Content uploaded by Alfredo Cramerotti
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Alfredo Cramerotti on Nov 06, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
- 1 -
Alfredo Cramerotti, Critical Studies Malmö Art Academy, University of Lund
Box 17083, 200 10 Malmö, Sweden
alcramer@gmail.com
Mediating spaces: some considerations on the spaces of large-
scale art exhibitions1
Alfredo Cramerotti – Malmö Art Academy, Lund University
Abstract
Large-scale temporary art exhibitions such as biennials present special characteristics
which in turn illuminate broader questions of art practice, curatorship and cultural
management, as well as cultural and social affect. This article considers the third Berlin
biennale for contemporary art, focusing its initial discussion on questions of exhibition
space including ‘hub’ forms that attempt to break from conventional ‘art-viewing’
practices. The article further considers the relationship of specific exhibition sites with
prior social, cultural and economic histories to the reception of art, inquiring what is at
stake in the semiological management of ‘sites of representation’, with particular focus
on three Berlin locations. Contrasting ‘neo-liberal’ approaches to large exhibitions
structured as commodities in major sites such as the Palais de Tokyo in Paris or
London’s Tate Modern, with less consumerist and more participative approaches, the
analysis considers alternatives to current practice on the part of cultural managers and
curators, and debates what is at stake for cultural politics in developing modes of art
practice and exhibition.
Keywords
art biennials
exhibition space
sites of representation
temporary art venues
autonomous art zones
site-specificity
1A first draft of this essay was presented at the Institut für Kunst im Kontext (University of the Arts in Berlin),
February 2005; the version published here has been revised and extended. My thanks to N. Blain, K. Sarikakis and the
team of Media and Cultural Politics.
- 2 -
Foreword
A large-scale exhibition, like a biennial or a triennial, seems nonetheless to be short-
lived. One week after the opening it is already past, delivered to dusty archives. Debates
included.
Despite certain critical/technical positions which praise the logic of ‘writing faster than
editing’, ‘doing faster than thinking’, and so on, it is nonetheless useful to afford a time
for reflection; to choose to leave a period of time between one’s own experience of an
exhibition and the discussion about it, as a reflective tool for certain insights; that is, the
nurturing of a necessary critical distance in order to achieve a worthwhile discussion. Art
reviews and critiques are subject to an ever-faster death, with impressions and heated
controversies about exhibitions and events forgotten after a few weeks, never to be
considered again. In this sense, setting a longer time frame allows one to look back with a
clear mind on these experiences, and thus propose a critique a posteriori, which can
foreground a greater degree of reflection and debate about future directions.
We consider here as a starting point an archetypal exhibition of this kind, the third Berlin
biennale for contemporary art (bb3, 14 February–18 April 2004). It is archetypal of the
conceptual frame adopted by its artistic director, the German curator Ute Meta Bauer; an
archetype, specifically, of the sites used as exhibition venues; of audience participation
and reaction; and ultimately of the aggressive campaign (with only a few exceptions)
carried out against it by the international press, both specialized and general.
The anticipated goal of the third Berlin biennale for contemporary art was to take local
contexts and circumstances, and the art production resulting from them, and also their
relations to similar structures elsewhere – in short, to adopt Berlin as a site of reference
and a frame for discussion – and to condense all of these within a temporary arrangement
as a ‘structure of interlocking discourses’2 (namely the social, cultural, political and
economic relations [re]presented in the biennale).
2 So defined in the introductory essay of ‘complex berlin’, publication-catalogue of the third Berlin biennale of
contemporary art.
- 3 -
The 50 works of the third Berlin biennale were selected on the basis of their potential to
reflect on the situation of Berlin as a physical, social and political environment, and to
mirror and further project these considerations onto other realities, in order to enhance
discussions in other places and situations beyond Berlin. To realize this programme, three
locations were chosen as spaces of mediation: the Martin Gropius Bau in Kreuzberg; the
Arsenal cinema; and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin-Mitte. These
venues – as registered in the introduction to the catalogue – represent diverse epochs and
neuralgic zones in the history of Berlin, and also varying degrees and levels of cultural
and political establishment.
The aim of this paper is, first, to discuss the way in which the general concept of the third
Berlin biennale has related to these spaces, particularly in relation to the proposed
‘interlocking’ and overlapping of discourses; and secondly, to initiate a discussion about
the different approach to space required when considering exhibition venues. Permanent
spaces for artistic productions and showcases like museums, and temporary arrangements
for artistic activities like biennials and cyclic large-scale exhibitions, do require a
different approach from other events when it comes to space. This article proposes to
look at temporary and permanent exhibition venues not merely as physical sites, but in
terms of a notion of places, non-places and other-places; and so trigger an understanding
of the specific locality of the art venue by way of the investment in the value of social
relations.
Art theory being the true domain of this essay, the focus here is not to analyse the
practical, logistical and political reasons behind the choice of venues. The intention is
rather to activate a nucleus of critical response and discussion on the nature of the
locations that produce, display, and in general engage with artistic practices.
Hubs and venues: an introduction
The bb3 curator’s statement introduces the concept of hubs, which can be defined as
specially designed spaces working as nodal points or areas, in or around which the artistic
positions, demonstrated as a series of works, are presented. The works produced for the
- 4 -
exhibitions insisted on the relevance of the artistic statement for the wider perception of
contexts; while calling on the public to participate autonomously. The incorporation of
older works deliberately produced a connection between early-1990s Berlin cosmology
with the ‘here and now’. (Less creatively, older works were also integrated for budget
reasons.) The hubs – basically ‘thematic distributors’ – were named: MIGRATION;
URBAN CONDITIONS; SONIC SCAPES; FASHION AND SCENES; and OTHER
CINEMA. They were produced by cultural workers, which can be read both as curators
and artists. The metaphor of the hub, borrowed from the language of information
technology, refers to a distributor of data within a computer network, and from that
usage, to a centre for air traffic.
The connection of the hubs to the artistic works produces a ‘neighbourhood’ that
enables an audience from all walks of life to establish cross-references between
the works exhibited, to raise questions, to see the contexts differently, and to
discover their own links in the subject matter of the contributions.3
The hub metaphor was spatially presented and ‘unfolded’ in the three physical sites, each
with its own topography and history.
We will not engage here with the endless highs and lows of the debate about ‘what’ has
to be shown in an exhibition such as a biennial, nor, strictly speaking, with the question
of mediation requirements between artistic positions and the audience (although this topic
is not ignored). Nor do we address here in general terms the curatorial choice of the ‘hub’
concept (as distinct from specific thematic or narrative approaches); the former
constituting a courageous position but one which can be acknowledged as in need of
further ‘tuning’.
This first part of the essay discusses the relation – and consequently the mediation that
did or did not happen – between the bb3 concept and the space(s) or the ‘lived places’
where the concept was enacted. It also discusses how the configuration of the spaces (the
- 5 -
‘local contexts and circumstances’, translated here into the physical site of the city and its
buildings) had affected or even prejudiced the (re)presentation and the nature of the
artistic contributions as a ‘structure of interlocking discourses’ – and did not simply
constitute the neutral terrain of reference for the latter.
In a city like Berlin or in any other city hosting an event like a biennial, the relation of the
art event with the local area is the main key to reading broader international contexts, not
only for the visiting audience, but also for the residents of the city itself. The bb3
attempted precisely to construct this dialogue, which was well worthwhile considering
the different characteristics and aspects of Berlin, but partially failed to convert the
concept into physical settings suitable for carrying such responsibility. Potential liabilities
of the physical sites were not sufficiently evaluated in all their multi-faceted aspects: if,
on the one hand, the historical symbolism of the venues was taken into account, then, on
the other, the (predominant) contemporary specificity of the buildings used for the bb3
was somehow overlooked: thus the mistranslation of the concept.
It is arguable that especially large-scale international exhibitions have to deal with a
variety of venues not intended to host such events, hence the need to negotiate new
semiotic paradigms and political discordances when it comes to concretely organizing an
exhibition. But what if the venues necessarily have to deal with the city itself hosting the
event, as for the Berlin biennale? Is there anything wrong in accepting the architectural
heritage of a building, discussing it openly through the artworks themselves, eventually
subverting the original significance if necessary?
The bb3 team claimed a commitment to positioning the event according to these precepts,
including sites of historical meaning, representation and debate. The KW Institute for
Contemporary Art, the site of a former margarine factory, was meant to foreground
questions of production; the museum architecture of the Martin-Gropius-Bau was
intended to confront questions of representation and mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion;
and the third venue, the cinema Arsenal, was meant to provide a forum for alternative and
3 From the introductory essay of ‘complex berlin’, ibid.
- 6 -
critical film production. ‘This Berlin biennial, with its non-linear and discursive nature
and its wide variety of temporal and spatial presentation formats, is a transitory space of
interlocking processes of communication’.4
As a matter of fact, the only work that addressed specifically the venue in which it was
exhibited, and critically questioned it in relation to the bb3 ‘interlocking of discourses’,
was strictly not an artwork, but one of the five hubs itself, namely the MIGRATION
space, designed by the German film-maker Hito Steyerl. It specifically addressed the
history and the political embodiment of the Martin-Gropius-Bau, and related it to
international contexts, working more as an introduction space than a distributor of
themes. Besides this exception, no other of the 50 works picked up this possibility of
cross-reference, which would have been essential for the functioning of the third Berlin
biennale as an overall frame of reference: despite the original claim, the exhibition as a
whole could have taken place in any building of the German capital. And to some extent,
even in any other city.
In Berlin there are far too few ‘prestige’ spaces being made available for contemporary
art to make its mark, indeed few fully suitable: a shortage, that is, of spaces where a
discourse ‘of’ (belonging to) contemporary art can be explored. Even the supposed
plentiful availability of buildings within the urban texture of Berlin is a kind of myth,
since everything is immediately claimed for another purpose. There are spaces ‘about’
contemporary art, where the issues are not explored and discussed, but simply presented
for consumption. ‘Prestige’ art spaces in Berlin – for instance, Hamburger Bahnhof, Neue
Nationale Galerie, and the same Martin-Gropius-Bau – are often labouring on frozen
issues, on productions and collections of contemporary art works that are largely
commodified, sometimes ‘bought’ as a package from some other institutions, in Germany
or abroad. And this does not do any good for contemporary art discourse in Berlin. In an
interview with M. Gisbourne,5 London-turned-Berlin art critic and curator, this issue of
speaking ‘about’ a content, an exhibition, or a topic (be it the content of a show or an
4 ibid.
5 Conversation with M. Gisbourne and S. Goltz during an interview on 29 July 2004.
- 7 -
article in a newspaper) rather than speaking ‘of’ it, has been raised and discussed. In such
a neuralgic zone for neo-liberalism like London, where everything produced has to make
its way either on the news or on the market – or both – what is debated is not the content
of an exhibition in the Tate Modern, South London Gallery, or ICA, but the exhibition
event itself. And this is true even for underground and grassroots venues like Space
Triangle or Dalston Underground Studios. Today’s commodifying and neo-liberal
approach toward art in London is not only widely accepted, but fostered and sustained in
other parts of the United Kingdom and Europe.
And there are all the premises for this to happen in Berlin also: the latest confirmation of
this trend is the Flick Collection saga, where a huge heritage accumulated with forced
labour during the Nazi period has been turned – by its last heir – into a contemporary art
collection, and is now represented as a positive cultural value in a public space, with the
blessing of former Chancellor Schroeder and various state Ministers. It seems that what
matters is the cultural event as a whole, and not what the event embodies, means, and
represents in the context where it takes place. When it comes to contemporary art
exhibition, the importance of speaking about it as ‘object’ (what and whom the practice
and theory presented are dealing with, and why) and not as ‘subject’ (the event as a
whole, regardless of the relation between producer, mediator and consumer) is
underestimated if not entirely ignored. One must seek and respect critical distance as
essential to produce and develop meaning, or else the whole experience of the cultural
production is useless. On the Berlin scene, there are not many places where this critical
distance is a value worth pursuing. Those where it is are not (with the intermittent
exception of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt) the venues which are publicly funded.
A site of representation: Martin-Gropius-Bau
Originally a nineteenth century Renaissance-styled museum of arts and crafts, then a
prehistoric and early history and East Asian art collection, the antecedent of the present
building was severely damaged at the end of the Second World War and its
reconstruction began as late as 1978. Re-opened as Martin-Gropius-Bau to honour the
great-uncle of Walter Gropius, since the 1980s the building has established itself as an
- 8 -
exhibition space and hall, run by the Berliner Festspiele on behalf of the federal state. It
functions as a classic presentation space for large-scale international blockbuster
exhibitions. ‘Thematizing, from today’s perspective, the Martin-Gropius-Bau as a once-
important site for exhibitions of contemporary art in West Berlin during the 1980s, and
taking advantage of its quality as a museum space, are things I find important’.6
Berlin has been a site par excellence of political transformations and probably still is. The
hubs were metaphors of places – ‘other places’ – able to thematize and work out these
changes, creating ‘zones of the transitory through which we move as visitors, picking up
and taking along information as we go’.7 Visitors were invited to cross-reference the
artistic works and the hub-themes, in a non-linear structure, where neither the thematic
nor chronological sequence (unlike many exhibition spaces) was determined. The
(unrestrictive) intended experience for audiences visiting the venues of the bb3 was to
enable them to create their own reference structure, a personal cosmology of interests
necessarily resolved within gaps, ‘asystematic connections’ or complete disconnections.
But the Martin-Gropius-Bau is not a space in which the sequence of non-linear discourses
can be achieved. As soon as one entered the building, in order to get access to the spaces
of the third Berlin biennale, one had to face a monumental staircase, reminiscent of
magnificent classical times and elitist, exclusive access. The Berlin biennale was shown
on the first floor, in a square-shaped space (with a ‘hole’ in the middle), that could be
entered and exited only from one door, i.e. the ‘introduction’ space of the hub:
MIGRATION mentioned above.
In Martin-Gropius-Bau the supposed ‘juxtaposition of works, which, as in urban
constellations, often results from pragmatic necessities as well, [and] can result in many
ruptures and asystematic connections’8 was in reality lined up in one way, and one only.
Once inside, the viewer faced the MIGRATION hub presentation, and could then choose
a clockwise or anti-clockwise path, offering a conventional succession of artworks. The
6 The curator U.M. Bauer in conversation with M. Babias in ‘complex berlin’, ibid.
7 ibid.
8 ibid.
- 9 -
visitors were channelled to circulate almost in a caged manner, more suggestive of the
displacement and alienation of the exhibition in relation to the space than of the possible
cross-references between the works; and between them and the hubs. The physical space
inside the Martin-Gropius-Bau confronted and defeated the courageous curatorial
concept.
One work attempted to challenge the symmetry and order of the display: the ‘revolving
door’ of the art collective __fabrics interseason, one of the most enigmatic and puzzling
pieces for audience, staff and critics alike (headlines like ‘Drehtür ins Nichts’9 were
common at the time of the opening). This revolving door was an attempt to break up,
both spatially and conceptually, the physicality and classical structure of the building. But
it did not have the effect wished by artists and curators, and – amidst technical
compromises and a minimalist outlook – the whole piece, and the questions posed by it,
did indeed disappear. One of the reasons can perhaps be identified within the difficulty of
adapting a conceptual, non-linear frame to a physical space where access, doors,
partitions, and floors play a major part in the perception of that space. Unless everything
else was free-standing too, the piece could not work. The problem is that the hub
concept’s real ‘nature’ is inscribed in computer networks and air traffic control, both
representations of flows of information, virtual channels concentrating and re-distributing
knowledge. This abstract description of immaterial work proves to be extremely difficult
to fit into a real spatial structure. Can there conceivably be an exhibition structure
pursuing a presentation of such works in a heterogeneous and non-linear way, yet co-
existential with the reality of the actual? Is the paradigm predicted in the catalogue of
Documenta XI by C. Basualdo of a ‘continuity of communication’ despite a ‘distance of
division’ realizable?
A site of production: KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Immediately after the Fall of the Wall, the original margarine factory (erected in the
second half of the eighteenth century) was used as a temporary space for exhibitions by a
9 ‘Turning [door] into nothing’ was the caption of the bb3 opening’s photograph in Der Tagesspiegel newspaper.
- 10 -
group of young artists. In 1990 the initiative Kunst-Werke Berlin was founded, with
studios, workshops and exhibitions. After the building complex was purchased with the
support of a public foundation, restored and given to the KW Institute for Contemporary
Art for cultural use, the location was reopened with a new exhibition hall, a café, and an
international studio programme housed in the building’s adjoining wings. The KW
Institute for Contemporary Art houses no collection of its own, but sees itself as a
laboratory that fosters exhibitions and events expressing national and international
contemporary art. ‘Certainly a work in Martin-Gropius-Bau will be read differently from
one in KW; the works are deliberately placed in their particular locations, as far as
possible. In doing so, it was important to me that viewers also address the connections
between the various subjects’.10
By purposely designing an open structure (i.e. in KW) and not prescribing a reading,
visitors were ‘stimulated’ to participate, experiencing ‘a place that should not be static
but rather one which people move through. It is only through this movement that the
connections between the different positions are produced’.11 At the opposite extreme of
the regularity of Martin-Gropius-Bau architecture, the works in KW seemed to be placed
as if they were interchangeable with any other. Scattered on five floors of exhibition, a
miscellany of practices and styles, topics and discourses, were almost impossible to
connect, though supposedly ‘driven’ by the thematic anchors of the hubs. This ‘potential
flexibility’ of the building was properly exploited only by two spatial arrangements: the
KW hall by B. Neumann – presenting stage constructions made for the theatre
productions of the Volksbühne, as elements to be used by the audience – and a ceiling-
less video installation by E. Cavusoglu. Both of these enabled the visitor-spectator to
engage with the work on two different floors and therefore two different levels of
sensorial experience; that is to say, making use of the potential of the venue itself. But the
labyrinthine pattern of walls, corners, stairs, ramps, windows, and ceilings, and the
difficulty of getting around them, was a substantial reason for missing works and thereby
some of the (potential) related cross-references, or at least for overlooking the artistic
10 The curator U.M. Bauer in conversation with M. Babias in ‘complex berlin’, ibid.
11 ibid.
- 11 -
‘interlocking of discourses’. Another problem was something not peculiar to the third
Berlin biennale, but common to the two previous events, and also one shared with all the
exhibitions produced, presented and (rarely) mediated in KW: the site-specificity of the
place. (This notion was discussed in the same conversation with M. Gisbourne and S.
Goltz quoted above.)
Site-specific locations for contemporary art projects carry with them something that is
imprinted on the site, and this is something that must be taken on board. Be it the former
site of power production (London), an industrial complex (Gateshead), a storage place
(New York), the former dictator’s residency (Bucharest), or a commercial pavilion
(Paris), site-specificity challenges the modernist assumption of the traditional Kunsthalle,
and likewise of the contemporary white cube, in which the art-presentation space was
‘segregated from everyday space and which was intended as a white cell of subjective
betterment or of aesthetizising ideal’.12 On a practical level, site-specificity challenges the
fundamental aim of creating a neutral space in which to show collections of art works
produced by a number of artists. It does so in two ways: by re-assessing and inserting
within the art exhibitions the site peculiarities, or (much more ‘trendy’ these days)
producing a space which, following neo-liberal premises, is no longer dialectically
divided into public and private, or outside and inside. Here, ‘art is never perceived as art
without previous (medial) information; and projects are increasingly designed as to the
(medial) participation of the recipient’.13 (In other words, relational art practice,
accompanied by relational aesthetic theory.)
The issue here can be addressed adequately through reference to the KW Institute for
Contemporary Art in Berlin: an old building, a factory space, which on the outside has
the characteristic factory features (the entrance, the wings, the backyard); and then – as
soon as one goes in – everything in the space denies the history of the space itself. There
is very little in KW that reveals the social palimpsest of the history of that building,
despite it’s being a site with a presumed history, a site that was supposed to highlight the
12 The line is taken from the writings of artist and author S. Roemer, who has extensively covered in recent times the
notion of artistic space and public sphere.
13 ibid.
- 12 -
localization of ‘questions pertinent and particularly relevant to Berlin’14 (which, along
with some political pressure to include it, was very much why it was selected as one of
the sites of bb3).
This central issue has been little considered. In the conceptual, and more importantly, in
the practical arrangements made to present the exhibitions in KW, the space has been
neutralized, sanitized, even ‘white-cubized’ to some extent. And when this was not the
case – for instance, in the setting of the SONIC SCAPES hub, or in the final
‘Performance Jam’ event – the ‘relational aesthetic approach’ did the rest by way of
reasserting conventional values. The potential of the space to connect and deal with the
Berlin context is thereby substantially limited.
As mentioned above, there is a need to re-think this way of promoting and de-
contextualizing places which otherwise offer enormous potential for suggesting,
mediating and re-proposing in imaginative ways a web of possible paths, which the
audience can navigate, re-experiencing in their own ways that which is seen and lived out
in the city. These paths can be historical or personal, economical or social, paths of
enjoyment and also of aesthetization, paths of affinity, interests and shared worldviews;
but certainly not paths of hyped consumerism (à la Palais de Tokyo in Paris) and planned
exploitation of capital-culture (à la Tate Modern in London). Making visible the past of
the buildings and locations hosting cultural events, particularly in visual art practice,
presents the opportunity to reflect on our past and envision a future. It does on the other
hand limit the space’s utility as exhibition space, and in some extreme cases it does
present the difficulty of living with an uncomfortable past (the emblems and signs of past
totalitarian regimes in Berlin and Bucharest, for instance). However, removing every
trace of what has been lived and (on a semiotic level) transferred to the society in those
locations does nothing to facilitate a full engagement for either the people living in, or
those visiting, the city hosting the event.
14 From the introductory essay of ‘complex berlin’, ibid.
- 13 -
It is highly debatable whether the managers of institutions, artists and cultural producers
ought to shy away from such visible marks of history, presenting their work in a ‘clean’
environment. What if those same intellectual workers, these immaterial producers and
creative people were to engage directly with the semiotic elements present in the venues,
the locations, the situations given to them, as the historical, cultural and social heritage of
each place? Would the engagement and reaction of the audience be different if the
managements of the institutions dared to leave fully visible the traces of doubtful politics,
industrial booms and collapses, social exploitations? Might that generate a continuous
stream of attention on both the space and the works that relate to it?
A site of imagination: Kino Arsenal
In 1970, the association Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek (founded in 1963 in order to
make publicly accessible the holdings of the Deutsche Kinemathek) inaugurated its own
movie theatre, Arsenal, Germany’s first non-commercial cinema, modelled after the
Parisian Cinémathèque Française. The Arsenal has a mediator’s function for film culture,
with retrospectives, themed film series, lectures, and discussions, and it offers a platform
for film history and new assessments in the area of film. Since the beginning of 2000 the
Arsenal’s new location in Berlin (together with the Berlinale, the Filmmuseum Berlin and
the German Film and Television Academy) has been Potsdamer Platz.
The third venue of the Berlin biennale raised the notion of a cinema as ‘exhibition’ space
– or better, performative space. The Kino Arsenal site was chosen to display the film
programme, as a site of imagination, a proper representational space for 2D moving
images. And to some extent it has played its own role. U.M. Bauer, the artistic curator of
the bb3, backed the choice of the Kino Arsenal as the proper choice for the cinematic
experience in an appropriate venue. We can nonetheless debate the validity of showing
films which are part of an artistic exhibition, and which specifically highlight social and
political positions – far more than the ‘parallel’ artworks in the other two venues, in fact
– in such a traditional cinema space. In this context, the space is experienced not as
dialogic, but as one-directional, with the audience on one side and the ‘product’, or
representation, on the other. There is no particular engagement for the viewer, or the
- 14 -
possibility of creating simultaneous cross-references, as the cinema space itself is a
fictitious and perfect system of exclusion/inclusion (Foucault called it a modern
heterotopia).
Would it have made sense to show the film programme – centred around the large areas
of ‘third cinema’, ex-GDR cinematographic productions and gender cinema – in different
locations, thereby scattering the imaginative space produced by the film across the very
places where the contexts were experienced first-hand? Could Berlin have been a ‘living
framed’ for discourses and not only a cinematographic reference to look at? If presented
in various and less established venues (a local ballroom, a bunker, a former GDR site, a
gay/lesbian meeting point, and so on), would the visiting audience and the inhabitants of
Berlin have cross-referenced what was seen on the screen with their own knowledge of
places, people, situations?
These are open questions that will remain open, but this kind of roadmap-approach for
curator, artist and viewer, which might allow people to look at familiar places in a
different way, or synthesize the unfamiliar, was not on the bb3 agenda. And indeed we
take into consideration at this point some issues not specifically related to the bb3, but
present in most of the large international artistic events of its kind. The discussion here is
not about contents, but rather examines some conceptual frameworks.
Spaces, places and zones: a discussion
‘Orte prägen intellektuelle Debatten’15
The other places of biennials
The term ‘Platform Formalism’, coined by art critic P. Albrethsen, depicts the tendency
of art environments to invite the public to join in, interact or just constitute a ‘presence’,
and to stress how this attitude of the artist or curator has recently developed into a
15 ‘Places shape intellectual debates’, U. M. Bauer on a podium discussion in Berlin, 21 November 2003.
- 15 -
structure and a concept, creating a situation where ‘artists and viewers somehow come to
function on equal terms. So rather than being an inspiring way of creating or displaying
art, the platform format has begun to function as a conventional practice, one that is often
used without much consideration’.16
These approaches were exemplified in bb3 in the URBAN CONDITIONS hub (an
analysis of the post-’89 building speculation in Berlin); the ‘Temporary Utopia’
installation room by I. Book and K. Heden (a retrospective of the garden as realizable
utopia in/outside the urban context), the latter both in Martin-Gropius-Bau; and also the
SONIC SCAPES hub (an overview of Berlin’s female electro-punk scene) in KW. They
provide the audience with a massive amount of information, which is widely understood
as part of the work, so creating the feeling of not doing justice to an artwork or a situation
if not ‘consumed’ with all the attachments. This is clearly not the ultimate intention of the
artist or curator – or it would be against the aim of creating a non-linear process.
Nevertheless it is almost omnipresent in international exhibitions and very frequent even
in small solo and group shows. As regards the bb3 examples, the art historian H. Bretton-
Meyer writes ‘I do not think it is sufficient to make information available by simply
placing a pile of books and catalogues on a table and then think the audience will be fine.
I even think it is a bit irresponsible’,17 and the reviewer of the journal NZZ Online wrote
about how the hubs create veritable ‘Stauzonen der Theorie’.18
Undeniably, if there’s no explanation why the material is there and how it was selected,
the whole experience becomes counterproductive, and ‘ultimately this strategy will limit
the experience of the project instead of actually contextualising it’.19 Out of his
experience as ‘mediator’ in Schadenfreude Guided Tours (an art project in which the
artwork was to mediate other artists’ works, developed for In the Gorges of the Balkans,
Kunsthalle Fridericianum Kassel, 2003) the artist L. Boyadjiev pointed out how
documentation, exhibition catalogues, or any other publications are not enough to fill the
16 ‘Platform Formalism” is also the title of an article by H. Bretton-Meyer and P. Albrethsen appeared on Neue Review
magazine, from which the quotation is taken.
17 ibid.
18 ‘Theory tailbacks’.
19 From the article ‘Platform Formalism’, ibid.
- 16 -
‘space’ that exists between the works in a show, and even less to fill the ‘void’ between
the many biennials, let alone to fill the void between the art world and the real world.20
It is clear how an earnest critique and a new constructive approach towards information
material, and mediation tools in general – including the consideration of the physical sites
of the exhibitions – is of the utmost importance. From what point of view should we
approach this issue of ‘overwhelming’ information in art exhibition contexts, and of the
possibilities of mediation?
Information, whether visual, written or aural, must play an important part in engaging the
audience in a discursive space, in communication, in expansion and extension of one’s
own worldview, while at the same time it must not be a deterrent for ‘entering’ the
discursive space itself. The issue at stake is huge and present: artist, curator and art
manager have yet to find a mechanism of ‘tuning’ (as mentioned above) this aspect of
contemporary art exhibitions, going from one extreme of purely representational and self-
referential art display to the opposite position of presenting artworks requiring a week’s
reading time to get through them.
How could an international large-scale exhibition offer not an image but an experience
for the visitor? And how could this experience be realized in the space of the exhibition?
One way is to rethink the relationship between the museums’ setting and function, and
the goal of art biennials; the fine line between ‘permanent’ contemporary art venues, such
as art institutions and galleries with exhibition programmes running throughout the year,
and ‘temporary’ ones, such as biennials, triennials and so on. Sometimes the physical
space is the same in both cases, not least for budget reasons, as the implementation in
museum spaces of biennials and triennials increases visitors and regains press attention.
The relational space, however, is very different, and indeed there is a semiotic discourse
embedded in the choice of the venue.
20 After participating in the event, L. Boyadjiev wrote an article for the Manifesta Journal in which he exposed his
experience.
- 17 -
Let’s consider at this juncture the permanent locations devoted to representation (and
sometimes to process-based practices) in terms of ‘places’ and ‘non-places’, as defined
by the anthropologist M. Augé in his famous book of 1995. According to him, non-places
are those spaces dealing only with individuals, but not with societal form. When
individuals come together, they engender the social and organize places in which
identities, relations and history are embodied; and if, on the one hand, places such as
museums and art venues create very many relations, on the other hand these relations are
not organically social. They are ‘constructed’, instilled from the very moment in which
visitors enter the building, ‘expecting’ to engage in discourses and so ‘setting’ their
senses, language, and bodies in order to receive the ‘message’ (borrowing McLuhan’s
terminology).
On this basis, permanent museums and art venues are closer to non-places than places, in
the same way as airports, tollbooths, motorway structures, and supermarkets also are, i.e.
where visitors/passengers/customers enter the building, expecting to ‘set’ a level of
relations pertinent to the space, then consume or trade what is on offer, and leave again.
This question of place and non-place is arguable from many points of view; nonetheless
we advance here this thesis in an attempt to define the different mental frames at work
when talking about art exhibitions. On the basis of the definition of ‘fixed’ spaces for art
dialogues as ‘non-places’, we could then define the ‘temporary’ spaces of interaction
created by time-bound art exhibitions (biennials, triennials, quinquennials, and so on) as
other-spaces, making use of the term coined by Foucault.21 Large-scale international
exhibitions never completely belong to the system of the ‘art industry’, as the range and
diversity of practices to which they give rise (at least theoretically) often turns out to be
subversive: for instance in de-centring both canon and ‘artistic modernity’, itself the
embodiment of a challenge. 22
21 The manuscript ‘Of other spaces’ was the basis for a lecture given by Foucault in March 1967. Although not
reviewed for publication by the author, the text was first released into the public domain for an exhibition in Berlin
shortly before Michel Foucault's death in 1984.
22 C. Basualdo provides this thesis in the context of a recent article for Manifesta Journal.
- 18 -
The time-bounded international art exhibitions can be seen as the ultimate heterotopias:
real phenomena where no social structure is implemented, because of their impermanent
nature. The very fact of the visitors’ relation with these spaces being heavily mediated
through written information and non-visual language formats, as the critiques above
pointed out, supplements a lack of first-hand ‘real-experiences’ data, which the visitor
cannot otherwise have except inside the structure. It is a further confirmation about the
character of these spaces. It is the ‘heterotopian’ ship of Foucaultian memory. Relations –
as in the ‘fixed’ art venues – are constructed and presented, but also generated by the
temporary and precarious character of the exhibition (or symposium, or workshop), as if
the space/time frame was temporarily occupied with issues not at stake in other times and
places.
These kinds of temporary arrangements are both a mythical and real contestation of the
‘normal’ spaces in which we live, and they seem to fulfil a precise function within
contemporary society: that of presentation of conflicts, controversy, injustice, but as
somehow unachievable dreams; thus absorbing and perhaps neutralizing the counter-
power they might generate. These events function namely as heterotopias of
compensation, dissimilar to the ‘places outside time’ as Foucault himself described
(fixed) museums and libraries.23 Contemporary art biennials are scenes of cultural
translation and transnational encounters, and simultaneously agoras of spectacle,
resembling those ‘marvellous empty zones outside the city limits, that fill up twice a year
… with booths, showcases, miscellaneous objects, wrestlers … optimistic fortune-tellers
etc.’24
The illusionary character of these temporary arrangements is reinforced by ‘autonomy’
not only on a spatial level but also on a temporal level, for through the very fact of
entering the building, and being there in that precise moment, a mechanism of
inclusion/exclusion is established in relation to, first, the space outside the
venue/museum/art institution and, second, the previous and future time arrangements of
23 M. Foucault in a passage of the same text ‘Of other spaces’ cited in note 21.
24 ibid.
- 19 -
that location, which can be very different and totally unconnected to what is revealed at
the time of entering. Think, for instance, of biennials arranged in former squatter
locations (Berlin), industrial and storage buildings (Istanbul), unused locations under
heritage protection (Venice, Istanbul), churches and mosques (Istanbul, Venice) and so
on.
All these locations perform the very task of creating a space of illusion (revealing, by
contrast, how illusory is the real space), but they also form another space, where
better/more real/fairer relations between humans somehow compensate for the lack of all
of those. And this is why biennials are heterotopias of compensation, like ‘conceptual
colonies’ (Foucault) living by themselves within the controlled society. The question of
spectacle is never detached from, and is always mediated by, extra-spectacular issues
(social and cultural codes), and art spaces have somehow a duty to be different from the
public space of consumption. They should, therefore, suggest the idea of a society of
thinking citizens as a possible reality, if only for a particular moment and in a certain
place: that is to say, during a biennial art exhibition. Such a compensatory phenomenon
cannot effectively realize what it is pursuing, but for this very reason it could possibly
inject a process of awareness. This is the potential worth pursuing.
The autonomous zones of biennials
The description of these ‘entities’ existing only for a certain amount of time and space,
reminds one – in one respect – of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ), the visionary
manifesto for a ‘high consciousness living’ written in the 1990 by the author under the
pseudonym Hakim Bey.
Bey describes the TAZ as an effort to liberate an area (of land, of time, of imagination)
and then dissolve itself to reform elsewhere/elsewhen. It does so, and is able to do so,
because it occupies the layer of substance and not of simulation (where the ‘system’ acts,
and here he refers to the French philosopher Baudrillard). That means, when the TAZ is
named, represented, mediated, it must vanish before the ‘state’ can crash it. This is, of
course, not the case of biennials, triennials, and so on, for all those events lack the
fundamental condition of ‘invisibility’, which is probably the most important feature of
the TAZ. The private and public funding mechanisms, advertising, and mediation
- 20 -
structures represent the opposite of the ‘tactic of disappearance’ predicated by Bey.
Despite this obvious fact, some characteristics of the TAZ can be envisioned, or even
recognized, in a temporary art context: the ‘hit and run’ attitude (‘nomadic war
machine’), the idea of the ‘band’ as affinity group (and where more than in artistic
temporary exhibition networks?), the concept of the ‘festival’ as a way of dealing with
life-matter.
Perhaps in this similarity between temporary art events and temporary autonomous zones
there is even an exchange of attributes: explicitly, with the aesthetic perspective as a
starting point. It seems that so-called engaged art exhibitions have quite a ‘representation
problem’ to solve; for instance, community-based art practices, uncertainly adopting both
post-representational and representational ways of working; or the documentary format,
still trapped in the contradiction of criticism about existing representational forms and the
use of the same mechanisms. An insidious feeling of discomfort in the dialogue between
aesthetic pleasure and social and political commitment is sneaking, unspoken, into the art
world. Why should it? Why not embrace an aesthetic approach to culture, if even the
TAZ – probably the most anti-everything and insurrectional theory of the last few
decades – seized the possibility? In an article published in 2004 by the magazine of the
Bundeskulturstiftungs,25 the historian P. Nolte suggests that art (and culture in general)
has become more and more essential in countering the confusion of society, permitting
one to ‘lift the fog’ and to make visible possible development and future horizons.
Modern sciences alone being no longer sufficient to understand this world, the latter
being more and more driven and ‘dependent’ on culture, it seems that society needs to be
re-thought on a cultural basis. A large proportion of the heated debates and clashes in
social development issues concern the realm of cultural identity and cultural sociology,
and we no longer consider them strictly in terms of political economy (as was the case
until recently). If (for example) globalization and migration issues were addressed
through cultural and artistic events with a more consistent kind of knowledge, which
could also be an aesthetic knowledge, evoking logics of dissemination and a reception of
otherness, that might in time produce and structure a collective knowledge, giving
25 The German Foundation for Art and Culture.
- 21 -
individuals more self-consistency, which in turn might have consequences within the
formation of the culture itself.
The possible paths of biennials
There is no ‘one way’ to act in the task of activating meanings in the contemporary art
world. Biennials and their derivatives represent a possibility of fostering new
worldviews, and perhaps – further on – of actually managing to change something. Not
directly through these events, but through discourses, in the contexts generated, which
become actions and later references for future generations. Using a metaphor, it’s not
completely true that the map – and the mapping process – is not the territory. To some
extent it contributes to the formation of the territory itself, and so to the formation of
living experiences, which are ultimately our history. If these temporary events can create
a social sharing of compensatory forms, or of new autonomous forms, only time will tell.
We must hope so.
All that seems to have been achieved so far is something that deprives temporary
exhibitions of the need for an autonomous zone – and even of a need for compensation.
This mirrors processes outside the art world, with real/simulated life transfers in the
media-spectacle industry and, inside artistic practice, a whole approach developed
through relational modes (spectator/mediator/artist). Influential ‘permanent’ art
exhibition venues dedicate their programme and resources to relational art practice,
where the concept of ‘relation’ itself is elevated, and turned into hyped commodity,
transforming the tools of communication, imagination, relation, commitment, into empty
words, substantial only for the evening of the opening. In this regard, it is important that
art venues, and particularly spaces of biennial events and similar exhibitions, do not
become a kind of privileged ghetto for a simulacrum of a show, without any true
connection to the reality of the context (city, inhabitants, politics).26 As the writer and
theorist B. Holmes stated in a recent paper published online, economical, political and
26 On this aspect are informing the writings of E. Muka, former curator of the first Tirana Biennial, published –
amongst others – in Manifesta Journal.
- 22 -
informational power having shifted to the realm of transnational exchanges, the art now
shown in museums has little more political influence than any other of the ‘universal
products’ we are offered, none of which includes any connection to an effective
democratic institution. In this respect, art exists in an institutional vacuum.27
It’s time to consider temporary and permanent spaces of art – any space of art, small and
big, private and public, publicly funded and grassroots – not only as compensation-
model, which per se cannot change a single thing, but also as a proper semi-autonomous
zone, and as a mediation tool to transfer and activate ideas that will thrive in life. It is
time to understand artistic production in its relation to the ways people live out their lives,
in its connection with their lived spaces, in its association with the creation and the
experience of their desires and their imagination. The real task in front of cultural
workers is to produce and propose alternatives in the general sphere of aesthetic
production that, in turn, can lead to a reaction, and a diffusion of ideas, of struggle, of
creation.
27 I draw here on the work of B. Holmes, cultural and political theorist, interested primarily in the intersections of
artistic and political practice. His writings are available on various websites like www.nettime.org,
www.16beavergroup.org, and http://ut.yt.t0.or.at/site/index.html. Accessed 20 January 2006.
- 23 -
Works cited
(in alphabetical order)
Albrethsen, P. (2003), ‘Running on empty: Platform Formalism’, NU - The Nordic Art
Review, 1, September 2003, and online at
http://composit.dimea.se/www/nue/site/redirectToFrameset.asp?p=229. Accessed 03
January 2006.
Augé, M. (1995), ‘Non-Places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity’
(trans. J. Howe), London and New York: Verso.
Basualdo, C. (2002), ‘The Encyclopaedia of Babel’, catalogue of Documenta XI,
Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Publishers.
Basualdo, C. (2003-2004), ‘The Unstable Institution’, Manifesta Journal, 2,
Winter2003/Spring 2004, pp. 50-61, Ljubljana and Amsterdam: Moderna Galerija
(Museum of Modern Art) and International Foundation Manifesta.
Bauer, U.M., Horn, G., Gau, S. (2004), ‘complex berlin’, publication-catalogue of the 3rd
Berlin biennale of contemporary art, Cologne: Buchhandlung Walther König.
Bey, H. (1985-1991), ‘The Temporary Autonomous Zone. Ontological Anarchy, Poetic
Terrorism’, Brooklyn: Autonomedia, and online at
http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz_cont.html. Accessed 03 January 2006.
Boyadjiev, L. (2003-2004), ‘Off the Record’, Manifesta Journal, 2, Winter 2003/Spring
2004, pp. 32-39, Ljubljana and Amsterdam: Moderna Galerija (Museum of Modern Art)
and International Foundation Manifesta.
Bretton-Meyer, H., Albrethsen, P. (2004), ‘Platform Formalism’, Neue Review, 5, March
2004, pp. 6-8, and online at
- 24 -
http://www.neuereview.net/?archiv:artikel:Platform+Formalism. Accessed 03 January
2006.
Foucault, M. (1967, first published 1984), ‘Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias’,
Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité Journal, October 1984, Paris: Groupe Moniteur, and
online at http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html.
Accessed 03 January 2006.
Herzog, S. (2004), ‘Schwitzen im Oberseminar / Die dritte Berliner Kunst-Biennale’,
NZZ Neue Züricher Zeitung, 16 February 2004.
Holmes, B. (1999) ‘Cities, Spirals, Exhibitions - Artworks in an Urban Frame’, online at
http://ut.yt.t0.or.at/site/index.html. Accessed 03 January 2006.
Kuhn, N. (2004), ‘Der strenge Duft von Berlin’, Der Tagesspiegel, 13 February 2004.
Muka, E. (2003-2004), ‘Tirana for beginners: a brief guide to a baby biennial’, Manifesta
Journal, 2, Winter 2003/Spring 2004, pp. 70-77, Ljubljana and Amsterdam: Moderna
Galerija (Museum of Modern Art) and International Foundation Manifesta.
Nolte, P. (2004), ‘Lift the fog!’, Bundeskulturstiftung Magazin, 3, pp. 4-5, Halle and der
Saale: Kulturstiftung des Bundes.
Roemer, S. (1998-2002), ‘Some remarks on the structural change between artistic space
and public sphere’, online at
http://www.16beavergroup.org/monday/archives/001296.php. Accessed 03 January 2006.
- 25 -
Author’s biography and affiliation
Alfredo Cramerotti [*1967] is curator, critic and artist. He works crossing the fields of
media production (TV, radio, cinema, publishing), contemporary art (video, audio,
installation, performance) and critical writing (art and media theory, reviews). He is
based in Copenhagen and Berlin.
‘Critical Studies’ Art Academy Malmö, University of Lund, Sweden.
alcramer@gmail.com
