15th Biennale de la Mediterranée
Thessaloniki, Rome and Casablanca
October 2011 – February 2012
Keywords of this new format are:
art and territory: every activity is based on site specific concept developed with local partners;
south shore: stronger presence in the south shore with more partners, artists and activities in the area;
opportunities for artists: a platform for exchanges and residencies, with stronger partners and visibility.
At the end of this journey, more than 400 artists under 30, from europe and mediterranean will have participated to our activities, presented in the framework of the common theme: “symbiosis?”
Curatorial Framework:
In order to define the curatorial framework of the event, a pool of experts and curators from Thessaloniki, leaded by Christos Savvidis, has redacted an introductory text based on the issue “Symbiosis?”. Here you can find an extract:
“The XV Biennale de la Mediterranée formulates its topic in the form of a question: Symbiosis?…this project seeks to raise a number of questions, including: how might we live together? Better, how to live together within different political modes of existence? How human self-fulfillment is advanced through symbiosis?…How is shared reality rearranged through expanded artistic practices?…How does the recent march of political events in parts of the Mediterranean reorientate the conditions of living together in the Mediterranean basin? In what way the work of art can function as an inner mould of ‘reading’ the ‘self’ and the ‘other’?”…
Starting from this text, we have invited experts and curators to define specific guidelines for each art fields that is included in the event: Costanza Paissan, curator – MACRO Roma; Emilia Giorgi, curator – MAXXI Roma; Alessandro Montedoro, chef – Suzhou Marriott Hotel; Gaia Tridente, programmer – RomeFictionFest and Francesco Gavatorta, blogger – Scuola Holden Torino.
Selection Process:
To the event participate more than 400 artists, from 18 to 30 years old, living in more than 30 countries, with strong presence of artists coming from the Mediterranean area. The selection of participants is carried out, according to the general shared criterias, by local experts and curators in most of the cases trough the process of an open call for participation. The main selection criterias are: the coherence of the proposed concept in relation with the topic “Symbiosis?” and the potential talent of the artist in relation to the actual trends in contemporary art and culture.
Once the artists selected, a curatorial team in each city will define a program of the event and of the exhibit, in order to give coherence to the selection and to present the artists and the activities related according the specifics characteristics of the city and its cultural and social context.