Biennale Ball Theater +

Ball Theater – 18th International Architecture Biennale, Venice, Italy

The Ball Theatre is an installation designed to reawaken our desires for utopia. Its hemispherical shape elicits multiple images. It can be interpreted equally as a terrestrial globe or as a mirror ball, a kitsch icon of an era when partying was still possible. This party aura suggests a new approach to today’s crises, one in which the emphasis is no longer on emergency, but on the possibility of alternative futures. This is enacted in the theatre for the duration of the biennale by an alternation between moments of contemplation and immersion in a landscape of sound echoing with foreign and far-off voices, and periods of intense occupancy in the form of variations on the theme of the “ball”, an interplay of workshops-residences between artists, researchers and students.

Program Design and production of an architectural exhibition at the French Pavilion as part of the 18th Venice International Architecture Biennale 2023
Client Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Culture, Institut français
Surface area 400 sqm
Budget €220,000
Curators Muoto and Georgi Stanishev
Team Jos Auzende, Clémence La Sagna, Sophie Mandl, Laure Muller, Anna Tardivel, Pilooski (Cédric Marszewski), Alain Français, Thomas Fourny, Les Ateliers de l’Eclairage, Carlotta Darò, Nicolas Tixier, Mainardi Metallurgica, Ranzato Bruno & Figli, Phoenix audio, Spassky Fischer
Year 2022-2023