Addressing the issue of agency and presence at La Biennale
“Missing Pavilions: The Political Space of Representation” addresses the issue of agency and presence at the Biennale. Hosted by e-flux Architecture as part of the National Pavilion Curators Collective Midissage, the online event is organized by Nikolaus Hirsch, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, and David Theodore, curators of the Germany, Russia, and Canada Pavilions at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. It is moderated by Marina Otero Verzier and features contributions by Rupali Gupte, Anna Livia Friel and Marco Provinciali (EUPavilion), Jonas Staal, Olga Subiros, and Léa-Catherine Szacka.
Rupali Gupte is an architect and urbanist based in Mumbai. She is a co-founder of and Professor at the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA), a partner at Bard Studio, and currently a senior Research fellow at the University of Brighton. Her work involves extensive research on contemporary South Asian architecture and urbanism with a focus on housing and urban form, tactical spatial practices, and the role of gender in shaping habitation.
Anna Livia Friel is a PhD candidate at the Doctoral School of Urbanism at IUAV University of Venice, where she works as a teaching assistant while pursuing her research on the role of demolition in the project of the city. Marco Provinciali is an architect based in Rome, and co-founder of Supervoid together with Benjamin Gallegos Gabilondo. Since 2018, Anna Livia and Marco are part of EUPavilion, a laboratory of research on the relationship between architecture and the European Union.
Marina Otero Verzier is an architect based in Rotterdam. She is Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI) and head of the Social Design MA at Design Academy Eindhoven.
Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, propaganda, and democracy. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (2012–ongoing). His Ideological Guide to the Venice Biennale (2013) provided information on the political, economic, and ideological framework of all national pavilions of the 2013 Venice Biennale.
Olga Subirós is the curator of CATALONIA IN VENICE – AIR/ARIA/AIRE, a collateral event of the Biennale Architettura 2021. She is an architect and curator of exhibition projects that provide an integrative approach to twenty-first century culture and the far-reaching transformations of the digital era. Subirós a lecturer on the Data and Design master’s course at Escola Elisava-Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Léa-Catherine Szacka is Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at University of Manchester and visiting tutor at Berlage. In 2021–2022 she will be visiting Academic at ETH Zurich. Szacka is the author of Exhibiting the Postmodern: the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale (Marsilio, 2016), Biennials/Triennials: Conversations on the Geography of Itinerant Display (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2019), and more.
