30th São Paulo Bienal – The Imminence of Poetics
September 7 to December 9, 2012
Press preview: September 3, 2012
Professional preview: September 4, 2012
Venue: Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, Parque Ibirapuera, São Paulo
Curator: Luis Pérez-Oramas
Associate curators: André Severo and Tobi Maier
Assistant curator: Isabela Villanueva
Educational program curator: Stela Barbieri
www.bienal.org

Download: participanting artists list-30bienal-releaseEN

Multiplicity of Poetics

The 30th São Paulo Bienal – The Imminence of Poetics will be celebrated in thirty posters by thirty different authors. This new initiative stems from the process of defining the visual identity for the show, which, for the first time in the sixty-year history of the event, was developed at an open workshop held toward the end of 2011. A documentary on the initiative is available for viewing on the website www.id30bienal.org.br.

The thirty posters were created by members of the exhibition’s curatorial team and Design Department, the twelve participants selected for the workshop and six guest designers.

For the curator Luis Pérez-Oramas, “the thirty posters respond to a shared visual concept, which is precisely the concept of the 30th Bienal. The fact that a single concept can come in thirty different versions is one of the 30th Bienal’s constitutive principles, materializing ideas of the multiplicity of poetics, alterformation, survival and formal drift”.

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“The educational program works with poetic fields, encounters and detours, similarities and contrasts, which, when tensioned, become visible and activate a field of creation in contact with the public.”
Stela Barbieri, curator of the Bienal Educational Program

The Bienal Educational Program, under the curatorship of Stela Barbieri, aims to reflect upon contemporary art and life, valuing everyday experience, and proposing open dialogue with public and private-school teachers, social educators, community agents, students of all ages, families and all those interested in discussing contemporary art. This project derives its identity from poetic actions in which concepts are lived in practice.

With a team formed by artists, educators and researchers, the Bienal Educational Program is driven by expression and intuition, working with the aesthetic, perceptual, social and human dimensions of relations with art.

In tandem with the curatorial proposal behind the exhibition, the works and the poetics of the artists, actions are devised to foster encounters, dialogues and experiences, the guiding lines of the Bienal’s Educational Program.

Educational Program for the 30th Bienal – The Imminence of Poetics

The Educational Program for the 30th edition of the Bienal has been in development since 2011, in partnership with the exhibition curators. In January this year, the Training in Contemporary Art meetings got underway with teachers, social educators, journalists and the general public, kick starting interaction with the concepts, artists and works featured in The Imminence of Poetics. From January to March 2012, 25 such encounters took place, attracting roughly two thousand people.

New educational material is currently being produced, with an expected print-run of 15 thousand copies, to be distributed free of charge. The publication is being prepared by the Educational team in collaboration with the exhibition curators and Communications department. This is the third materials package the Educational department has produced for editions of the Bienal. A third edition of the distance learning course – So Near, Yet So Far – is also being prepared for art teachers statewide, and is scheduled to go online in September.

Another highlight is the course administered to the team of educators, the interns who will be dealing with the public during the Bienal. Starting in May, the course will provide additional training to 150 university students, many of whom have been working with the Educational Department since 2010. Some of these educators, as recent graduates, will be taken on as supervisors or as professional educators. One of the Bienal Educational Program’s main principles is the ongoing formation of its team, at all levels.

The Educational Department’s responsibilities do not stop once the exhibition opens, as the department is responsible for providing guided tours for scheduled and walk-in groups, holding workshops and running a parallel program, including lectures and seminars, performances, film screenings and special family events.

The Educational team makes a point of promoting encounters with the most varied publics and of attending each in all its specificities, hence the +60 program, for senior citizens, and sign-language tours for the hearing-impaired.

The Bienal Educational Program

The Bienal has a track-record in preparing educational activities that are in synch with the time and that propose vanguard investigations. The Educational Program has accompanied the exhibition since its 2nd edition, in 1953, though these were isolated endeavors lasting only for the duration of the exhibition in question. Under Stela Barbieri, the Educational program for the 29th Bienal lent continuity to its activities, becoming a permanent fixture within the Foundation and following the event with the exhibitions The 29th Bienal – Selected Works and In the Name of the Artists – North-American Contemporary Art in the Astrup Fearnley Collection. This is a great achievement for all the educators who have passed through the institution and whose work has made a significant contribution to this history.