Original: THE 20 YEARS' BOOK OF BIENNALE

Original 20 years of the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean is a book realized with Electa which explains the firts twenty years of the history of Biennial.


ABOUT THE BOOK ITSELF
Jurij Krpan, Curator

It was November 2004 in Helsinki, where we'd just finished the general assembly of the association. We were sitting in a nice bar and it was snowing outside. Some of our colleagues from the Mediterranean saw snow fall for the first time in their lives.
As always, after arduous all-day sessions, we were spontaneously commenting on events at the assembly and the association in general, and once again the issue of the identity of the project BJCEM was broached. Again there were calls for a clearer artistic profile and a more determined conduct on the art scene. We recalled artists who had taken part in Biennials and went on to become major players in the art world. They typically had their first international appearance at the Biennial and everyone sitting at the table that night agreed that our project should actually be the coming-out event for emerging artists. READ>>


INTRODUCTION

Luigi Ratclif
President, BJCEM

It is a great pleasure for me to present Original, the book of the twenty-second anniversary of BJCEM, the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean.
I am happy because this edition represents a very important moment for all those who have participated with their work and with their ideas to the implementation of one of the most original projects in the recent history of the cultural policies in this area of the world. The BJCEM is now going through a very decisive and at the same time very delicate phase of its twenty-year old history. A crucial and strategic moment for its future.
This book can definitely help us to review our actions, to reflect on the potential of the new artistic creativity in these last two decades and on the evolution of the public policies on behalf of the young people and the culture in our cities and in our countries. But most of all this book can help us understand what can be the role of the artists, the critics, the intellectuals, the role of the culture in general to the research of a dialogue and to the establishment of concrete relationships in order to create a peaceful Mediterranean. READ>>


Ibrahim Spahic
First President, BJCEM

Original is a document about the history of the last twenty years of the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, in the period between the last decades of the twentieth and the first decade of the twenty-first century, which testifies to the excellent artistic works of the generations which have been creating on the very spring of ancient and modern cultures and civilizations. The Biennials that took place in Barcelona in 1985 and 1987, in Thessaloniki 1986, in Bologna 1988, in Marseilles 1990, in Valencia 1992, in Lisbon 1994, in Turin 1997, in Rome 1999, in Sarajevo 2001, in Athens 2003, and the Biennial in Naples 2005 have promoted young artists whose works are today appreciated in modern art. READ>>


Paolo Beni, President ARCI
Flavio Mongelli, Culture Responsible ARCI

The Biennial is an event that has a place of honor in mind and in heart of ARCI, after so many years and so many people who invented and developed it, facing first of all some doubts, especially in Italy, and then with its impetuous success, till the foundation of the BJCEM Association.
The promotion of young artists is a constant engagement in the activity of ARCI, of its spaces and its associative tissue, as well as its "use" as media, actors and leaders of the Euro-Mediterranean dialogue and exchange. READ>>