Biennales

Exhibiting the Postmodern traces the origins and significance of the First International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Situating the 1980 exhibition The Presence of the Past against the larger historical backdrop in which architecture exhibitions appear, and considering their proliferation in the postmodern era, this book claims that the exhibition, beyond heralding a shift in the history of curating, marked both the beginning of the end, and the end of the beginning of the postmodern turn in architecture. Looking at the institutional changes, exhibition techniques and exhibition spaces, as well as the discourses and controversies between advocates of modern and postmodern architecture, this book narrates the development of architectural exhibitions as a ‘genre’ of cultural manifestations, while expanding on both the history of the Venice Biennale – and, more generally, of Italian architecture in the 1970s – and the history of postmodernism. It also reveals how the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale announced a changing relationship between the worlds of art and architecture, and the consequent transformation of the architectural product as end object.

In 1897 Russia had its debut at the Venice International Art Exhibition, with a group show commissioned by the State Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg and curated by
Ilya Repin. Based on Russian and Italian unpublished archival documentation and press reviews, the article sheds light on the organization of the art show, while also addressing
its critical and popular reception, mostly characterized by common places and stereotypes derived from Russian literature. In turn, such a critical response fitted the rhetoric of a “national character” promoted by early Biennale exhibitions and its collateral events, from public acquisitions to art criticism awards.

Con una mostra collettiva realizzata su commissione dell’Accademia Imperiale di Belle Arti di San Pietroburgo e a cura di Il’ja Repin, la Russia debuttò all’Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia alla sua seconda edizione (1897). Alla luce di documenti inediti e di recensioni critiche di provenienza sia russa che italiana, l’articolo prende in esame le alterne fasi di realizzazione della rassegna e la sua accoglienza da parte di critica e pubblico. Ne emerge un quadro ricettivo in cui l’orizzonte d’attesa nei confronti dell’arte russa è in larga parte condizionato da precognizioni e stereotipi di natura letteraria, orientati verso l’individuazione di quel “carattere nazionale”, a cui si ispirava il “concorso delle nazioni” delle prime Biennali e le sue attività collaterali, dalle acquisizioni pubbliche ai premi alla critica

The 57th edition of the Venice Biennale opened on Saturday 13 May 2017. For an International Relations scholar, the Biennale offers an opportunity to explore the structures of the art world and observe the dynamics between different kinds of actors.

The number of contemporary art biennials has increased significantly over the last 25 years giving rise to the phenomenon of biennalization of contemporary art. In this article, we detail the world politics of biennalization through a review of mainly academic literature on biennials. We analyze internal definitions within the reviewed material through three dimensions: scale, politics, and production of value (political economies). Our analysis shows the world politics of biennials revolves around a set of productive tensions between the order of nation states and its alternatives, cultural dominance and resistance, and various modes of value production.

"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.
"

This folio documents the exhibition RETURNS, curated by David Teh for the 12th Gwangju Biennale, 2018. The exhibition was conceived as a walk-in magazine, a lounge space in the Biennale Hall populated by a series of art historical vignettes mounted on large, moveable plywood displays. Each carried a story drawn from the first four editions of the biennale (1995-2002), informed by research in the Gwangju Biennale Foundation archives. The vignettes were also distributed for free as A3 cards, with designs by Ella Sutherland based on her analysis of printed matter from the early editions. This loose-leaf exhibition history has been bundled as a PDF folio for wider dissemination. Texts by David Teh, SooJin Lee & Grace Samboh. Design by Ella Sutherland. Special thanks to Han Jungsun and Cho Inho.

The City in the Biennale: Architecture, geography and identity


Nicola Foster and Joel Robinson, The Open University, n.foster@open.ac.uk    joel.robinson@open.ac.uk

Biennials and other large-scale recurring art expositions now occur in major cities and regional areas across the world. This session explores the centrality of the city to biennials and their ‘festivalisation’ of art. We are interested in the relationship between the ‘heterotopia’ of such events and the city (concrete or imaginary) to which they are attached. These ‘mega events’ are endowed – financially and otherwise – with the potential to re-image and re-make the city, changing its identity. Such mega-exhibitions are of course bound up with a politics of place-branding for financial investment, real-estate speculation, regeneration and gentrification, as well as attracting local and global tourism. Dismissing such events as a cultural arm of neoliberalism, however, may discount the new identities and opportunities that they configure.
This session aims to open the debate on ‘the city in the biennale’: the role of the city and the architectural spaces used and/or constructed in the organisation of such events, as well as the engagement with those spaces in the work of participating artists, curators and the public. To what extent have recent biennials followed on or departed from models like Venice or São Paulo? What facilities are used, adapted or newly built to accommodate displays and the circulation of visitors? What kind of architecture drives the spectacle? What dynamics of exclusivity or inclusivity are designed into the geography of such events? We welcome contributions from art historians, anthropologists, urbanists, curators and artists, and are particularly interested in case-studies from the emerging economies of Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Shaped by the ubiquitous yet unnoticed component of the city, the 14th Istanbul Biennial, SALTWATER: A  eory of  ought Forms, takes up a lighthouse located on the northernmost coastline, a hotel in Prince Islands, a garage in Tophane, and thirty-three other locations including museums, public libraries, and an artist’s studio. Most of the venues host works by a single artist therefore reinforcing the idea of site-speci city throughout the biennial. In curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s words, ‘there are collisions between art and life, knots that tie them together’ and the critical interventions to these physical spaces becomes a de ning part of the biennial (Christov-Bakargiev, 2015: 43).  is year’s biennial is an attempt to transcend conventional understandings of an art exhibition with its references to different forms of knowledge productions such as science and philosophy. Given the complexity and extent of such a project, Christov-Bakargiev takes the role of drafter, the one who drafts where to draw the line, to withdraw, to draw upon, to draw out and forms alliances with artists, scientist, and writers both from Turkey and abroad.

Kotlomanov A.O. Twilight Biennale: Russian art life as if it mattered. Vestnik SPbSU. Arts, 2018, vol. 8, issue 2, pp. 320–324. (In Russian)
Котломанов А.О. Сумерки биеннале: российская художественная жизнь, как если бы она имела значение // Вестник СПбГУ. Искусствоведение. 2018. Т. 8. Вып. 2. С. 320–324.

4th International Canakkale Biennial has its conceptual framework structured upon ‘1914-1918-The Centenary of World War I’. [*]
The project takes place between 27 September and 2 November 2014 in the historical town of Canakkale at the southern edge of the Gallipoli Strait, in northwestern Turkey. The exhibition features 37 artists from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Lebanon, Palestine, Armenia, USA, Italy, Greece, Ireland, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Austria and Turkey.

ARTISTS:
Gulcin Aksoy (Istanbul), Maja Bajevic (Paris–Sarajevo), Nigol Bezjian (Beirut), Bashir Borlakov (Istanbul), Songul Boyraz (Wien), Harold De Bree (The Hague), Klaus vom Bruch (Berlin–Munich), Ergin Cavusoglu (London–Istanbul), Ersan Deveci (Izmir), Nezaket Ekici (Berlin–Istanbul), Reha Erdem (Istanbul), Ayse Erkmen (Berlin–Istanbul), Aladdin Garunov (Moscow), Douglas Gordon (London), Murat Gok (Diyarbakır), T. Melih Gorgun (Istanbul), Guven Incirlioglu (Izmir), IRWIN (Ljubljana), Khaled Jarrar (Ramallah), Grigor Khachatryan (Yerevan), Anne Kodura (Berlin), Sitki Kosemen (Istanbul), Raziye Kubat (Istanbul), Radenko Milak (Belgrade), Jehane Noujaim (Boston), Pinar Ogrenci (Istanbul), Ahmet Oktem (Istanbul), Marilena Preda Sanc (Bucharest), Antonio Riello (Milan–London–Asiago), Anri Sala (Paris), Hans Schabus (Wien), Tunca Subasi (Istanbul), Erdal Sezer (Canakkale), Panos Tsagaris (New York–Athens), Astrid Walsh (Dublin), Viron Vert (Berlin–Istanbul), Akram Zaatari (Beirut)

BIENNIAL TEAM
General Art Director: Beral Madra
General Director: Seyhan Boztepe
CABININ Executive Director: Deniz Erbas

Consultant: Ismail Erten
Catalogue Editors: Marko Stamenkovic & Cagla Ilk
Assistant Curator: Irene Panzani
Press/PR Director: Aynur Ganiler
Production Management: Kubilay Ozmen
Coordinators: Deniz Erbas, Didem Gurdogan, Erdal Sezer, Erdinc Alniak, Gozde Robin, Ismail Erten
Biennial Management Centers: CABININ & MAHAL Art Center

S’il est vrai que l’expôt est capable de créer, a priori, les conditions d’un espace discursif, l’exposition, elle aussi, peut définir son propre espace, concret, esthétique, sémiotique. L’unicité de l’expôt et de son exposition implique d’être dans un espace et, simultanément, de faire espace. Cela suggère, parfois, l’idée d’une structure immersive, pénétrable, où le spectateur se retrouve enveloppé par un espace esthétique, recréé par l’ « architecture » de l’installation. Mais si, comme il apparait dans certains cas, l’expôt est invisible, alors son exposition se traduit dans la jouissance du lieu d’exposition et dans l’expérience sensorielle du spectateur. Il se produit alors un chevauchement entre oeuvre et espace
qui devient enfin le dispositif (tautologique) de sa mise en monstration. Ainsi, tandis que l’objet se dématérialise, l’espace s’objective. Il s’agit, en ce sens, de s’interroger sur les formes expographiques actuelles, sur le rôle de l’installation dans le processus expérientiel du spectateur et, finalement, sur ce qu’exposer signifie. Pour ce faire, notre intervention étudie trois exemples contemporains qui, en exposant des impulsions invisibles, proposent un terrain de débats autour de ce qu’on peut définir comme « l’invisibilité de l’oeuvre et la matérialité de l’exposition » :
- I Need Some Meaning I Can Memorise (The Invisible Pull), de Ryan Gander, exposée pendant Documenta XIII, à Kassel, en 2012. L’artiste a exposé un courant d’air artificiel au rez-de-chaussée du bâtiment du Fridericianum et, ensuite, dans l’entrée du restaurant de l’édifice.
- Eternit et Imperium, de Luca Vitone, respectivement exposées à la Biennale de Venise (2013) et en une galerie berlinoise (2014). Dans les deux cas, l’artiste a exposé un parfum qui, se répandant dans les espaces d’exposition, a interpellé les spectateurs au sujet de leur expérience perceptive et mémorielle.
- A Conductor, de Rossella Biscotti, réalisée pour Manifesta IX, à Gand, en 2012. L’artiste en récupérant 500 kg de cuivre a construit le système électrique qui a ensuite éclairé l’usine accueillant Manifesta. L’installation de ces oeuvres dans des lieux et des conditions expographiques différentes (manifestations collectives, expositions personnelles, etc.) nous permettra, ainsi, de mettre en lumière l’importance de la nature de l’événement expographique et le rôle des
modalités d’installation d’oeuvres invisibles, dans le processus d’appréhension esthétique du spectateur.

N el 1998 il legislatore ha avviato in Biennale una fase di rin-novamento alla cui guida si sono alternati tre presidenti. Confrontandone strategia e operato, nonché le relazioni che hanno instaurato con l'ambiente di riferimento, si intende verificare il grado di successo del cambiamento nonché il diverso ruolo gioca-to dal presidente, dalla strategia adottata, dalle pressioni politiche, legislative e del mondo culturale. In altri termini, si vuole valutare se il cambiamento previsto dal legislatore sia stato effettivamente realizzato e in quale misura, oppure se, al contrario, si registri la mera adesione formale ai nuovi valori aziendali. L'analisi ha evidenziato come ciascuno dei tre presidenti abbia adottato soluzioni di governance e a livello organizzativo molto dif-ferenti. Le differenze strutturali non sono imposte solo da pressio-ni istituzionali, ma anche da un diverso approccio culturale e stra-tegico ai problemi dell'istituto, che trova nel background dei tre soggetti parte della spiegazione.

This essay investigates Kukuli Velarde’s intervention in the permanent collection display of the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan during 2014 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale, Terra Nova: Critical Currents / Contemporary Ceramics. Velarde’s intervention is used by the author as a vehicle for developing a model of artistic agency via a strategy of Virtual Ventriloquism. It  debates the problematic nature of the Yingge Museum’s permanent collection display, and encourages the development of a more sophisticated approach to the historical narrative of Taiwanese ceramics, and especially a more just and contemporary representation of the ceramics traditions of Taiwan’s first nations.

Public art, unlike works of art created for galleries and museums, is often cast by well-meaning artists and curators into situations that make it vulnerable to the vicissitudes and vagaries of urban planners and civic administrators. Without clearly documented roles of ownership and responsibility, public artworks are unshielded from inevitable changes in taste, personnel and municipal priorities. Public art commissioned by biennales is especially prone to neglect, as its artist and curator "parents" unsurprisingly move on to make way for the next biennale's exhibition team. The Joseph Beuys tree commissioned for the 1984 Biennale of Sydney is a case in point.

In the latest iteration of the event, the organizers of and participants in Haiti's Fourth Ghetto Biennale have attempted to identify, address and rectify some of the major issues at stake, including concerns related to cross-cultural artistic agency, themes of disaster and crisis, the tourist "gaze", and Haitian art history. By examining four of the arts projects executed during the two-week event in downtown Port-au-Prince, this article analyses the shifts and adjustments between the Second Ghetto Biennale in 2011 and the fourth in 2015, and how the biennale's artists and curators have attempted to address and account for points of contestation.

What is the scope of 'global art' and who drives its framing within the current climate of corporate globalization? In what ways do the recent global turn and curatorial turn underwrite meaningful global inclusivity and visibility, and to what degree does this globally shared art constitute mutuality? Does 'global art', including the accompanying process of biennialisation, allow for local narratives in a way that seriously accounts for a geopolitical view of contemporary art in the twenty-first century? While the inclusion of 'new art worlds' in what Belting, Buddensieg and Weibel (2013) term 'global art' is framed as a democratisation of contemporary art and the demise of the western art canon, it is important to raise questions regarding the blind spots of this supposedly global, post-1989 expansion.

In this article I analyse the current discourse of 'global art' as articulated in The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds (Belting, Buddensieg & Weibel 2013), focusing on its origin, transcription, mapping, consumption and ultimately, I
suggest, its emergence as a function of privilege. Challenging the charting of supposedly new art regions (Belting et al. 2013:100), which 'writes-out' local narratives and counter-narratives, I argue for a logic of subtraction in place of a logic of addition. While the latter triumphantly implies that 'new' art worlds have been added to the dominant core, the former is useful to a geopolitical perspective that strips away normative vision and actively seeks that which people often fail to see.

In this paper I analyse the work of CAPE Africa Platform in South Africa, which, while briefly and erroneously used as "evidence” of biennialisation and global expansion in The Global Contemporary, was locally referred to as 'not-another-biennial'. Discussing what some see as the shortcomings of the Cape 07 and Cape 09 exhibitions, I propose a reconsideration of measures of 'success' and 'failure', suggesting that an embrace of 'failure' can enable new ways of seeing the privilege of the contemporary art world. It is only when blanks, failures and things presumed not to exist are carefully regarded, that the goal of achieving mutually shared art on a global scale might become possible. Only then does it become apparent that the global south can have a certain edge over what is viewed as the prevailing art world.

L’Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia, che si tiene ogni due anni, è la più antica manifestazione di questo tipo ancora esistente; dopo più di 120 anni dalla sua creazione e la concorrenza di manifestazioni simili, come Documenta di Kassel, Manifesta o Art Basel (e di un altro centinaio di Biennali sparse per tutto il mondo), mantiene il suo posto d’onore nella promozione delle arti visive contemporanee, dei rapporti di potere tra nazioni e nella creazione dei valori di mercato dell’arte.
I suoi spazi -padiglioni ai Giardini di Castello, Arsenale e sedi espositive esterne- in continuazione allestiti e ripensati, odiati da generazioni di critici per via dei loro stili, spesso minacciati di demolizioni e restyling, ma idolatrati da decine di pubblicazioni, appaiono sempre di più come una dimostrazione del grande successo dell’istituzione veneziana.
Questi spazi appaiono oggi in una serie di disegni: sezioni, viste a volo d’uccello e spaccati prospettici permettono di cogliere con uno solo sguardo l’esterno e l’interno degli edifici e di comprendere immediatamente il rapporto tra l’organismo edilizio e l’esposizione delle opere d’arte.

The Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, which is held every two years, is the oldest event of its kind still existing; notwithstanding its age and competition from similar events, such as Documenta in Kassel, Manifesta or Art Basel (and another hundred Biennials scattered throughout the world), the Biennale still retains its place of honor in the promotion of contemporary visual arts, in the relations between states and in the creation of the art market values.
Its spaces -pavilions in the Giardini, Arsenale and external exhibition venues- are continuously refurbished and redesigned; hated by generations of critics because of their styles, often threatened with demolition and restyling, but idolized by dozens of publications. They represent the best demonstration of the everlasting success of the Venice Biennale.
These spaces are shown here in a number of drawings: sections, plans, axonometric projections, bird's eye views, allowing us to understand the exterior and the interior of the buildings with a single glance and to understand the relationship between the building and the exhibits.

This paper is about the legendary exhibition Times Square Show (1980), which was organized by Collaborative Projects Inc. It was published in an anthology of essays edited by Elena Filipovic, which first appeared in The Artist as Curator, a series that occupied eleven issues of Mousse from no. 41 (December 2013/January 2014) to no. 51 (December 2015/January 2016). The series set out to examine what was then a profoundly influential but still under-studied phenomenon, a history that had yet to be written: the fundamental role artists have played as curators. Taking that ontologically ambiguous thing we call “the exhibition” as a critical medium, artists have often radically rethought conventional forms of exhibition making. The anthology surveys seminal examples of such exhibitions from the postwar to the present, including rare documents and illustrations. Edited by Elena Filipovic (Mousse Publishing, 2017)

A reflection on my research and publishing approach to the field of exhibition histories, with a focus on the books I have worked on with colleagues for Afterall (one a year since 2010): https://www.afterall.org/publications/exhibition.histories/ This text was commissioned by Mia Yu for her edited section of Art Monthly (Beijing) on exhibition histories; her introduction features alongside.

CONDITIONS DE CRÉATIONS ET DEVENIRS ARTISTIQUES DE SEPT ARTISTES (FEMMES), JUIVES ET ÉTRANGÈRES EN FRANCE DANS L'IMMÉDIAT APRÈS-GUERRE (1945-1960).
CHAYA SCHWARTZ (1912-2001), LEA NIKEL (1918-2005), HANNA BEN-DOV (1919-2009), GEULA DAGAN (1925-2008), BELLA BRISEL (1929-1982), FELICE PAZNER-MALKIN (1929- ), HANNAH VAN HULST (1933- ).


      Au début du XXe siècle et jusque dans les années 1950, Paris, capitale de l’art, incarna le lieu de la création mondiale. De nombreux artistes et hommes de lettres vinrent se former, créer et se confronter à la capitale française.
Toutefois, la Seconde Guerre mondiale mit un terme à ces voyages artistiques et littéraires de plus ou moins longues durées. En outre, les mesures raciales antisémites prises par l’occupant nazi et la France du Maréchal Pétain s’intensifièrent, empêchant les artistes d’exposer et de vendre.

      Après le conflit mondial, ce fut la découverte de la Shoah et de l’horreur humaine. Dans une logique de reconstruction, l’époque délicate qu’incarna l’après-guerre, fut marquée par l’arrivée d’étrangers. Parmi ceux-ci, sept jeunes femmes artistes venues de la Palestine mandataire, puis du tout jeune État, Israël, et de la Hollande.
Leur fascination pour Paris apparaît ambivalente et paradoxale. D’une part, « la ville Lumière » perdit de son aura avec l’avènement de l’art abstrait et le déplacement de la capitale artistique de Paris à New York. D’autre part, le rôle collaborationniste que la France joua, au début des années 1940, entacha l’image de la capitale internationale des arts. Or, en Palestine, puis en Israël, Gabriel Talpir, avec sa revue Gazith, servit de passerelles entre les artistes juifs de Palestine puis d’Israël, diffusant une image idéalisée des artistes de l’École de Paris et suscitant le désir, chez les premiers, de se rendre à Paris. Puis, au cours des années 1950 et 1960, les relations franco-israéliennes correspondirent à une période d’« âge d’or ».

      Ces sept femmes débarquèrent à Paris dans des conditions socio-économiques, des statuts personnels (célibataire, mariée, divorcée, avec ou sans enfants) et avec des niveaux d’études divers et variés (formations supérieures dans leurs pays d’origine ou à l’étranger ou bien sans) ; sans oublier des réseaux sociaux plus ou moins bien développés - galeristes, photographes, collectionneurs -, qui contribuèrent à la diffusion et à leur reconnaissance. De surcroît, ces femmes s’inscrivent dans une logique complexe ; à savoir une redéfinition sociétale avec d’importants mouvements migratoires en France, leur place en tant que femmes et étrangères avec les évolutions et bouleversements qui rythmèrent le pays, sans oublier leur conception ou l’idée qu’elles se firent de leur carrière artistique et la place qu’elle accordèrent à leur judéité.
Si ces femmes se réunirent autour de nombreux points communs - les lieux de formation, les enseignants, les photographes, les galeristes, les critiques d’art, les cercles de sociabilité comme les cafés - ; il eut cependant des dissemblances sociétales et culturelles (milieu d’origine, niveau de formation, façon de s’exprimer artistiquement, situations personnelles et durée de séjour à Paris).

The paper discusses diplomatic and cultural political conditions for the inauguration of the Pavilion of Yugoslavia at the Venice Biennale in 1938. The first and second official participation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at this international art event (in 1938 and 1940) is analyzed within the context of the re-established political relations between Italy and Yugoslavia, as well as according to the exhibition concept laid out by Milan Kašanin, the commissioner of both exhibitions. A particular consideration is given to the exhibition as a field of political dialogue and as the space for articulation of the Yugoslav ideology in the international context.