As part of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2025, Escuela Moderna / Ateneo Libertario presented “Paradigm and Hallucinations” as an educational space in the Biennale Sessions Gardens on May 10.
The proposal is part of the practice carried out by the Berlin-based network of architectural collectives, Raumlaborberlin, and featured the following artists: Arianna Ferreri (saxophone sound performance), Kateryna Kovalchuk (poetic street performance in front of the Pavilion), Nicoletta Braga and Zhenru Liang (Escuela Moderna), followed by Francesco Apuzzo of Raumlaborberlin.
With a shift in narration, we choose to build using materials previously employed in other contexts — fragments with their own memory, and objects and systems that, for a limited time, assume diverted, decontextualized roles.
This radical decision, which we share with experts from various disciplines, takes shape as a paradigm: a stance, a meaningful gesture.
Matter, space, and the invisible body of technical, administrative, and economic parameters are interwoven.
As in a fabric marked by errors or overlays, hallucinations emerge.
In the creative and constructive process, the fine line between letting these hallucinations happen and controlling them remains a central theme, and often represents the core of our work.
Written by Francesco Apuzzo of Raumlaborberlin.
The collaboration with Francesco is longstanding; we had the pleasure of working together on forms of turmoil in Milan at BASE, and since then we have maintained a friendly relationship.
Later, Nicoletta Braga presented the results of this collaboration at various universities in Spain such as Granada and Seville, and then exhibited at the Spanish Pavilion in the same year Raumlaborberlin won the Golden Lion at the Architecture Biennale.
This year, a meeting with students in Brera in the course taught by Zhenru Liang, in collaboration with Guerri, Scudero, Braga, Moioli, and finally this event at Biennale Sessions 2025 in the Russian Pavilion, to discuss their practices, but also internationalism, art, architecture, poetry, and peace — as always, in our style.
Among other things, we have worked on libertarian influences in the arts with Golden Lion winner Saburo Teshigawara; museums with Vicente Todolí and David Liver; conferences on Jean Baudrillard with Francesco Proto from Oxford; Antonio Manuel and Camillo Osorio from the Brazilian Pavilion; with our comrades at Sale Docks; the Italian beat generation in workwear with Sardella, Brolati, Brugnaro senior, Rino de Michele, Elena Roccaro, and others — but without boring you with a complete list (everything is archived) — not forgetting Parco Aperto Mestre with ApArte, the historic libertarian cultural magazine of Venice, or public art at the Marco Polo Airport in Tessera, Venice.
We have always tried to address contemporary issues with the utmost gentleness.
Written by Massimo Mazzone, spokesperson for Escuela Moderna.