La Biennale di Venezia Foundation

The Venice Biennale has for over a century been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. Ever since its foundation in 1895, it has been in the avant-garde, promoting new artistic trends and organising international events in the contemporary arts in accordance with a multi-disciplinary model which characterises its unique nature.
Check out the benefits for holders of the Biennale Card 2008.

Biennale Music 

52nd International Festival of Contemporary Music  

Roots / Future 

Janulyte / Stravinsky / Tally / Nono [choir and orchestra]  

Orchestra and Choir of the Teatro La Fenice
Teatro alle Tese - Thursday 2 October, 8 p.m.

Stravinskij / Xenakis / dall’Ongaro / Lachenmann [orchestra]  

Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI
Teatro alle Tese - Friday 3 October, 8 p.m.

Adès / Kurtág / Donatoni / Gorli / Stockhausen [piano recital]  

Maria Grazia Bellocchio, piano
Sale Apollinee at the Teatro La Fenice - Saturday 4 October, 5 p.m.

Knussen / Bedford / Anderson / Grisey [chamber orchestra]  

London Sinfonietta
Teatro Piccolo Arsenale - Saturday 4 October, 8 p.m.

De Pirro / Beethoven / Nono [string quartet]  

String Quartet of the Teatro La Fenice
Sale Apollinee at the Teatro La Fenice - Sunday 5 October, 5 p.m.

Lutosławski / Corghi / Vacchi / Lindberg [orchestra]  

Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice
Teatro Piccolo Arsenale - Sunday 5 October, 8 p.m.

Stockhausen [opera]  

musikFabrik / La Fura dels Baus
Teatro alle Tese, Arsenale - Tuesday 7 October, 8:00 p.m.

Dusapin / Ligeti / Chin / Murail [piano recital]  

Aldo Orvieto, piano
Sale Apollinee at the Teatro La Fenice - Wednesday 8 October, 5 p.m.

Other Roots  

Cuncordu di Castelsardo / Cantadores a chiterra de deris, de oe e de sempre
Trilok Gurtu / Franco D’Andrea / Fabrizio Bosso
Teatro alle Tese, Arsenale - Wednesday 8 October, 8.00 p.m.

Petraškevičs / Maderna / Ambrosini / Grisey [ensemble]  

Ex Novo Ensemble
Teatro Piccolo Arsenale - Friday 10 October, 6 p.m.

Solbiati / Saariaho / Paredes / Manzoni [orchestra]  

Orchestra dell’Arena di Verona
Teatro alle Tese, Arsenale - Friday 10 October, 8 p.m

Scarlatti / Berio / Debussy [piano recital]  

Andrea Lucchesini, piano
Sale Apollinee, Teatro La Fenice - Saturday 11 October, 5:00 p.m.

Bulfon / Grisey / Dufourt / Maresz / Romitelli [ensemble]  

Unitedberlin ensemble
Teatro alle Tese, Arsenale - Saturday 11 October, 8 p.m.

Cardi [chamber opera]  

Freon Ensemble
Teatro alle Vergini, Arsenale - Saturday 11 October, 10 p.m.

Schönberg / Eisler / Dessau / Kourliandski [ensemble]  

Chamber Ensemble of the Accademia Teatro alla Scala
Teatro alle Tese, Arsenale - Sunday 12 October, 6 p.m.

Xenakis / Wang / Donatoni / Ghisi / Ligeti [ensemble]  

Divertimento Ensemble
Teatro alle Vergini, Arsenale - Sunday 12 October, 8 p.m.

Berio / Composers of the Conservatoires of Venice and Milan [strings]  

Kreutzer Quartet and pupils of the violin classes at the Conservatoire of Venice
Teatro alle Vergini, Arsenale - Tuesday 14 October, 6 p.m.

Scelsi / Aperghis / Tadini / Berio [vocal ensemble]  

Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart
Teatro alle Tese, Arsenale - Tuesday 14 October, 8 p.m.

Scelsi / Henze / Mosca / Sarto / Perez-Ramirez [string quartet]  

Kreutzer Quartet
Teatro alle Vergini, Arsenale - Tuesday 14 October, 10 p.m.

Saariaho / Casale / Stockhausen [ensemble and electronics]  

Ex Novo Ensemble
Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello, Concert Hall - Wednesday 15 October, 5 p.m.

Poppe [opera]  

Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart / musikFabrik
Teatro Piccolo Arsenale - Wednesday 15 October, 8 p.m.

Composers selected by the 17th Meeting of Music Informatics [concert]  

Aldo Orvieto / Davide Tiso / Alvise Vidolin
Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello, Concert Hall - Thursday 16 October, 5 p.m.

Grisey / Nas / Bellon / Boulez / Pauset [ensemble]  

Nieuw Ensemble
Teatro alle Tese, Arsenale - Thursday 16 October, 8 p.m.

Birtwistle / Fedele / Harvey [string quartet]  

Arditti Quartet
Teatro alle Tese, Arsenale - Friday 17 October, 8 p.m.

Xenakis / Druckman / Broström [percussion]  

Johan Bridger, percussion
Teatro Piccolo Arsenale - Friday 17 October, 10 p.m.

Francesconi [concerto]  

Fresco: concerto for 5 moving wind orchestras
St Mark’s Square - Saturday 18 October, 3 p.m.

EXIT_01 - Symptomatic Party  

Teatro alle Tese / Teatro alle Vergini, Arsenale
Saturday 18 October from 7 p.m.

Workshops / Meetings  

Sale Apollinee, Teatro La Fenice / Teatro Piccolo Arsenale / Conservatorio di Musica “Benedetto Marcello”, Venice
25-26-27 September / 3-4 / 6-7 / 15-16-17 October

Biennale Theatre  International Theatre Workshop 

Mediterraneo 

The Shakespearean Sea

Just as time “takes away and redeems”, in Shakespeare’s immense work even the sea, and strangely enough the Mediterranean Sea, dominates an imaginary geography that redesigns the edges of the world and laps the shores of yet undiscovered lands, sending characters from Greece to Sicily to navigate on fantasy routes. Above the scene of the world the sea separates and reunites lovers, fathers and sons, dethroned men and usurpers, as in The Tempest, where the sea agitated by Prospero’s magic wand reunites fate and destinies within the scheme of the infinite mutability of life.

>> A workshop on ‘A Dream’

workshop of linguistic, dramaturgic and directorial analysis of A Midsummer Night’s Dream  directed by Walter Le Moli and Luca Fontana

>> Theatre as an Instrument for Peace

theatre workshop directed by Gabriele Vacis

The Myths Rediscovered

The formula “Mediterranean culture” summarizes the directions in which the ancient myth spreads, renews itself, is lost and found again in constantly modified forms. The mutation of the forms of transmission is the cultural evolution that between the ancient and modern eras presents an antique legacy of perennial stories, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where the stories of poems and ancient tragedies are summarized and embedded into one another, to the modern myths, like the myth of Don Giovanni, from one shore to the other of the sea. Looking at myth means to recognize our depth and our millenary tradition in the infinite narrations that return over and over again.

>> A Study of ‘Orlando’

musical research workshop directed by Stefano Pagin and based on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando

>> Elyssa / Dido: The Wandering Queen

theatre workshop directed by Renato Nicolini and Marilù Prati

>> Don Giovanni

theatre workshop for opera singers directed by Susanna Attendoli

>> The Antigone Project

theatre workshop directed by Massimo Munaro

>> Ploutos

public presentation of the theatre workshop directed by Massimo Popolizio

>> Theatre as the Art of Navigation

theatre workshop directed by Giuseppe Emiliani

>> Flying towards Simurgh

theatre workshop directed by Elisabetta Brusa

>> A Sea of Angels

by Raffaele Curi, with Myrtò Papatanasiu

Once Upon A Time

We live in a historic, artistic and civic era in which we Europeans from the Mediterranean feel the need, as part of our cultural tradition, to look throughout the centuries towards the Orient, to discover new knowledge, new tolerance, new surprises, new illusions. The Orient closest to Europe (and getting closer all the time) is what we particularly wanted to work with in this theater project, not just for its violent conflicts of interest and religions for once, but for the utopian dream of a painful and joyous coexistence that the “unlimited exercise” of fantasy in The Thousand and One Nights suggests and makes possible.

The multi-ethnic civilization which already exists in Europe and particularly in southern Europe has stimulated us to imagine a series of considerations borrowed from the words and songs of Arab poets, from the stories of The Thousand and One Nights, from Lo Cunto de li Cunti by Giovan Battista Basile, all observed through the curious and dreaming vision of a Europe that cannot ignore that part of its artistic and cultural legacy, and thus of its very civilization, comes from the contamination and the convergence between the Arabic, Christian and Jewish cultures. Just as it cannot forget the many common bonds, contiguous to the theatre, suggested by The Thousand and One Nights, such as the feast, the market, the square, the sun, the night, the sea, marvel, love, magic, stories. And naturally, words. (Maurizio Scaparro)

>> Workshop and lectures by Adonis on poetical and dramaturgical writing

>> Concert for the veiled Christ

>> Once upon a Time

theatre workshop directed by Maurizio Scaparro and Francesca Corrao

The Lingua Franca of Mediterranean Ports

Lingua franca del Levante -  the lingua franca of the East, an expression similar to the Arabic lisān al-faranğ - was the name given to the mixed language of the free exchange of people and goods when, between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age, the sea returned as the privileged system of communication in the world. It is a language that absorbs words, spreading them from one coast to another, along the routes of the French-Venetian symbiosis with the contribution of Greek, Spanish, Arabic and Turkish. The comic effect comes from mixing and inlaying the languages: this may be seen in sixteenth-century Venetian theatre, in authors such as Calmo and Giancarli; in the centuries to follow the so-called sabir may be found in several plays by Molière and Goldoni, and in more recent experiences such as the curious pastiche with which Bernard de Zogheb, listening in on the language of Italian servants in Alexandria of Egypt, has the “very beautiful and very young” Brontë sisters speak and sing (1963).

>> Mediterranean Archipelago

playwriting workshop directed by Biljana Srbljanovic

>> Anoleri, Bladimeri, Tra la la

theatre workshop directed by Davide Livermore and Stefano Valanzuolo

Sans Papiers

There are words that revolve around the identity of new and old generations of immigrants, from the Orient, from Africa, from the many souths and which fall become part of the toil of civilian life and new cultural goals, the words I think of are sans papiers, banlieues, integration, passports, borders…

The perhaps utopian focus of our considerations in this International Theatre Workshop seeks to verify whether there is room for art in general and for the theatre in particular, where, despite all the difficulties, it is possible to capture the great potential and energy that these changes bring with them and which must also deal with the language and the gestures of sentiment, often forbidden by the codes of behaviour in so many difficult living situations. (Maurizio Scaparro)

>> The ‘Sunflower’ Workshop

workshop for theatrical creativity directed by Roger Assaf

>> La porte de Fatima

conceived and directed by Roger Assaf

>> Itineraries for Peace

La sindrome di Sant’Erasmo (a documentary by Ferdinando Vicentini Orgnani)

concert for instruments and reciting voice (Paolo Fresu on trumpet, flugelhorn and effects)

>> Ciao: East of East

theatre and interculture workshop directed by Corrado Veneziano

>> Thessaloniki 43

a project adaptated and directed by Ferdinando Ceriani

>> Video documentation workshop 

workshop of video documentation directed by Gianni Di Capua

Biennale Architecture  11th International Architecture Exhibition 

September 14th - November 23rd, 2008 
The 11th International Architecture Exhibition titled Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, takes place in Venice from Sunday, September 14th to Sunday, November 23rd 2008 in the Arsenale and Giardini exhibition venues.

The Exhibition is directed by Aaron Betsky and organised by the Venice Biennale presided over by Paolo Baratta.

OUT THERE: Architecture Beyond Building

• Out There: Architecture Beyond Building
• Aaron Betsky, biographical notes
• Foreword by Aaron Betsky
• Participants exhibited at the Arsenale
• Participants exhibited at the Padiglione Italia
• Uneternal City. Thirty years after “Roma interrotta”
• Everyville 2008. Online competition
• Upload City
• Housing Italy, by Francesco Garofalo
• Official Awards
• Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement to Frank O. Gehry and James S. Ackerman
• National Participations
• Special Event: Manifesto per Milano. Void as Public Opportunity
• Collateral Events
• Information for the public
• Educational
• Ultrafragola is a media partner of the Architecture Biennale
• Press accreditation (for media operators)