ROMANIA
Daniel Knorr
Commissario: Marius Babias. Sede: Padiglione ai Giardini




European Influenza
The artist Daniel Knorr, who was born in Bucharest and lives in Berlin, represents Romania at the 51st Venice Biennale. The commissioner of the Romanian Pavilion is Marius Babias.

European Influenza will be exhibited in the Romanian Pavilion. The Venice Biennale, as a world model for culture, is an ideal place for the presentation of a powerful countermodel to the eastern expansion of the European Union. The Pavilion will be left empty, with only the traces of past exhibitions remaining.

The materialization of the work "European Influenza" takes place through the consideration and observation of the process of European unification, so to speak in the minds of the visitors and their process of interaction with society and media. Since 2001 Daniel Knorr has been working on “invisible artworks.” These works exist as oral information and narration. The documentation of the works as well as their "materialization" only occurs through media.

Further, the process of European acculturation is a focus of this presentation. The question is how new cultures of assimilation, liberated identities, and options for action can emerge in the prospect of Europe’s future self-definitions. The visual arts produce linguistic and visual politics, models for thinking and observing, that cross borders.

The second part of the presentation in the Romanian Pavilion consists of a reader in English, edited by Marius Babias, that contains critical texts on Europe and illustrations by Daniel Knorr. The thousand-page reader will be given to exhibition visitors free of charge. The authors include Edit Andras, Sorin Antohi, Marius Babias, Boris Buden, Cosmin Costinas, Nicoleta Esinencu, Catalin Gheorghe, Roger Griffin, Vasif Kortun, Erden Kosova, Marta Kuzma, Oliver Marchart, John Miller, Rastko Mocnik, Stefan Nowotny, Bojana Pejic, Dan Perjovschi, Natasa Petresin, Ileana Pintilie, Piotr Piotrowski, Meike Schmidt-Gleim, Hito Steyerl, Kristine Stiles, Marlene Streeruwitz, Ovidiu Tichilendeanu, Attila Tordai-S., Raluca Voinea, and Tim Zulauf.