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Seventh CEI Venice Forum for Contemporary Art Curators. Continental Breakfast 2015.
Venice, Ca’ Rezzonico Museum (Dorsoduro 3136), May 8th, 2015 [10am-1pm  |  3-6pm]

BEFORE NUMBERS.
Perspectives in funding contemporary art research.

 

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Developed on the optimism the director Okwui Enwezor is giving to the 56th International Art Exhibition in Venice under the title All the World's Futures, the 2015 CEI Venice Forum for Contemporary art Curators intends to involve professionals believing in quality and research.

 

This year, the Forum will explore and consider new ways to carry out these two elements – essential to the artistic production of all times – especially 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, this year’s discussions will focus on how to build a future based on content quality to be developed, on how current topics, issues and problems can be shaped and analysed, in order to prepare new models of interpretation of our future knowledge-based society.

 

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, that are engines of creativity, imagination and innovation "at risk", yet necessary for the preparation of the future public sphere and for the activation of a true audience development.

 

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.

 

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 will be discussed.