Open call
Applications to participate in the biennial’s main project are accepted from artists of up to 35 years of age.

Curators of up to 35 years of age will be able to submit applications with their concepts for the biennial’s strategic projects that will take place at National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA) and Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA).

Applications are accepted at www.youngart.ru until December 15, 2017.

About Abacadabra 
Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti, curator of the biennial’s main project: “It has been largely theorised that the contemporary “economy of presence” has made fluid the boundaries between the professional, private and social spheres of human activity. Institutional apparatuses rely on our incessant self-performance, where immaterial labour, personal commitment and the search for pleasure are barely distinguishable and in constant operation. In this dystopian pleasure-based economy, the conventional arbiters of value convert easily into immaterial alternatives such as emotions and experiences. Love and authenticity are the currencies of our time, exchanged alternatively through restless online posting, reproductive labour and the good vibes produced by corporate mindfulness meditation sessions. In our 24/7 workday it becomes unclear whether we are performing by our own will or not, which makes the practice of strike as physical absence an unsuitable strategy of withdrawal. How can we navigate chrono-imperialist, sleepless self-performance and still claim the right to inhabit our own time? What kind of autonomous agencies can we perform in order to resist holistic burnout?

Abracadabra is an archaic magical incantation with opaque origins and the title of a homonymous 1980s disco hit by the Steve Miller Band. It is a performative word, suggesting the hazardous production of unforeseen surplus energy as a strategy to navigate sub-political quicksand. Staged in an electrically charged society, crisscrossed by apparently unintentional intensities and elusive forces, Abracadabra draws a line through contemporary forms of suggestion and disenchantment, the growing interest of contemporary culture in esoteric, clandestine practices, and the ecology of “the night out” as exuberant fugitive protocols. Abracadabra will investigate the imaginary and transformative force of these minor, and sometimes hidden, narratives, proposing the historically charged subculture of the dance floor as a scenario where different times can be inhabited, animated proxies can be invented, and conditions can be staged to host embodied experiments in exuberance. Notions of secrecy, generosity, metabolism, posture, attention and intimacy gain operational meaning in the attempt to transform protocols of consumption in situated activities. That’s why we will place emphasis on time-based practices, video and interdisciplinary research, and we hope to find practitioners whose work aims at activating space and landscapes through notions of performativity and agency.”