04 May 2015

May 8th, 2015: Seventh CEI Venice Forum for Contemporary Art Curators

This year, the 2015 CEI Venice Forum for Contemporary art Curators will explore and consider new ways to carry out quality and research and will involve professionals believing that these two elements – essential to the artistic production of all times – are especially needed in times of economic depression.

While the new public funds system does not provide enough resources to foster experimental production and is more insistently asking the sector of visual arts to become an industry capable of demonstrating efficiency through the amount of numbers it is able to put in place, and when public money is used for large projects and wide partnerships, sometimes forced to state the obvious in compliance with the rules for 'quantity' of presentation (especially through the media and the new social media) and participation (first of all, numbers related to audience, but also numbers related to hospitality and mobility of personnel), the 2015 Forum will pay attention to the need for continuity in research and in experimental artistic and curatorial practice.
We will also consider what the scenario in Europe would be like in the medium and long term, should the current funding guidelines not be integrated with the option of conducting smaller-scale research projects where both independent organisations and more structured public institutions can test the new aesthetic production processes and their impact on the contemporary world and operate as critical incubators of imagination and innovation for the preparation of the future public sphere and for the activation of a true audience development.

Since the plurality of art experts unanimously believe that giving continuity to experimental production is crucial for the art sector and represents a contribution for a better future, appropriate ways to support this continuity of will be discussed.


Go to www.triestecontemporanea.it to read speakers' schedule and register online!


2015 Venice Forum is conceived and organised in co-operation with the CEI-Central European Initiative and in collaboration with the Institute for Contemporary Art in Zagreb. The event is held under the patronage of Mr Tibor Navracsics, Member of the European Commission and under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, the Central European Initiative, the Provincia di Venezia, the Provincia di Trieste, the Comune di Venezia, the Comune di Trieste, the University Ca' Foscari in Venice, the University of Trieste, the Goethe-Institut Triest and the International Venice Foundation. It is supported by the CEI and the Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia. Thanks to the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.


The CEI Venice Forum for Contemporary Art Curators is a biennial event to be held in close connection with the opening of the Venice Biennale. It deals with the topics of cultural promotion and the exchange of curatorial experiences. The initiative is opened to Central Eastern European experts and curators and to the commissioners of the Venice Biennale responsible for the national pavilions of CEE countries. The event is carried out by the Trieste Contemporanea Committee under the auspices of the CEI-Central European Initiative, which in 2003 adopted the Venice Forum as one of its Feature Cultural Events, and is an activity of the European network Continental Breakfast that fosters the creation of partnership projects and multidimensional capacity building exchange programmes in the field of contemporary art in CEE.