Nora N. Khan has been appointed by the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (CACG) as co-curator of the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement 2023 (BIM23). A critic, editor and curator, Khan joins Andrea Bellini, who is also the current director of the Centre. They will select and commission artists to produce works to be premiered in Geneva in November 2023.
Khan previously held a professorial position at Rhode Island School of Design (2018-21), where she was nominated for the John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching. Recent curatorial endeavours include the 2020 exhibition Manual Override at New York’s The Shed, featuring works by Simon Fujiwara and Martine Syms.
Initially called the ‘International Video Week’, BIM was founded in 1985 by André Iten and – after featuring works by artists like Guy Debord, Harun Farocki and Jean-Luc Godard in its initial stint – inherited in 2009 the former Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, founded and run by the Centre for Contemporary Image from 1985 until 2007. The CACG launched the current event format in 2014, which considers its history, whilst maintaining a commitment to spotlighting young artists. Across multimedia installations, films and commercial-cinema documentaries, as well as live performances, the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement is a ‘constellation of solo exhibitions and a site for research and production’.
In ArtReview, Rebecca O’Dwyer described the BIM22 as ‘by turns bleak, frustrating, tedious and LOL funny, but always insistently contemporary. Favouring excess, the biennale turns a mirror to our ceaseless consumption, hubris and self-aggrandisement, imparting images that are often both uncomfortable and uncomfortably accurate.’
Next year’s edition will explore how new technologies and ideologies shape the artistic production of moving images – and the often invisible forces of influence such technologies have. As in previous years, all works on show will have been commissioned for the event. The list of participating artists will be released in September 2022.
