| Summary: | The collaborative artist duo Paweł Althamer and Goshka Macuga proposed that Warsaw's Bródno neighborhood be nominated as an exhibition, citing the biennale format famously used in cities such as São Paulo, Berlin, and Istanbul. Althamer and Macuga focus on on the neighborhood's defining features: the situations, sites, local initiatives, inventions, collections, buildings, and the infrastructure that can be encountered here. They call it a "Venice" biennale, alluding to the world's oldest (established in 1895) and most famous art event held on a biennial basis. This descriptor also emphasizes the splendor and solemnity inherent in the very act of considering the neighborhood in terms of an art exhibition. The exhibition is a tool for shaping public awareness, and can therefore be a means for social change. The map of the exhibition features over eighty locations that were selected this spring while touring Bródno in the company of local experts. Locals were also encouraged to submit their own ideas: postcards calling on resident to participate -- "Show Bródno to the World!" -- were deposited in mailboxes all across Bródno. The collaboratively designed program for the Venice Biennale in Bródno is just one of many possible itineraries for exploring the neighborhood. The purpose of the exhibition is not to create an idealized, sentimental depiction of Bródno, but rather to present a subjectively composed constellation of things that would introduce audiences to the spirit of the place, its ongoing transformation, the co-existence of its numerous seemingly incompatible elements, defects, and traces of past social and urban processes.
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