) and Naturaleza (2013).

He has worked as artistic producer on the albums Frontera (1999), Sea (2001) and Eco (2003) by Jorge Drexler, as well as Soy sola (2006) by Ana Prada and Todos estos cables rojos (2007) by La hermana menor. He has also scored music for visual arts installations and documentary films.

He holds a degree in economics. As a university researcher he has published papers in peer-reviewed journals on the economics of art and culture, made presentations at conferences and taught undergraduate and graduate courses on the subject.

Pavilion-of-Uruguay_Credits MAPA+Inst

https://enopera.uy/Home

The International Jury of the Biennale Architettura 2023

Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, president.

The Awards Ceremony will take place on Saturday, May 20th 2023.

The official prizes

The International Jury will award the following official prizes:

Golden Lion for best National Participation

Golden Lion for best participant in the International Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future

Silver Lion for a promising young participant in the International Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future

The Jury may also award:

a maximum of one special mention to National Participations

a maximum of two special mentions to the participants in the International Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future

The Awards Ceremony will take place in Venice on Saturday, May 20^th 2023.

https://www.labiennale.org/en/news/international-jury-biennale-architettura-2023

The International Jury

The International Jury of the 18^th International Architecture Exhibition (20 May > 26 November 2023) is made up of the Italian architect and curator Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli (president); the Palestinian architect and curator, Nora Akawi; the American director and curator of The Studio Museum di Harlem, Thelma Golden; the South-African founder and co-editor of Cityscapes Magazine, Tau Tavengwa; the Polish Izabela Wieczorek, architect in Spain and a researcher and educator based in London.

The composition of the Jury has been deliberated by the Board of Directors of La Biennale di Venezia upon recommendation by Lesley Lokko, the Curator of the 18^th Exhibition titled The Laboratory of the Future, that will be held in Venice (Giardini and Arsenale) from May 20^th to November 26^th, 2023.

Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli (Italy) – president – is an Italian architect and curator based in Milan. He is the founder of 2050+, an interdisciplinary agency moving across technology, politics, design, and environmental practices. He curated Open, the Russian Pavilion at the 17^th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2021 and co-curated Manifesta’s 12^th edition in Palermo in 2018. Between 2007 and 2019 he has worked as architect and partner at OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture). He teaches at the Royal College of Arts in London Data Matter, a research and design studio exploring the entangled relationship between data and the material world. Latest projects include Synthetic Cultures at the 10^th Architecture Biennale of Rotterdam; the short film diptych Riders Not Heroes; the exhibitions Aquaria at MAAT in Lisbon and Penumbra in Venice; the design for the space of the Fredriksen’s collection at the National Museum of Norway in Oslo; and the transformation of La Rinascente’s modernist building icon in Rome.

Nora Akawi is a Palestinian architect and curator living in New York. She is an assistant professor of architecture at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and a co-founding partner in the interdisciplinary research and design studio interim. She co-curated the Pavilion of Barhain at the 16^th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, titled Friday Sermon (2018). Her teaching and research focus on transcontinental South-South anti-colonial solidarity and on architecture’s role in erasure and bordering in settler colonialism, drawing from border studies, critical geography, and archive theory. Nora taught at Columbia University’s GSAPP, where she was the director of Studio-X Amman and initiated the Janet Abu-Lughod Library and Seminar. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals Faktur: Documents and Architecture and InForma, the peer-reviewed architecture publication of the Universidad de Puerto Rico.

Thelma Golden (United States) is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, the world’s leading institution devoted to visual art by artists of African descent, where she began her career in 1987 before joining the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1988. She returned to the Studio Museum in 2000 as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs and was named Director and Chief Curator in 2005. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Barack Obama Foundation, Crystal Bridges Museum, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She holds a B.A. in Art History and African American Studies from Smith College. She was appointed to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House by President Obama in 2010.

Tau Tavengwa (Zimbabwe) is the co-founder, curator and editor of Cityscapes, a hybrid annual publication that showcases different ideas, and narratives on the built environment and cities globally from Africa, Latin America, and South Asia perspectives. He’s a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) (2018), an Aspen Global Leadership Fellow, a Research Fellow in Advanced Visualization at Max Planck Institute (2019-2023), and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics’ LSE Cities from 2020-22. He is also the Curator-at-Large at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and was curator of the 2022 Lisbon Architecture Triennale’s Multiplicity exhibition. With Edgar Pieterse, he is a co-founder of the CS Collective.

Izabela Wieczorek (Poland) is a registered architect in Spain, and a researcher and educator based in London. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Reading, where she is the Director of the Master of Architecture Programme and the acting Research Lead for Architecture. She was a co-director of an award-winning Madrid-based office Gálvez+Wieczorek Arquitectura (2003-2016). Her work has been presented in several publications, including ‘Cartographies of the Imagination’, London (2021), ‘Works+Words Biennale of Artistic Research in Architecture’, KADK, Copenhagen (2019), and the Spanish Pavilion at the 16^th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia Exhibition (2018). She curated the In-Between public lecture series at Arkitektskolen Aarhus, Denmark (2013-2016).  

La Biennale di Venezia

18th International Architecture Exhibition

The Laboratory of the Future

Demas Nwoko

Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement

Biennale Architettura 2023

The Award Ceremony: Saturday 20 May 2023

Ca’ Giustinian, headquarters of La Biennale di Venezia.

https://www.labiennale.org/en/news/demas-nwoko-golden-lion-lifetime-achievement-biennale-architettura-2023

Statement by Lesley Lokko

«One of the central themes of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition is an approach to architecture as an ‘expanded’ field of endeavours, encompassing both the material and immaterial worlds; a space in which ideas are as important as artefacts, particularly in the service of what is yet to come. With all of its emphasis on the future, however, it seems entirely fitting that the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement should be awarded to someone whose material works span the past 70 years, but whose immaterial legacy – approach, ideas, ethos – is still in the process of being evaluated, understood and celebrated.

Baba (a Nigerian honorific title) Demas Nwoko is everything all at once: an architect, sculptor, designer, writer, set designer, critic, and historian. When pushed, he refers to himself as an “artist-designer”, which speaks both to the polyglot nature of his talents and oeuvres, and to the rather narrow interpretation of the word ‘architect’ that has arguably kept his name out of the annals.

The son of a traditional Obi (ruler), he was born in 1935 in Idumuje-Ugboko, southern Nigeria. His early forays into painting, drawing, and carving at secondary school in Benin City pushed him to apply for a place to study architecture at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology in Zaria. However, his discovery that the course focused more on technical drawing skills than the creative imagination prompted him to change tack, applying instead to study fine art. He was a founder member of the Zaria Art Society – a group that included Yusuf Grillo, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Uche Okeke and Simon Okeke, also known as the “Zaria Rebels” – who were interested in a blend of modernity and African aesthetics as an authentic language to reflect the spirit of political independence growing in the 1940s and 1950s.

This profound desire to blend and synthesise, rather than sweep away, has characterised Nwoko’s work for over five decades. He was one of the first Nigerian makers of space and form to critique Nigeria’s reliance on the West for imported materials and goods, as well as ideas, and has remained committed to using local resources.

Although relatively few, Nwoko’s buildings in Nigeria fulfil two critical roles. They are forerunners of the sustainable, resource-mindful, and culturally authentic forms of expression now sweeping across the African continent – and the globe – and they point towards the future, no mean achievement for someone whose work is still largely unknown, even at home. In 1977, writing about Nwoko’s first commission, to build the complex for the Dominican Institute in Ibadan, the architectural critic Noel Moffett wrote: “Here, under a tropical sun, architecture and sculpture combine in a way which only Gaudí perhaps, among architects, has been able to do so convincingly.”

It gives me enormous pride and pleasure to award the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Demas Nwoko, an architect of both the 20th and 21st centuries, and to encourage all visitors to the 18th International Architecture Exhibition to visit the small but perfectly formed and articulated display of his work in the Stirling Pavilion in the Giardini, alongside the Book Pavilion Project of The Laboratory of the Future».

Demas Nwoko is a Nigerian born artist, protean designer, architect and master builder who was at the forefront of Nigeria’s Modern Art movement. As an artist, he strives to incorporate modern techniques in architecture and stage design to enunciate African subject matter in most of his works. In the 1960s, he was a member of the Mbari Club of Ibadan, a committee of burgeoning Nigerian and foreign artists.

Prince Demas Nwoko was born in 1935 in Idumuje Ugboko, Nigeria, in Aniocha North Local Government area of Delta State to Obi (King) Nwoko II. Nwoko grew up in Idumuje Ugboko, inspired by the newly-constructed architectural residences in the town and the Palace edifice of the Obi, his grandfather, who designed the palace himself. Further extensions to the palace were commissioned by Nwoko’s father.

He studied at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology in Zaria (1957-1961), where he was a prominent founding member of the Zaria Art Society. This influential group of artists, popularly known as the ‘Zaria Rebels’, promoted natural synthesis: a concept of art coined by the artist Uche Okeke, which bridged their Western training by colonial educators with a focus on African themes and narratives. The Zaria Rebels contributed to the postcolonial modernist vanguard in Nigeria in the early 1960s, along with their peers in literature, theatre and music.

In 1961, Nwoko received a scholarship to study at the Centre Français du Théâtre in Paris, where he studied theatre architecture and scene design. After university, he returned to Nigeria to lecture at the newly formed School of Drama at the University of Ibadan. Reconnecting with his old member of the Zaria Art Society, Nwoko went on to establish spaces such as the Mbari Writers and Artists Club, developing a new art that blended African and Western modernist aesthetics, forms and processes to reflect the spirit of political independence. Nwoko’s first commission to build the complex for the Dominican Institute in Ibadan occurred in 1970, though he had already commenced his architecture work at the New Culture Studios in Ibadan, in the late 1960s.

He founded the New Culture Studios in Ibadan, which is presently run as a training centre for the performing arts and a design center. Nwoko also founded (the now defunct) New Culture Magazine, in the 1970s, a publication that documented contemporary art and culture.

Applied Arts Pavilion Special Project
Biennale Architettura 2023
organised thanks to the collaboration between
La Biennale di Venezia and Victoria & Albert Museum, London
for the seventh consecutive edition
Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Power in West Africa

Curator tour: Wednesday 17 May 2023 | 3pm

official opening: Thursday 18 May 2023 | 4.30pm

Curated by Dr Christopher Turner (V&A),

Nana Biamah-Ofosu and Bushra Mohamed (AA),

20 May – 26 November 2023

Sale d’Armi A, Arsenale

https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2023/applied-arts-pavilion

https://www.vam.ac.uk/

Image caption: Ghana Independence Arch, Accra by Public Works Department built by Kwame Nkrumah

for Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Ghana in 1961 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

La Biennale di Venezia and the V&A present Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Power in West Africa. Organised in collaboration with the Architectural Association (AA), London, and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, this presentation at the Biennale Architettura 2023 critically reflects on the imperial history of Tropical Modernism through an analysis of the work of the Department of Tropical Architecture and a dozen key projects. It explores the ways in which this distinctive architectural style was initially developed and employed as a tool to support colonial rule before being adapted by new African nations to promote the excitement and possibilities of a Pan-African future in the period that followed Ghana becoming the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence in 1957.

Curated by Dr Christopher Turner (V&A), Nana Biamah-Ofosu and Bushra Mohamed (AA), the Venice presentation in the Applied Arts Pavilion is centred around a multi-channel film installation featuring interviews with surviving protagonists and footage of remaining buildings. Responding to the theme of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition conceived by Director Lesley Lokko, who writes ‘Africa is the laboratory of the future’ in her curatorial statement for the Biennale, the presentation also lays the groundwork for a larger exhibition scheduled to take place at the V&A in London in 2024.

The Department of Tropical Architecture
 
In the late 1940s, in the context of British West Africa, husband and wife architectural duo Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew developed the tools of Tropical Modernism, adapting an international modernist aesthetic to the hot, humid conditions of the continent. Their distinctive language of climate control – adjustable louvers, wide eaves and brises soleils that made only superficial reference to the locality – was propagated through the Department of Tropical Architecture they established in 1954 at the AA in London, where they taught European architects to work in the colonies and trained a new generation of post-colonial architects.
 
Fry and Drew’s architectural innovations, which attracted international interest, appeared against the political background of decolonial struggle, which would soon come to fruition. The couple and their peers won commissions of a scale and quantity that architects in post-war Britain could only dream, and built numerous schools, universities, community centres and libraries for Africans. These commissions were paid for by the Colonial Welfare and Development Act’s £200m post-war programme to reform, rebuild and modernise the colonies – a cynical initiative designed to offset calls for independence, and to make the colonies better producers for the world market and better buyers for European goods.

The ‘winds of change’

This investment could not hold back the ‘winds of change’ that blew across Africa as two-thirds of the continent won their freedom in the decade that followed Kwame Nkrumah becoming the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana in 1957. In Tropical Modernism, Nkumrah saw the possibility not only for nation-building, but an expression of his Pan-African ideology, commissioning architects from Eastern Europe to work alongside Ghanaian architects to create monumental structures that were intended as beacons of a free Africa.

In 1963, the Department of Tropical Studies was invited to form a partnership with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, where a first generation of qualified African and Black architects including John Owusu-Addo and Max Bond also taught. Whereas Maxwell Fry had asserted that nothing could be learned from traditional African architecture, the School[NO1]  questioned the colonial assumptions of Tropical Modernism and inspired a new architecture that appreciated vernacular forms and looked to create a unique national or African style.

Dr Christopher Turner, Keeper of Art, Architecture, Photography & Design
at V&A and Lead Curator of Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Power in West Africa,
said: “Through close study of the work of the Department of Tropical Studies and its collaboration with KNUST, our Venice presentation explores the ways in which Tropical Modernism was adapted by Ghanaian architects to promote Nkrumah’s Pan-African ideals during a transitional moment in which new freedoms were won and a break with the colonial past was articulated through architecture. It considers the power of architecture, both as a means of colonial suppression and a symbol of nascent political freedom, as well as exploring the specific legacy of Tropical Modernism in West Africa.”

Nana Biamah-Ofosu and Bushra Mohamed, researchers and architects at the Architectural Association (AA), London and co-curators of Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Power in West Africa,said: “This exhibition investigates the AA’s archives and institutional history in relation to its collaboration with KNUST in the 1960s. Our research centers the significant African figures of this collaboration whose voices and recollections are missing within the archives. By revisiting key buildings developed by prominent architects of the time, we are interested in the story of politics, power, resistance and freedom that this architecture came to represent in the post-independence Pan-African dream. This exhibition presents an important moment in centering African architecture, architects, and historians, and addressing the omissions and erasure evident in the archives.”

About the V&A
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London is the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance with collections unrivalled in their scope and diversity, spanning 5000 years of human creativity. It was established in 1852 to make works of art available to all and to inspire British designers and manufacturers. Today, its purpose is to champion creative industry, inspire the next generation, and spark everyone’s imagination

La Biennale di Venezia

18^th International Architecture Exhibition

The Laboratory of the Future

Padiglione Italia – Biennale Architettura 2023

SPAZIALE: OGNUNO APPARTIENE A TUTTI GLI ALTRI

Spaziale –Everyone belongs to everyone else

Italian Pavilion 18th International Architecture Exhibition

La Biennale di Venezia

Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else Curators

Fosbury Architecture

Commissioner Onofrio Cutaia

Designers (ab)Normal, BB (Alessandro Bava and Fabrizio Ballabio), Captcha Architecture, HPO, Lemonot, Orizzontale, Parasite 2.0, Post Disaster, Studio Ossidiana, and Giuditta Vendrame

Advisors Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia Caleo, Claudia Durastanti, Roberto Flore, Elia Fornari (Brain Dead), Adelita Husni Bey, Ana Shametaj, Terrafor- ma, Emilio Vavarella, and Bruno Zamborlin

Stations

Bay of Ieranto (Massa Lubrense, Naples), Campania; Belmonte Ca- labro (Cosenza), Calabria; Librino (Catania), Sicilia; Montiferru-Sinis (Oristano), Sardinia; Prato-Pistoia, Toscana; Ripa Teatina (Chieti), Abruzzo; Taranto, Puglia; Venice mainland, Veneto; Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia

20.05 – 26.11.2023

Tese delle Vergini Arsenale

Padiglione Italia – Biennale Architettura 2023

Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else”1 is the title of the Italian Pavilion at the 18th International Ar- chitecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia,

promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of culture and curated by Fosbury Architecture (Giacomo Ardesio, Alessandro Bonizzoni, Nicola Campri, Veronica Caprino, and Claudia Mainardi).

For the first time, a curatorial group made up of architects born between 1987 and 1989 brings with them to Venice the demands of a new generation of designers under 40 (nine groups of designers and as many advisors, professionals from different fields in the cre- ative industries, for a total of about 50 people with an average age of 33) who grew up and were trained against a backdrop of permanent crisis and who have therefore made collaboration, sharing, and dia- logue the basis of all their activities. A generation that is aware, on the one hand, of the impact and responsibility of the construction sector in the face of the environmental crisis and, on the other, of the cri- sis of significance of architecture and design in the transformation of cities and territories.

A generation of designers who, compared to their predecessors, have grown up in a regime of scarcity in terms of resources and opportunities, who sense as crucial the issue of sustainability, and who know that this is the only context in which they will be able to operate now and in the future. Fosbury Architecture is a voice for those Italian designers who are “sustainable natives” and have already accepted all these challenges, for whom transdisciplinarity is a tool for expanding the boundaries of architecture, and for whom the built artifact is a means and not an end in itself. “Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else” originated from these assumptions and is based on the vision that architecture is a research practice beyond the construction of buildings and that investigate the limits of landscape protection and its reproducibility.

Within the Italian Pavilion, therefore, it is not a finished project that will be presented, but the launch of a series of initiatives that will have a long-term impact. From an exhibitionary point of view, the Pavilion will present the for- mal and theoretical synthesis of the processes initiated in the nine regions in the months preceding the opening, from January to May, providing a diverse and original portrait of Italian architecture in the international context. The extension of the Pavilion outside the Arsenale will correspond to a reduction in the exhibition installation to make room for the repre- sentation of the activated processes throughout the Italian peninsula. Local projects will not stop with the opening of the Italian Pavilion but will continue with a dense series of activities in the different regions throughout the duration of the exhibition and beyond. The unfolding of all activities in the various regions can be followed on the online and social media platforms that were activated beginning in January 2023.

design is always the result of collective and collaborative work that goes beyond the idea of the architect-author. According to this vision, space is understood as a physical and symbolic place, a geographical area and abstract dimension, a system of known references and a ter- ritory of possibilities. Spaziale thus refers to an expanded notion of the field of archi- tecture: to intervene in space is to operate on the fabric of rela- tionships between people and places that forms the basis of every project.

1B_Post Disaster Rooftops EP04_Taranto_Ph.Sara Scanderebech

“Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else”1 is the title of the Italian Pavilion at the 18th International Ar- chitecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of culture and curated by Fosbury Architecture (Giacomo Ardesio, Alessandro Bonizzoni, Nicola Campri, Veronica Caprino, and Claudia Mainardi). For the first time, a curatorial group made up of architects born between 1987 and 1989 brings with them to Venice the demands of a new generation of designers under 40 (nine groups of designers and as many advisors, professionals from different fields in the cre- ative industries, for a total of about 50 people with an average age of 33) who grew up and were trained against a backdrop of permanent crisis and who have therefore made collaboration, sharing, and dia- logue the basis of all their activities. A generation that is aware, on the one hand, of the impact and responsibility of the construction sector in the face of the environmental crisis and, on the other, of the cri- sis of significance of architecture and design in the transformation of cities and territories. A generation of designers who, compared to their predecessors, have grown up in a regime of scarcity in terms of resources and opportunities, who sense as crucial the issue of sustainability, and who know that this is the only context in which they will be able to operate now and in the future. Fosbury Architecture is a voice for those Italian designers who are “sustainable natives” and have already accepted all these challenges, for whom transdisciplinarity is a tool for expanding the boundaries of architecture, and for whom the built artifact is a means and not an end in itself. “Spaziale. Everyone belongs to everyone else” originated from these assumptions and is based on the vision that architecture is a research practice beyond the construction of buildings and that 1 The phrase “everyone belongs to everyone else” chosen by Fosbury Architecture—a quotation from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World—makes explicit reference to the inevitable interconnection between people and their destinies, between all the actors involved in a large and ambitious project such as the Italian Pavilion, and, ultimately, between us all.

The Korean Pavilion

in Venice Architecture Biennale 2023

2086: Together How

The Korean Pavilion, 2013. Image courtesy Arts Council Korea.

Press Tour: Thursday, 18 May 2023 | 12pm

Opening Ceremony: Thursday, 18 May 2023 | 4:15pm

Curated by Artistic Directors Soik Jung and Kyong Park

Commissioned by ARKOKOREA Arts Council Korea (ARKO)

20 May – 26 November 2023

Giardini della Biennale,

Castello 1260 30122 Venezia, Italia

https://korean-pavilion.or.kr/

@arkokorea

https://www.labiennale.org/en/news/biennale-architettura-2023-laboratory-future-0

Why are we so “isolated” when we are supposed to be so “connected”—through the globalization of information, finance, commodities, and even in culture? Why are we so insecure about our future when so many of us are living at unprecedented levels of wealth, technologies, mobility, and consumption? How did we get to this point of abundance in absence? How can we bridge the contradictions that are driving us toward extinction?

2086” asks how we might live together in the year when our global population is supposed to peak. It posits that we need to realize a biocultural revolution if we are going to endure the unimaginable levels of environmental crises to come, which have already begun. Starting with three communities in South Korea, “2086” imagines a more empathetic, reflective, and restrained life in a new ecosphere.

Banwol Archipelago, NHDM Architects, 2023. Digital on paper, courtesy of N H D M Architects.

The exhibition is enriched with a participatory video game, and a series of multidisciplinary installations that encompass photographs, drawings, models, video and architectural installations.

The Korean Pavilion invites audiences to imagine an ecocultural revolution through a critical reassessment of our capitalist, globalist, and colonial history.

The exhibition, 2086: Together How?, focuses on three small communities engaged in active regeneration projects in South Korea, each varying in population, history and characteristics: inside the global city of Incheon; the colonial historic centre in the mid-size city of Gunsan; and in the rural areas largely resided by migrant workers in the Gyeonggi Province. 

According to curators, “these locations constitute a cross section of urbanization, modernization, and westernization in South Korea.” 

Soik Jung and Kyong Park. Photo by Nam Yun Jung. The Korean Pavilion presents 2086: Together How?

A team of architects and community leaders have worked with local communities and carried out collaborative research activities, framed by a set of dialectics that have been determinant factors in our ecocultural evolution; for example, how to balance individualism and communalism in future society.

“Each community is a case study which utilizes the community leader’s deep knowledge of the place and the architect’s spatial analysis to evaluate its current state, and propose site- specific future scenarios leading up to 2086,” said Soik Jung, the Artistic Director of the exhibition. 

Arts Council Korea (ARKO), the Commissioner of the Korean Pavilion that commissioned the foundation of the pavilion itself, is a governmental agency under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, dedicated to supporting and promoting Korean arts and culture.

https://worldarchitecture.org/architecture-news/ennze/the-korean-pavilion-presents-2086-together-how-in-venice-architecture-biennale-2023.html

EVENT LOG:

La Biennale di Venezia

18^th International Architecture Exhibition

The Laboratory of the Future

BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA 2023
THE LABORATORY OF THE FUTURE

Pre-opening 18 and 19 May 2023

Curated by academic, educator and best-selling novelist

Lesley Lokko

Saturday 20 May – Sunday 26 November 2023

https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2023

https://www.labiennale.org/en/news/biennale-architettura-2023-laboratory-future-0

Collateral Events:

A Fragile Correspondence – Scotland + Venice

Docks Cantieri Cucchini, San Pietro di Castello 40

May 20 – November 26, 2023

Organizing Institution: Scotland + Venice

Catalonia in Venice_ Following the Fish

Docks Cantieri Cucchini, San Pietro di Castello 40A

May 20 – November 26, 2023

Organizing Institution: Institut Ramon Lull

Climate Wunderkammer

IUAV Palazzo Badoer ground floor – Calle de la Laca 2468

May 20 – November 26, 2023

Organizing Institution: RWTH Aachen University

Diachronic Apparatuses of Taiwan

Architecture as on-going details within landscape

Palazzo delle Prigioni, Castello 4209

May 20 – November 26, 2023

Organizing Institution: National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

EUmies Awards. Young Talent 2023. The Laboratory of Education

Palazzo Mora, Cannaregio 3659

May 20 – November 26, 2023

Organizing Institution: Fundació Mies van der Rohe

Radical yet possible future space solutions

May 25, 2023 at IUAV Palazzo Badoer first floor – Sestiere Castello 3608

May 26, 2023 at IUAV Auditorium Tolentini – Santa Croce 191

Organizing Institution: New European Bauhaus, Joint Research Centre of the European Commission

Students as Researchers: Creative Practice and University Education

Centro Studi e Documentazione della Cultura Armena, Dorsoduro 1602

May 20 – November 26, 2023

Organizing Institution: New York Institute of Technology

Transformative Hong Kong

Campo della Tana, Castello 2126

May 20 – November 26, 2023

Organizing Institution: Hong Kong Arts Development Council + The Hong Kong Institute of Architects Biennale Foundation

Tracé Bleu

Que faire en ce lieu, à moins que l’on y songe?

Campiello Santa Maria Nova 6024

May 20 – November 26, 2023

Organizing Institution: CA’ ASI

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA

Biennale Architettura 2023

18th International Architecture Exhibition

Meetingpoint

Palazzo Contarini Polignac

BERÜHRUNGSPUNKTE Meetingpoint zur
Architekturbiennale Venedig

BERÜHRUNGSPUNKTE | Gira, KEUCO, TRILUX

Things to know about our Meetingpoint and the Architecture Biennale in Venice

Already for the fifth time BERÜHRUNGSPUNKTE invites you to the Meetingpoint to Venice this year! Discover everything about this unique and exciting event here – from our varied event program to the practical city map with helpful tips for your stay.

As part of the Architecture Biennale in Venice, which takes place regularly every two years, we invite architects and people interested in architecture to our Meetingpoint on the Grand Canal during the opening week – an event that has long since become an institution. In the majestic ambience of the Palazzo Contarini Polignac, you can look forward to a varied supporting programme as well as our legendary Welcome Party, which is the kick-off meeting of the event. Look forward to an inspiring exchange and joint networking in the middle of Venice.

Im Rahmen der Architekturbiennale in Venedig, die regelmäßig alle zwei Jahre stattfindet, laden wir Architekt:innen und Architekturinteressierte während der Eröffnungswoche zu unserem Meetingpoint am Canal Grande ein – ein Event, das bereits zu einer festen Institution geworden ist. Im majestätischen Ambiente des Palazzo Contarini Polignac erwartet Sie ein vielseitiges Rahmenprogramm sowie unsere legendäre Welcome-Party, die den Startschuss gibt. Freuen Sie sich auf einen inspirierenden Austausch und gemeinsames Netzwerken mitten in Venedig. 

18. Architektur Biennale 2023

Meetingpoint

Palazzo Contarini Polignac

BERÜHRUNGSPUNKTE | Gira, KEUCO, TRILUX

Welcome-Party. Wed 17. May 2023 | 6 pm

17. – 21. Mai 2023 | Täglich | 9 -22 Uhr

Opening hours Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am – 6 pm. Admission free.

Sestiere Dorsoduro, 874, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy

https://beruehrungspunkte.de/biennale-di-venezia/meetingpoint

http://www.palazzocontarinipolignac.com/Magazzino-Gallery

The entrance in Callesela Rota is a short walk from the Accademia vaporetto stop

In der Eröffnungswoche der Biennale, die alle zwei Jahre in den Giardini, dem Arsenale und an unzähligen Orten innerhalb der Stadt stattfindet, öffnen sich die Tore eines Palazzos direkt am Canal Grande, um für mehrere Tage Treffpunkt für Architekt:innen zu werden.

Umfangreiches Programm und Services für Architekt:innen

Täglich von 9:00-22:00 Uhr bieten wir ein vielseitiges Programm, inklusive Speisen und Getränke. Schon im Vorfeld wird zu Vorträgen eingeladen, es werden Feste gefeiert und in Liegestühlen im Garten oder auf dem Steg ausgeruht, genossen, genetzwerkt. Ein mehrmals täglich zwischen Biennale-Gelände und Palazzo pendelnder Wassertaxi-Shuttle sorgt für eine gewisse Grandezza während der Fahrten.

https://beruehrungspunkte.de/en/biennale-venice/biennale-meetingpoint-details/programm

Thursday 18.05.2023

Lecture by Leon Roloff

Villa Viva Hamburg A house that builds wells!

Thursday 18.05.2023 | 3 p.m.

The new social business of Viva con Agua is being built in the heart of Hamburg. It will be a public house with 150 rooms, catering and conference facilities, the majority of the profits from which will flow into VCA‘s project work. Water for all, all for water!

urban future Gmbh

Villa Viva Haus GmbH

www.ufd.hamburg

Lecture by Prof. Xaver Egger

Rethinking architecture – designing social practice

Thursday 18.05.2023 | 6 p.m.

As architect and managing director of SEHW Architektur in Berlin and professor at Bochum University of Applied Sciences, Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Xaver Egger is concerned with sustainable architecture that creates social added value. With us, he provides exciting insights into this multifaceted topic and takes a look into the future.

www.sehw-architektur.de

Architekturbiennale in Venedig

Salone Verde in Santa Croce, Venezia

gmp Architekten

UMBAU. Nonstop Transformation

Opening: 18. May 2023 | 18.30 Uhr

Curators Stephan Schütz, Nikolaus Goetze
Curatorial Advisor and Editor Florian Heilmeyer

Exhibition: Ausstellung: 19. May – 26. November 2023

Opening hours Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am – 6 pm. Admission free.

Öffnungszeiten Di – So 10-18 Uhr. Eintritt frei.

Salone Verde, Sestiere Santa Croce 2258, Calle della Regina, 30135 Venedig

https://umbau.gmp.de/

http://saloneverde.com/

UMBAU (conversion) means the continuous transformation of existing structures. Considering today’s climate goals, UMBAU must move from being the exception to becoming the rule. Our exhibition contributes to this by discussing seven projects by gmp as precise case studies of conversion practices from the 21st century dealing with the architectural heritage of the modern movement. What the projects have in common is a conceptual approach to UMBAU, which, starting from a comprehensive inventory of the existing, continues and develops the old as an architectural evolution. Practice shows that UMBAU must also integrate new settings and superimpositions. UMBAU is not unique, but continues into the future as a nonstop transformation, as a collaboration spanning generations.

UMBAU bedeutet die kontinuierliche Transformation des Baubestandes. Hinsichtlich der heute gesetzten Klimaziele muss UMBAU von der Ausnahme zum Normalfall werden. Unsere Ausstellung stellt sieben gmp-Projekte als konkrete Fallbeispiele von UMBAUpraktiken des 21. Jahrhundert zur Diskussion, die sich mit dem Architekturerbe der Moderne auseinandersetzen. Gemeinsam ist den Projekten die konzeptionelle Annäherung beim UMBAU, die ausgehend von der umfassenden Bestandsaufnahme das Alte als eine architektonische Evolution fortschreibt und weiterentwickelt. Die Praxis zeigt, dass UMBAU dabei auch neue Setzungen und Überlagerungen integrieren muss. UMBAU ist nicht einmalig, sondern setzt sich als Nonstop Transformation in der Zukunft fort, als eine die Generationen überspannende Zusammenarbeit.

http://www.gmp.de/de/aktuelles/41/presse/14131/umbau-nonstop-transformation-ausstellung-vom-19-mai-26-november-2023-im-salone-verde-venedig

Friday 19.05.2023

Lecture by Lance Hollman

New work needs new light

Friday 19.05.2023 | 5 p.m.

The furniture and interior concepts of office environments have changed considerably over the years, but what about the lighting? Lighting for the New Work Generation must meet functional and aesthetic requirements, focus on user needs and, above all, be designed for flexibility.

www.jackbenimble.de

BERÜHRUNGSPUNKTE Meetingpoint zur
Architekturbiennale Venedig

divia award Diversity in Architecture

DIVIA AWARD Preisträgerin

Reception in the garden: Friday, 19. May 2023 | 6 pm

17. – 21. Mai 2023 | Täglich | 9 -22 Uhr

Sestiere Dorsoduro, 874, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy

https://beruehrungspunkte.de/biennale-di-venezia/meetingpoint

http://www.palazzocontarinipolignac.com/Magazzino-Gallery

The entrance in Callesela Rota is a short walk from the Accademia vaporetto stop

Saturday 20.05.2023

BP_biennale Garten03 Leon Lenk

Anniversary Party

Saturday 20.05.2023 | 6 p.m.

Sestiere Dorsoduro, 874, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy

https://beruehrungspunkte.de/biennale-di-venezia/meetingpoint

http://www.palazzocontarinipolignac.com/Magazzino-Gallery

The entrance in Callesela Rota is a short walk from the Accademia vaporetto stop

Sunday 21.05.2023

baunetz CAMPUS guided Tour:

Modern Architecture in historical context

Sunday 21.05.2023 | 10 a.m.

Exclusive for students!

Matinee of the AHK

Sunday 21.05.2023 | 12 a.m.

Open for maintenance – wegen Umbau geöffnet

Florian Summa and Petter Krag are part of the curatorial team for the German contribution who will share their knowledge on the topic of ”Open for maintenance – Open for conversion“ in a round of talks.

Moderation:

Isabella Göring, Managing Director/Head of the Academy of the Chamber of Architects and Town Planners of Hesse (AHK), and Brigitte Holz, President of the AHK, Participants: ARCH+ / SUMMACUMFEMMER

www.ahk.de

Lecture by Prof. Jan R. Krause

Lost in Translation

Sunday 21.05.2023 | 3 p.m.

How language shapes our thinking and in times of circular planning and Planning and Building.

Architecture and the building industry are at a crucial turning point: climate sinners or climate saviours? New terms are shaping the current debate: Resilience. Sufficiency. Circularity. Lifecycle assessment. Reconstruction culture. Urban Mining. Grey Energy. ESG. Taxonomy. AI. The new vocabulary stands for new values. Does it also stand for new aesthetics, new materials, new products and new processes?

Institute for Architecture Media Management AMM

Bochum University of Applied Sciences,

amm-bochum.de

https://beruehrungspunkte.de/en/biennale-venice/biennale-meetingpoint-details/programm

No registration is necessary for the lectures

The lecture room is signposted. We reserve the right to restrict access in case of extreme crowds.

https://www.facebook.com/EstherArtNetWorking/

ALBERTINA Museum

Ofer Lellouche

From 29 June 2023

Curator: Elsy Lahner

Exhibition: 29 June – 19 September 2023

Daily | 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Wednesday & Friday | 10 a.m. to 9 p.m

Albertinapl. 1, 1010 Wien

https://www.albertina.at/en/exhibitions/ofer-lellouche/

https://www.oferlellouche.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ofer.lellouche.1

Ofer Lellouche Portrait of the Artistwith a Bust of his Father, 2019

Mixed media on paper150 × 105 cm Collection ofthe Artist© Ofer Lellouche Foto: Elad Sarig

Ofer Lellouche

29 June –19September 2023

Destruction, decay, mutilated and burned bodies, disfigured faces. Ofer Lelloucheportrays human beings in a way that is as mystical as it is radical. The output of this Tunisian-born Israeli artists brings up the oldest universally valid question pertaining to human existence: Why?

The human being as a stranger in the world, the individual abandoned by God, is a prominent theme of all eras and cultures. But in light of millennia of persecution, it is a question that enjoys a special status and degree of topicality in historical and—unfortunately—present-day Jewish thought. Lellouche also approaches this theme in light of his own multicultural identity: with the “why” always being central. Be it in the Bible or in the Talmud: in Hebrew, this existential interrogative shares the same numerical value as the word for human being (Adam), thus referring to the existing close and eternally valid connection between these two words

Ofer Lellouche Self-portrait with a Sunset I, 2011Woodcut170x 90cm

The ALBERTINA Museum, ViennaPhoto: Elad Sarig© Ofer Lellouche

The self-portrait and the human body are the most important themes in Lellouche’s oeuvre. His bodies are naked and exposed, as God created them, with how or why they were mutilated remaining a Kafkaesque mystery. Lellouche does not offer any ways out, nor does he provide a possible iconography of liberation: his figures, who seem dark and threatening, greet us with blank stares. Despite their passivity, however, the mere presence of these bodies forces us with shocking power and unsurpassed intensity to confront the question of being

Lellouche, who lives in Tel Aviv and Paris, began experimenting with video art and painting in the 1970s and has worked with a wide range of media from drawing to sculpture, etching, and woodcut over the course of his career to date. His works stand out for their unmistakability much as do those of Alberto Giacometti and Jim Dine, the latter of whom is a personal friend.

Ofer Lellouche Two, 2005 Bronze
Collection of the Artist © Ofer Lellouche | Foto: Elad Sarig

Of significant importance to the process behind his works’ creation is the unity of content and form: instead of forcing an abstract idea upon an arbitrarily chosen medium, he deliberately allows the specific characteristics of said medium—be it a woodcut, a metal plate, or a bronze casting—to determine his respective works’ final outcomes

The ALBERTINAMuseum owns several of the artist’s important woodcuts and sculptures, which it has already been able to show in various presentations of its collection. He has now donated a considerable number of his drawings and prints to the current exhibition.

Curator: Elsy Lahner

Ofer LelloucheSelf-Portrait with a Raised Hand, 2012Charcoal on paper 80 × 120 cm

The ALBERTINAMuseum, Vienna –Donated byOfer Lellouche 2023 in memory of Jan Krugier Photo: Elad Sarig © Ofer Lellouche

Ofer Lellouche *1947 in Tunis, Tunesien

is an Israeli painter, printmaker, sculptor and video artist who was born in Tunisia.

Ofer Lellouche was born in Tunisia, 1947. He studied Mathematics and Physics at Saint Louis college, Paris.

In 1966, two months before his final examinations he ran away from home to kibbutz Yehiam in the Western Galilee, Israel. In 1968, during his military service, he suffered severe hepatitis which immobilized him for several months. It was during this illness that he started to paint. He first studied with Yehezkiel Streichman, an abstract lyrical painter, at the Avni Institute of Art in Tel Aviv. He later returned to Paris to study with the sculptor Cesar, At the same time obtaining a master’s degree in Literature. His thesis concerned the work of Stephane Mallarme.

https://www.oferlellouche.com/?q=node/48

A painter, sculptor, and etcher, Ofer Lellouche lives and works in Tel Aviv and Paris. His work has been exhibited at world-renowned museums, including the Gulbenkian Museum of Modern Art in Lisbon, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art the Israel Museum Jerusalem, the CAFA Museum in Beijing, the Hymalayas Museum in Shanghai, and the Albertina Museum Wien. He has been represented by the Jan Krugier Gallery untill its closure in 2012. 

 Although he began his artistic career in the 1970s by concentrating on video art, Ofer Lellouche soon felt a need to “get back to basics”: painting. For many years, the painted self-portrait was his consuming passion. Lellouche later branched out to landscapes, the still life, and the nude model. Most recently, this versatile artist has focused on sculpture.

 Ofer Lellouche has also published theoretical treatises, including “Reflections on Narcissism”, “The Nude Descending a Staircase”, “Numbers: Thoughts on Diane Michener’s Photography”, and “The Wedding of Narcissus and Echo”.Ofer Lellouche is represented by

Ditesheim & Maffei Fine Art SA Neuchatel Gordon Gallery Tel Aviv

IN MEMORIAM Peter Weibel

* 5. März 1944 in Odessa, † 1. März 2023 in Karlsruhe

IN LIEBEVOLLER ERINNERUNG AN

PETER WEIBL

1944 -2023

DER AM 1. MÄRZ 2023 NACH KURZER SCHWERER KRANKHEIT

IN KARLSRUHE IM 78. LEBENSJAHR FRIEDLICH EINGESHCHLAFEN IST.

Die Trauerfeier findet am Dienstag, 21. März 2023 um 14:00 Uhr in der Luegerkirche (Eingang Tor 2)

auf dem Wiener Zentralfriedhof statt.

Die Beisetzung in einem Ehrengrab der Stadt Wien (Gruppe 33G, Nr. 21).

Wir trauern um einem geliebten Menschen,

außergewöhnlicen Künstler

und unübertroffenen Visionär.

Susanne Widl

Maria Weibel Schwägerin | Alexenia Weibel Nichte

Uli Rieger

Freunde und Wegbegleiter

Wien, im März 2023

Kondolenzadresse: Sussanne Widl, c/o Café Korb, Brandstätte 9,1010 Wien,

mail: cafe@cafekorb.at

© Foto EstherAttar-Machanek

Alfred Weidinger

Liebe […], Lieber Peter, 7 Minuten Redezeit, das sind gewöhnlich 700 Wörter. Unmöglich, dir, deinem Leben und deinem Vermächtnis in so kurzer Zeit gerecht zu werden, Peter. Sicher, du hättest auch das Dreifache geschafft, wie du immer das scheinbar Unmögliche möglich gemacht hast.

Jetzt bist du in eine andere Realität entrückt und ich sehe das warmherzige Schmunzeln in deinen Augen – auch weil ich diese Rede nicht alleine, sondern im Dialog mit unserer gemeinsamen Freundin Lynn Hershman-Leeson geschrieben habe. Du warst „Larger than Life“. Auf Fragen danach, ob du ein Genie bist, niemals schläfst oder vielleicht doch einfach nur verrückt bist, konnte man nur mit JA antworten. Du warst aber vor allem auch ein großzügiger Menschenfreund, und hast für die Kunst und deine Projekte gelebt. Mit dir zu arbeiten war ein gemeinschaftliches Wunder der Beschwörung, ein Prozess, Optimismus pur, bei dem Zeit keine Rolle gespielt hat, man hat die Zeit entwirrt, oder, in deinen Worten: „Nimm dir Zeit, oder sie nimmt dich.“

Jetzt hat die Zeit, dich, uns doch genommen. Erst kürzlich hast du noch gesagt: „Ich lebe ja nur, weil ich noch Projekte habe. Und die wichtigsten liegen noch vor mir. Wirklich. Also muss ich einfach noch leben.“

Kunst ermöglichen! Das war dein Credo. Denn zeitgenössische Tendenzen in der Kunst spiegeln unsere Gesellschaft. Dafür hast du dich unermüdlich eingesetzt und warst allen anderen um Meilen voraus. Peter hat fest daran geglaubt, dass Menschen Energie erzeugen – auch wenn der Energieerhaltungssatz etwas anderes besagt. Für Peter galt: Lass die Begriffe hinter dir, das Universum steht niemals still, der Weg, die Zukunft vorherzusagen, ist, sie zu erschaffen.

Ja, er war ein Visionär. Schon vor 45 Jahren sagte er mit unheimlicher Genauigkeit voraus, wie sich die Kunst in der Zukunft verändern würde. Für ihn war die Entwicklung und Bedeutung der Medienkunst vorgezeichnet – also hat er sich dafür eingesetzt: in seinen Schriften, mit Ausstellungen, Aktionen, der inhaltlichen Prägung der Ars Electronica, der Frankfurter Schule und natürlich ein Vierteljahrhundert ZKM.

Seine letzte Ausstellung dort heißt „Renaissance 3.0“ und ist ein genialer Brückenschlag zwischen arabischen, italienischen und zeitgenössischen Allianzen von Kunst und Wissenschaft. Jede Zeit nutzt ihre technischen Möglichkeiten in der Forschung, Entwicklung und in der Kunst. Für das 21. Jahrhundert heißt das: AI, KI und Metaverse. Wir haben Chat GPD über Dich befragt und folgende Antwort erhalten: „Sein Vermächtnis wird uns auch weiterhin begleiten und seine Ideen werden uns inspirieren, weiterzumachen und uns für eine bessere Welt einzusetzen. Wir werden ihn vermissen, aber wir werden ihn nicht vergessen.“

Nein Peter, was dich betrifft, weigert sich die Geschichte sich zu verflüchtigen, deine Legende und dein Vermächtnis sind deine Kunst, deine Kunstausstellungen, die Künstler:innen, die du als Mentor, und Motivator begleitet hast, deine Lebensmenschen und Freunde und nicht zuletzt deine Schriften. Für jemand, dem als Kind Bücher verboten waren, der heimlich lesen musste und seine Lektüre wie Schmugglerware versteckt hat, ist es vielleicht unausweichlich, subversiv zu lesen, zu schreiben und 120.000 Bücher zusammen zu tragen. Für diese, die er natürlich auch gelesen hatte und die Berge an beschriebenem Papier, hatte er den Plan, in Wien zwei Container-Türme zu bauen mit einem Lastenaufzug in der Mitte, der als Transportmittel und Wohnung zum arbeiten, schreiben und schlafen gedacht war. Auf eine Küche konnte er verzichten, zum Essen ging er ins Restaurant. So hat er sich seine Pension vorgestellt: Lesend, schreibend, mit seinem Lebensmenschen Susanne im Restaurant und ab und an mit ihr in Piesting, auf dem Bankerl sitzend. Wie gerne hätten wir dich, in deinem Turm besucht.

Was uns allen bleibt, sind die persönlichen Erinnerungen. An einen Menschen, der unerschrocken an seine Grenzen ging, Künstlerinnen und Künstlern in Ausstellungen gezeigt und Karrieren möglich gemacht hat. Selbst künstlerisch neue Wege gegangen ist und ein Vermächtnis hinterlassen hat, dessen Bedeutung und Größe wir nur erahnen können. Peter selbst hat gesagt, dass man seine Kunst erst ernst nehmen und verstehen wird, wenn er tot ist.

Peter, ebenfalls deine Worte: „Die symbolische Sprache ist menschlicher als die körperliche Nahkommunikation.“ Wir alle vermissen die persönliche Nahkommunikation mit dir. Für uns alle hinterlässt du eine nicht zu füllende Lücke. Und doch ist es ein kleiner Trost, dass du so viele Spuren hinterlassen hast, die uns hier in dieser Welt den Weg weisen, während du im Metaverse mit deiner unerschöpflichen Energie dafür sorgen wirst, dass das Universum niemals still steht.

Alfred Weidinger

Abschied Susanne Widl @susannewidl © Foto EstherAttar-Machanek

Das ZKM trauert um Peter Weibel

Mit großer Trauer gibt das ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe bekannt, dass der künstlerisch-wissenschaftliche Vorstand des ZKM, Peter Weibel, nach kurzer schwerer Krankheit, am 1. März 2023 im Alter von 78 Jahren in Karlsruhe verstorben ist.

Peter Weibel © ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe, Foto: Christof Hierholzer
 

Als Künstler, Theoretiker und Kurator prägte der 1944 in Odessa geborene Peter Weibel die Kunstwelt durch seine visionäre Kraft, sein umfassendes Wissen und seinen Mut. Über 24 Jahre lang entwickelte er das ZKM zu einer international renommierten Kunstinstitution mit einem weltweit einzigartigen Profil. Bis zuletzt arbeitete er intensiv an den kommenden Ausstellungen, Veranstaltungen und Publikationen des ZKM.

Petra Olschowski, Ministerin für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst des Landes Baden-Württemberg: „Mit seinen Ausstellungen im ZKM hat Peter Weibel uns immer wieder vor Augen geführt, wie sich unsere Wahrnehmung der Welt durch die digitale und mediale Transformation wandelt. Seine avancierten Ansätze waren immer herausfordernd, denn in seinen oft brillanten Konzepten war Peter Weibel dem Heute oft voraus. Das weltweite Renommee und die dauernde Weiterentwicklung und Öffnung des ZKM für Themen und gesellschaftliche Fragen sind dieser Haltung und seinem kompromisslosen Einsatz zu verdanken. In diesem Sinn war er in vielen Gremien des Landes und auch mir persönlich ein wichtiger Ratgeber. Sein plötzlicher Tod lässt uns erschüttert zurück.“

Dr. Frank Mentrup, Oberbürgermeister der Stadt Karlsruhe: „Karlsruhe verliert mit Professor Peter Weibel einen Pionier und eine herausragende Persönlichkeit. Karlsruhe bleibt weltweit als Ort des ZKM und als UNESCO Stadt der Medienkunst mit seinem Namen verbunden. Sein Tod ist ein schwerer Verlust.“

02.03.2023

zkm.de/de/magazin/2023/03/das-zkm-trauert-um-peter-weibel

Peter Weibel – Ein Rückblick auf die Highlights 1999 – 2023

© Foto EstherAttar-Machanek