#21
Hello World?

Next year Lithuania will be represented at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale for the first time. This event draws an ambitious goal – a construction of a new national pavilion. The project’s concept is based on the fact that the primary biennale space is nearly built to its limits. The edge of the Giardini, the majority of parkland in Venice, is the only area where new construction may still be possible. This specific territory in Venice is the proposed location for the Swamp Pavilion. The project as action is simultaneously belligerently radical and peacefully diplomatic. On the one hand, it is a provocation regarding the expansion of national territory within the international context of the Biennale. On the other hand, the boundaries and boundedness of the place inhibit incursion onto the land area, locating the pavilion where pre-existing elements of air and water are available. In this Janus-like project, two identities become intertwined: that of a human as a representative of a particular nation with a human as a part of and cohabiting with “nature,” and therefore representing an inhabitant of planet earth.

First construction piece of the Swamp Pavilion will be the lecture series Hello World? which takes its name from the basic script that is written as the first foray into programming language. Taking inspiration from Stafford Beer’s cybernetic dream, the program of the lecture series scripts the construction process of the Swamp Pavilion to expand existing and create new perspectives on forms of representation and pedagogy. Hello World? is the twenty-first event in the series organised by the Architecture Fund that stands for building a new vocabulary across emergent discourses, calling for criticality and ethics in the time of crisis and post-truth. Starting in fall 2017, seven invited speakers will engage the audience at the National Gallery of Art in Lithuania by presenting their research to push boundaries of discipline, interrogate discursive forms of architectural practice, and produce new spaces for alternative imaginaries.

Project is presented by: Lithuanian Council for Culture and Ministry of Culture of The Republic of Lithuania..
Partner: National Gallery of Art.