The Casco initiative, founded in 1996, and currently directed by Binna Choi, has generously offered its accommodation as social meeting place for participants of the XVI Biennial IASC-Conference and also will organize some side-events in association with the conference organizers.
Casco is an open and public space for artistic research and experiments and regards artistic practice as a way of engaging with the world we live in. The artistic practices Casco focuses on are cross-disciplinary, open to collaboration, and process-driven and traverse design, theory, and the wider social sphere. Correspondingly, Casco’s activities encompass not only exhibitions, but also research, production, applications, workshops, forums, debates, actions, performances, screenings, education, and publishing. Central to these activities is the support for artist-led projects and other collaborative initiatives, initiating long-term visionary research projects, and fostering meaningful partnerships. Above all, Casco is committed to sharing with varied audiences both the process and the results of these initiatives in a variety of forms.
In 2014, Casco moved to its current location. The current home of Casco is a nineteenth-century former school building, incorporating parts of a former convent, alongside the historic courtyard Abraham Dolehof. The space is designed by architects Jesko Fezer and Andreas Müller in collaboration with designer Maximilian Weydringer. Multiplying the motif of the arch as a recurring element in the building as well as an important support structure in architecture, the architects designed a new “grand arcade” running through the space differentiating work and meeting spaces, the library, and an indoor garden.
