Curatorial accidents. Alterations and unforeseen events at the 2019 Chilean Architecture Biennial

Abstract

Architecture biennials, heirs to art exhibitions, are challenged in the 21st century to meet mass audiences. Including in the title the word “citizen” is not synonym of openness, thus the proposal of the last Chilean architecture biennial reconsidered the format and the fundamentals, as a challenge. Approaching from participatory work methodologies has led to discovering codes, dynamics, relationships and scenarios. The preliminary understanding of the neighborhood was manifested in the adoption of a temporal language, thanks to a series of mobile artifacts allowing a multiplicity of events instead of a fixed sample. Going out onto the streets to present architecture that addresses common and everyday problems is an unprecedented gesture of openness in Chile, however its staging led to a castling of roles; the exhibition became accidental, while the neighborhood and its community became an object of interest. The biennial, subordinated to the laws of the place, encountered a complex sociopolitical context that finally revealed an unusual appropriation and resignification of the event's stand displays and contents.