Evento 2011
Bordeaux | Art for an urban re-evolution
From 6 to 16 October 2011, Bordeaux plays host to EVENTO 2011, the new version of its artistic and urban rendezvous. The guest artists, be they international or Bordeaux residents, will be asked to create original works, installations, exhibitions, concerts and performances with the participation of the public, professional and amateur alike.
This year’s edition, whose artistic direction is curated by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Cittadellarte, will focus on the themes of art and citizenship, and inclusion and difference, art being for Pistoletto a fundamental vehicle of social change.
This year’s edition, whose artistic direction is curated by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Cittadellarte, will focus on the themes of art and citizenship, and inclusion and difference, art being for Pistoletto a fundamental vehicle of social change.
EVENTO: Bordeaux’s artistic and urban rendezvous
From 6 to 16 October 2011, the second EVENTO festival will underscore Bordeaux’s liking of daring cultural adventures, by way of the carte blanche offered to Michelangelo Pistoletto and his foundation Cittadellarte. As an original, surprising and festive contemporary art event, EVENTO’s brief is to help reinvent Bordeaux in an ongoing way, just as Bordeaux strives to rethink EVENTO anew each time. These distinctive features, which made evento 2009 so successful and attracted more than 390,000 visitors, will be carried on this year by a new creative team, impatient to take up this artistic and urban challenge.
Every two years, EVENTO offers international artists an chance to cast a new eye over the city, explore it and turn it into an atypical place of artistic experimentation. This 2011 festival is thus bringing together famous and emerging figures, for a free event that is demanding, generous, multicultural, and designed for all kinds of public keen to discover and share.
Original works, collective experiments, performances, concerts, installations, exhibitions and games for the citizenry will all occupy the city’s public places and its museums, for meetings aimed at reinventing the city and finding new ways of living together.
Every two years, EVENTO offers international artists an chance to cast a new eye over the city, explore it and turn it into an atypical place of artistic experimentation. This 2011 festival is thus bringing together famous and emerging figures, for a free event that is demanding, generous, multicultural, and designed for all kinds of public keen to discover and share.
Original works, collective experiments, performances, concerts, installations, exhibitions and games for the citizenry will all occupy the city’s public places and its museums, for meetings aimed at reinventing the city and finding new ways of living together.
My first meeting with Michelangelo Pistoletto took place in the timeless setting of an old mill which houses his foundation, Cittadellarte, at Biella. We immediately got into a casual discussion as we visited that old industrial wasteland, where artistic creation nurtures many different projects, educational, social, economic and ecological alike… That was a very special day: the enthusiasm I felt about that approach to art’s role in our society and the desire to share it with as many people as possible fuelled my decision: I gave carte blanche to the artist for EVENTO 2011.
Since then Bordeaux has become the turf where, surrounded by young curators, Michelangelo Pistoletto has been developing his vision of living together, his contribution to social change centered around a concept: art for an urban re-evolution. It is bold, it is risky, and it is a novel approach.
EVENTO 2011 will propose an art connected to the present-day state of the world, along with its issues and its hopes. It will also offer its public, in its various forms, works produced as a result of the commitment of international as well as many Bordeaux born and/or based artists, in a powerful participatory dimension.
EVENTO 2011 will delve into our historical, urban, social and cultural roots and help to stimulate and enrich our shared future project.
EVENTO 2011 will experiment, call on us, excercise us and, I hope, bring us together in games where imagination, creativity and pleasure will all be combined with reflection.
This EVENTO will offer a new chance to share and assert the inventive energy of our city and its inhabitants. It will invite new forms of dialogue for which Bordeaux will be the theatre throughout next October.
I hope that this new look at the city can be embraced by as many people as possible and that it will be received beyond our boundaries like an invitation to everyone to develop their openness to the world, their curiosity and their humanism.
Alain Juppé, Mayor of Bordeaux, First vice-president of the Bordeaux Urban Community
Since then Bordeaux has become the turf where, surrounded by young curators, Michelangelo Pistoletto has been developing his vision of living together, his contribution to social change centered around a concept: art for an urban re-evolution. It is bold, it is risky, and it is a novel approach.
EVENTO 2011 will propose an art connected to the present-day state of the world, along with its issues and its hopes. It will also offer its public, in its various forms, works produced as a result of the commitment of international as well as many Bordeaux born and/or based artists, in a powerful participatory dimension.
EVENTO 2011 will delve into our historical, urban, social and cultural roots and help to stimulate and enrich our shared future project.
EVENTO 2011 will experiment, call on us, excercise us and, I hope, bring us together in games where imagination, creativity and pleasure will all be combined with reflection.
This EVENTO will offer a new chance to share and assert the inventive energy of our city and its inhabitants. It will invite new forms of dialogue for which Bordeaux will be the theatre throughout next October.
I hope that this new look at the city can be embraced by as many people as possible and that it will be received beyond our boundaries like an invitation to everyone to develop their openness to the world, their curiosity and their humanism.
Alain Juppé, Mayor of Bordeaux, First vice-president of the Bordeaux Urban Community
Through EVENTO 2011, I am keen to turn Bordeaux into a huge experimental platform, and involve every field helping to transform both city and society, the aim being to produce an original and universal model, a new representation of how we can live together, drawing inspiration from other cities around the world.
The event will invite every manner of artistic expression to explore new prospects in the economic, political, social and ecological arenas. Our goal is to produce, with and in Bordeaux, an alternative model for living together in a better way, a novel linkage between cultures, to be achieved through art - “an urban re-evolution” for tomorrow’s cities. This renewal will bring forth art works representing the “re-invented city”, capable of becoming a new subject of hope for contemporary societies.
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Artistic Director EVENTO 2011
The event will invite every manner of artistic expression to explore new prospects in the economic, political, social and ecological arenas. Our goal is to produce, with and in Bordeaux, an alternative model for living together in a better way, a novel linkage between cultures, to be achieved through art - “an urban re-evolution” for tomorrow’s cities. This renewal will bring forth art works representing the “re-invented city”, capable of becoming a new subject of hope for contemporary societies.
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Artistic Director EVENTO 2011
As a major figure of Arte Povera, the Italian philosopher and humanist Michelangelo Pistoletto is persuaded that art must be at the hub of social and responsible urban change.
As artistic director of EVENTO 2011, he has thus decided to link inhabitants and visitors powerfully together with the production of ideas and
creative projects at the city’s heart, thereby illustrating the theme of the bond between art and citizenship. This new EVENTO festival will thus be focused on the participation of many different kinds of public and the commitment of artists actively involved in collective works. Some 250 organizations (associations, local institutions, schools, and so on) will be taking part in the various projects.
In order to fuel their line of thinking from many different angles, Michelangeloo Pistoletto and his team have invited both artists and thinkers, all underwriting the role of art and the role of the citizen in the city, and representing some 20 nationalities and as many disciplines: visual arts, music, dance, architecture, urbanism, theatre, set design, design, network games, video, photography, philosophy, anthropology, economics, politics, ecology, mapmaking, geography, botany…
They will all adopt a participatory approach to EVENTO and, through their exchanges among themselves and with the different kinds of public, offer an echo of the artistic director’s belief, which he set forth back in 1994 in his manifesto Project Art: “Art is the most sensitive and synthetic expression of thought: the time has come for the artist to assume his responsibility and create bonds between human activities, from economics to politics, from science to religion, from education to behaviour, in a nutshell, all the territories of the social fabric.”
As artistic director of EVENTO 2011, he has thus decided to link inhabitants and visitors powerfully together with the production of ideas and
creative projects at the city’s heart, thereby illustrating the theme of the bond between art and citizenship. This new EVENTO festival will thus be focused on the participation of many different kinds of public and the commitment of artists actively involved in collective works. Some 250 organizations (associations, local institutions, schools, and so on) will be taking part in the various projects.
In order to fuel their line of thinking from many different angles, Michelangeloo Pistoletto and his team have invited both artists and thinkers, all underwriting the role of art and the role of the citizen in the city, and representing some 20 nationalities and as many disciplines: visual arts, music, dance, architecture, urbanism, theatre, set design, design, network games, video, photography, philosophy, anthropology, economics, politics, ecology, mapmaking, geography, botany…
They will all adopt a participatory approach to EVENTO and, through their exchanges among themselves and with the different kinds of public, offer an echo of the artistic director’s belief, which he set forth back in 1994 in his manifesto Project Art: “Art is the most sensitive and synthetic expression of thought: the time has come for the artist to assume his responsibility and create bonds between human activities, from economics to politics, from science to religion, from education to behaviour, in a nutshell, all the territories of the social fabric.”
