The new Board of Directors of the Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, met on 16th January and 6th February and undertook the appointments for the Artistic Directors in 2008. The following events are set to take place this year:
The 65th International Venice Film Festival will be held between 27th August and 6th September. Marco Müller has been appointed for a further four years to continue the work he began in 2004, which has led to a Festival that is increasingly present on the international stage, responsive to emerging film industries and to new talents and at the same time can exploit a solid and constant relationship with the best film production of the world, confirming the festival as a major stage on which to launch leading international productions.
Aaron Betsky, former director for six years of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) of Rotterdam, one of the most important architecture museums and centres in the world, and since last year director of the Cincinnati Art Museum, will be the curator of the 11th International Architecture Exhibition – Out There. Architecture Beyond Building, which will open from 14th September to 23rd November. The exhibition will present site-specific installations, manifestos, landscapes and scenes of an architecture beyond building. It will also exhibit experimental architecture from around the world and highlight experimental aspects of current practice.
Ismael Ivo will conclude a four-year period in the Biennale’s Dance section with the 6th International Festival of Contemporary Dance, entitled Beauty. Art is beautiful! to take place in the second half of June. In the last three years, the Dance Festival has focused on the theme of the body, in reference to choreography and contemporary thinking. Ismael Ivo has found that the best way to conclude this cycle is with a reflection on beauty: although in today’s world this concept is seen exclusively in terms of its physical expression, leaving aside any interior value, the art of dance, which is pure beauty in movement, may be able to open up new horizons of sense and sensibility.
Luca Francesconi is to be the new Director of the Music section. The appointment provides him with a four-year mandate foreseeing not only the direction of the 52nd International Festival of Contemporary Music to take place between September and October, but also responsibility for permanent activities based around a research project.
The next two years of the Theatre section, directed by Maurizio Scaparro, will be closely tied in to two features: the first, in November 2008, with an international training and specialisation workshop; the second, in 2009, with an International Theatre Festival to be held in February of that year. Both will be associated with a single artistic theme: the Mediterranean. The aim is to rewrite the progress of theatre today, starting from the Mediterranean to reconnect with precious fragments of an antique culture being destroyed by wars and violence.
