Workshop

The 5th Young Artists’ Workshop is part of the main programme of the 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art. The title of the workshop, Romance, arises from an alternative reading of the main concept and primary theoretical underpinning of this year’s edition of the Biennale, which is based on Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. The organisers’ rationale for the forthcoming Workshop attempts to revisit the political interpretation of this book and focuses on its multiple readings: on the writing which is a monologue by necessity, but nevertheless allows the writer’s cognitive faculties to break free from the prisoner’s role and routine; on romance, which is what defines people living and communicating with society under peculiar conditions; on romance as a trait to be found in every ideologue; on romance as a concept and a choice that is both genuinely personal and deeply political – especially when characterised by the ideological consistency demonstrated by thinkers like Gramsci. The defining characteristic of the Workshop also served as the selection criterion of participants: inclusiveness and diversity.