12th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale Di Venezia Hungarian Pavilion 29 August 2010 21 November 2010 Working Diary

The artists Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska are representing Poland at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice 2010, August 29 - November 21, 2010. The Emergency Exit installation not only merges the disciplines of architecture and art within this project, it is the culmination of a collaborative dialogue between Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska that unites their interests and professional experiences. While the installation itself offers a unique and challenging experience within the Biennale context, there is also a specific set of ideas and a particular discourse in which the project is rooted. The Polish Pavilion thus represents both a cultural and epistemological moment that we attempt to unpack in this catalogue. Importantly, this background is not purely to be found in literary, theoretical or discursive texts. Rather, we hope that the many photographs, cultural references, and graphics give as much meaning to the pavilion as the essays we have brought together. In their essay Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska present the ideas behind Emergency Exit and the concept of "urban portable holes." This is complemented by an archive of reference images, theories, films, and documents that inspire and support their work within expanding and interrelated subjects: "Utopian Ruins," "Urban Exploration," "Materialization of Utopias," "ComplexCity," and "Self-organization," "Extremely Rare Events," "Holes," "Fictional Sports and Escapism." Co-published with Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw Contributors Pedro Gadanho, Agnieszka Kurant, Markus Miessen, Magnus Nilsson, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Aaron Schuster, Aleksandra Wasilkowska

This innovative new history examines in-depth how the growing popularity of large-scale international survey exhibitions, or 'biennials', has influenced global contemporary art since the 1950s. Provides a comprehensive global history of biennialization from the rise of the European star-curator in the 1970s to the emergence of mega-exhibitions in Asia in the 1990s Introduces a global array of case studies to illustrate the trajectory of biennials and their growing influence on artistic expression, from the Biennale de la Méditerranée in Alexandria, Egypt in 1955, the second Havana Biennial of 1986, New York’s Whitney Biennial in 1993, and the 2002 Documenta11 in Kassel, to the Gwangju Biennale of 2014 Explores the evolving curatorial approaches to biennials, including analysis of the roles of sponsors, philanthropists and biennial directors and their re-shaping of the contemporary art scene Uses the history of biennials as a means of illustrating and inciting further discussions of globalization in contemporary art

Upscaling, Training, Commoning features a lively account of the 10-year exploration by STEALTH.unlimited into what it means to engage with the glimpses of a world that has become conceivable in the cracks of the Global Financial Crisis (2008). Ultimately, this book is about devising methods for imagining and enacting other worlds. The perspective for this is situated between spatial practice and emerging commons, between an already plundered future and the politics of possibility, between reflection and future fiction. The book traces the moves STEALTH.unlimited (Ana Dzokić and Marc Neelen) have taken to reframe practice, to rethink economy and create urban commons. Its six-part sequence moves from critique to commitment, but along the way reveals an unsettling systemic rejection - by current politics and economy - of the urgency to upscale and 'train' for a world beyond the capitalist urban condition. The book leads us thus to a crucial question: how to construct our alternatives on the ruins of the broken system? By including personal accounts from emerging alternative voices from literature, economy and urban politics from across Europe, it expands this quest beyond the field of architecture and art.

'Living as Form' grew out of a major exhibition at Creative Time in New York City. Like the exhibition, the book is a landmark survey of more than 100 projects selected by a 30-person curatorial advisory team; each project is documented by a selection of colour images.

"The third edition of the Bienal de La Habana, which took place in 1989, extended the global territory of contemporary art and redegined the biennial model. This book examines the project in its historical and international contexts ... Making art global (part 2) will focus on the Paris exhibition 'Magiciens de la Terre' of 1989."--P. [4] of cover.