[spectre] 5th

[Geert Lovink]

5th berlin biennial for contemporary art

05.04. - 15.06.2008 Elena Filipovic to join Adam Szymczyk as co-curator 
of the 5th berlin biennial The 5th berlin biennial for contemporary art 
is delighted to announce that Adam Szymczyk, the curator of the 5th 
berlin biennial in 2008 has invited Elena Filipovic to join him as 
co-curator. Szymczyk, who was appointed by an international selection 
committee in October 2006, has said "the most rewarding part of the 
curatorial work is an exchange of ideas in collaborative projects and I 
am more than happy that Elena Filipovic has agreed to join me as of 
now. She comes to the project with experience both in thinking about 
the theoretical and historical implications of exhibitions and an 
exciting record of inventiveness in making them. Working together and 
learning from each other, we will develop a detailed concept of the 
show within the next three months and I am very much looking forward to 
an inspired collaboration and to making the exhibition, which we hope 
will be beyond the usual."

Adam Szymczyk is a curator and writer born in 1970 in Piotrkow 
Trybunalski, Poland. He studied art history at Warsaw University and 
worked at different art institutions in Warsaw. In 1997, he was one of 
the founding members of the Foksal Gallery Foundation (FGF) in Warsaw 
where he organized projects together with Andrzej Przywara and Joanna 
Mytkowska, both in Poland and internationally. In 2003, he was 
appointed director and chief curator of the Kunsthalle Basel, where he 
recently curated the retrospective Lee Lozano: Win First Don't Last Win 
Last Don't Care (in association with Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven), the 
group show Quauhnahuac: The Straight Line Is An Utopia, and a solo 
exhibition with Micol Assaël Chizhevsky Lessons. He has written 
extensively about contemporary art for books, catalogues and art 
magazines and has been responsible for exhibitions in Poland, Sweden 
and Switzerland. Elena Filipovic is independent curator and writer born 
in 1972 in Los Angeles. She is completing her doctorate in art history 
at Princeton University and was co-editor, with Barbara Vanderlinden, 
of The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and 
Biennials in Post-Wall Europe recently published by Roomade and MIT 
Press. She is a frequent contributor to frieze and a guest tutor of 
theory/exhibition history at De Appel in Amsterdam. Most recently, she 
curated Let Everything Be Temporary, or When is the Exhibition? at Apex 
Art in New York and Anachronism at Argos Center for Art and Media in 
Brussels, and will curate the first major exhibition of Marcel 
Duchamp's work in Latin America, to open at the Fundacion Proa in 
Buenos Aires and the Museu d'Arte Moderna in Sao Paulo in 2008. 
Established in 1998, the berlin biennial has become a major 
international event in the contemporary art world. Located in Berlin, 
in the midst of the vibrant cultural scene of the fast-changing capital 
of Germany, the berlin biennial has received an enthusiastic response 
from its audience as an experimental, forward-looking, and 
context-sensitive show. The four editions of the berlin biennial that 
have taken place until today explored a variety of exhibition formats 
and involved diverse curatorial approaches. The former editions of the 
berlin biennial were curated by: the founding director of the berlin 
biennial, Klaus Biesenbach, with Nancy Spector and Hans-Ulrich Obrist 
(1st berlin biennial in 1998); Saskia Bos (2nd berlin biennial in 
2001); Ute Meta Bauer (3rd berlin biennial in 2004); and the curatorial 
team of Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick (4th 
berlin biennial in 2006). In 2003, the Kulturstiftung des Bundes/German 
Federal Cultural Foundation designated the berlin biennial as one of 
the "Beacons of Contemporary Art." As a consequence, the German Federal 
Cultural Foundation decided to support the two following editions of 
the berlin biennial from 2003 to 2008, the 4th berlin biennial and the 
5th berlin biennial, with 2.5 million Euro each in order to enable its 
curators to focus on the content and communication of their project and 
to secure the much-needed financial stability of the whole endeavor.

The 5th berlin biennial will open for the public on April 5, 2008 and 
will run until June 15, 2008. The organizer of the 5th berlin biennial 
is KW Institute for Contemporary Art. KW is also one of the 5th berlin 
biennial's exhibition venues. If you have questions or require further 
information, please do not hesitate to contact us. More information 
concerning the exhibition will be available at www.berlinbiennale.de.

SAVE THE DATE: 05.04. - 15.06.2008 The 5th berlin biennial is funded by 
the Kulturstiftung des Bundes/German Federal Cultural Foundation.
Director: Gabriele Horn Further information:
Markus Müller l Maike Cruse 0049 [0] 30 24 34 59 41/42 
press at berlinbiennale.de