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Catalonia in Venice
La Venezia che non si vede

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Catalonia will participate in the 57th Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale under the program, Eventi Collaterali, with a project by Antoni Abad and curated by Mery Cuesta and Roc Parés. The project goes by the name of, 'La Venezia che non si vede. Unveiling the Unseen’. The Ramon Llull Institute is producing the Catalan presence at the Venice Biennale, which begins on May 13th, 2017. Antoni Abad proposes a sensorial interpretation of the urban space that is Venice in collaboration with a local group of blind and visually impaired people. The map of Venice that you cannot see has been created before the Biennale's inauguration, thanks to the meetings that the artist Antoni Abad is having with associations of blind people along with university students. Over the course of the Biennale, the mobile app and the BlindWiki webpage are being fed fed by the contributions made by citizens and visitors who wish to participate.

The catalan presence at the Venice Biennale, which will take place from May 13th – November 26th, is produced by the Institut Ramon Llull Opens in new tab. This will be the fifth time that Institut Ramon Llull brings Catalonia at the Venice Biennale. This proposal was chosen by an independent jury led by Xavier Antich along with Martí Manen, Chus Martínez, Martí Peran, Nekane Aramburu, Antoni Muntadas i Ferran Barenblit  and Marta Oliveres, the director of the Creation Department at the Ramon Llull Institute, who participated as the spokesperson without voting privileges.

BlindWiki is a collaborative project that grows thanks to the contributions of volunteers.

A SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL THE PARTICIPANTS: Anna Ammirati, Inessa Baldin, Flavia Banchi, Mattia Bordolotto, Simone Boso, Romane Bourgeois, Elena Brescacin, Valentina Caccamo, Miriam Calabrese, Luigi Carabuzza, Luca Casella, Cristina Faraon, Laura Ficotto, Francesco Fratta, Irene Fratta, Martina Fusaro, Anita Herodek, Piergiorgio Longagnani, Andrea de Lorenzo, Martina Manzari, Chiara Mazza, Guglielmo Messina, Giulia Oblach, Antonio Pozzana, Tobia della Puppa, Stefano Rossetti, Anna Maria Salariace, Alberto Scatto Vio, Emanuele Serpe, Felice Tagliaferri, Marta Toti, Alessandro Trovato, Ilaria Visentin, Rossana Zambon.

Thanks to: Ernest Ameller, Tamara Andruszkiewicz, Francesc Aragall, Associació Catalana per a la Integració del Cec, Associació Discapacitat Visual Catalunya, Alberto Balletti, Alessandra Ballotta, Giulia Bencini, Llorenç Blasi, María José Bou, Luciano Domenicali, Paula Ferullo, Bernat Franquesa, Fundació Ulls del Món, Paolo Garbolino, Dimas García, Miquel Giner, Ramón Gironés, Istituto dei Ciechi di Milano, Ione Larrañaga, Andrés Lewin-Richter, Merche Loureiro, Jose Lozano, Sandra Martin, José Luís Merino, Albert Morales, Carme Oller, ONCE Barcelona, PHONOS, Shaun Pilgrem, Jordi Ros, Paolo Rosso, Ernesto Saade, Sala Blu Stazione Santa Lucia, Sala Consiliare di San Lorenzo, Scoleta dei Calegheri, Angela Vettese and Giuseppe Vigolo.

Antoni Abad

Antoni Abad (Born in Lleida, Spain in 1956. Lives and works in Barcelona, Spain) From 2004 to 2013 Abad devoted his activity to undertaking the www.megafone.net online communication projects based on publications from smartphones done by various at-risk groups in Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, United States, and the Algerian Sahara.

In October 2014 he began developing the BlindWiki project in the Spanish Academy in Rome, a prototype of an online citizen network conceived for people who are blind or visually impaired. Participants use smartphones to make geo-located audio recordings of their everyday experiences in the city. Through the BlindWiki application, the previously posted recordings are always accessible from mobile phones on the streets, reflecting the urban landscape as experienced by people with vision loss. The project promotes the collaborative creation of a sensorial public map to be extended to other cities. Various editions of the BlindWiki project were implemented in Sydney 2015, Berlin 2016 and Wroclaw, Poland 2016. His work has been presented at the following art biennials: Venice, Italy 1999; Lima, Peru 1999; Seville, Spain 2004 and 2008; Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil 2009; Curitiba, Brazil 2013 and Berlin, Germany 2016.

Among other venues, his work have been presented in Europe and the Americas, including the following: Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1997 and 2008; Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, 1999; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany, 1999 and 2008; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2001; Hamburger Banhof, Berlin, 2002; Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2003 and 2014; PS1, New York, 2003; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, 2005; La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2005; Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona, 2006; Centro Cultural Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2007; Centre d'Art Contemporaine, Geneva, 2008; Matadero, Madrid 2014; Laboratorio de Arte Alameda, México DF 2014; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil 2015.

In 2006 he was awarded the Visual Arts National Prize of Catalonia and the Golden Nica Digital Communities of the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria.

Curators

Roc Parés Burguès

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Roc Parés Burguès.

(Born in Mexico City, Mexico in 1968. Lives and works in Barcelona, Catalonia) An interactive communication artist and researcher, Pares’ work is characterized by the poetic and critical experimentation with digital technologies, and has been presented and exhibited in festivals, art centers and museums in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Parés holds a PhD in Audiovisual Communication and a degree in Fine Arts. He is a Professor and Researcher in the Communication Department at the Pompeu Fabra University, and his research projects have been published by the British Computer Society, Academic Press, FECYT, Macba, and MIT Press, amongst others. He has launched pioneer platforms in electronic art, such as, for example, “Galeria Virtual” (1993-2000), dedicated to the development of virtual reality as an art form; 'Macba En Línea' (1995-1997), a pioneer platform for net.art; and M.A.L. (2011-2013), an art lab with smartphones. From 2010 to 2015 he was co-director of the Master’s in Digital Arts, UPF. His commitment to an inter-discplinary culture (which he defends for its anti-dogmatic potential and for its civilizing power), has led him to explore the intersections between art, science, technology and society.

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Mery Cuesta

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Mery Cuesta. (Born in Bilbao, Spain in 1975. Lives and works in Barcelona)Cuesta is an art critic, exhibition curator, teacher and cartoonist. Since 2002 she can regularly be found in the La Vanguardia newspaper writing an art criticism column. As a curator, Cuesta’s projects address questions relative to the analysis of consumer culture, outsider art, pop culture and the critical dissection of the working mechanisms of contemporary art. The following exhibitions are worth mentioning: ‘Quinquis de los 80: Cine, prensa y calle’ (CCCB, La Casa Encendida, Centro de Historia de Zaragoza i Alhóndiga de Bilbao), ‘La mano izquierda de Cervantes’ (Instituto Cervantes – Karsi Sanat, Istanbul), and 'Bálsamo y fuga' about artistic creation in prisons (Caixaforum). She is the Director of the Masters program in Illustration and Comics at Elisava – the Barcelona School of Engineering and Design. Mery Cuesta’s work as a theorist, teacher and author in the world of illustration and comics centers around the fusion of comic language and cultural criticism. As a cartoonist she has published various essay-style and culturally critical series and comic strips for magazines. Her cartoons have been exhibited in various galleries and she has published three albums.

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