We are pleased to announce that Scott Burnham has been invited to deliver a keynote address at the World Urban Development Congress in Riga, Latvia this October, focussing on the development of creative urban environments.

Joining him as keynote speakers at the congress will be Rem Koolhaas OMA, Charles Landry, Jānis Dripe, chief architect of Riga City, and the economist Robert C. Kloosterman.  Click here for a complete list of the speakers.

We invite you to join Scott Burnham, creative director of La Biennale de Montréal 2009 in the context of the Pecha Kucha meeting taking place this coming Wednesday, July 9, at the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) located at 1195 boulevard St-Laurent, beginning at 8:00 PM.

For those who are not familiar with this event:

“Pecha Kucha”, a Japanese expression for the sound of conversation, is a series of show and tell evenings for designers started by Klein Dytham Architecture in Tokyo. Since 2003, groups have sprung up in more than 80 cities all over the world and adopted the Pecha Kucha format: each presenter has 20 slides which are displayed for 20 seconds each. The Montreal event is presented every 2 months at SAT and and gathers about ten presenters.

The idea is to create an environment where designers from all fields can present (in 6 minutes and 40 seconds) a project carried out, under development, or which they dream to see accomplished. Anyone who has made, or will make, something interesting and would like to share with the curious and open minded is welcome.

Program:

1. Martin Houle, web editor, Kollectif
2. Scott Burnham, creative director La Biennale de Montréal 2009, Urban Play & Open Culture
3. Stuart Kinmond, artist, Visages
4. Adam B, States of invention
5. Emmanuel Sevigny, producer of interactive/immersive environments, playmind
6. Jacques Bilodeau, designer, recent sculptures and installations
7. Celinecelines & Hoda, interactive designers, Teevx
8. Daniel Canty, writer and director, gauche droite
9. Jane Rabinowicz, director, Santropol roulant
10. Céline Mertenat, Véronique Bélanger, Julie Veillette, Geneviève Rousseau, designers/intern architects, CV514: Pansement métropolitain

La Biennale de Montréal 2009 proposes a new model for a biennale by widening our focus on developments taking place in contemporary culture at large, encompassing a wide range of cultural practices, allowing the forces at work in this shift to be part of the actual creation of the biennale.

The most significant of these recent developments in global contemporary culture is the shift towards open models, manifested in the transparent relationship between the creative process and the resulting work. Accordingly, the Biennale will use elements of this shift in creative activity and cultural production to generate some of the content of the Biennale. Thus, La Biennale de Montréal 2009 will focus on the central narrative of Open Culture, working across the fields of open music, open cinema, open design, and open methods of visual art production and display. Open Culture will resonate within the Biennale in a broad definition of the term:

Enabling ideas and projects which are created as open platforms for creativity, contribution, and collaboration by individuals other than the originating artist. For La Biennale de Montréal 2009, the artist becomes the enabler, and its ideas serve as catalysts.

Exhibiting some of the best open projects and openly created works to come forth in recent years.
Celebrating projects which show ways in which individual creativity operates in the day-to-day experiences and interactions of people as they rework their surroundings and immediate environment, transforming them to their own desires and needs.

Bringing the margins of contemporary culture into the centre; from the edges of Internet culture to urban intervention. A key tenant is that all of culture is an open playfield, and, as such, it is time to learn from the laboratories existing at the margins of the mainstream.

View the press conference (Cinémathèque québecoise, May 26, 2008)