Lithuania 2018

Title: “The Swamp Pavilion”
Commissioner: Pippo Ciorra
Curators: Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas
Exhibitors: Sam Auinger, Guoda Bardauskaitė, Jautra Bernotaitė, Nikola Bojić, Rasa Chmieliauskaitė, Aidas Čergelis, Aušra Černiauskienė, Nico Dockx, Justinas Dūdėnas, Milda Grabauskaitė, Tinna Grétarsdôttir, Tomas Grunskis, Sigurjôn Baldur Hafsteinsson, Nicole L’Huillier, Jurga Katakinaitė-Jakubauskienė, Nicolás Kisic Aguirre, Milda Kulvičiūtė, Lina Lapelyte, Hannes Lárusson, Donatas Linkus, Francisco López, Petteri Nisunen, Paléo-Energétique, Thomas Pausz, Armina Pilav, Marjetica Potrč, Tobias Putrih, Andrius Ropolas, Laura Serejo Genes, Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits, Hildigunnur Sverrisdóttir, Antanas Šarkauskas, Gabrielė Šarkauskienė, Indrė Umbrasaitė, Kęstas Vaikšnoras, Paulius Vaitiekūnas, Reda Valentinavičienė, Jana Winderen

In a time marked by existential threats of war and climate change, the pavilion highlightd the vital urgency of human cohabitation with humans and forms of life. Inaugurated with the launch of live broadcasting programmes on Swamp Radio, “The Swamp Space” and its extended network will engage audiences in a variety of acoustic space explorations. “The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him,” maintained Bertolt Brecht. Acts of revalorising the Swamp over solid ground and exploring its complex web of interactions are both conceived as pedagogical exercises by the project’s initiators with aims to transmit possibilities of speaking for the silenced voices of this planet. Drawing from the concept of wetlands, the project incorporates many battlefields of contemporaneity including conditions of hybridity, the idea of “nature,” questions of human and nonhuman agency, the strata of history, and future possibilities.

The Swamp Summer School is a public programme at Venice Biennale of Architecture comprising:
the Swamp Radio (on transmitting), May 23-27;
Futurity Island (on symbio-poetics), June 26-30;
Commonism (on cohabiting), September 24-29
The Swamp Summer School will function as a changing, flexible, open-ended structure that supports experiments in design, pedagogy and artistic intelligence. Invited designers and scholars will conduct performative lectures and lead workshops for visitors to the Biennale, all of whom are invited to participate.
The full programme is available here.