Venice Biennale 2018 - British Pavilion Submission

Venice Biennale 2018 - British Pavilion Submission
Civic Agency

August 2017

with Akiko Kobayashi, Lee Ivett & Neil McGuire

In response to the British Council’s open call for the curation of the British Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale under the festival’s overall theme of ‘Freespace’ I submitted a proposal entitled ‘Civic Agency’ along with Akiko, Lee and Neil as fellow co-curators.

Our submission centres on the construction of a doppleganger ‘ghost’ pavilion in Glasgow - a 1:1 replica of the British Pavilion in Venice. Creating a dialogue of oscillation between the two locations, we proposed to explore ‘Freespace’ through activism, agency, knowledge and doing within our shared built environment.

We believe that this type of ‘Freespace’ – for playfulness, experimentation, learning through doing, debate, discourse and the communication of ideas – need not only be the preserve of a cultural elite, but should be re-imagined as a new form of autonomous civic space which values and creates ideas and agency. A Civic Agency presents a new form of exploratory, active and facilitated public space dedicated to the conception and prototyping of social, cultural, economic and environmental activity.

A Civic Agency believes that architecture is at its most uplifting when it permits a participation in its conception, creation and its manifestation by the people directly affected by its existence.