The Begehungen art festival will hold an exhibition in the lagoon city from 20 April to 30 June 2024 during the first ten weeks of the Venice Biennale 2024. The festival will thus provide the first international showcase for the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 at one of the most important locations for contemporary art in Europe.
The DESIRE LINES Pavilion will be located not far from the official Biennale exhibition site, the Arsenale. This newly initiated exhibition venue will bring together artistic positions from three partner organisations from the DESIRE LINES network, which was launched in 2021. This network connects European art initiatives for cross-border exchange; organisations from Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Slovenia, Lithuania, Kosovo and Poland are currently cooperating in this loose network. The art festival Begehungen from Chemnitz, Proforma from Manchester and PASE from Venice have joined forces for the pavilion in Venice 2024.
The three partners are jointly organising the venue and exhibition, with the selection of the exhibited works being the responsibility of the respective partner organisations themselves. Under the direction of curator Kristin Dittrich, the Begehungen art festival is presenting a selection of contemporary photographic positions from eastern Germany, Proforma is showing a photographic position and a performance, while for PASE, several artists are creating various immersive multimedia and sound installations and performances especially for the exhibition.
For the Begehungen art festival, the exhibition in Venice represents a special challenge and is an important step towards European networking. Frank Weinhold explains: "For five years now, we have been implementing the idea of bringing European partner organisations to our festival with guest contributions. This has resulted in invitations from artists from Chemnitz to Manchester, among other places. Our presence in Venice is now the next step that brings us closer to our goal of developing the Begehungen art festival to Europe-wide relevance."
Frank Weinhold, who manages the project for Begehungen e.V., reveals the history of this collaboration: "During a visit to the Biennale two years ago, we had the idea of becoming part of this major art event. Especially with a view to 2025, we wanted to be present at an art world hotspot and draw the international public's attention to Chemnitz 2025 and our art festival. We have stubbornly held on to this dream and will be able to realise it this year."
Kristin Dittrich explains the background to her curatorial concept: "The first professorship for photography at a German art academy was awarded in 1913 at the HGB art academy in Leipzig. During the GDR era, this art academy was the only place where you could study photography. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many of the professors were dismissed. This process has still not been properly analysed. Generation X, the artists born in the mid-1970s/early 1980s, came to terms with their new freedom as post-reunification students at the HGB Leipzig. At the same time, this generation forms a bridge between the past and the present. Their parents lived in an unfree country. They moulded their children and this generation of artists developed their artistic work from this influence."
The Begehungen art festival is one of the projects for the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 programme and Kulturhauptstadt GmbH is supporting the project's development process.
