Gabrovo Biennial of Humor and Satire in Art

'Economy of Means'  The world has been running on steroids. Nature is privatized and cheapened. Our voracious extraction and consumption of resources have created an ecological debt gone default. Acceleration and gigantism have shaped a metabolic cycle between capital and nature, North and South, rich and poor, clean and polluted, with greed and hypertrophy on one end and exhaustion on the other. There is a global freak show going on, a spectacle of disproportion and distortion reminiscent of those 19th century displays of deformed humans and animals. Only now it happens on a planetary scale and we’re all in it. At times, it seems as if the vicious comedy of the freak show might be the appropriate response to our present-day monstrosity.  Can the planetary imaginary be refueled with humor, satire and conviviality? Be it to figure out how to go through collapse as humanly as possible, or to reconsider how much is enough and what constitutes good living. Economy of Means as a biennial theme stands for a shift towards caring and maintenance instead of show business; for looking into society, but also looking at art, its modes of production and means of expression, where brief, economical and simple are part of the punchline delivery.