Platform Austria – Midissage

Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer, curators of Austria’s contribution PLATFORM AUSTRIA to the 17th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia 2021, cordially invite you to their midissage talks on Saturday, 28 August 2021.

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To celebrate half-time in one of the most important international architecture shows – and two days before the official announcement of this year’s awards of the architecture biennale – most of the more than fifty contributors to PLATFORM AUSTRIA will be present in Venice. In a series of talks they will be presenting their respective projects and discuss current challenges posed to architecture with the audience.

At 4:00 pm, Peggy Deamer (Yale University and author of Architecture and Labor), Saskia Sassen (Columbia University and author of Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy), and Sandro Mezzadra (Bologna University and co-author of The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism) will be talking about “Labour in the Platform City” in the courtyard of the Austrian Pavilion.

Further participants in the talks, which have been scheduled to take place from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm are, among others, Tom Avermaete, Orit Halpern, Tiziana Terranova, Peter Lang, Leo Hollis, Daniel Cardoso Llach, Owen Hatherley, Jochen Becker, Bernadette Krejs, Mona Mahall & Asli Serbest, Benj Gerdes, Ofri Cnaani, Andreas Kofler, Lucia Babina, and Gerald Nestler & Sylvia Eckermann, as well as the collectives FairWork, Into the Black Box, and Slutty Urbanism.

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For the first time in the history of the Venice Biennale, the curators of individual countries’ pavilions have formed a transnational network, the so-called Curators Collective. The midissage events at the Austrian Pavilion are thus embedded in a more comprehensive programme facilitating a lively exchange between the various national pavilions.

To mark the occasion, Irit Rogoff (Goldsmiths, University of London and co-founder of the freethought collective), Hae-Won Shin (curator of the Korean Pavilion), and Rafał Śliwa (member of PROLOG, the team of curators of the Polish Pavilion) will be talking about “Networked Practices of Curating” starting at 2:00 pm.

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A get-together at the Rialto fish market in the evening, with music, Italian delicacies, and organic wine from the Lenikus vineyard, will be an opportunity to meet our illustrious guests – not only the Austrian Pavilion’s but also many others involved in this midissage initiative of the participating pavilions – in a relaxed atmosphere.

Due to limited spatial capacities, participation in the event at the Rialto fish market will only be possible with a personal invitation. Please register beforehand by writing to office@platform-austria.org.