Viu life. Billboards. Ediz. inglese

Venice International University has celebrated its tenth birthday. Since activities started in December 1995, we have aimed at developing a research and training project that goes beyond the straightforward curricular activities, by creating in particular, a space for interaction between different cultures and modes of communication. Over the years these activities have multiplied. Besides the undergraduate program, which is open to students from the various universities that are part of the consortium, today Venice International University is home to research and training structures that have asserted themselves on the international scene: the TEN Center, for themes regarding the economy of the environment, and the TEDIS center, for themes regarding competitivity and economic globalization. In the field of advanced studies, Venice International University promoted the opening of a doctoral school (SSAV), which reproposes the key themes of research developed by the Venetian universities. In these ten years, we have never failed to underline certain key characteristics. Venice International University's proposal aims at consolidating a top-quality academic curriculum with an experience of creativity and participation that is often lacking in Italian universities. In this prospect, the cultural and artistic activities as a whole that Venice International University promotes, constitute a privileged meeting space for people coming from extremely different cultural backgrounds. Venice International University is an international institution, but not an 'extraterritorial' project. The international character of the program develops around interaction between the city and the territory, proposing new forms of dialogue and, in some cases, even original ones. The Radar Project, of which this publication is an appendix, is one example: Radar wished to connect contemporary artists and Venice through the language of visual arts, to enable the city to be looked at and reinvented with new eyes. The billboards which have given color to the worksite hoardings of Insula for two years have given a different image of their everyday life back to the Venetians, playing with passion and irony on some of the clichés that mark the city's life. We asked Boris Missirkov and Georgi Bogdanov, two Bulgarian artists who have already worked in Venice for the Radar project, to capture the route we have undertaken in a few snapshots. There is a lot of irony in these images; there is a classic taste for shots and a good dose of complicity with those photographed. There is also passion for what professors, staff and students do every day, and also a lot of entertainment. Missirkov and Bogdanov have used a really special poetic art to capture a way of working and enjoying the research and learning experience that Venice International University pursues with persistency. Those photos are now hanging in the corridors and lecture halls of the university and looking at them is a reminder of the profound link between amusement and intellectual discovery, between learning and participation, between passionand identity. I am sure that these images will be able to remind us how much innovation also depends on our own ability - individual or collective - to renew the image we have of ourselves.