The combined effect of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine with the disruptive effects on the costs of energy, raw materials and grain exports have rekindled the spotlight on Africa, a forgotten and widely plundered continent. While Europe is slow to give convincing answers on a development model for the southern shore of the Mediterranean that solves the climate emergency and eases migratory pressure towards the north, national answers always prevail over everything.
As is known, Italy is trying to counter French hegemony in Africa by entrusting ENI not only with the policy of energy independence from Russia (with new agreements in Libya, Tunisia and Algeria) but with the same geopolitical position towards that continent for the next few years. In short, there is an attempt by the Meloni government to re-propose, after 60 years and in a profoundly changed international scenario, the so-called "Mattei plan", that sort of postcolonial challenge to the cartel of the "seven sisters" aimed at exploit their energy resources together with African countries. Today the challenge is against China and Russia on one side and against Iran on the other. But meanwhile Ukrainian grain exports to Africa are languishing and the climate crisis wreaks havoc in sub-Saharan Africa.
As very often in the past, this time too it is therefore necessary to trust in the saving power of art and creativity in order to best interpret the prevailing "zeitgeist" and mark the course of future actions. An initial, interesting answer to questions about global crises comes from Venice where the inauguration of the 18th edition of the Architecture Biennale entitled "Laboratory of the Future" is scheduled for next Saturday, curated by Leslie Lokko, an architect who grew up in Africa and now lives among London and Accra, Ghana. In the challenge that the Biennale has always given itself since its origins to explain the contemporary world and its contradictions (as the president Roberto Cicutto never tires of repeating on every occasion), the new Architecture Biennale offers a new vision of the African continent and its problems , breaks down prejudices and clichés and in many cases explains how he faced global problems before us. As explained by the president of the Biennale, Cicutto (in the photo) both in the 2021 exhibition by Sarkis and in that of Lokko there is no shortage of concrete examples of architecture but both "have tried to give an answer to the question of what should be the purposes of a contemporary that often places the object in real contexts showing unprecedented criticalities and necessary changes in the way of life of all the beings that populate our planet”.
Lokko: not architects, but "practitioners"
First of all Lokko inaugurates a new professional figure, no longer the architect, engineer, urban planner, designer or academic but the "practitioner", a sort of "agent of change" an almost untranslatable term for us proof of the difficulty of creating new roles for the present challenges. “We believe – says Lokko – that the dense and complex conditions of Africa and of a rapidly hybridizing world require a different and broader understanding of the term architect”. In fact, Lokko wants to propose a new narrative made up of new alliances, to give a voice to those who have so far been excluded from that history of architecture which, he says, "is not wrong but incomplete". According to the curator, national pavilions usually do not often respond to the theme proposed by the exhibition "but this time they have responded in a very very interesting way and new alliances are being created between countries, as in the case of the Caribbean, the Middle East and Europe itself" .
Cicutto: we work on contemporaneity
Lokko, explains Cicutto, started from a precise laboratory which is Africa where some global crises have already been tested and which are now touching us closely. “We, says Lokko, have faced them like this, how do you plan to face them?. This extraordinary idea – observes Cicutto – of starting from a concrete experience and comparing it with the rest of the world is the trump card of this exhibition”. In 1893, Cicutto always says, Selvatico had created the Biennale for visual arts as a place of confrontation with the national pavilions. This has become the place to interpret the contemporary; the Biennale has acquired the awareness that it must leave the narrow domain of sectors (visual arts, architecture, music, theatre, dance, cinema) to propose itself as a laboratory that re-elaborates the contents of the various artistic directions.
The structure of the exhibition between force majeure and dangerous liaisons
But how is the exhibition organised? It will be divided into six parts with 89 participants, more than half of whom will come from Africa or the African diaspora. Gender equality guaranteed, average age of participants 43, while it drops to 37 in the Curator's Special Projects section, in which the youngest is 24 years old. 46% of Participants consider training as a real professional activity and, for the first time ever, almost half of the architects come from studios that are individually run or made up of up to five people. In all sections of the exhibition, over 70% of the works on display were designed by studios managed by a single person or a very small team. In the Central Pavilion at the Giardini, 16 studies have been brought together that represent a distillation of Force Majeure (Force Majeure) of African and diasporic architectural production. In the Arsenale complex, with the Dangerous Liaisons section, there are works by young African and diasporic "practitioners", the Guests from the Future, whose work directly confronts the two themes of the Exhibition, decolonization and decarbonization, providing a snapshot of future practices and ways of seeing and being in the world. For the first time, the Architecture Biennale includes the Biennale College Architecture, which will take place from 25 June to 22 July 2023. Fifteen international professors will work with fifty students, graduates, academics and emerging professionals from all over the world and selected by Lesley Lokko through an open call process.
Carnival: series of meetings and conferences
The program is enriched by the Carnival, a cycle of meetings, conferences, round tables, films and performances during the six months of the Exhibition, aimed at exploring the themes of the 2023 Architecture Biennale. There will be 64 national participations that will organize their exhibitions in the pavilions at Giardini (27), at the Arsenale (22) and in the historic center of Venice (14). Niger participates for the first time in the Architecture Biennale; Panama presents itself for the first time alone, in the past it participated as IILA (Italian-Latin American International Organization). The Holy See's participation in the Architecture Biennale is back, with its own Pavilion on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore.
Italy: everyone belongs to everyone else
The Italian Pavilion at the Tese delle Vergini in the Arsenale, supported and promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, is curated by the Fosbury Architecture collective, formed by Giacomo Ardesio, Alessandro Bonizzoni, Nicola Campri, Veronica Caprino, Claudia Mainardi. The title of the exhibition is SPACE: Everyone belongs to everyone else.
“The Italian Pavilion – underlines Fosbury Architecture – represents an opportunity to promote pioneering actions relating to a time horizon that goes beyond the duration of the 2023 Architecture Biennale. In this process, as complex as it is lyrical, we propose ourselves as mediators between different constellations of agents , local and otherwise, actors in a collective project”.
