Application deadline: December 15, 2017
The 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art will take place in Moscow (Russia) from June 8, 2018.
The curator of the main project is Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti, a young independent curator from Italy. The theme proposed for the 2018 biennial is Abracadabra.
Open call
Applications to participate in the biennial’s main project are accepted from artists of up to 35 years of age.
Curators of up to 35 years of age will be able to submit applications with their concepts for the biennial’s strategic projects that will take place at National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) and Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA).
Applications are accepted at www.youngart.ru until December 15, 2017.
About Abacadabra
Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti, curator of the biennial’s main project: “It has been largely theorised that the contemporary “economy of presence” has made fluid the boundaries between the professional, private and social spheres of human activity. Institutional apparatuses rely on our incessant self-performance, where immaterial labour, personal commitment and the search for pleasure are barely distinguishable and in constant operation. In this dystopian pleasure-based economy, the conventional arbiters of value convert easily into immaterial alternatives such as emotions and experiences. Love and authenticity are the currencies of our time, exchanged alternatively through restless online posting, reproductive labour and the good vibes produced by corporate mindfulness meditation sessions. In our 24/7 workday it becomes unclear whether we are performing by our own will or not, which makes the practice of strike as physical absence an unsuitable strategy of withdrawal. How can we navigate chrono-imperialist, sleepless self-performance and still claim the right to inhabit our own time? What kind of autonomous agencies can we perform in order to resist holistic burnout?
Abracadabra is an archaic magical incantation with opaque origins and the title of a homonymous 1980s disco hit by the Steve Miller Band. It is a performative word, suggesting the hazardous production of unforeseen surplus energy as a strategy to navigate sub-political quicksand. Staged in an electrically charged society, crisscrossed by apparently unintentional intensities and elusive forces, Abracadabra draws a line through contemporary forms of suggestion and disenchantment, the growing interest of contemporary culture in esoteric, clandestine practices, and the ecology of “the night out” as exuberant fugitive protocols. Abracadabra will investigate the imaginary and transformative force of these minor, and sometimes hidden, narratives, proposing the historically charged subculture of the dance floor as a scenario where different times can be inhabited, animated proxies can be invented, and conditions can be staged to host embodied experiments in exuberance. Notions of secrecy, generosity, metabolism, posture, attention and intimacy gain operational meaning in the attempt to transform protocols of consumption in situated activities. That’s why we will place emphasis on time-based practices, video and interdisciplinary research, and we hope to find practitioners whose work aims at activating space and landscapes through notions of performativity and agency.”
About the curator
Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti (Italy, 1990) is an independent curator and co-founder of the research-driven non-profit project CLOG, Torino. She completed the curatorial programme by De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, in 2017 and she works as the coordinator of the Young Curators Residency Programme by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino. She graduated with a degree in in visual and performing arts from the renowned Venetian university IUAV, attended the curatorial programme CAMPO12 at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and pursued a curatorial internship at Artists Space, New York. She previously worked as artistic advisor for Artissima (Internazionale d’Arte Contemporanea), assistant curator for Tutttovero by Francesco Bonami and Shit and Die by Maurizio Cattelan, Myriam Ben Salah and Marta Papini. She writes for contemporary art and culture journals and founded the online projects Curatorshit, shitndie and Ketchup Drool. Her most recent projects include: Why Is Everybody Being So Nice?, De Appel, Amsterdam, Goodbye, See You After the Revolution!, UvA, Amsterdam, Dear Betty: Run Fast, Bite Hard, GAMeC, Bergamo.
