The Covid-19 pandemics reduced cultural mobility of which the biennial circuits are very much part of and created space and time for thinking and practicing interconnectedness of the biennial’s ecosystems with their immediate environments. Renewed interest in concept of locality and rootedness is one of the outcomes of this situation, in which the reclaiming and redefining of these terms in the light of its recuperation from the side of the extreme right wing seems of utmost importance.
The workshop cycle was organised in the form of 5 half-day online workshops, hosted by each Biennial in turn and conceptualised and led by curator and writer Nataša Petrešin Bachelez with the support of 5 guest initiators, Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro, Shela Sheikh, Rasha Salti, Pauliina Feodoroff and Binna Choi.
The intention is to work collaboratively towards a series of propositions for thinking, speaking, feeling, acting and remaining in an increasingly toxic institutional environments, and to speculate on a proposal for a charter for new, sustainable and intersectional models for the operation of biennials of contemporary art, which will be presented at the 3rd Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art in July 2022.
Workshop dates:
Material accountability: 8. 10. 2021
Residing with others: 18. 10. 2021
Spaces of humbleness: 5. 11. 2021
