Dec 9, 2009
I SHOULD BE ON A BICYCLE TO COPENHAGEN INSTEAD OF A PLANE TO MURICA…
“…the big international circus goes on. The opening days of the Venice Biennale are now written-up as much in terms of parties and celebrities as the art. In 2007, the five–yearly Documenta in Kassel, Germany, and the once-a-decade Munster Sculpture Project followed Venice, and became part of an unseemly Grand Tour, which also took in the Basel art fair. Such migrations across Europe haven’t been seen since the 30 years war.” (i)
If a biennial is to retain any credibility as an authentic platform for what is contemporary in art, then I believe it must also push to the periphery of its concerns, those elements which do not genuinely promote innovative, urgent (activist) art. If a biennial is to validly strive for a role as a provider of fertile artistic growing space and not simply be a global popularity contest with an underlying profit motive, a massive consumerist extravaganza for the purchase of exotic encounters, with international art and artists flaunting themselves like compliant contestants in a Miss World pageant – then it should strive to emerge as a configuration, not only for the presentation and development of art work, but as a location to actively influence and transform the structures of art practice. Artists involved in biennials should use the opportunity of their involvement with such a large and powerful platform to create possibilities for collaboration, and to address the extreme consumerism and populist national swaggering that these events have become prey to.
Although ‘activist art’ is not a new phenomenon, something about the urgencies of the times we are living through has made it necessary for the combination art and activism to move from the periphery to the centre-stage of the world of contemporary art, not only become central, but to wholeheartedly oust any non-political art from this position.
In the introduction to Art & Social Change [ii] the activist art referred to is defined as being art which incurs actual changes in the social structure. I would prefer to extend that to include art which may not at first appear to have any prolonged effect, but which may eventually elicit reactions or lead to recognitions which could enable others to work toward change in the social structure. Art, in other words, which creates, or emphasises, or opens up possibilities for, the production of agency.
A butterfly flapping its wings? Perhaps… but a butterfly flapping its wings in the right direction!
So, how could an artist use the structure of a biennial to intervene in the scope of existing politics?
I must make clear that I am writing here as someone who is more or less biennial illiterate – I have only ever visited one – the 11th Istanbul – and so I am making these comments based purely on my few days’ experience at that one event.
As biennials go, the conceptual framework of ‘What does mankind need?’, which suggests “Aren’t today’s questions about the role of art in instigating social changes equally pressing as they were in the 1930s, when the Left confronted fascism and Stalinism?” [iii] was undoubtedly closer to my heart than most would have been.
Nonetheless, despite the socialist terminology, there were some things I would have liked to have seen approached differently.
(I’m not going to discuss the choice of artists – I thought there was a lot of interesting work there – but to simply mention one or two things I missed.)
Biennials as a phenomenon are presumably reliant on funds which are ‘inevitably’, because of the scale of the undertaking, tied up to large, market-driven business enterprises. This means that no matter the ‘good intentions’ of the organisers, a certain amount of compromise will most likely be made. Istanbul was a case in point where, despite the Brechtian theme, the event’s main sponsor was Koç – one of Turkey’s biggest family business monopolies, and Turkish equivalent of Shell. Oil companies being infamous for their predatory ‘profits at all costs and to hell with human rights’ attitude, this made it extremely hard for anyone to take the curators socialist predilections at face value.
The incongruity did give rise to a certain amount of protest, but it seemed to me like a missed opportunity that the artists invited to participate in the biennial did not form some kind of collective response to this situation. Or even, the curators themselves could have instigated a platform for some kind of collective response to this circumstance by the artists. This may have been a more effective statement than the outsider protests which could be manipulatively dismissed as the jealous reactions of the uninvited.
Art can function as a way to shape awareness, to articulate ideals and needs and to instigate potentially transformative discussion. If you are going to bring together a large number of artists from different backgrounds and localities in a biennial, then this is a great opportunity to create a collaborative platform to engage collectively in generating concepts that could play a significant role in current discussion. Unfortunately such initiatives – organised opportunities for the participating artists present during the production period, to convene, conspire, collaborate – were not developed in Istanbul.
Commendably, the curators did make a gesture of transparency by publishing a break-down of the budget in the biennial guide. Somewhere, buried in the statistical small print, one could ascertain that artists were not paid a fee for their participation. (Although a percentage of the budget was spent on commissioning new works.) So, how is an artist participating in a biennial expected to manage financially? The answer, presumably, is that they are sponsored by various subsidisers all chomping at the bit to be included in the promotional bonanza – assorted state funds supporting their national artist and stamping their sponsorship logo on their county’s culture. But doubtless this means that those artists coming from lands where promoting the arts is seen as something of national importance, are better cared for than those less prosperous countries whose governments probably have more pressing concerns to hand. The usual imbalance. And another missed chance to put some kind of socialist ideals into place within the structure of the biennial and not only in the thematics of the works chosen – why not coordinate a system whereby participating artists pool their funding, and redistribute based on actual time invested in participation at the biennial? Income-levelling for artists.
These neglected opportunities, are particularly unfortunate if one considers that Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, from which the song that lends its title to the biennial was taken, actually thematises the process of redistribution of ownership within bourgeois society.
So, either biennials have to really “attempt to think about the role of artistic endeavour in the conditions of contemporary capitalism, to reevaluate our everyday practices, our value systems and modes of operation”. [iv] Or else we should simply leave biennials for what they are becoming: vast, wasteful, commercial extravaganzas attracting art tourism in various shades of privilege and affluence – and move on to a new mode of creative platform more relevant to tackling the urgencies of today’s world.
(And yes, I am feeling like a complete traitor by flying to Murcia to the Manifesta Coffee Break instead of cycling to Copenhagen to rage at the climate summit.)
[i] http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/dec/06/review-of-decade-visual-art Adrian Searle, accessed 7-12-2009
[ii] Art and social change – a critical reader, ed. Will Bradley & Charles Esche, publ.Tate afterall, 2007
[iii] Conceptual Framework of the 11th Istanbul Biennial – What keeps mankind alive? http://www.iksv.org/bienal11/icsayfa_en.asp?cid=6&k1=content&k2=conceptual – accessed 1-12-2009
[iv] ibid.