May 5–10, 2026
Venice
Italy
Radio GAMeC is back on the airwaves: the seventh season of the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art’s digital platform, Pedagogy of Hope, is curated by Lorenzo Giusti and Lara Facco and arrives in Venice as a Collateral Event of the 61st Venice Biennale.
The title echoes that of the museum’s 2026 program—dedicated to education as a practice of freedom and transformation, inspired by the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire—sharing themes and objectives through a reinterpretation of the radio platform as a device for listening and a tool for critical and participatory learning.
“Today, we need to question which forms of knowledge and skills are essential to understanding and transforming contemporary reality, and which educational practices can foster autonomy and critical thinking in a context of widespread conflict where algorithms and digital flows shape learning processes in an ever more automatized fashion,” states GAMeC Director Lorenzo Giusti. “Equally central is the reflection on how dialogical processes can be integrated with the disciplinary expertise of cultural institutions. In other words, it involves clarifying what it means to educate today and through which tools.”
Pedagogy of Hope will foreground decentralized perspectives and non-hegemonic forms of knowledge, placing them in dialogue with the theme of the Biennale Arte 2026, In Minor Keys, conceived by Koyo Kouoh (1967–25). The “minor keys” thus become not only a thematic reference but a genuine pedagogical approach capable of interrogating the present and opening spaces for imagination and hope.
Venice week programming
Conceived from the outset as a digital archive of voices, reflections, and imaginaries, Radio GAMeC will relaunch from Venice as a temporary broadcaster: from Tuesday May 5 to Sunday May 10, during the opening week of the Biennale Arte 2026, Pedagogy of Hope will be on air from the premises of Radio Vanessa, a historic independent local radio station founded clandestinely in 1978, and the only one still broadcasting on FM from the town center, between the Arsenale and the Giardini.
The program will be developed as an open and dynamic process, progressively shaped through encounters and relationships formed over the course of the Biennale and beyond. It will unfold through a series of conversations with Italian and international guests, articulated across different fields of practice and research in order to foster a broad and cross-cutting dialogue on the central themes of the project.
The first week of programming places a significant focus on the visual and performing arts, featuring the participation of international artists. The voices, experiences, and reflections of Ei Arakawa-Nash, Sammy Baloji, Éric Baudelaire, blaxTARLINES KUMASI, Eglė Budvytytė, Bonnie Devine, Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, Guadalupe Maravilla, Nonument Group, Gala Porras-Kim, Tabita Rezaire, Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser, Kemang Wa Lehulere—to name but a few—will enrich the platform with narratives on contemporary artistic practices, fostering critical exchange on the educational urgencies of our time.
Expanding this dialogue, artists such as Aliaskar Abarkas, Chiara Bersani, Chiara Camoni, Mohammad AlFaraj, Gabrielle Goliath, Dan Lie, Ahmet Öğüt, Hito Steyerl, Cecilia Vicuña will also contribute to the program, exploring themes such as disability aesthetics, decoloniality, and the digital mediation of reality.
The program will also engage curatorial and educational perspectives through figures such as philosopher Federico Campagna, professor of Cognition and Education Howard Gardner, researcher Els Silvrants-Barclay, and curators Ute Meta Bauer, Janna Graham, Philippe Pirotte, and Sam Thorne. The area of science and technology will be explored with data science and artificial intelligence expert Georg Fuchs, professor of Computer Engineering Juan Carlos De Martin, philosopher of science and evolutionist Telmo Pievani, computational semanticist Aurélie Herbelot, and quantum technologies researcher Tommaso Calarco.
Contributions from the fields of media and cultural studies will be brought by Marie Moïse, writer and lecturer in intercultural communication, and McKenzie Wark, theorist and writer working across media theory and critical studies. The program will also extend into the field of anthropology with Tim Ingold, and music with trumpeter Paolo Fresu, and singer-songwriter Vasco Brondi.
To guide these conversations, the season’s first episodes will feature a diverse rotation of hosts who will join Lorenzo Giusti and Lara Facco throughout the week, such as Andrea Contin, Guia Cortassa, Micaela Deiana, Silvia Franceschini, Ilaria Gadenz, Valentina Gervasoni, Ilaria Gianni, Irene Guandalini, Alice Labor, Greta Martina, Barbara Meneghel, Nicola Ricciardi, and Jelena Sofronijevic, ensuring a multifaceted narrative approach to the radio programming.
New contributors will join the project in the upcoming months, progressively enriching a program that remains open by design to foster a plurality of perspectives throughout the entire season.
Broadcasts will be introduced by the brand-new sound piece Pedagogy of Hope, a special commission by Kenyan composer and performer Nyokabi Kariũki, whose practice encompasses contemporary classical, experimental electronic music, film scoring, sound art, field recording, and East African musical traditions.
During the week, the physical headquarters of Pedagogy of Hope will be open daily to the public as a space for listening, encounter, and participation, combining on-site experiences with FM broadcasting on Radio Vanessa and streaming on the new web radio radio.gamec.it.
Radio GAMeC’s program will run until November 22, the closing date of the Biennale Arte 2026; the contents produced will become part of the Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts of La Biennale di Venezia, and will then be made available online as a public resource accessible to everyone.
