Finishing School have just announced their upcoming project, We Will Always Have Venice, with the above teaser video. I’ll be there, will you? They describe the project thusly:
We Will Always Have Venice is a new participatory project framed as a series of collateral actions deployed in and around the 2011 Venice Biennale. Museum patrons are invited to travel with FS to Venice and help perform the actions. The scope of the project includes enlistment of participants, participation in all training workshops, the mission to Venice, and post-trip activities. The projects primary objectives are to create lasting critical reflections concerning the role of the biennale in contemporary culture and to temporarily redirect some of the flow of creative communication and power of the biennale experience into the hands of the project participants and the public at large. Secondary intentions are to investigate aesthetic judgments, boundaries (as artist, institution, audience, and public), and relevance (economic, historical, social, and political) of the biennale. The individual actions also explore appropriation, intervention, memory, ritual and transgression, institutional critique, history, collaboration, power, and space. The specific nature of each mission action and the roles of participants will be presented to the group once in Venice. FS has contracted a professional tour company to manage all travel, food, and accommodations for Venice. Space is limited; a maximum of thirty-six people can participate in this project. Upon completion of the mission, each participant will receive a limited edition artwork commemorating the project.