La Biennale di Venezia has announced the closing programme for the 61st International Art Exhibition, In Minor Keys, curated by the late Koyo Kouoh. From Friday 13 to Sunday 22 November, the Arsenale will host performances, lectures, debates and roundtables, together with an Assembly bringing together ten artist-led organisations and collectives from around the world.

The performance strand includes new work made for the occasion. Laurie Anderson closes the programme with a solo performance combining music, storytelling and video, extending her installations Notebook and All In Your Head, which are on show in the Arsenale. Tammy Nguyen presents an aria sung by a Vietnamese English teacher turned refugee lost at sea, staged inside a panoramic tapestry, while Hagar Ophir revisits a séance held during opening week to question silenced histories. Natalia Lassalle-Morillo and Sofia Gallisa Muriente stage Tactics of Transmission, infiltrating the imperial archive to reconnect Puerto Rican artefacts held by the Smithsonian with the people and places they belong to.

The Assembly gathers ten artist-led groups, six of them participants in the exhibition itself: Denniston Hill, RAW Material Company, GAS Foundation, lugar a dudas, blaxTARLINES and the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute, joined by Dar Jacir, Fresh Milk, Picha Collective and Gudskul. Across three days of discussion they will share ideas and practices around pedagogy, knowledge transmission, research and the tending of land, body and community, under headings including Seeding Resilience and Epistemic Disobedience.

The programme also includes a lecture by the Senegalese thinker Felwine Sarr, To Inhabit the World, on 14 November, and a roundtable, Saudade, reflecting on legacy and absent presence through the work of artists in the exhibition who are no longer living. The exhibition itself remains open until Sunday 22 November, with admission tickets required except for events at the Teatro Piccolo, which are free until capacity is reached.