LA BIENNALE SUMMER SCHOOL 2017
LA BIENNALE SUMMER SCHOOL 2017
This year’s La Biennale Summer School will consider the question of display and the applied arts. The applied arts, as a historic category, occupies an ambiguous territory in terms of display and perception. It can exist simultaneously in a museum, in a commercial shop window, and in the everyday setting of the home. As it moves through these different spaces, each with their own framing mechanisms and strategies, the objects in question take on different meanings. As such, they offer a uniquely rich object lesson in the operations and values of our different cultural institutions.
What is the ideal scenario in which to present objects that can represent high art, daily culture, or intimate personal stories?
The 2017 Summer School will investigate different strategies of display for the Applied Arts, and in so doing speculate on the Applied Arts Pavilion itself, and what an Applied Arts Pavilion for the 21st Century could be.
Participants will experience during two weeks with artists and theorists from various fields, the evolving history of curatorial and commercial display, the nuances between exhibition for fine art, applied art, and other types of objects and the alternative and new strategies for display;
Lessons, practical workshops, and behind-the-scenes visits to the 57th International Art Exhibition, the Historical Archives of La Biennale di Venezia, and other locations around Venice will be planned.
The Summer School will be closely related—in space and in spirit—to Jorge Pardo’s installation work. Pardo has continuously questioned the framing and viewing of things: from building an entire house to be lived in (4166 Sea View Lane) as an installation piece for MOCA in the 1990s; to his lobby redesign of the Dia Center in NYC in 2000; to providing sculptural armatures for the display of pre-Columbian artefacts at LACMA in 2008; to his ambitious series of buildings in Tecoh, Mexico, Pardo has created work that goes beyond the white cube, challenging where and how art can be shown. His installation in the Applied Arts Pavilion will provide a stimulating departure point for the Summer School’s debates, tours and projects.
About the Applied Arts Pavilion
The Applied Arts Pavilion is a partnership between La Biennale di Venezia and the Victoria and Albert Mu- seum, and is intended to serve as testing ground for ideas concerning art, design and architecture, and their relationship with contemporary everyday life. As such, the Summer School is intended to complement the pavilion, by digging deeper into the ideas presented in the exhibition, through lectures, excursions, debates, and workshops.
