In a week, the Slovak and Czech installation will open in Venice

Bratislava This year's exhibition in the pavilion of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic at the 13th Biennale of Architecture in Venice will belong to the project Asking Architecture, which will present more than 19 authors and creative groups from Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The exhibition project of the platform rese arch will be ceremonially opened on August 27, 2012. This unconventional installation exclusively utilizes virtual and augmented reality and is revealed to the visitor only after their step towards communication with the exhibited projects and their authors.

An increasing number of authors and independent groups work with architecture as a medium of art, culture, science, or society: without the ambition to offer answers and solutions, to replace the inadequate with the adequate, or to optimize. They search, ask, problematize, theme, deconstruct, and experience. Their activities are closer to art than to contemporary conventional architecture. The Asking Architecture project questions whether such a shift in the role of the architect is indeed emerging in our countries, what its cultural, international, and historical contexts are, and whether it represents a new concept or a return to the foundations of architecture, coming from its periphery.

The exhibition Asking Architecture leaves the pavilion without conventional exhibits, but in a virtual space mediated by augmented reality technology in tablets with proprietary software, 26 parallel installations from 19 authors and creative groups from Slovakia and the Czech Republic are accessible. Tablets invite visitors to leave content-rich video comments that will later be used in the further development of the exhibited projects and activities.

Under the common name La Biennale di Venezia (Venice Biennale), prestigious reviews of contemporary architecture, art, film, dance, music, and theater take place. In the Giardini della Biennale area, there are 29 national pavilions built by the participating countries themselves. The theme of this year's biennale is Common Ground (loosely translatable as "common basis"), with the main organizer of the exhibition in the former Czechoslovak National Pavilion being the civic association rese arch of Ján Pernecký along with the Slovak National Gallery, the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and the non-profit organizations Mladý pes and Čerstvé ovocie. Authors from both countries are presented, with another opportunity to organize an exhibition under the auspices of the SNG not repeating for four more years.

The exhibition in the pavilion of the Slovak and Czech Republics will be opened with a vernissage on Monday, August 27, 2012, during the so-called preview, when the biennale is visited by invited experts from around the world. The exhibition at this time will be supported by a series of discussions with foreign architects and theorists Reiner Zettl and Peter Trummer from Austria, as well as a lecture by Hernan Diaz Alonso from the United States.

The biennale will be open to the public from August 29 to November 25, 2012, in the historic areas of Giardini della Biennale and Arsenale, as well as in other locations around Venice.

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The exhibition in the pavilion of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic
at the 13th Biennale of Architecture consists of works:

Asking Architecture (rese arch, SK);
Kill Your Fox / psychoanalysis of contemporary Brno architecture,
Compact City (4AM Forum for Architecture and Media and Szymon Rozwałka, CZ);
Space – Expansion / Atrophy, New Giardini (13m3 and Milan Mikula, Ján Triaška, SK);
Subjective Variations (Anna Cséfalvay, SK);
Fasa Place, BA! From UFA to UFA, Audiotourism: Bratislava (Atrakt Art, SK);
Double Impact (Štokovec / BANSKÁ STANICA Contemporary, SK);
BUNKA for Contemporary Culture (tab_lab / BUNKA for Contemporary Culture and Lucia Mičíková, SK)
No Man's Land, Portal (Tomáš Džadoň, SK/CZ);
Viewing Latrines for Everyone (H3T architects, CZ);
Home (Marek Kvetán, SK);
M_P_BA (Pavlína Morháčová, SK);
Multimedia Space for Contemporary Culture Platform 1-12, 324 (Nástupište 1-12 and Daniela Krajčová, SK);
archicustica (OFFCITY, CZ);
Domography, Považské STROJartNE (Pblog, SK);
Stadlnova (Stadlnova, SK/AT);
S2 (Truc sphérique / Stanica Žilina-Záriečie);
Mirror Mountain (Kateřina Šedá, CZ);
Victory Arch, You're Not Here (East Coast and Jozef Tušan, SK);
Garden: Talks about Culture and the Shout of the Times (Garden, SK)