The Art Newspaper

Pirates of the Venice Biennale

Artist-run campsite is the place to stay—if you don’t mind life al fresco

By Iona Whittaker. Web only
Published online: 03 June 2011

Pirate Camp at the Stateless Pavilion

VENICE. The Pirate Camp, is a work of art that serves a vital practical function, providing free accommodation in Venice for 16 international artists during the biennale’s opening week. The initiative, part of the Stateless Pavilion, is the idea of Italian collective Coniglioviola founded by Brice Coniglio, who is also the pavilion’s “curator”. Included at the last minute as part of the Italian Pavilion project organised by Vittorio Sgarbi, the camp “is 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, “ said Coniglio.

Participants were chosen from over 120 applicants through an online competition judged by seven of Italy’s leading artist-run spaces, including the DNA project space in Venice and Milan’s Lucie Fontaine. “Like international [art] 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.” Coniglio calls the nomadic life of many contemporary artists “extra-territoriality”, adding that despite its cost and uncertainties, it is “a privileged vantage point for observing and representing the world.”

The Stateless Pavilion has been funded by the City of Turin and the Gai Association for the Circuit of Young Italian Artists, and also received support from the city of Venice’s department of youth policy and the Venice-based foundation Art Enclosures.