The GLOBAL BIENNIAL ASSOCIATION was started in 2009, by a group of international exhibition makers and art-historians who have been involved in the growing global rise of the art biennial phenomenon. The GBA has it’s main headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, but is active all over the world. We take on a fresh, young and critical approach towards the global art world, creating new, ambitious and successful formats.

Due to the increasing number of biennials appearing over the last decade, many questions arise about the function and context of biennials in general. The Global Biennial Association maps current trends in relation to the connection between artists, biennials and the places which they are held in. Together with the already existing information on the political and economical value of international biennials, we would like to use this information to develop a format for an Ideal Global Biennial that can live up to all dominating international standards and desires.

To gain this information we have created a questionnaire that we will spread among our network of artists. This will help us to create a better image of the current existing ideas about biennials; not only based on the opinion of a group of established artists, but also on that of the next generation of artists.

The outcome of this research will be tested within a pilot-project at Manifesta 8 in Murcia. Artists and locals will be involved in realization of a critical yet profitable format. The GBA sees Manifesta as an example of a recognized biennial, which is not afraid to take on a self-reflective and experimental approach.

On the Manifesta blog for “Unsolicited Research“, we will be posting our progress.

For our first posting we share our questionnaire. If you would like to participate in the creation of the Ideal Global Biennial, please download >> the questionnaire as pdf, and email your results to: global.biennial.association@gmail.com

“(…) From such formulated platforms we can relate to other spaces and spheres indicating that biennials are not predominantly to be seen as utopias, but rather as heterotopias, capable of maintaining several contradictory representations within a single space.”

Simon Sheikh
in ‘Marks of Distinction, Vectors of Possibility’

It is clear that biennials, triennials, art fairs, as art events are, undoubtedly, part of an
economic system dominated by structures of power that seek not only to brand a new
place or event but also to contribute for the legitimization of a particular art world and its
participants. Following this one can think that a biennial, whose main purpose is to
attract visitors to a city or region and to promote a restricted group of art professionals
that operate within this field, becomes only one more to add to the list. And then the
recurrent questions emerge: What was the contribution of this biennial? Why here and
not there? and so on.
Biennials in the past played an important role in what concerns to exhibiting practices
and mostly by giving visibility to artists and/or its peripheral art contexts that through this
way could reach an international art audience. Nowadays the biennial is not the only way
through which is possible to access international art. Although it is of course still
important in what concerns to exhibiting practices and mostly in terms of extending
visibility to different art contexts, but it is not exclusive.
It is for me interesting to think of the biennial free of this exclusivity and, most
importantly, as a mass medium, as a vehicle to communicate between different spheres
(that otherwise wouldn’t meet), generating new dialogues and points of view, an
heterotopic space within a host place, or even as this project’s title, a platform for
(un)solicited research. This is what I see as the main purpose of biennials and of what
could bring a sustainable meaning to its proliferation. It is clear to me that every place
can host a biennial, but would it be possible for all of them to generate new and
contradictory forms that would escape the limitations of social, economical and political
powers in order to generate this new energy?

]]> http://www.manifestaplatform.org/archives/86/feed 0 http://www.manifestaplatform.org/archives/82 http://www.manifestaplatform.org/archives/82#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:42:06 +0000 admin http://www.manifestaplatform.org/?p=82 Julio Pastor

A few days ago, I sat in front of my laptop and placed my fingers over the keyboard with the intention of writing my opinion in relation to biennials. It was only then that I thought:

“How can I take a stand in relation to the biennial phenomenon taking into account that my personal experience on visiting these events comes down to… one?”

I gave up on my attempt and thought that maybe I should try to use also the information which was provided to us in the lecture on the history of biennials by Marieke van Hal. Marieke’s lecture was an attempt into mapping some of the most important biennial’s according to their focus: cultural, political, economical, social, geographical, etc. The list was huge.

I aslo read a few articles concerning biennials that I had within easy reach of me. I thought that maybe this way, my knowledge on the subject would not only be reduced to the trip I did this summer to visit the 11th Istanbul Biennial and to listening to Marieke’s lecture. The increasing number of such events was again something which was mentioned in some of these articles.

Having this vague panorama in mind, I was surprised that although there are so many of these events I myself had only been visitor to one of them. Maybe if I was not ineterested in contemporary art this would seem as something logic but having into consideration that I think of myself as a regular visitor of museums and galleries then something doesn’t seemed to make sense.

This reflection has given me the conviction to say that there are still not enough biennials.

I am aware that after having just mentioned that the list of these events is quite extensive, it sounds ilogical to make a claim as this. However, I am not only saying this because I myself haven’t had the chance to visit many, but for a number of other reasons:

I do believe that biennials can stimulate artistic discourse. It is therefore logic to assume that as more stages are built more actors will be recquired. This growth could have as a negative effect a loss in the quality of the show, if things are not given the recquired attention. However I think the number of good curators, artists and other professionals in the whole world are quite a lot as to avoid this diminuishing in quality.

A clue question lies in focusing in the locality. In this sense I think it is natural that as an artists one becomes interested in working in a site specific way. However, as Isabel Carlos pointed out in her article “The importance of the Place”, working in a site specific way does not just mean to explore a space for its pyshical charteristics but also to consider the , social, ploitical, and economical background. Once art pieces become more involved with the space, then they will become much more interesting for local public.

If we consider that the main goal of a biennial is to work in the interest of the local public, then it becomes evident that the already existing biennials can not suffice. One reason for which this should be important is that it is not possible for every human interested in art to travel to Vennice every two years to visit an exhibition (nor is it environmental wise). On the other hand what point is there in watching art works that become engaged with a particular city when there are so many places (and possiblities) to explore. These reasons are why I applaud the efforts of all those who have worked in the creation of art events in the periphery of the art world, and specially those events thought in relation to a specific place or context.

It is in relation to these ideas that I also believe that biennial organizers should try to seek the participation of the local artists. The territory of the biennial should in this sense be concieved as an arena for the dialogue between foreign and local artists. Doing this will not only make the local public feel identified in the exhibition but will encourage local artists to exhibit abroad, and therefore would ensure a better dialogue between the local and the global.

It is evident that globality cannot be ignored in the phenomena of biennials. The nature of a biennial also involves globalization in making a city the host for an event that will bring the attention of the whole world for a certain amount of time. In this sense it is clear that there are more interests to take into consideration other than the local public and artists. But in my opinion such things should always remain preconditioned to the local. Once the global is given more importance than the local then we will found ourselves in the creation of another biennial which attempts to establish itself as the rival of Vennice or Documenta. We don’t need another biennal which seeks to compete for being the most important cultural event. However if each small biennial finds its place in the art world in relation to its own possibilities, then I certainly believe that more will be welcome.

If we wish to train ourselves as cultural analysts, then cultural analysis, however, need not necessarily force us, as Marieke’s suggested question insists, to divide ourselves into two groups: Biennial Haters and Biennial Lovers.

I find Biennials interesting because they are a place where one can see art-documentary films and a documentary approach in visual arts such as video and photography. This is brilliant because such work can carry a nuanced truth about socio-political matters.

1 . The question of truth lies in the documentary!

2 . Biennials can be places for exhibiting the truth!

In her lecture Sophie Berrebi talks about a ‘degree zero form’, which means non-object oriented exhibition. “The look of exhibitions incorporating documentary works tends, in fact, to vary very little, and often consist of rows of framed photographs and television monitors and of successions of black boxes in which films are projected. Hence Documenta 11’s nickname ‘the 400-hour Documenta’, a reference to the time allegedly necessary to view every film included in the exhibition in its entirety”.

For me it sounds like an ideal framework, for Biennials to focus on documentary films or other kinds of documentary media, like photos etc.

Manifesta is entering a new phase, shifting from its previous East-West dialogue to focus on North-South notions. The idea of decentralisation is very necessary and therefore I am very optimistic in imagining the idea of Manifesta together with Murcia starting a dialogue with Northern Africa. In my opinion, if Manifesta is concerned with allowing itself to expand beyond the European continent, then it should organize an art intervention in Northern Africa.

]]> http://www.manifestaplatform.org/archives/143/feed 0 http://www.manifestaplatform.org/archives/49 http://www.manifestaplatform.org/archives/49#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:22:59 +0000 admin http://www.manifestaplatform.org/?p=49 Omar Koubaa

I agree with what sceptics bring forward: they have to many roots in city marketing and economical and political interest instead of artistic interests.

In the case of Manifesta however, I believe that the location, the history of occupation of Cartanega trough the people of Carthago and current events of immigration make it ideal for site- specific work.

This Manifesta is a chance – because of its interesting geographical location- to make clear that clashing civilisations are the result of mutual fear of people for each other. The curators should in my opinion design projects that show manners in an artistic way to try to live in a multicultural world.

Dear M.
Today I was invited to participate in a very prestigious biennial. They saw my show in D. last year and want me to make a new work for them. I always said I would never want to be part of a biennial, easy if you never get the chance to be involved. I asked if I could think about it, they were surprised to hear that, I guess nobody had to think before they accepted, but it was OK.
Basically, I really like the idea of artists from all over the world gathering and representing their country. It also gives so many people a chance to encounter art for the first time, or outside a traditional context. Because it’s outside the traditional context, artist really get the chance to relate to problems locally or important for themselves, which they wouldn’t be able to do inside a traditional museum.
But would I be able to do the same? Is that idea still working? It is the 27th biennial at this location, you would think all local problems have already been addressed. And why would they ask me? Surely they have an idea of what they want to see? I wouldn’t feel free to do what I want.
Well, why should I? They give me an opportunity, for the whole world to see on an amazing location. Why am I complaining so much? Just grab the opportunity to show myself and my work. Who do you think will come to the show? I’m afraid it’s gonna be the same people that have visited all the biennials before, so much for new audiences. Am I gonna let them exploit me for something that’s becoming more traditional than museums?
I like to think I would say no… I wouldn’t
x

Jeroen Marttin

As an artist I am an active part of the art world. I am just starting my art practice, and the art world in which I am working is mostly within the Netherlands. As an artist one tries to strive to make ones ideas knowledgeable within a wide audience. So for me working in a local context is a starting point; participating in the context of a biennial could be a goal. It is of course not a goal in itself. The main goal for me as an artist is to become more specific in my ideas. But art doesn’t exist if it has no audience, so in that sense art needs a platform. Locally, nationwide or internationally.

Internationally and commercially seen, a biennial is a perfect place to display ones work. New connections can be made and ideas are developing. Participating artists and cities will get international attention. Cities or regions can point out local problems and artist can respond on that. So it works two ways.

For me, as an artist, the charm of a biennial is the integration of the international art scene in a local setting. Integrating in a setting of, for instance a, a city is more interesting to me than strolling around in another white cube. So context and content are important and need to be examined. I also visit a biennial in order to see an overview of the current ideas of artists from all over the world. But with the amount of biennials shifting upwards, the question rises: where to go? Until recently I only knew about the bigger ones (Venice, Istanbul, Documenta) and like everybody who’s interested in contemporary art I went there to check out what was happening in the international art world. Now I’m aware of the amount of biennials, I suddenly find the idea of a small biennial in the middle of nowhere very appealing. The other thing I am dealing, with, concerning today’s mega exhibitions, is that they are too big to get grip on. Unless one has the time to see everything and study all backgrounds. But for that there’s no time enough, because in a way we are all products of capitalism. We are on the move and trying to keep up with the pace of our own society.

To me biennials are a bit ambiguous, because it is a by all means product of capitalism. It is about selling and market value(s). It is about getting bigger. But the positive side of it is that capital also creates new dialogues, new ideas and new possibilities. So the best thing to act as an artist is probably to use this fact and respond on it. Commenting the system from within the system; a strategy that also can be used concerning the system of a biennial. (Examples of criticizing the biennial phenomenon are The Sixth Caribbean Biennial and the Emergency Biennial). I would like to suggest to the biennial audience in general: spread out and go visit smaller biennials. Find out what is happening there but do not tell anybody you’re going because in no time the smaller ones will become bigger ones.

“…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 11^th 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.)

[ii] Art and social change – a critical reader, ed. Will Bradley & Charles Esche, publ.Tate afterall, 2007

[iii] Conceptual Framework of the 11^th 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.

Looking at the phenomenon of the mega-exhibition expansion, at present, the biennial debate can be generally divided between sceptical and optimistic points of view.

Optimists share the notion that biennials: create a concept of the city as a global host, have a transient and flexible character, offer an alternative site for artistic production, stimulate artistic discourse and activities, support local and national artists to exhibit abroad, offer urban regeneration potencies and foster civic or national pride, open up the art world, and have a decentralizing effect (West – periphery).

Biennial skepticism, however, exists in the idea that biennials: are little alternative and innovative anymore, are interchangeable, can be regarded as epiphenomena of mass culture and cultural tourism, are symptoms of global capitalism, are sheer products of city marketing, are ready to compromise with political and economical instead of artistic interests, are simply too many and are obsolete.

Take a stand, as an artist vis-à-vis the biennial as exhibition platform. Please define your position and create a proposition accordingly.