The main objective of the Bienal de Performance (Performance Biennale), organized by Fundación Babilonia para las Artes, la Ciencia y la Cultura, is to celebrate performance art and increase its visibility.
The concept “Performance art”, ”action art” or ”live art” escapes all rigid, or simplistic definitions. In order to get to its essence, it is possible to conceive it as an interdisciplinary organic expression that is also a liminal, eccentric and extended manifestation where the artist’s body appears in its full poetic and revolutionary potential.
The Biennale’s focus spans from the commissioning of new creations to the revival of iconic pieces by celebrated performance artists. For that purpose, artists from Argentina and abroad are invited to develop new productions or to revisit some key pieces in the history of contemporary performance.
A central segment of the Biennale is devoted to academic events. Seminars, workshops, and talks seek to generate a space for reflection and the expression of ideas with the aim of building a bridge between the universe of performance and the academic discourse.
As a reflection of the plurality and transversality of this artistic form of expression, the Performance Biennale partners and engages in dialogue with different local and foreign cultural institutions. Thus seeking to enhance connections, interactions, and cooperation among artists, while promoting new spaces for discovery, transformation and crossover that would enable the emergence of new languages.
The Biennale’s curatorial team is made up of artists and members of the academia who work from their own perspective while including a democratic team angle to seek, select and follow up works and creators. In this light, the Biennale offers itself as a collaborative system accompanying artists throughout their research and production.
Since its inception, the Biennale was conceived as a platform to gather artists, curators, and different cultural organizations. As such it irrupted onto the local scene with a promise of continuity, joining the constellation of international biennales and thus enabling the outreach of local artists.
To explore and confront new models and methodologies for the curation, promotion, and production of performance art are constant fundamental premises that earmark the Biennale as a machinery of creation and reflection in motion.