Presentation

The first Valencia Biennial will be a major international festival including all the various different languages of contemporary arts and, very specially, the communication between the arts. The connections opened up by communication the arts today locate us in a new medieval - in the most positive sense of the term -a period witnessing the emergence of a new style.

The English language has taken on the role formerly played by Latin, and the images used by and among different peoples have also adopted the function of universal icons. The importance of Internet and the mass media herald a new era, a future which we are irrevocably bound.

The Valencia Biennial's approach to the arts is not self-referential. On the contrary, it is focussed on communication between the arts, an experience so important nowadays that it constitutes a new language in itself. Throughout history, like curious children, artists have always been interested in the whole spectrum of materials and forms of expression, whether pigments, marble or trash; from objects to concepts; and what is happening now, is Internet. From the moment when an artist creates communication, he (or she) has no idea where it will stop, as it reaches out and effects other languages such as advert fashion or design. For this reason, the possibility for artists and creators to resort to transversal communication between different artistic languages is so interesting.

The idea of separation between the arts is an obsolete concept. Virtual communication happens in a no-place. We live in airports, communicate in the net, travel around the world via Internet. We are in permanent transition, in constant motion.
Today, virtual reality has become an actual fact. The no-place has conquered a real space in our lives. Hence, the need to understand where we are living and the importance of comprehending exactly where communication is leading us to. The invention of Internet confronts the world with a totally new reality, with the dawn of a radical yet positive change.

MacLuhan believed that it was artists who understood their time and place before everybody else, forerunners teaching of us how to react to new situations. Starting from the premise that art is the virtue of communication, the Valencia Biennial will analyse communication between the arts within a contemporary context. The multidisciplinary approach and the critical discourse of the Biennial, are sure to situate us in the reality we are living through -the dawn of a New World.