AKT & Hermann Czech: Partecipazione / Beteiligung

This exhibition questions the Venice Biennale’s spatial policy—the vacancy of one half of the pavilion becomes the exhibit. 

The slogan of this year’s Biennale is “The Laboratory of the Future”. Architecture collective AKT & Hermann Czech originally planned to make one half of the Austrian Pavilion freely accessible from the neighbouring district of Sant’Elena. Engaging in an intensive exchange with local initiatives and residents, the project was conceived as the Biennale’s turning to the surrounding city: not in the form of further expansion, but as a reversal of this spatial practice, which in recent years has also been criticised by the international press. Now the Biennale and the Monuments Office have indicated that they reject the opening of the pavilion towards the city. The question of what role the world’s most important architecture exhibition will play in the future of the city of Venice will thus be all the more in the focus of the exhibition. 

Extension 
AKT & Hermann Czech took a possible refusal of the opening of the pavilion into account in their original concept. The contribution now will showcase the international mega exhibition’s constant expansion that has taken place since its foundation and the population’s exclusion from spaces occupied by it. In this context, experiencing the vacancy of one half of the pavilion will become an exhibit in its own right, raising the question of what role an international architecture exhibition can play in a city. “Partecipazione” was already one of the core demands on the Biennale’s first Architecture Exhibitions in the 1970s, as was dealing with Venice and its most pressing issues on site. The Austrian contribution harks back to these two approaches through its conversion of the pavilion, while juxtaposing them with the Biennale’s present-day spatial practice in the exhibition and publication. This will be accompanied by events organised by the local residents and Venetian initiatives along the Giardini’s wall, in public places throughout the city, and in private gardens, as well as in tours of the city and around the Giardini’s boundary. 

Rejection  
After a new access through the border wall was rejected in earlier negotiations, the proposal of building a bridge between the city and the pavilion, which was submitted in January, has now also been dismissed, as things stand at present. The reasons given in a preliminary protocol by the Biennale and the Monuments Office are that this would create a precedent and that the indivisible use of the pavilion and the Giardini as monuments would be compromised through public access. 

Expansion 
The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue therefore will present the results of findings collected over one and a half years by AKT & Hermann Czech in collaboration with local researchers as to the Biennale’s growing demand of space in the Giardini and the Arsenale, as well as for collateral events throughout the city. In the exhibition catalogue, local guest authors will contrast these developments with Venice’s urban reality. Last year, the population of Venice fell below its historic low of 50,000. A tourist monoculture, the economic exploitation of urban space, the accompanying processes of displacement, and the loss of essential infrastructure have continuously driven the depopulation of the city. 

Appeal 
All this will now be made even more distinctly visible in the exhibition and discussed in alternative locations, for even and especially in the case of the Biennale’s refusal, local residents and collaborating initiatives have compiled a dense programme of activities. 

It is thus not only the Austrian contribution but also said freely accessible programme of events organised by Venetian residents and initiatives that will focus on the institution’s role in the city throughout the six-month duration of the exhibition. To say it in the words of the Venetian organisation We are here Venice: “Can the Biennale do more than raise awareness of the issues which face the contemporary city? […] Can an organisation showcase references to social and environmental justice without specifically addressing these issues in its operations?”

Team: AKT & Hermann Czech.

AKT is: Fabian Antosch, Gerhard Flora, Max Hebel, Adrian Judt, Julia Klaus, Lena Kohlmayr, Philipp Krummel, Gudrun Landl, Lukas Lederer, Susanne Mariacher, Christian Mörtl, Philipp Oberthaler, Charlie Rauchs, Helene Schauer, Kathrin Schelling, Philipp Stern, Harald Trapp.

Information: info [​at​] labiennale2023.at. Newsletter here.