Life, Together
The most influential of all architecture exhibitions premiered in La Serenissima in May, a year later than planned. In the context of the global pandemic, widening political divides and growing economic inequalities, curator Hashim Sarkis’s provocative cornerstone question — “How Will We Live Together?” — became more urgent, and he set out in search of a new spatial contract. The exhibitors and curators of participating national pavilions accompanied him on that journey, translating and negotiating it to encompass a broad array of themes.
Alongside a tonal shift in content, there followed a shift in overall experience. “If you think of architecture as a kind of reference system, you like to think of the Venice Biennale as something like the centre of it,” says Nikolaus Hirsch, co-founder of E-flux Architecture and co-curator of the German Pavilion. But this edition’s opening days communicated the opposite sentiment. There were no crowds, queues or mingling in almost-deserted exhibition spaces. Some pavilions would even remain closed or covered in black plastic until the fall. The rare moments of exchange you had with others were intense and felt mutually appreciated. The whole system seemed fragmented, changing and realigning itself. How will we live together? The “we” of us actually there were so few.
But the notion that the entire world comes, which is displayed in the first room of the pavilion. It gathers 28 texts around alternative ways of thinking about and programming cultural institutions. Another example is Germany’s contribution: Inviting us to meet in the year 2038, the pavilion is empty save for QR codes on the white walls, which lead visitors to a film series. On the so-called “History Channels,” experts and exemplary projects help you trace the paths of a (hi)story through the 2020s and 2030s. One of the films features two 18-year-olds who meet to explore the Venice of their childhood, their encounter offering a glimpse into how the future might feel: The world has changed, peace reigns in dimmed prosperity and personal technology helps us to better cope with complexity. The digitally focused pavilion, planned long before the pandemic, shows just how much the Venice experience could be stretched to include visitors who can’t be there.
