The Bucharest Biennale is held once every two years in Romania's capital of Bucharest. The first one was held in 2005, so it's relatively young compared to other
biennials.
This year's festival will be curated by Felix Vogel, who studied media theory, philosophy and aesthetics in Karlsruhe and Madrid. His research was centred on the relations between aesthetics and the social sphere and, as a result, he has a particular interest in areas connected to activism, gender, historical avant-gardes and participative architecture.
Two years ago Vogel edited books for One Star Press in Paris: "Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil: Fin de reprsentation" and "Lia Perjovschi: Sense." He's also written for numerous magazines, including Pavilion which organises the biennial. Vogel has experience in lecturing for institutions such as Index in Stockholm, Evento in Bordeaux, and Pavilion Unicredit in Bucharest.
Vogel, who lives and works in Berlin, has become the youngest curator of a biennial ever. At 23 years old, Vogel believes his youth was one reason why he was appointed curator. He said in an interview it's because he's "less contaminated by the art system.''
The 2010 biennial will focus on the German term 'handlung'. Vogel says this phrase is impossible to translate because it has many levels of meaning, but "it is somehow located between action, activity, agency and participation, but at the same time it could also mean story or even narration.'' The Bucharest Biennale will scrutinise and exhaust the promise of art taking place in the public sphere and its possibility to create political action. According to the website: "The exhibition rather tries to articulate questions and suggests different prospects than to formulate answers. The biennial aims to intensify the interaction with the urban and political context in Bucharest by inviting participants, coming from different fields like arts, architecture, politics, anthropology etc."
The last biennial was curated by Jan-Erik Lundstrom and Johan Sjostrom from Sweden. The theme was 'Being Here: Mapping the contemporary'. Highlights included a Persian-style carpet disintegrating as if worn-out or moth-eaten to form the pattern of an egalitarian world map; Kharlo-Andrei Ibarra's sculptural intervention and photograph 'Flesh Map' and Mikael Lundberg's 'Lifeline', an animation of a GPS map of the artist's life that followed his longitudinal and latitudinal positions and charted scale, time, date and speed for 18 months.
