During the past weeks, an external jury reviewed a longlist of submissions for their artistic potential to radically reimagine Europe and provoke critical questions. The jury will soon finalise interviews with the five finalists still in the run for receiving a EUR 500,000 commissioning grant. In January, ECF will announce which of the curatorial concepts is selected to develop and host The European Pavilion 2024.

Here the five finalists.

FAILLE, by Cittadellarte and OGR Torino.
FAILLE, Frictional Borders, Ancestral Practices, Precolonial Europe will investigate the Insubric line that runs through the Alpine region and corresponds to the last stretch of the so-called Balkan migratory route. The project looks at this territory as a union of regionalisms.

Four partners working and inhabiting the Alpine region will each host a four- month artist residency to input into an exhibition at OGR Torino and Fondazione Pistoletto, and into a reader – bringing together curators, artists, thinkers and communities – looking into European liminal geographies as radical places to debate European identity.

Let’s dream we are all EQUAL, by antiwarcoaltion.art and partners.
This transnational project proposes to reflect on the idea of a network as a potential framework for the future enabling to break the hierarchical power relations and structures, avoiding conventional clichés and stereotypes. Let’s Dream We Are EQUAL features interconnected offline and online exhibitions taking place simultaneously in various geographical locations, with a major event in Kharkiv, Ukraine and bridging them into a virtual web through a specially developed online platform.

Liquid Becomings, by Stichting Pássaros | espaço agora now and partners.
Within Liquid Becomings a collective of independent artists will create a travelling pavilion. After an opening ceremony in Gdańsk on 1st September 2024, four boats will sail for 28-days on four rivers: the Danube, Rhine, Vistula and Tagus.

The boats, each with a crew of five artists and a captain, will focus on a different theme (“Ruins and Monsters”, “Perimeters”, “Togetherness”, “Bodies and Politics”). The boats will become platforms for durational performances which will be translated into a polyphonic, interdisciplinary work for the final polyphonic programme in November 2024 in Lisbon, where artists and citizens will share a new mythology for Europe.

Space of togetherness, by NEON.
‘What is our imagined future in relation to the present and how can we get there? What are the ideals for a shared civic understanding?’ This proposal encompasses a five-week exhibition held at the National Drama School in Athens, which will explore how preconceived ideas of racism, social and climate mobility, and rights of migrants, are woven into our daily lives and how we can find a sense of belonging and learn to co-exist through the thoughtfulness of class, race, and gender.

An ongoing community project, The AfroGreeks by Døcumatism collective, provides an audio-visual archive of members of the African Diaspora in Greece and serves as a point of departure for an exhibition. The exhibition will be accompanied by a public programme bringing together various contributors, and a commissioned research paper on migration policy in Greece and Europe.

Utopia is not an island, by LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre.
This project aims to mobilise utopian storytelling and art to imagine a better and ecologically viable future, as it revolves around three aspects of what Europe is today: diversity as a constituent characteristic, mobility as a cohesive condition of our society, and climate action and policy as driving forces.

From September 2024 to April 2025, LABoral will devote over 2300m2 to hosting Utopia is not an island in the form of an experimental space, somewhere between an open studio, an agora and an exhibition, in its’ own centre and in Gijon. Part of these shows is the work of artists that earlier on embarked on 5-week artistic residencies on a train departing from their hometown. During their journey, besides preparing their contribution to the exhibition in Gijón, they will record a series of podcasts. They will also share their artistic work and process during a series of events organised in collaboration with partner institutions such as Brunnenpassage in Vienna, Transmediale in Berlin, or Makery in Paris.