Uzbekistan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale presents The Panoptic Garden

July 5–9, 2022

Guest program curated by Sara Raza (curator, writer, US) and Andris Brinkmanis (art critic and curator, Italy, Latvia).

Public program

“The Panoptic Garden,” a one-week intensive public program focused on transcultural issues connecting to the garden as a discursive place via the perspective of utopia, heterotopia, and dystopia, is coordinated by Sara Raza, NYU ITP, and Andris Brinkmanis, NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti. The intense poetry confronts algorithmic thinking and bias from a human-centered and non-Euro-American centric standpoint. It was created in reaction to the 59th International Venice Biennale “Dixit Algorizmi—The Garden of Knowledge.” The curriculum challenges colonial historical narratives, presumptions, and optics using the concept of “world-building.”

It offers a site-specific and site-responsive program of land cultivation and gardening, seminars, presentations, radio programs, walking tours, and dinner clubs using both online and offline components. Through the application of AI and the emergence and rapid growth of quantum computing, the program considers the issue of surveillance and the role of algorithms in control over global populations. It also looks into its connections to Western ideology and history.

A live and virtual programming, daily radio program, digital archive, and publication will be produced during the one-week intensive in collaboration with artists, local hosts, facilitators, architects, scientists, sociologists, writers, and musicians. Daily field visits will take place across Venice, where participants will tour institutions, private residences, gardens, and other public locations while engaging in vibrant debate. The program will conclude with the creation of a group magazine featuring those who participated in the intensive and edited by Raza and Brinkmanis.

Web project 
Ergin Çavuşoğlu: Ephemeral Grounds, 2022
3D animation and video

Curated by Sophia Baker and Ami Mehta, Creative Technologists (NYU ITP)

A web-based interactive artwork called Ephemeral Grounds by conceptual artist Ergin Çavuşoğlu (born 1968 in Targovishte, Bulgaria) turns fabric into terrain both literally and figuratively. An Anatolian carpet is transformed into a dynamic three-dimensional world so that spectators can realistically explore its tangled patterns and abstract structures.

The piece, which builds on Çavuşoğlu’s body of work that includes anamorphic drawings, sound installations, and video, urges viewers to proceed with caution as they enter a foreboding liminal space that alludes to historical and modern concepts about Islamic-Venetian trade, migration, transculturality, and empire.

The site-specific piece will launch online and live as part of “The Panoptic Garden,” a public program hosted by the Uzbekistan Pavilion at the 59th International Venice Biennale (“Dixit Algorizmi—The Garden of Knowledge”).

Events
Introduction of one-week intensive public program: July 5, 11–11:45am
Welcome words by curators Andris Brinkmanis and Sara Raza

Flying Carpets—Utopias of Mobility: July 5, 12–1pm
Artist Nadia Kaabi Linke in conversation with Sara Raza

World-building through Art: July 5, 2:30–3:30pm
Ami Mehta, Sophia Baker (NYU ITP MA), Munisa Kholkhujaeva and Leonardo Zappala (NABA MA)

From Surveillance to Sousveillance: July 5, 4–5pm
Conversation with artist Danilo Correale. Presentation of the research and film Nacht in Venedig

Swamp Observatory: Instrumentarium For a New Climatic Regime: July 6, 2:30–4:30pm
Presentation with artists Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas (Lithuania) moderated by Andris Brinkmanis

From Algorism to Algorithm. 3000 years of algorithmic rituals: July 7, 2:30–4:30pm
Presentation by Matteo Pasquinelli on history of algorithms moderated by Andris Brinkmanis

Algorithmic Perfumery: July 7, 4:45–6pm
Presentation by Anahita Mekanik (Scent Artist, USA) and conversation wth Sara Raza

The Invisible Trajectories: July 8, 2:30–5pm
Conversation between Ergin Çavuşoğlu (Artist, Bulgaria) and Sara Raza

Final Presentations of the Panoptic Garden Workshop: July 9, 11am–1pm

Walking the Sea: July 9, 2:30–4pm
Film presentation and conversation with Anton Ginzburg moderated by Gayane Umerova and Sara Raza

The Panoptic Garden Conclusive Dialogue: July 9, 4:30–5:45pm
Facilitated by Sara Raza and Andris Brinkmanis