The Panoptic Garden

Guest program curated by Sara Raza (curator, writer, US) and Andris Brinkmanis (art critic and curator, Italy, Latvia).

Public program
“The Panoptic Garden” is organized by Sara Raza, NYU ITP, and Andris Brinkmanis, NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti and is a one-week intensive public program that focuses on transcultural themes relating to the garden as a discursive space through the lens of utopia, heterotopia, and dystopia. Designed in response to the 59th International Venice Biennale “Dixit Algorizmi—The Garden of Knowledge” the intensive poetically addresses algorithmic thinking and bias from a human-centric and non Euro-American centric perspective. Through the metaphor of “world-building” the program questions colonial historical narratives, assumptions, and optics.

Employing both on and offline components it offers both a site-specific and site-responsive program of land cultivation/gardening, workshops, talks, radio program, walking tours, and supper club. The program takes into account the theme of surveillance and the role of algorithms in control over global citizens, via the implementation of AI and the emergence and rapid development of quantum computing, and investigates its links to Western ideology and history.

In concert with artists, local hosts, facilitators, artists, architects, scientists, sociologists, writers, musicians the one-week intensive will culminate in a live and virtual programming, daily radio program, and digital archive and publication. Participants will undertake daily field trips across Venice visiting gardens, institutions, private homes, and other public sites and engage in lively discussion. The program will culminate in the creation of a collective publication including the intensive’s participants edited by Raza and Brinkmanis.

Web project 
Ergin Çavuşoğlu: Ephemeral Grounds, 2022
3D animation and video

Curated by Sophia Baker and Ami Mehta, Creative Technologists (NYU ITP)

Ephemeral Grounds, by conceptual artist Ergin Çavuşoğlu (b. 1968, Targovishte, Bulgaria), is a web-based interactive sculpture that transforms textile into terrain both spatially and metaphorically. The immersive experience invites viewers to virtually navigate the labyrinthine patterns and abstract architectures of an Anatolian carpet rendered as a dynamic three-dimensional landscape.

Building on Çavuşoğlu’s oeuvre of anamorphic drawings and sound and video installations, the work beckons travelers to tread carefully across an engulfing liminal space that references historical and contemporary ideas related to Islamic-Venetian trade, migration, transculturality, and empire.

The site-specific piece will launch online and live as part of “The Panoptic Garden,” a public program hosted by the Uzbekistan Pavilion at the 59th International Venice Biennale (“Dixit Algorizmi—The Garden of Knowledge”).

Events
Introduction of one-week intensive public program: July 5, 11–11:45am
Welcome words by curators Andris Brinkmanis and Sara Raza

Flying Carpets—Utopias of Mobility: July 5, 12–1pm
Artist Nadia Kaabi Linke in conversation with Sara Raza

World-building through Art: July 5, 2:30–3:30pm
Ami Mehta, Sophia Baker (NYU ITP MA), Munisa Kholkhujaeva and Leonardo Zappala (NABA MA)

From Surveillance to Sousveillance: July 5, 4–5pm
Conversation with artist Danilo Correale. Presentation of the research and film Nacht in Venedig

Swamp Observatory: Instrumentarium For a New Climatic Regime: July 6, 2:30–4:30pm
Presentation with artists Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas (Lithuania) moderated by Andris Brinkmanis

From Algorism to Algorithm. 3000 years of algorithmic rituals: July 7, 2:30–4:30pm
Presentation by Matteo Pasquinelli on history of algorithms moderated by Andris Brinkmanis

Algorithmic Perfumery: July 7, 4:45–6pm
Presentation by Anahita Mekanik (Scent Artist, USA) and conversation wth Sara Raza

The Invisible Trajectories: July 8, 2:30–5pm
Conversation between Ergin Çavuşoğlu (Artist, Bulgaria) and Sara Raza

Final Presentations of the Panoptic Garden Workshop: July 9, 11am–1pm

Walking the Sea: July 9, 2:30–4pm
Film presentation and conversation with Anton Ginzburg moderated by Gayane Umerova and Sara Raza

The Panoptic Garden Conclusive Dialogue: July 9, 4:30–5:45pm
Facilitated by Sara Raza and Andris Brinkmanis