The Venice Architecture Biennale, which will run from May 20 to November 26, 2023 in that Italian city, will have as its title and theme "The laboratory of the future", announced the organization.
The selection, through a limited competition, of the curatorial and exhibition project that will officially represent Portugal at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia 2023 is taking place until the 25th of October 2022, with a global financial amount available of €350,000 (three hundred and fifty thousand euros). The set of curators/curatorial team invited to present proposals is composed by Ricardo Carvalho, Andreia Garcia and Atelier do Corvo (Carlos Antunes, Désirée Pedro). The appreciation committee is made up of Paulo Carretas (senior technician at DGARTES), who coordinates it, Joaquim Moreno, Isabel Ortins Simões Raposo, Julia Albani and Nuno Grande (experts). Projects must be related to the theme "The Laboratory of the Future", proposed by the Bienal's Curator, Lesley Lokko, architect and writer, who in the last 30 years has reflected in her work on the relationships between 'race', culture and space .
“New technologies continually appear and disappear, giving us unfiltered glimpses of life in parts of the globe we will likely never visit, let alone understand,” said Lesley Lokko, curator of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, adding that seeing up close and far simultaneously is a form of “double consciousness”, the internal conflict of all subordinated or colonized groups, which describes most of the world, not only “over there”, in the so-called developing countries, third world and Arab world, but also “here”, in the metropolises and countries of the north.
“In Europe, we talk about minorities and diversity, but the truth is that our norm is that minorities in the West are the diversity of the global majority. There is one place on this planet where all these issues of equity, race, hope and fear converge and link up: Africa. On an anthropological level, we are all Africans. And what happens in Africa happens to all of us”, underlined the artistic director of the architecture department.
Candidate proposals should also take into account objectives such as boosting the internationalization of Portuguese arts and culture through cooperation with other countries; valuing the educational dimension and raising awareness of culture through good public mediation practices; environmental sustainability and the implementation of good ecological practices; the promotion of artistic research and experimentation as innovative practices of development and knowledge; the promotion of physical, social and intellectual accessibility for all professionals involved in artistic projects and the respective audiences.
The Official Portuguese Representation will be located at Palazzo Franchetti during the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia 2023, which will take place between May 20 and November 26, 2023.
