The North Macedonia Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Biennale

description provided by the participants

Representing North Macedonia at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, "Now" pavilion is an imaginary interval mediating between past and future, designed to answer the question; How will we live together?, is currated by Bekir Ademi, founder of the architecture office BINA [bureau of inventive architecture] and the director of the National Gallery of North Macedonia, Dita Starova Qerimi, as the commissioner.

How can we live together?

The question itself brings forth the porosity which is at the hearth of our project. This is contrary to the essence of our tradition of architecture: the enclosure, the wall, the concealed. Protection from the elements,but also, protection from the Others. Walls separating communities, “protecting” our community from the others, from “them”. The concealedness also limits our thinking, closing our freedom, since freedom lies in the Open. In the unconcealed. Cutting ourselves from others, trying to protect “us” from “them” by erecting walls makes us prisoners of our close mindedness. Makes us prisoners of mindlessness! In order to break away from our chains, in order to free ourselves from our self-imprisonment, we need torethink architecture as well. We need to open ourselves to the sky. It is the earth that we see when we look to the sky. It is us, the mortals, who we see when we search for the divinities. The groundless ground is what we stand on firmly, when we accept our fundamental fragility, our fundamental ephemerality, our fundamental finitude! It is only on the basis of these choices that we can live together. Only at the Unconcealed, when we open ourselves for each other as vulnerable beings, can we shine among the mortals upon the earth!

Graphic no.1 : Ivana Chaloska

Therefore, the project “NOW”, points out the urgency for challenging the space-time aspects of being. The pavilion, which is a symbolic cut from the plenty, follows the Dedaldialectics of the open vs closed, and frames the basic human needs: being protected at home and symbiotically connecting the near surroundings. In answering the biennale question the Macedonian exhibition intentionally involves the nearby narrative, Palazzo Zorzi -the regional UNESCO office for Europe, counterpointing the archetypal appearance of the pavilion and preserved language of a suggestive renaissance palace and its highly distinctive semantics.

Graphic no.2: Ivana Chaloska, Enes Sever

If language is our reasoning tool, it’s inevitable, as french architects from the Enlightenment period would argue, that the elements of the architecture we create invoke conversation, pose questions, or even give answers. Dialectics weaves through as a structure model, not only in the concept, but also in the pavilion materialisation. Encircled by the walls and towers of Venice, a rectangle, a triangle and a sphere, a display devoid from program, elaborates the relation between the highly abstracted form and the human sensation. Opposing wood and stone, transparent and opaque, filigrane and robustness, the project meditates future tectonics as possible transcendent bodies. The visitor is pulled in a space of speculative gravitation, and her expectations forwholeness and finiteness of the structure meet a distorted center and porose cover, which combined with the binary shadow on the palazzo’s atrium floor, dissolves her sole and distributes her focus in a Dedal labirynt of self-revelation and a process of rethinking society.

Graphic no.3: Ivana Chaloska

“NOW” is a destilate and a section through a process of sedimentation of the ubiquitous cultural layers of the current Macedonian, and world society, or as Heidegger would say, expresses one moment of thehuman epoch and its perception specifics. The exhibit tries to rise above and surpass the recurring culture of segregation of human body and soul, and demonstrates this in its structure of clear lines, brought together as a filigrane fairly distanced topographical succession, that gradually suffise the ether in search of life together. Wooden stalactites suspended below a roof-like frame, projecting mirrored pinnacles faced downwards at the gaze of people visiting the structure, fragment the experience, onone hand stage an implosion and pressure in the inner space, and on the other dismantle the image of the shelter and incite etheric experiences.

Photo 1: Andrea Ferro

The Macedonian pavilion was officially opened during the Vernissage at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2021, by the commissioner Dita Starova Qerimi, the author and curator Bekir Ademi, the co-curator Jordan Shishovski and the Minister of Culture of RNM Irena Stefoska. It will stay open until November 21, 2021.

Photo 2: Andrea Ferro

Participants: Bekir Ademi, Ana Rafailovska, Ivana Chaloska, Jordan Shishovski, Amine Ademi, Enis Abovski, Enes Sever, Atanas Naumovski, Gavril Boshkoski, Aida Bakali Salihu, Dren Nevzati, Elmedina Hasani, Nita Chavoll

Patronage: Ministry of culture of Republic of North Macedonia

Commissioner: Dita Starova Kjerimi

Curators: Bekir Ademi, Jordan Shishovski

Autor: Bekir Ademi [BINA]

Audio instalation: Vladimir Lukash, Gjorgji Mitrevski

Photographer: Andrea Ferro (+participants)