IBA Academy Launches with “Biennials and Memory: Expanding on Archival Practices”
IBA Academy Launches with “Biennials and Memory: Expanding on Archival Practices”
April 9,14, 15 2026
Online (Zoom)
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new long-term program: IBA Academy an online platform dedicated to sustained knowledge exchange, research development, and critical dialogue across the field of biennial making.
Conceived as a modular format, IBA Academy brings together sessoins organised around specific thematic focuses. Each module unfolds over a concentrated period of time (one or two weeks), combining lectures, presentations, and roundtable discussions. By engaging both academic research and biennial practice, the program aims to create a space where theoretical reflection and institutional experience intersect, opening pathways for further research and collective inquiry within IBA and beyond.
The inaugural module, Biennials and Memory: Expanding on Archival Practices addresses a fundamental yet often underdeveloped dimension of biennial making: the question of how these inherently temporary and evolving structures produce, preserve, and transmit memory and knowledge.
Biennials, by their very nature, are characterised by temporality. Teams are assembled and disbanded, infrastructures shift, and institutional continuity is frequently interrupted. As a result, significant aspects of their histories, processes, decisions, and forms of knowledge, risk being lost or only partially documented. At the same time, the development and maintenance of archives often remain secondary within organisational priorities, particularly in contexts marked by precarious or inconsistent funding.
This program builds on the question of why and how biennials can be archived, approaching archives not only as repositories of the past but as active sites of knowledge production. Bringing together archivists, curators, and researchers, the three sessions explore archival methodologies, institutional memory, and contemporary practices that rethink how biennials are documented, remembered, and reactivated.
Moderated by Caroline Fucci (PhD Researcher, University of Leicester), who has also contributed to the development of the programme, the module unfolds across three sessions:
Session 1: Learning
April 9, 2026 (Thursday), 4:00 pm (CET/GMT+1)
An introductory session addressing the ontological questions of knowledge production, history, and archives in relation to biennials. The discussion brings together perspectives from academia and archival practice.
Francesca Zanella, Associate Professor of History of Contemporary Art, Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Guilherme Vieira, Manager, Wanda Svevo Historical Archive, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
Gregor Dražil, PhD Researcher, International Center of Graphic Arts (MGLC), Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts
Register here for the first session
Session 2: Remembering
April 14, 2026 (Tuesday), 9:30 am (CET/GMT+1)
Expanding beyond traditional archival frameworks, this session focuses on exhibitions and research projects that engage with biennials as sites of memory and historical reflection.
Dusu Choi, Former Head of Exhibition Department, Gwangju Biennale
Mi You, Professor, University of Kassel / documenta Institut
Register here for the second session
Session 3: Exchanging
April 15, 2026 (Wednesday), 4:00 pm (CET/GMT+1)
A roundtable discussion bringing together IBA members to exchange perspectives, experiences, and strategies, contributing to a collective reflection on future approaches to biennial archives.
Register here for the third and final session
Each session will conclude with an open Q&A, inviting participants to actively engage in the conversation.
Through this first module, IBA Academy aims to foreground archival practices as essential components of biennial continuity and as key sites for the writing of art history. Beyond sharing knowledge and case studies, the program seeks to initiate a longer-term process of reflection within the Association, potentially contributing to the development of shared frameworks, best practices, and future research trajectories.
