For the Biennale de Lyon 2013, curator Gunnar B. Kvaran has invited artists from all over the world who work in the narrative field and use art to experiment with the modalities and mechanisms of storytelling.

“The art of these artist-storytellers comes in many and varied forms and uses a wealth of different registers, materials and techniques. So the exhibition naturally includes sculptures, paintings, fixed images, animated images, arrangements of text, arrangements of sounds and of objects in space, as well as performances. It highlights the way (or rather, ways) in which young artists of today—according to whether they work in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa or North America—are imagining the narratives of tomorrow: narratives that do without the suspense and excitement of globalised fiction as practised in Hollywood, on television, or in the best-sellers of world literature. Theirs are totally new narratives that defamiliarise us with the world and restore the deep-rooted strangeness and complexity that classic storytelling devices have always sought to iron out or to stifle. These are art narratives that enable us to see and understand the world in a new light and more intelligibly.”
–Gunnar B. Kvaran

Performance weekend
Saturday 19 & Sunday 20 October
With Xavier Cha, Mette Edvardsen, Rana Hamadeh, Louise Hervé& Chloé Maillet, Alice Lescanne & Sonia Derzypolski, Georgia Sagri, Helga Wretman, Paulo Nazareth and Donna Kukama, together with interviews and discussions orchestrated by art critic Jean-Max Colard

Symposium: “The world is made of stories”
Friday 22 November
How contemporary artists formalize visual narratives, with artists Antoine Catala & Fabrice Hyber, Mieke Bal, Marie Fraser, Olivier Asselin, Normand Biron, Mauro Carbone, Bertrand Gervais, Benoit Peeters, Cyrille Bret & Christine Ross.

Video weekend
Saturday 30 November & Sunday 1 December
With Alain Robbe-Grillet, Matthew Barney, Patricia Lennox-Boyd, Petra Cortright, Laure Prouvost, Neïl Beloufa, Laida Lertxundi, Helen Marten, Gustavo Speridiao, Ryan Trecartin… and special screenings, presented by Fabrice Bousteau

Robotics weekend / Interactive narratives
Saturday 14 & Sunday 15 December

The artists :
Jonathas Andrade De Souza (BR); Ed Atkins (GB); Trisha Baga (US); Matthew Barney (US); Neil Beloufa (FR); Gerry Bibby (AU); Dineo Seshee Bopape (ZA); The Bruce High Quality Foundation (US); Antoine Catala (FR); Paul Chan (US); Ian Cheng (US); Dan Colen (US); Petra Cortright (US); Jason Dodge (US); Aleksandra Domanovic (RS); David Douard (FR); Erro (IS); Roe Ethridge (US); Edward Fornieles (GB); Gabriela Fridriksdottir (IS); Robert Gober (US); Karl Haendel (US); Fabrice Hyber (FR); Glenn Kaino (US); Jeff Koons (US); Donna Kukama (ZA); Margaret Lee (US); Patricia Lennox-Boyd (GB); Ann Lislegaard (NO); Nate Lowman (US); MadeIn (CN); Vaclav Magid (RU); Helen Marten (GB); Thiago Martins De Melo (BR); Bjarne Melgaard (NO); Takao Minami (JP); Meleko Mokgosi (BW); Paulo Nazareth (BR); Paulo Nimer Pjota (BR); Yoko Ono (JP); Laure Prouvost (FR); Lili Reynaud-Dewar (FR); James Richards (GB); Alain Robbe-Grillet (FR); Matthew Ronay (US); Tom Sachs (US); Hiraki Sawa (JP); Mary Sibande (ZA); Gustavo Speridiao (BR); Tavares Strachan (BS); Nobuaki Takekawa (JP); Ryan Trecartin (US) & Lizzie Fitch (US); Peter Wachtler (DE); Hannah Weinberger (DE); Ming Wong (SG); Yang Fudong (CN); Anicka Yi (KR); Zhang Ding (CN)…

Artistic Director: Thierry Raspail
Guest Curator: Gunnar B. Kvaran

Preview: 10–11 September 2013

www.biennaledelyon.com