MAIN PROJECT
Curator of the 4th biennial main project is João Ribas (Portugal). His project revolves around three guiding metaphors which are ‘Image as witness / Capitalism choreographies / Persistent word’.
The fourth industrial revolution of information and communication technologies has transformed the way we live, work, dream, and play. How might the visual and bodily practices of contemporary artistic production form the basis for understanding the speeds, languages, and interfaces of this transformation? Employing the exhibition as a tool for visual, experiential, and discursive investigation, the 4th Ural Industrial Biennial will be organized around a series of convergent themes and will propose forms of critical literacy toward understanding the future of our network-driven conditions.
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM
The program is designed to integrate art into industrial enterprises of the Urals. Last time all the artists within the program created projects exclusively for the biennial during their stay at the enterprise. The results were exhibited within the final show.
At the 4th biennial, the program will be introduced by the art routes across the Ural towns, which will include visiting industrial sites, and public spaces where the artworks are exhibited, as well as a show in Ekaterinburg.
SPECIAL PROJECTS
The program of special projects addresses industrial thematics, and allows revealing semantic dominants of the biennial in a distinct way.
– project Work Never Stops (curated by Svetlana Usoltseva) in Tyumen
– research project Avant-Garde Architecture Of the ‘Big Ural’ Cities
– project World Building (curated by Vladimir Seleznev) in Nizhny Tagil
– ShadowMemory app (Katya Sivers and GRAD) shadowmemory.net
– Project by Timofey Radya
PERFORMANCE PLATFORM
A platform is a melting pot for directors, actors, artists, musicians, dancers, performers, playwrights, and composers. They conceive new drama formats and create performances for non-theatrical spaces.
The platform contributes to creating a new type of theatre performance in Ekaterinburg based on aesthetics of postdramatic theatre, and sets a new vector for developing theatre life in the city.
Structure of the 2017 biennial performance platform:
– key project is the oratorio Ural Lights (The Verkh-Isetsky Centre of Culture and Arts)
– invited performances of the ‘theatre post’ (St. Petersburg)
PARALLEL PROGRAM
The program brings together cultural institutions of Ekaterinburg and the Ural region during the dates of the main biennial exhibitions. Projects included in the parallel program of the biennial are independent and prepared by the curatorial teams of institutions on the basis of their collections or of works by specially invited artists. These projects represent the key theme of the biennial and develop the topic of urban environment in industrial and post-industrial periods and its reflection in the artistic practices and fates of both local and international artists.
INTELLECTUAL PLATFORM
The platform aggregates public discussions, research groups, a symposium, and a cultural-economic forum. Its focus is on new technologies, industrial design, digital humanities, speculative architecture and philosophy of technology. Its aim is on making academic knowledge accessible, on making the audience familiar with technologic innovations and their transformation of everyday life. Its products are online archives allowing exchange of the best practices.
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
Along with traditional educational formats (public lectures and artists talks), the program sets conditions for informal education, exchange of opinions, and critical discussions (tours with mediators, workshops, reading groups). Independently of age, experience and knowledge in the field of art, visitors are invited to participate in a dialogue serving better understanding of contemporary art, its social role and regional significance.
Art mediation is the new approach towards educational practice of the cultural institution, which shifts focus from the viewer as a recipient of information towards her/his active participation in producing knowledge and meanings. Mediator encourages viewers to express their own judgement about the artwork, thus shaping a space of new interpretations, discussions and joint creativity.
During the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial more than 5 000 people participated in the mediation tours.
