Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art
September 22–October 1, 2015
Pavilion No.1 of VDNKh
Prospect Mira 121
Moscow
Russia
How to Gather? Acting in a Center in a City in the Heart of the Island of Eurasia
Curators: Bart De Baere, Director of MUHKA, Antwerp; Defne Ayas, Director of Witte de With, Rotterdam; Nicolaus Schafhausen, Director of Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna
Driven by the questions of how to live together and how to activate capacities for the future, the 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art aspires to be a think-in to be realized over ten days. It is a declaration of intent and an invitation to engage. Counting on the commitment of its participants—more than 70 Russian and international artists and thinkers, the program invites art and cultural workers as well as visitors to take part in a common undertaking to articulate their experiences of creative and intellectual practice and to engage in an exchange between individuals and commonality, Moscow and the world, the so-called East and the West.
Preliminary program
Lineup of daily keynotes:
September 22
Rem Koolhaas (architect), Saskia Sassen (sociologist)
September 23
Michelangelo Pistoletto (artist)
September 24
Ulrike Guérot (political scientist)
September 25
Mariana Mazzucato (economist)
September 26
Ackbar Abbas (professor of comparative literature)
September 27
Ilya Budraitskis (historian and activist), Tom McDonough (writer), Maya van Leemput (futurologist), Lee Weng Choy (curator)
September 28
Eyal and Ines Weizman (architecture theorists)
September 29
Pascal Gielen (sociologist, art theorist)
September 30
Evgeny Gontmakher (economist)
October 1
Yanis Varoufakis (economist)
Artists Babi Badalov, Sergey Bratkov, Honoré δ’O, Els Dietvorst, Fabrice Hyber, Elena Kholkina, Li Mu, Augustas Serapinas, Luc Tuymans, Peter Wächtler, Anastasiya Yarovenko, Qiu Zhijie and Constantin Zvezdochotov will realize works on site.
Recurring daily statements and performances by Saâdane Afif, Ricardo Brey, Vaast Colson, Rana Hamadeh, Inventing Ritual by MadeIn, Anna Jermolaewa, Gabriel Lester, Hanne Lippard, Leon Kahane, Alevtina Kakhidze, Donna Kukama, Andrey Kuzkin, Taus Makhacheva, Mian Mian, David Polzin and Suchan Kinoshita, u/n multitude and Anton Vidokle
Open meetings with Burak Arikan, Simon Denny and Maya Van Leemput
Birdhead, Ives Maes, Otto Snoek and Maarten Vanden Abeele will develop a photography-based vision of the state of Moscow today, and every day one artist will be a focus of attention through a video program: Maria Thereza Alves and Jimmie Durham, Keren Cytter, Ieva Epnere, Evgeny Granilshchikov, Nastio Mosquito, Chan-Kyong Park, Jon Rafman, Meggy Rustamova and Lu Yang.
Further contributions by Flaka Haliti, Isa Genzken, Liam Gillick, Aleksander Komarov, Almagul Menlibayeva, Katja Novitskova, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Goran Petrović Lotina, Studio for New Music Ensemble Moscow, Alexander Ugay, Amalia Ulman, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Ho Tzu Nyen and Johanna Van Overmeir
The Moscow Biennale includes more than a hundred exhibitions throughout the city, structured within several categories. Only on the grounds of VDNKh are there three major exhibitions, besides the Caucasian Pavilion, which will be built by The Unbound art collective, invited by the biennial as a fourth, autonomous curator.
The 6th Moscow Biennale is organized by the Moscow Biennale Foundation and is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, and VDNKh. Its commissioner is Joseph Backstein.
The biennial takes place from September 22 to October 1, 2015, at VDNKh. A documentary exhibition about it will run at the same location from October 2 to November 1, 2015.
Rietumu Bank, the leading private bank in Latvia, known also for its support of Latvian-Russian cultural links, is the general sponsor of the 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art.
