Roberto Cicutto

The title of the Architecture Biennale 2021 hinges on the final question mark:
“How will we live together?”
The ricci/forte program, which we will refer to hereafter using the pronoun THEY to identify the authors as a single entity, compels us to “ask ourselves, finally, necessary questions: what will happen to us? How do we see our future? What do we want and what are we transforming into?”
I feel freedom in this cast-off fear to ask precise questions, probably seen as rhetorical until today, that have instead become normal after the abnormality of too many months lived so differently.
THEY never talk about the Festivals they will organise during their term of office. They always refer to one edition: 2021-2024. It means far more than a four-year project. It is a Festival that, united with the activities of the College, has been conceived as indivisible, an eye that changes the colour of its iris yet remains the same, scanning the stage and the audience: perhaps able, together, to answer these questions.
THEY have wed the idea of dialogue and exchange between the arts of La Biennale. They want to create real exchange among different disciplines, together with the other Directors.
THEY have enriched the College’s scope (direction and theatre), welcoming Italian and foreign performers Under 40 who—with their site-specific participation, designed for Venice—will also serve as special guides for arriving spectators.
THEY will organise Masterclasses to delve into and reflect upon the contents proposed by the Festival and what the Colleges produce so that everything will become a subject of study, a source of learning, encounters that can break the Festival’s temporal bounds.
THEY proposed, and the Board of Directors of La Biennale approved, the awarding of prizes to two different figures, both extraordinarily representative of the immense richness of live art: Krzysztof Warlikowski, Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, and Kae Tempest, Silver Lion, to both of whom all of us owe the very greatest admiration and most heartfelt congratulations.

I wish Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte every success in realising the Festival in the manner closest to their desires, in the awareness that La Biennale considers their work a new stage in its history and will accompany them with the wealth of its professionalism.

Thanks to the Ministero della Cultura and the Veneto Region the local institutions that support La Biennale in various ways, the City of Venice, the Soprintendenza Archeologia, belle arti e paesaggio per il Comune di Venezia e Laguna and the Italian Navy.

Thanks to Valentino, Main Sponsor of the Biennale Teatro 2021 and to Rai Cultura, Media Partner of La Biennale di Venezia.