VENICE AGENDAS V, 2007

　　FIVE REASONS TO COME TO VENICE AGENDAS V:

　　ONE

　　Biennale Director Robert Storr will be on the panel Saturday 9 June to engage in debate on his exhibition ‘Think With the Senses, Feel With the Mind’, with Joseph Backstein (Director of the 2007 Moscow Biennale and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Moscow), Professor Michael Corris (artist, writer and Head of Art and Photography at Newport School of Art, Media and Design, University of Wales, Newport), Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton (writer, critic, curator and former Director of Visual Arts, Arts Council of England), and Angela Vettese (Curator, Critic and Professor of Contemporary Art, University IUAV of Venice). The panel will be chaired by the art historian and critic Professor Mel Gooding.

　　TWO

　　This is the first time that anyone has tackled the subject of gossip at the Venice Biennale, and its role in building careers, constituencies, legends and myths. Gavin Butt, author of ‘Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Artworld’ (Duke University Press: 2005), will debate the role of gossip in art with writer and Bloomberg Space curator Sacha Craddock, journalists and academics Ian McKay and Francesco Ventrella, and art impresario Richard Demarco CBE, the subject of a film by BAFTA-award winning filmaker Samir Mehamovic, who will also be interviewing other participants in Venice Agendas.

　　THREE

　　How often do you get three international curators talking at one event?
Three Biennale Directors will be taking part in Venice Agendas V 　 Richard Grayson (Director of the Sydney Biennale 2002, speaking on 7 June), Joseph Backstein (Director of the Moscow Biennale 2007,speaking on 9 June) and Robert Storr (Director of Venice Biennale 2007, speaking on 9 June).

　　FOUR

　　Dan Perjovschi , one of the artists selected for Robert Storr’s show, will scrutinise the value of ‘art as debate’ with an international panel of artists , academics and curators including John Beagles, Polly Gould, Richard Grayson, Cesare Pietrouisti, Jaspar-Joseph Lester and Sharon Kivland.

　　FIVE

　　The Venice Agendas symposium has featured at every Venice Biennale since 1999, and has been developed out of Professor Bill Furlong’s ‘Audio Arts’ cassette magazine of interviews with artists, first published in 1973. He has made recordings at the Biennale since 1984, which has included the British representative on each occasion. The ‘Audio Arts’ archive has been acquired by Tate Britain, and is the subject of an exhibition ‘Audio Arts: Bill Furlong’ currently showing at Tate Britain until 27 August 2007. A small part of the vast Audio Arts archive can be accessed online at: http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/audioarts