Pirate Camp. Biennale Venezia
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    pirate camp at venice biennale

    PIRATE CAMP – the new project devised by the Italian art group CONIGLIOVIOLA – is the first itinerant artists’ camping program created to give free hospitality to a selection of young international artists during the most important contemporary art events worldwide.

    From 31 May to 6 June, the BIENNALE will provide the backdrop for a camp hosting 16 young international artists, who have been chosen, through an online competition, by a special jury made up of nothing but artists from Italy’s seven leading artist-run spaces.

    In true corsair style, the PIRATE CAMP will also – for the very first time – break the well-entrenched rule that outlaws camping in the lagoon!

    The Pirate Camp is a project created by artists to help artists, says the man behind the project, Brice Coniglio – the captain of CONIGLIOVIOLA – whose surname means “rabbit” in Italian, explaining the operation’s meaning: “Like international trade fairs and major exhibitions, art biennials force young people to invest often large amounts of money in travel and lodging. That’s why we came up with the idea of a pirate camp that would enable young artists to stay in Venice for nothing, while at the same time providing a platform for encouraging an exchange of experiences, generating new partnerships and creating a real international network”.
    The Pirate Camp is primarily a work of art in its own right: a metaphorical representation of being midway between the land that belongs to the “system” and the sea that is the domain of the “pirates”, an essential condition for contemporary artists, a status of extra-territoriality that becomes a privileged vantage point for observing and representing the world”.

    The Stateless Pavilion, as the first PIRATE CAMP has been dubbed, aims to focus attention on the topic “extra-territoriality” as a condition typical of artists that comes to expression in the project’s two key figures: the pirate and the camper.The status of not-belonging-to-places, inhabiting places while remaining outside the concept of territorial ownership, becomes a status of statelessness, of not-belonging-to-any-state, in the context of the Venice Biennale, whose mainstay is the fact that its every edition is built on an offering – and a reiteration – of the representation of national identities, by “national” pavilions.

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