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DACS collaborates with arts organisations on series of Venice Biennale events

Four people speaking and sitting around a conference table

DACS are proud to announce our collaboration with Venice Agendas and the International Association of Art Critics on Venice Confidential: Off the Record, a series of interviews and discussions between artists, curators, writers, and other arts professionals.

We're pleased to work with Venice Agendas on Venice Confidential: Off the Record, in collaboration with the International Association of Art Critics, which will encourage frank conversations throughout 2022 and 2023 about the art in front of us as well as about the politics & structures of the sector and role of the artist. For its 11th iteration, beginning at the 59th Art Show at Venice Biennale, Venice Agendas will curate and convene interviews and discussions between artists, curators, writers, and other arts professionals.

Beginning at Venice Biennale in April 2022, AICA UK’s President Sacha Craddock and art historian critic and curator Jean Wainwright will work with Venice Agendas’ team Terry Smith, Mark Segal and Chelsey Browne to capture signature images and curate a series of discussions, offering immediate first-hand critical reaction and responses, between critics, curators, and visitors, providing unique engagement.

Misinformation and fake news have seen a rise in recent years. From elections and referendums to the rise in social media and now war in Europe it seems to be increasingly impossible to tell what is true, what is fact from fiction. Venice Confidential: Off the Record is curated to encourage and allow people within the arts to speak their mind without fear of favour, to facilitate responses in-situ to artwork and how art responds to the world – through published conversations can be anonymous or credited.

Terry Smith
Artist and Venice Agendas curator

Misinformation and mass information is nothing new. We have had unreliable mainstream media for years, but with over the past 20 years, social network platforms have increasingly delivered poorly researched, unverifiable news, where opinion is presented as fact and this current state of play is unsustainable for our collective health and wellbeing. That is why for 2022 and 2023, Venice Agendas through Venice Confidential: Off the Record will explore this state of play as a theme. Conversations and dialogue that researches, explores and expands through discussion the way that the international art world might see the future of art and how it can respond to the global rhetoric and events

Mark Segal
Artist Agency and Venice Agendas curator

Venice Confidential: Off the Record is a work in progress where Venice Agendas will hold and curate discussions, talks and analysis over a two-year project that looks in depth at the place of art in a society. Conversations will range from revelations about the abuse of power to money laundering of art objects, deepening our collective understanding of the inequalities in society that continue shape our social awareness, force reflection, and rethink our future.

You will be able to see Venice Confidential discussions and interviews uploaded daily between 20 - 22 April 2022 and throughout 2022 and 2023 at events in Folkestone and London on DACS' social media channels as well as the Venice Agendas website, Vimeo, Radio and YouTube.

Artists and the visual arts community are encouraged reflect, contribute, and comment on the content as well as get in touch with the Venice Agendas team to get involved.

Event information

Venice Confidential: Off the Record

International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia

Preview: 20, 21, 22 April 2022

Continuing in Folkestone and London through 2022 & 2023

Find out more at the Venice Agendas Website

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