The Politics of Contemporary Art Biennials: Spectacles of Critique, Theory and Art (original) (raw)

The Art Biennial’s Dilemma: Political Activism as Spectacle in Aesthetic Capitalism

2020

In recent decades, the biennial has become the most widespread mode of showcasing contemporary art. Rather than acting as mere aesthetic containers, these shows aspire to be socially relevant by raising questions about capitalism, colonialism, inequality, environmental devastation, and gender imbalances. In this chapter, we draw from ethnographic observation of the 7th Berlin Biennale (2012) that took place in the context of a rising anti-capitalist discourse reflected in the Occupy movement and the movement of the squares. We explore the outcome of curators’ attempts to disrupt existing practices by introducing the logic of activism. Drawing from empirical vignettes, we identify three institutional rationales that coexisted, clashed, and mutually displaced this logic, reaffirming rather than disrupting the idea that art has to preserve some distance from social reality, that neo-anarchist activism should prefigure social reality in the here and now, and that the configuration of th...

Curating Resistances: Ambivalences and Potentials of Contemporary Art Biennials

Culture, Communication & Critique, 2014

The idea of enabling resistant narratives to neoliberalism through dialogical and participatory works, steadily informs the agenda of perennial large-scale exhibitions of contemporary art (biennials) around Europe and the world. Somewhat paradoxically, the proliferation of such shows since the early 1990s depends on this very neoliberal model that values culture for its measurable outcomes. By discussing such predicaments of the “biennial phenomenon,” this article lays out its ambivalences and potentials within the current political–economic context. Moreover, through looking at the case of the 7th Berlin Biennale (2012), a controversial exhibition that prioritized activism and the “real effects” of art in society, the article suggests that such biennial complexities could be better addressed through ethnographic methodologies.

Biennial Art and its Rituals: Value, Political Economy and Artfulness

Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 2019

The visual art of the last decades privileges, explicitly or implicitly, social rather than art historical or aesthetic issues. In sites ranging from university classrooms and journals to museums and biennials, the emphasis is usually put on how effectively art handles the social issues of the day while questions of aesthetic value are often treated as suspicious and ideological. Given this anti-art character in these contexts of mediation, the insistence to perceive the objects as artistic objects constitutes a paradox that has been rarely discussed in sociological terms. This article draws on ethnographic research in order to explore “biennial art” that is to say the art that displayed in contemporary art and international platforms of showcasing. These platforms struggle to maintain a concept of art as social practice while at the same time nurture an exclusive and highbrow environment in which “artfulness” is key. I call this quality artfulness so as to both underline its artificiality as well as the inventiveness and skills required for its production. Artfulness in these sites is enabled through various formal or informal rituals of valorization, including guided tours, curatorial statements, media promoting activities and artist talks. These rituals, positioning certain objects within the sphere of art and producing them as objects meriting aesthetic interpretation, resemble the politics of publicity found in aesthetic capitalism at large. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20004214.2019.1627847 KEYWORDS: Contemporary art, aesthetics, biennials, politics of art, Rancière, conceptual art, ethnography, art and value

Just Another Exhibition: Histories and Politics of Biennials

"In the last twenty years the “Biennale” has become a prominent exhibition model, disseminated all over the globalized art system. A laboratory for curatorial experimentation, the Biennale has come to affect and make visible international exhibition practices. Conversations with Thomas Hirschhorn, Alfredo Jaar, Antoni Muntadas, and Stéphanie Moisdon focus on the questions brought about by each chapter, and open up to different ways of thinking about national representation, history-making and conceptualization of biennials’ exhibition formats in contemporary art. "

Contemporary Art Biennials - Our Hegemonic Machines in Times of Emergency

Julia Bethwaite, Dorothee I Richter, Henk Slager, Daniela Labra, Rime Fetnan, Dr. Shwetal A Patel, PhD, Ronald Kolb, Dr Katerina Valdivia Bruch, Nathalie Zonnenberg, per gunnar eeg-tverbakk, giulia colletti

OnCurating - Contemporary Art Biennials - Our Hegemonic Machines in Times of Emergency, 2020

Biennials are each in their own way a complex constellation of different economical and geopolitical, and representational cultural aspects within its own power relations. With all their underlying deficiencies (canonical, hegemonic, colonialist, hot money-funded, politically influenced, hierarchical), biennials tend to establish international discourse, at best, rooted in local cultural specificities and contexts. With this edition of the journal, we wanted to include a variety of cases and research areas, not ordered along a historical trajectory, but rather, ordered by theme. With a mix of over sixty new contributions and reprints of important articles for the biennale discourse this issue is like a biennale: too much to experience at once. Contributors Agustina Andreoletti, Rasheed Araeen, Defne Ayas, Marco Baravalle, Alessia Basilicata, Julia Bethwaite, Amy Bruce, Sabeth Buchmann, Vasyl Cherepanyn, Sven Christian, Ana Paula Cohen, Giulia Colletti, Catherine David, Ekaterina Degot, Diana Dulgheru, Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk, Okwui Enwezor, Brandon Farnsworth, Rime Fetnan, Patrick D. Flores, Natasha Ginwala, Eva González-Sancho Bodero, Resmi Görüş, Martin Guinard, Bregtje van der Haak, Catalina Imizcoz, Răzvan Ion, Andrés Jaque, Melody Du Jingyi, Anni Kangas, Daniel Knorr, Omar Kholeif, Ronald Kolb, Panos Kompatsiaris, Yacouba Konaté, Daniela Labra, Ilse Lafer, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Bruno Latour, Teobaldo Lagos Preller, Eva Lin, Yung Ma, Anna Manubens, Sarat Maharaj, Oliver Marchart, Federica Martini, Vittoria Martini, Lara van Meeteren, Louli Michaelidou, Christian Morgner, Gerardo Mosquera, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Rafal Niemojewski, Ksenija Orelj, Anita Orzes, Shwetal A. Patel, Delia Popa, Farid Rakun, Raqs Media Collective, Dorothee Richter, Roma Jam Session art Kollektiv, Miriam La Rosa, Mona Schubert, Henk Slager, Robert E. D’Souza, Nora Sternfeld, Fatoş Üstek, Katerina Valdivia Bruch, Mirjam Varadinis, Raluca Voinea, Wilson Yeung Chun Wai, Bart Wissink, Beat Wyss, Xinming Xia, Nathalie Zonnenberg

Capitalist Cocktails and Moscow Mules: The Art World and Alter-Globalization Protest

Globalizations, 2011

This paper asks whether exhibitions of political art are used to discipline dissent. Certainly, many artists, activists and scholar argue that exhibitions of protest art might echo the issues of the protest, but they do so in a “context without consequence.” In answer, a number of curators have attempted instead to bring art exhibitions to the action as a way of potentially avoiding the institutional depoliticizing logic of the museum or gallery. Focusing on a PR event titled “Massive Uprising,” which took place in Toronto, and two exhibitions, “Art Goes to Heiligendamm,” organized at anti-G8 protests, and “RETHINK,” held amid the COP15 negotiations in Copenhagen, I ask do the power relationships change if political or activist art is showcased outside of the institution? I conclude that all three examples were ultimately unsuccessful in their aims, but that they nevertheless raise important questions regarding the role art might play in protest or oppositional action.