Open Borders: Tourists or Explorers?

A recording of the 6 May 2015 program of Venice Agendas held during the opening week of the Biennale. The proposed theme was: do artists belong to one culture through their nationality, or are they citizens of the world?

Surprisingly, a discussion of technology takes over the agenda. Does modern communication make us all nomads? Then language and identity takes the focus. The value of curiosity about seeing and knowing other places. Are we tourists or explorers?

With moderators JW Stella (Korean contemporary art curator, London) and Mark Waugh (curator/writer with recent projects in Seoul and Gwangju) and participants Marita Isobel Solberg (Norwegian musician, visual artist, poet, and nomad of the world), Richard Demarco (born 1930, Italo-Celtic curator of cross-cultural links, worked with Joseph Beuys and Marina Abramovic), Tony Heaton (artist, Chief Executive SHAPE, a disability-led arts organization based in London), Gaynor O’Flynnn (artist and pioneer in interactive, inter disciplinary art), and Ala Younis (artist and curator born in Kuwait, based in Jordan).

Note: some of the speakers are off mic and hard to hear but hang in there. The speakers, specially the cranky, wonderful Demarco, are worth the wait.

Venice Agendas 2015 is a program of breakfast events and performances, curated by London-based workinprogress, during the preview week of the 56th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia. The theme for this edition is Crossing Boundaries; an open brief, which considers the many ways art not only trespasses geographical territories but how it crosses cultural, political and artistic boundaries.
 
The first edition of Agendas held at the Venice Biennale was in 1999, created by the sound artist Bill Furlong and the writer Mel Gooding, Since 2011 workinprogress, Clare Fitzpatrick and Terry Smith, have continued the project working closely with Vittorio Urbani, director of Nuova Icona who has supportedVenice Agendas since 1999.

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