Interesting interview with Daniel Birnbaum:

The 53rd Venice Biennale is awaited with great anticipation. At the heart of the event is Biennale director Daniel Birnbaum’s curated exhibition "Making Worlds," which includes a project by the architectural visionary Yona Friedman. Oliver Koerner von Gustorf spoke with Daniel Birnbaum shortly before the opening.

To be sure, he has every reason to feel stressed. In just about two weeks, the Venice Biennale opens under his directorship; after documenta, it’s probably the most important art exhibition in the world. Yet Daniel Birnbaum seems extraordinarily relaxed. This must have something to do with his many years of experience—including with Venice, as he co-directed the international section of the Biennale in 2003. The Swede, who was born in 1963, is rector of the Städelschule in Frankfurt as well as the director of the Portikus; he is considered one of the most influential figures on the international art scene. With his exhibition Fare Mondi/Making Worlds at this year’s Biennale, he calls attention to the process aspect of art from the sixties to the present day—particularly art’s interdisciplinary nature and the manner in which things arise.

An important project in the show is The Ville Spatiale—Visualisation of an Idea by architectural visionary and urban planner Yona Friedman, born 1923 in Budapest. Together with his students, Friedman has installed a grid structure of wire cable; hovering above the exhibition, participants have inserted their own models into it. The materials are simple and the ideas democratic: the installation refers back to Friedman’s Ville Spatiale, a kind of megastructure stretching over existing cities that he developed in the nineteen-fifties. His architectural utopias have made Friedman into an art star: he was invited to documenta 11 in 2002 and participated in the Venice Biennale for the first time in 2003. In 2008, together with students of the Städelschule, he realized a site-specific installation at the Portikus in Frankfurt that was sponsored by the Deutsche Bank Foundation. His latest work in Venice continues this collaboration and is once again supported by Deutsche Bank.

Continue reading "A Conversation with Daniel Birnbaum" »