BOURDON TO BIENNALE
Ever since the start, we have always tried to programme quite plurally and part of that is also being able to support people financially. A big part of our learning through the years, has been to apply for public funds and not rely on in-kind labour for the people we are commissioning. That does not reflect, sadly, in the team yet who are still mostly volunteers. The core programme is a huge part of what we do. The kinship and allyship with the open programme is so critical because if they were not there, then we would just be talking to ourselves. What is so nice about the model is that if we take / other, for example, the people of colour collective who came out of the Glasgow School of Art, and the current team are
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Mia Pinder-Hussein, Alyesha Choudhury and Carl Jonsson, they began to self-produce work and use the Architecture Fringe open platform to amplify their work and that is the whole point. We don’t gatekeep access to the platform. We don’t have a curatorial committee that sanctions if you can do that or not, as long as it’s safe and it’s going to happen, then it’s not actually our business about what your approach to that culture is. In terms of working with other people, it is really amazing and what was nice about the 2021 edition was we were going through the pandemic, which was hard for everybody, but because we were mostly online, through necessity, our programme internationalised.
Unlearning was our provocation theme then. We were learning about biases and how different people’s lived experiences are affected by the systemic structures that are inherent within society. It was so great because we worked with people in Detroit, New York, Calcutta, people here in Glasgow as well. That was quite liberating. MM: In October it was announced that the Architecture Fringe, along with -ism magazine and /other was to represent Scotland at the 2023 Venice Biennale. Your proposal is titled, 'A Fragile Correspondence'. Could you tell us a little bit about that, and what your involvement entails? AS: The Venice Biennale is the world’s largest art and architectural exhibition, a fully
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