The 27th Bienal de São Paulo starts in January, 2006, and runs until December, through a program of International Seminars. The lengthening of the event’s timeframe is one among other pioneering experiments that will mark this edition: that is, the biennial will not be limited to an exhibition that lasts a little more than two months, but will rather provide the audience with a gradual propagation of ideas, which will guide the show’s development. At the same time, the 27th Bienal’s territorial extension will be enlarged to engage other states besides São Paulo, through a program of Art Residencies aimed at raising awareness concerning Brazilian cultural diversity and activating regions that are lacking information.

The International Seminars are formatted as groups of studies and debates, beginning before the opening of the exhibition and complementing it. Six seminars have been planned, led by Brazilian and foreign art historians, curators, artists, philosophers, psychoanalysts and political scientists. Each seminar will last
two days, with three roundtables, to be organized by one of the curators of the 27th Bienal, responsible for selecting a theme inherent to the exhibition How to Live Together, which is organized in two different blocks: “Constructive Projects” and “Programs for Life.”

The title of the 27th Bienal, borrowed from a series of lectures Roland Barthes gave at the Collège de France between 1976 and 1977, was chosen to approach one of the most burning issues of public life: How to establish a plausible communication between groups and nations that listen to each other less and less?
Almost thirty years later, these courses have gained unexpected resonance, when we consider “terrorism and nihilism,” which today are essential to any possibility of ethics and peaceful cohabitation.

In this sense, the abandonment of the “national representations,” something which had accompanied the Bienal de São Paulo ever since its creation, is seen to be even more urgent. Thanks to an experimental platform, the 27th Bienal intends to take on the role of a cultural congress, stimulating participation, while
understanding that the very defi nition of creative work requires that exhibition walls be transcended.
Not by chance, the fi rst seminar discusses the permanence and recomposition of museums and their exhibition logic.

Lisette Lagnado, chief curator of the 27th Bienal

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