RELAY

La Biennale di Venezia presents the RELAY performance, held on July 16th and 17th 2021 at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, as part of the Meetings on Architecture – Expanded Programme of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition titled How will we live together?, curated by Hashim Sarkis.

RELAY was a global conversation-relay lasting 24 hours, conceived and conducted by Adam Kaasa, Thandi Loewenson and David Burns of the Fiction Feeling Frame research collective at the School of Architecture, Royal College of Art in London.

“How can we speak to one other? How can we speak together?”: these are the questions raised by RELAY, in an experiment designed to activate conversations and connectedness, to create closeness and intimacy. The project involved over 50 architects, artists, curators and designers in a unique debate live online from every time zone across the world. It started in Venice at 12 noon (12:00 CET; UTC + 2), passing the ‘conversational baton’ westward moving around the globe.

Inspired by performances such as Artangel’s Long Player Assembly (2020) and Occupy Wall Street’s ‘people’s microphone’ (2011), RELAY was been made possible by the support of the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art and WePresent.

RELAY was streamed live on relay.fff.industries and screened in several satellite sites: from Accra, from the African Futures Institute to the Nubuke Foundation, from Filet Space in London to the Frontyard in Sydney.