7th Biennale Gherdëina
– a breath? a name? – the ways of worldmaking
08 Aug - 20 Oct 2020
Curated by Adam Budak
Worlds like words multiply in the narrative of lives we conduct. One after another, and the one next to it, they proliferate in an organic process of symbiosis and growth. American philosopher, Nelson Goodman underlines the world’s collective self-referentiality, its interdependency and plurality: “If I ask about the world, you can offer to tell me how it is under one or more frames of reference; but if I insist that you tell me how it is apart from all frames, what can you say?” Nelson sees the world as a fabric of interwoven narratives; our role is to retell those narratives. To find the strategy - the way to do it - is what constitutes and determines our task: “We are confined to ways of describing whatever is described. Our universe, so to speak, consists of these ways rather than of a world or of worlds. (…) The many stuffs - matter, energy, waves, phenomena - that worlds are made of are made along with the worlds. But made from what? Not from nothing, after all, but from other worlds. Worldmaking as we know it always starts from worlds already on hand; the making is remaking.”
Such is a paramount premise of the 7th Biennale Gherdëina: to research and to challenge our ability to contribute to an active process of the world’s continuous (re)making while the world we inhabit finds itself at its apparent limit: in a critical precarious moment of a sociopolitical turmoil, an ethical vacuum and an immunological crisis. The principle of responsibility and care, as well as civic responsiveness and a humility linked to it, come forth as agencies of our daily poiesis, defining the urgency to act and engage. We are in this together, a chant frequently uttered during the recent months of the pandemic limbo, reminds the founding statement of the philosopher Rosi Braidotti’s politics of affirmation. We are this world’s participants, its tender narrators and the passerby, listening to the poets, the Shelleyian “unacknowledged legislators of the world”. Ultimately, we are the interpreters of this world and its vast fields of land and thought, both real and imaginary. In this together.
Artists:
Agnieszka Brzeżanska (PL)
Brave New Alps (IT)
Carlos Bunga (PT)
Pavel Büchler (CZ/GB)
Josef Dabernig (AT)
Aron Demetz (IT)
Habima Fuchs (CZ)
Henrik Håkansson (SE)
Petrit Halilaj e Alvaro Urbano (XK – ES)
Ingrid Hora (IT)
Paolo Icaro (IT)
Hans Josephsohn (CH)
Lang/Baumann (CH)
Tonico Lemos Auad (BR)
Kris Lemsalu (EE)
Sharon Lockhart (US)
Myfanwy MacLeod (CA)
Antje Majewski (DE)
Marcello Maloberti (IT)
Franz Josef Noflaner (IT)
Paulina Ołowska (PL)
Pakui Hardware (LT)
Maria Papadimitriou (DE)
Nicolas Party (CH)
Stefan Rinck (DE)
Hermann Josef Runggaldier (IT)
Marinella Senatore (IT)
Paloma Varga Weisz (DE)
Worlds like words multiply in the narrative of lives we conduct. One after another, and the one next to it, they proliferate in an organic process of symbiosis and growth. American philosopher, Nelson Goodman underlines the world’s collective self-referentiality, its interdependency and plurality: “If I ask about the world, you can offer to tell me how it is under one or more frames of reference; but if I insist that you tell me how it is apart from all frames, what can you say?” Nelson sees the world as a fabric of interwoven narratives; our role is to retell those narratives. To find the strategy - the way to do it - is what constitutes and determines our task: “We are confined to ways of describing whatever is described. Our universe, so to speak, consists of these ways rather than of a world or of worlds. (…) The many stuffs - matter, energy, waves, phenomena - that worlds are made of are made along with the worlds. But made from what? Not from nothing, after all, but from other worlds. Worldmaking as we know it always starts from worlds already on hand; the making is remaking.”
Such is a paramount premise of the 7th Biennale Gherdëina: to research and to challenge our ability to contribute to an active process of the world’s continuous (re)making while the world we inhabit finds itself at its apparent limit: in a critical precarious moment of a sociopolitical turmoil, an ethical vacuum and an immunological crisis. The principle of responsibility and care, as well as civic responsiveness and a humility linked to it, come forth as agencies of our daily poiesis, defining the urgency to act and engage. We are in this together, a chant frequently uttered during the recent months of the pandemic limbo, reminds the founding statement of the philosopher Rosi Braidotti’s politics of affirmation. We are this world’s participants, its tender narrators and the passerby, listening to the poets, the Shelleyian “unacknowledged legislators of the world”. Ultimately, we are the interpreters of this world and its vast fields of land and thought, both real and imaginary. In this together.
Artists:
Agnieszka Brzeżanska (PL)
Brave New Alps (IT)
Carlos Bunga (PT)
Pavel Büchler (CZ/GB)
Josef Dabernig (AT)
Aron Demetz (IT)
Habima Fuchs (CZ)
Henrik Håkansson (SE)
Petrit Halilaj e Alvaro Urbano (XK – ES)
Ingrid Hora (IT)
Paolo Icaro (IT)
Hans Josephsohn (CH)
Lang/Baumann (CH)
Tonico Lemos Auad (BR)
Kris Lemsalu (EE)
Sharon Lockhart (US)
Myfanwy MacLeod (CA)
Antje Majewski (DE)
Marcello Maloberti (IT)
Franz Josef Noflaner (IT)
Paulina Ołowska (PL)
Pakui Hardware (LT)
Maria Papadimitriou (DE)
Nicolas Party (CH)
Stefan Rinck (DE)
Hermann Josef Runggaldier (IT)
Marinella Senatore (IT)
Paloma Varga Weisz (DE)