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Symbolic Production in the Art Biennial: Making Worlds
Abstract
Biennials – periodic, independent and international exhibitions surveying trends in visual art – have with startling speed become key nodes in linking production, distribution and consumption of contemporary art. Cultural production and consumption have been typically separated in research, neglecting phenomena, like biennials, sitting in between. Biennials have become, however, key sites of both the production of art’s discourse and where that discourse translates into practices of display and contexts of appreciation. They are, this article argues, key sites of art’s symbolic production. Symbolic production is what makes a work, an artist, or even a genre visible and relevant, providing its sense in a system of classifications and, in an exhibition like a biennial, literally giving it a place in the scene. This article proposes a cultural analysis of biennials, focusing on the Venice Biennale, founded in 1895 and the first of the genre, through which we can trace biennials’ rise and transformations.
... Besides global museums, the biennial, or a similar temporary international platform such as triennials or art fairs, has also become a popular hub for governments practising CD through exhibitions. The Venice Biennial, long known as the Olympics of the Arts, continues its role as a 'battlefield' of countries' national arts (Sassatelli, 2017). ...
... Association (Sassatelli, 2017, p. 100). Some scholars refer to the increasing institutional structure for large-scale exhibitions as 'the biennialization of the contemporary art world' (Filipovic, Van Hal and Ovstebo, 2010;Sassatelli, 2017). Currently, there are biennials in at least 50 countries, with a particular concentration in Europe and Asia. ...
... The development of global biennales is profoundly related to the world's political and economic epoch shifts. The Western canon has been weakened, and symbolic production in formerly peripheral regions (compared to Occidental countries) has been rising (Sassatelli, 2017). ...
... Agents of cultural production today connect into novel, specifically global scaling relational structures, and art professionals today build transnational careers from the start (Kong, 2014;Urry, 2003). Museums started to develop cosmopolitan practices (Levitt, 2015), and the global art field is being built at art fairs, biennales, and globally connected galleries (Gardner & Green, 2016;Sassatelli, 2017). Just as in other global processes, in the globalization of art new territorial actors appeared besides the nation-state, such as global cities and transnational regions (Alderson, Beckfield & Sprague-Jones, 2010;Boon, Wubs & Klemann, 2019). ...
In our contemporary art field global institutional networks offer novel strategies for peripheral artists in their struggle for global recognition, bypassing the necessity of maximizing presence in the territorial core. We address the puzzle of how such novel artistic strategies bypassing core gatekeepers can succeed. In this article we analyze the way artists from Central-Eastern Europe strive for consecration via acquisition by the pinnacle museums-Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou and the MoMA-between 1990 and 2018. Our analysis is based on more than hundred thousand exhibition events of about 3500 artists, held at nearly ten thousand venues in 112 countries. We focus on network topology of co-exhibiting relations of venues and artists. We introduce two key concepts to understand success in the multiscalar global art field: geo-capital and the globalizer position. Geo-capital measures the territorial balance of a venue's topological neighbours, capturing a capacity to span boundaries, while the globalizer position marks those venues that can provide artists with global visibility against the territorial core-periphery spectrum on to-pological grounds. We show that a strategy built on venues in the globalizer position improves the likelihood of consecration more than any other factors. We contribute to prior research by showing the functioning of a relational form of territoriality, that relies on global networks, and provides a mechanism through which global institutional networks can function in relative vertical autonomy within the multiscalar global art field.
... Not forgetting roots of the main artistic revolutions, the transition from salons to binennials sinc the late 19 th century, then the parade of avant-gardes with "exhibitions that made history" (Altshuler, 1994(Altshuler, , 2008(Altshuler, , 2013 until the "over here" (Mosquera & Fischer, 2005). The contemporary stage of global art or, better saying it, of globalised references still with asymmetrical geographies of main art sites, powers, markets: Conde, 2024d4, 2024d5;Vogel, 2010;Belting, Buddensieg, & Weibel, 2013;Dornhof et al. 2018;Tang, 2007Tang, , 2011Vogel, 2010;Filipovic & Ovstebo, 2010;Amsellem, 2019 ;Shalem, 2021;Sassatelli, 2015Sassatelli, , 2017 The sectoral glance attaches the ECS to projects funded by the EU programmes, foremost Creative Europe that supports cultural/ creative industries, activities, and cultural heritage (Conde, 2024a6). What constitutes only a part in my framework about the ECS regarding sectoral spaces as operational panoramas. ...
... Rather, biennales are more like "a tool that can be used to build very different shows and obtain very different results". "Initially contained in a single exhibition, today the Biennale expands across the Venetian archipelago in a wide typology of sites and, as a brand, globally" (Sassatelli, 2017). An important marketing technology, used in the ancient times, was collecting visual arts works. ...
The relevance of this article is based on shaping new modern world’s market relations one of which is the art market. The aim of the research is the analysis of the marketing interrelations and tendencies in the market of the 20th-21st centuries together with the previous historical periods. In order to hit the goal of the research, theoretical, empirical and comparative researching methods have been used. It sets theoretical foundations of the visual arts marketing and the ways of their practical application. Already before the modern art market as an element of a total capitalistic market came to exist, the movement of visual art works, in the ancient epoch, included elements of marketing approaches and technologies caused by the then-existing processes of sale and purchase of art works, their exchange and collecting. The article is about the expertise of their quality and originality; definition of the already existing methods of promoting art works in the society. It is worth paying a particular attention to ceramic products like porcelain (china) that, in its turn, occupies an important place among art works, together with paintings and sculptures. In the beginning of the 18th century, the porcelain arrived to Europe from China. Collectors have for three centuries admired porcelain products. It should be admitted, there is a particular category of the Venice Biennale visitors. They are porcelain collectors. The practical value of this research stays in the analysis of the marketing instruments in the modern art market for the benefit of not only modern artists but also of the managers of all levels who work in the field of visual arts, at exhibitions, for companies producing collection ceramics tableware, at auctions and in the world’s museums
... Furthermore, Palestine's involvement can be analysed through the prism of cultural diplomacy -where art serves as a medium for political expression and negotiation. The symbolic presence of Palestine in such settings acts as a form of soft power, subtly influencing international perceptions and dialogues (Nye 2004;Sassatelli 2017;Shomali 2022;Turner 2016). By highlighting their art and history in these spaces, Palestinians are not only preserving their heritage but also using it to educate, engage, and challenge the distorted narratives often propagated by the Israeli occupation. ...
... Modern sanattaki eğilimleri inceleyen, periyodik, bağımsız ve uluslararası büyük sergilerdir. Bienaller, çağdaş sanatın anlamlarının inşa edildiği, sürdürüldüğü ve değiştirildiği bir etkinlik ve sergilerden oluşmaktadırlar (Sassatelli, 2017). Bienaller, sadece bir sanatsal sergilerin ötesinde bir "mega-sergi" veya "meta-sergi"lerdir. ...
Etkinlikler, belirli bir zaman aralığında tek seferde veya tekrarlanarak gerçekleştirilen ve bir konu hakkında farkındalık, bilinirlik veya ekonomik gelir sağlamak amacıyla yapılan faaliyetlerdir. Etkinlikler, sanatsal, kültürel, bilimsel ve ekonomik birçok konu hakkında yapılabilmektedir. Etkinliklerde, katılımcılar, fikir, ürün ve eserlerini paylaşarak değerlendirirken, ziyaretçiler de bu fikir, ürün ve eserlerden haberdar olmakta ve aynı zamanda satın alma imkânı bulmaktadırlar. Günümüzde, teknolojideki gelişmelerle birlikte internet kullanımının yaygınlaşması ve pandemi vb. gibi sebeplerle etkinlikler dijital ortama kaymaya başlamış ve birçok etkinlik dijital ortamda yapılmaya başlamıştır. Dijitalleşme sayesinde etkinliklerin düzenlenmesi ve uygulaması da kökten değişmeye başlamış, dijitalleşme birçok açıdan düzenleyici, katılımcı ve ziyaretçilere kolaylıklar sağlamıştır. Bu kolaylıklardan en dikkat çekeni ise, düzenlenen etkinliğin hitap ettiği hedef kitleye coğrafi herhangi bir kısıt olmadan dijital ortamda ulaşmanın çok daha kolay hale gelmesidir. Bienaller ise, iki senede bir düzenlenen dikkat çekici sanatsal etkinliklerdir. Bu çalışma ile de sanal etkinliklerin sistem etkinliğinin değer üzerindeki etkisi ve sanal etkinlik değeri, memnuniyeti ve sadakati arasındaki ilişkiler incelenmiştir. Bu kapsamda, Bandırma Onyedi Eylül Üniversitesinde 17-24 Nisan 2021 tarihleri arasında ilk defa çevrimiçi gerçekleştirilen 1. Uluslararası Görsel Sanatlar Bienali katılımcılarının etkinlik deneyimleri incelenmiştir. Bu bienal çalışması, görsel sanat alanında Türkiye’de düzenlenen ilk dijital bienal olması açısından önemlidir. Toplam196 çevrimiçi katılımcıya çevrimiçi anket uygulanmıştır. Elde edilen verilere doğrulayıcı faktör analizi uygulanmış, araştırma hipotezleri Yapısal Eşitlik Modellemesi ile test edilmiştir. Araştırmanın sonuçları, sanal etkinliklerin sistem etkinliğinin değer üzerinde, sanal etkinlik değerinin tatmin ve tatminin de sanal etkinlik sadakati üzerinde pozitif ve anlamlı etkisi olduğunu göstermiştir. Sanal sistem etkinliğinin tatmin üzerinde anlamlı bir etkisinin olmadığı fakat değer değişkeninin; sistem etkinliğinin tatmin üzerindeki etkisinde tam aracı değişken rolüne sahip olduğu sonucuna ulaşılmıştır.
... Modern sanattaki eğilimleri inceleyen, periyodik, bağımsız ve uluslararası büyük sergilerdir. Bienaller, çağdaş sanatın anlamlarının inşa edildiği, sürdürüldüğü ve değiştirildiği bir etkinlik ve sergilerden oluşmaktadırlar (Sassatelli, 2017). Bienaller, sadece bir sanatsal sergilerin ötesinde bir "mega-sergi" veya "meta-sergi"lerdir. ...
Etkinlikler, belirli bir zaman aralığında tek seferde veya tekrarlanarak gerçekleştirilen ve bir konu hakkında farkındalık, bilinirlik veya ekonomik gelir sağlamak amacıyla yapılan faaliyetlerdir. Etkinlikler, sanatsal, kültürel, bilimsel ve ekonomik birçok konu hakkında yapılabilmektedir. Etkinliklerde, katılımcılar, fikir, ürün ve eserlerini paylaşarak değerlendirirken, ziyaretçiler de bu fikir, ürün ve eserlerden haberdar olmakta ve aynı zamanda satın alma imkânı bulmaktadırlar. Günümüzde, teknolojideki gelişmelerle birlikte internet kullanımının yaygınlaşması ve pandemi vb. gibi sebeplerle etkinlikler dijital ortama kaymaya başlamış ve birçok etkinlik dijital ortamda yapılmaya başlamıştır. Dijitalleşme sayesinde etkinliklerin düzenlenmesi ve uygulaması da kökten değişmeye başlamış, dijitalleşme birçok açıdan düzenleyici, katılımcı ve ziyaretçilere kolaylıklar sağlamıştır. Bu kolaylıklardan en dikkat çekeni ise, düzenlenen etkinliğin hitap ettiği hedef kitleye coğrafi herhangi bir kısıt olmadan dijital ortamda ulaşmanın çok daha kolay hale gelmesidir. Bienaller ise, iki senede bir düzenlenen dikkat çekici sanatsal etkinliklerdir. Bu çalışma ile sanal etkinliklerin sistem etkinliğinin değer üzerindeki etkisi ve sanal etkinlik değeri, memnuniyeti ve sadakati arasındaki ilişki incelemiştir. Bu kapsamda, Bandırma Onyedi Eylül Üniversitesi Mimarlık ve Tasarım Fakültesi, 17-24 Nisan 2021 tarihleri arasında ilk defa çevrimiçi “1. Uluslararası Görsel Sanatlar Bienali”ni gerçekleştirmiştir. Bu bienal çalışması, görsel sanat alanında Türkiye’de düzenlenen ilk dijital bienal olması açısından önemlidir. Bu çalışmada, 1. Uluslararası Görsel Sanatlar Bienali katılımcılarının, aynı zamanda birer ziyaretçi olarak yaşadıkları çevrimiçi etkinlik deneyimleri incelenmiştir. Toplam 196 çevrimiçi katılımcıya çevrimiçi anket uygulanmıştır. Elde edilen verilere doğrulayıcı faktör analizi uygulanmış, araştırma hipotezleri Yapısal Eşitlik Modellemesi ile test edilmiştir. Araştırmanın sonuçları, sanal etkinliklerin sistem etkinliğinin değer üzerinde, sanal etkinlik değerinin memnuniyet ve memnuniyetin de sanal etkinlik sadakati üzerinde pozitif ve anlamlı etkisi olduğunu göstermiştir. Sanal sistem etkinliğinin memnuniyet üzerinde ise anlamlı bir etkisinin olmadığı görülmüştür.
... A promising arena for creating new recognition space is the emergence of international biennales hosted outside the West (Wei 2013). Important art biennales can now be found on the continents of Asia, Africa, and South America and, in consequence, non-Western growth may bring with it new evaluative standards and ideas (Enwezor 2008;D'Souza 2013;Sassatelli 2017). For example, the Havana Biennale is known for its anticolonial stance and emphases artists from developing regions, particularly Latin America, as well as those from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East (Morgner 2020). ...
This study examines the 22-year development of the Shanghai Biennale from a localized contemporary art exhibition to an internationally renowned art biennale. Through the lens of organizational legitimacy, this research examines how the Shanghai Biennale negotiated changing external pressures to establish within China and grow into the international art world. Using a mix-methods approach, we first create a unique database of participant nationality and then examine artist and curatorial statements, media reports, and interviews with organizers and curators of the Shanghai Biennale from 1996 to 2018. Our study delineates three periods of the Shanghai Biennale’s development: incipient (1996–1998), internationalization (2000–2010), and expanding period (2012–2018). Through these periods we examine the different pathways by which the Shanghai Biennale attained legitimacy first within the local and national Chinese context and then within the Biennale’s expansion into the international art scene. We find at the beginning stage of the Shanghai Biennale, establishing local legitimacy was the foremost concern. When the Shanghai Biennale started to diffuse into the global art world in 2000, focus shifted towards remaking the Shanghai Biennale to comply with international perceptions. That said, our research finds both local and international legitimacy requirements remained salient simultaneously, with the importance of maintaining a good relationship with the Chinese State as a critical basis for internationalization and development. In the most recent editions, more local and non-Western features are included in the Shanghai Biennale, signaling the Biennale’s efforts of distinguishing itself in the global biennale scene. This research contributes to organizational study by closely examining a cultural organization’s ability to negotiate legitimacy requirements in different contexts, but also empirically responds to recent calls for studies on the global development of non-Western biennales.
... Costa, Guerra & Neves, 2017; Gielen, 2008 Gielen, , 2009 Gielen & Bruyne, 2009. Remarking the proliferous and diverse approaches of the art biennials : on their history, politics, promises and discontents either for European locations or the global mapping ; on art, theory and critique ; symbolic production in the " making worlds "(Vanderlinden & Filipovic, 2005; Gardner & Green, 2013;Altshuler, 2013; Kompatsiaris, 2017;Sassatelli, 2015Sassatelli, , 2017. More references in note 19.15 Peppiatt & Bellony-Rewald, 1983;Rodriguez, 2002; Jacob, & Grabner, 2010. ...
... Critical studies of the politics of biennials draw our attention to the importance of connecting the processes of cultural and artistic production to the dynamics of capital accumulation, without reducing the value produced in and through biennials solely to economic capital. Instead, they relate accruing economic capital through biennials leads to the acquisition of symbolic and political capital and to the interfaces among these three kinds of capital (Sheikh, 2010;Sassatelli, 2017;Bethwaite & Kangas, 2018). Importantly, these studies underline the multiple co-implicated spatialities and scales in their analysis of the politics of such cultural events/productions, especially in relation to the challenges they pose to existing power relations (Bethwaite & Kangas, 2018). ...
On the basis of empirical material from a city bordering Syria and Turkey, this article aims to situate the city’s emerging landscape of culture and arts in the 2000s within the dynamics of neoliberalizing city-making. It provides a political economy of the city’s “cultural reach” by connecting the dynamics of cultural production to value creating processes in and through urban regeneration to understand when, how, and which groups and sites become de- and re-valorized. It highlights the futility of nation state-city, state-civil society binaries in analysing the power geometry of multiscalar actors involved in the work, efficacy and the potency of cultural networks, institutions, and “cultural diplomacy.”
... First, certain pre-suppositions towards genuinely artistic criteria, respective values and autonomous logics can be reconsidered for sites of cultural production (Sassatelli, 2016). Numerous studies on organizations research artistic logics under pressure by political, economic or religious interests. ...
While numerous studies have shown diverse effects of rankings, rather little is known about their production. This article contributes to a broader understanding of rankings in society, and does so by focusing on underlying worldviews. I argue that the existence of a ranking and its concrete methodology can be explained by the producer's paradigmatic assumptions about a world-to-be-ranked. Referring to the sociology of knowledge and studies on commensuration, comparisons, quantification and valuation, I provide a general heuristic to analyze this relation between underlying worldviews and observational regimes through which order is constructed systematically. Presenting empirical results on a ranking for the most famous artists in the world, I show how the review device's initial problem and its construction of order derive from consistent assumptions about contemporary art, its symbolic structures and its social embeddedness. These findings have implications for both research on rankings and sociology of the arts.
... with the ability to make or break artists" careers, the Venice Biennale is known as "the Olympics of the art world" (Alloway, 1968). Art biennales are not uncommon in developed nations, and currently are held in Sydney, Havana, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Istanbul (Ashbury, 2006;Sassatelli, 2017), among other cities and regions. The most prominent biennales after Venice are the Sao Paulo Biennale (started in 1951), the German Dokumenta (founded in 1955 and held every five years), and the Kwangju Biennale in South Korea (Rodner et al., 2011). ...
The Kochi-Muziris Biennale seeks to establish itself as a centre for artistic engagement in India by drawing from the rich tradition of public action and public engagement in Kerala, here Kochi is located. In a world of competing power structures it is necessary to balance the interests and independence of artists, art institutions and the public.
... The single most prestigious art biennale is that of Venice, which held its first such event in 1895; with the ability to make or break artists' careers, the Venice Biennale is known as "the Olympics of the art world" (Alloway, 1968). Art biennales are not uncommon in developed nations, and currently are held in Sydney, Havana, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Istanbul (Ashbury, 2006;Sassatelli, 2017), among other cities and regions. The most prominent biennales after Venice are the Sao Paulo Biennale (started in 1951), the German Dokumenta ( founded in 1955 and held every five years), and the Kwangju Biennale in South Korea (Rodner et al., 2011). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the meaning, in both local and international context, of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), the first international exhibit of contemporary art in India. Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF), which administers the KMB, identifies art as a means for transforming society, with a mission to bring global contemporary art to India and to present India’s modern art to the world. The authors further investigate the role of government sponsorship and corporate patronage in funding the KMB, and investigate how resistance through art is key to the KMB’s identity.
Design/methodology/approach
This study focuses primarily on published materials relating to the KMB. One of the authors attended the 2016 KMB and interviewed fellow attendees. Additionally, the authors reviewed and assessed social media postings regarding the 2016 KMB.
Findings
The authors argue that government sponsorship and corporate patronage are never solely about political or financial power. Rather, a generalized reciprocity among the three entities – corporations, the government and the artists – allows the KMB to flourish. For the artists involved, the KMB, co-founded by activist artists, sustains interest in and awareness of resistance.
Originality/value
Extant literature on biennales is sparse on ways in which these exhibits extend their impact beyond the art world. The authors examine issues such as India expanding its position on the world stage through art, and the implications of political resistance embraced by Indian artists on future directions for the KMB, that have heretofore been unaddressed.
... Their number has proliferated rapidly especially over the last 25 years. There are now estimated to be some 150 such exhibitions taking place in more than 50 countries (Filipovic et al. 2010;Vogel 2010;Sassatelli 2016a). Marchart (2010Marchart ( [2008) has come up with the notion of biennalization to refer to the proliferation and standardization of contemporary art exhibitions under the biennial format. ...
The purpose of the article is to analyse and study the methodology and processes of socio-cultural projecting of algorithms for the selection of experts in fine art marketing and, including, in the formation of art collections in museums, galleries, private collections. The research methodology consists in the application of comparative, empirical, and theoretical methods, including analysis, synthesis, inductive and deductive modelling of work situations that may arise in the work of expert groups. The scientific novelty consists in the development of a fundamentally new view on the modelling of algorithms for the selection of experts, who must perform tasks in the field of art market platforms, and in the further expansion of ideas about the study of marketing processes in the art market. Conclusions. The article formulates a new scientific model for algorithms for the selection of experts who work in fine art marketing at auctions, fairs, galleries, museums, and private art collections. This model of selecting experts who work on the art market can be used as an effective technology in the marketing of fine art, because this technology actually makes it possible to segment specialists in the field of providing expert services in the work of museums, galleries, auctions and in-service activities private art collections.
Abstrakti Artikkeli käsittelee Venetsian nykytaidebiennaalia, taidemaailman megatapahtumaa. Sen lähtökohta on huomio megatapahtumien paradoksaalisuudesta. Tarkastelemme Venäjän kansallisen Venetsian-paviljongin paradokseja analysoimalla, miten yksityisen taidesäätiön johtaja ja "oligarkin vaimo" Stella Kesajeva nousi paviljongin komissaariksi kaudelle 2011-2015. Esitämme, että biennaali tarjosi olosuhteet yhteiskunnalliselle ja poliittiselle alkemialle, jossa taloudellista pääomaa on mahdollista muuntaa symboliseksi pääomaksi tai symbolista taloudelliseksi. Venetsian biennaalin paradoksaalisuutta voidaankin selittää sillä, että kyseessä on Pierre Bourdieun käsittein heteronominen tila. Eri kenttien arvostusperiaatteet risteävät biennaalissa, mikä synnyttää paradokseja. Pohdimme artikkelissa myös nykytaiteen ja Venetsian-paviljongin muutosvoimaa suhteessa Venäjän kleptokratiseen järjestelmään, jossa vauraan bisneseliitin ja valtion suhteet ovat kietoutuneet yhteen sekä varallisuus huomattavan epätasaisesti jakautunutta. Abstract This article is an analysis of the Venice Biennial, a contemporary art megaevent. We argue that megaevents are paradoxical and focus our analysis in particular on the paradoxes of the Russian pavilion during the years 2011-2015. During this time, Stella Kesaeva, a contemporary art collector and "oligarch's wife" steered the pavilion as its commissar. We suggest that the Biennial provided ideal conditions for social and political alchemy whereby economic capital was converted into symbolic capital and symbolic capital to economic. From here we move on to argue that the paradoxical character of the Venice Biennial can be explained with the help of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of heteronomy. The value principles of different fields crisscross at the Biennial, which generates paradoxes. On this basis, we also reflect on the role of contemporary art and the national pavilion vis-à-vis the Russian kleptocratic system within which the relations of the affluent business elite and the state are intertwined and the levels of wealth inequality are very high.
This paper investigates the art world as a setting for hegemonic status or prestige politics. Powerful states engage in art world status-seeking but appear to face challenges distinct to the art world in so doing. To explain, I adopt a Bourdieusian forms of capital approach, framing the art world as a social field with distinctive contentious dynamics and symbolic politics. I argue states must work through art world networks and institutions to pursue status there, observing local rules in so doing. I frame art world prestige as symbolic capital—the overt, observable pursuit of which tends to undermine any gains. Hegemonic incumbents and challengers face differing such constraints. The existing global art world models rules and standards by homology on that of the current hegemon. A challenger must adapt to this status quo before they can revise it. I unpack these dynamics in the cases of America, China, and India. I focus on their shifting standing in the global art market and performances of national aggrandizement at a recurring global art world event: the Venice Biennale.
In yet another variation on a theme park, the contemporary art biennial establishes host cities as cultural destinations. The qualities of these events, their various exclusivities, esoteric referentialities, and circulating stars reflect a form of “pure imageability” (p. xiv) (Sorkin, M. [1992]. Introduction: Variations on a theme park. In M. Sorkin (Ed.), Variations on a theme park: The new American city and the end of public space (pp. xi–xv). Hill and Wang.). Reducing art events to their functions for city branding, marketing, or as a tourist attraction is hardly satisfying as a qualitative analysis reveals their various (sometimes conflicting) intentions. Inspired by Sorkin’s writing about public space, this paper considers one of these aims: the engagement of various publics. Bringing in school groups and indigenous rights activists through outreach programs and curation reflects attempts to
make biennials more accessible and inclusive. The struggles to expand their publics, however, also reveal entrenched forms of exclusion. Despite political, economic or health crises art biennials persist. Their resilience reinscribes segregated urban lives, a
reminder that follies are not necessarily fragile.
There has been a proliferation of contemporary art biennials in
the past 20 years, especially in cities outside of North America and
Europe. What biennials represent to their host cities and what is
represented at these events reveal a great deal about the significance of
this proliferation. The biennial platform entails formalistic notions of
representation with regards to place branding or the selection of artists
as emissaries of countries where they were been born, reside, or to which
they have some kind of affinity. This notion of representation is obscured
considering the instability of center and periphery, artists' biographies,
practices, and references. In contradistinction to the colonial world fair,
the biennial thwarts the notion or possibility of “authentic”
representation. The analysis incorporates works shown at the 2018 biennials
in Dakar and Taipei, interviews with artists, curators, and stakeholders, and materials collected during fieldwork in both cities.
Since the early 1990s, large‐scale, recurring exhibitions, known as biennials, triennials, or the quinquennial exhibition Documenta, have turned into platforms that define contemporary global art. A few years before the turn of such cultural globalization, the First İstanbul Biennial in 1987 planted its roots and turned İstanbul into one of the global contemporary art hubs in the world. This paper examines the first two İstanbul Biennials both organized by Beral Madra,1 one of the prominent curators in Turkey and surveys how Madra struggled to turn these initiatives into recurring prestigious events. Through an examination of Madra’s work, the article proposes a methodological approach to examine biennials outside of the Global North. The paper surveys the conceptual, spatial, and organizational aspects of two landmark exhibitions in Istanbul and their place in the history of contemporary art in Turkey. The paper inspects the theoretical construction of these inaugural exhibitions to reveal the modernist tendencies in the conceptual framework of the First and the Second İstanbul Biennial (September 25 – November 15, 1987 and September 25 – October 31, 1989). It demonstrates the venues selected for display and examines how the formation of these exhibitions became entangled with the cultural policies. Last, it surveys the role of the Curator and how this role served as a mediator between state agencies as actors that founded or sponsored the exhibitions, and the artists, critics, visitors, who were part of the temporary museum event. It illustrates how biennials are temporary museums that are constructed through power dynamics and how the title ‘Curator’ became a hard‐earned credential in the short history of contemporary art in Turkey. The author offers this example as a template of analysis for understanding the curatorial practices in large – scale exhibitions, both in the ‘center’ and in the ‘periphery’.
This article analyses the curatorial practices behind the 2018 Taipei Biennial by considering its ethos of public engagement that fostered a merging of artistic means and civic aims. Entitled ‘Post-Nature: A Museum as an Ecosystem’, the biennial confronted the timely theme of environmental precarity and positioned itself as a substantive stakeholder in the public debate on climate change. It mobilized the biennial platform to marshal artists, community groups, conservationists and others to spur on new thinking and, perhaps more importantly, to create solutions. By adopting this new role as an environmental problem solver, the biennial expanded itself from the ensconced space of aesthetic inquiry and sought to generate new forms of institutional relations and to nurture in its audience an ecological consciousness. These exhibition strategies underscore many international biennials’ self-assigned mandates to claim a socially relevant role and to adopt an interventionist posture. But while the biennial showcased multifaceted ecological visions of the present, it also delimited its range of critique and the possible modes of collective action. In this way, the exhibition becomes a valuable searchlight into the social and political relevance of global biennials, as well as their contention for legitimacy and significance as agents of social transformation.
This chapter draws upon recent work in the sociology of art and the studies of cultural work to analyse the ways in which experiences of entering creative industries relate to the larger processes of sociocultural change. I examine this by looking at the emergence of flagship cultural initiatives in the non-capital Russian cities stemming from the influence of charismatic local cultural leaders, with the Ural Industrial Biennial being the most important and well known. I look at the complex networks that exist around the biennials and their ways of popularising professional knowledge. The art biennials achieve popularity through promoting elaborate specialised cosmopolitan discourses around production, distribution and consumption of contemporary art. Their forms of representation are interpreted by large groups of mediators, generally female, who are attracted to this volunteer work by its potential to be a pathway into creative employment. I draw on existing research and fieldwork at the few biennials held in Ekaterinburg from 2010 to 2018, and analysis of media materials, to unpack those factors, which emerge as particularly important for supplying youth with a sense of differentiation by remaining in the orbit of ‘something globally important’.
iCon: India Contemporary (2005) was not only the first collateral event of India at the Venice Biennale, but it also began as a bid to become a national pavilion – an ambition that was ultimately unsuccessful. Drawing on original research and interview data surrounding the exhibition, this article examines the collaborations and conflicts between private art institutions, artists and the state in the context of India’s participation in the Venice Biennale since the 2000s. The article foregrounds a transversal approach – that is, an analytical framework that unsettles the conventional dichotomy between national pavilions and collateral events – and demonstrates how commercial galleries and private art institutions have acquired an important role in the production and exhibition of Indian contemporary art in global biennial circuits.
This paper focuses on the role of contemporary art in international relations and world politics. In IR, art is often examined within the framework of cultural diplomacy, country branding, and soft power, or approached as a site of resistance. We argue that the concept of heteronomy offers an alternative conceptual framework for analysing contemporary art in world politics. It highlights the interaction of various fields such as art, commerce, the state and media. We concretise this approach with an analysis of the Venice Biennale. We show that the Biennale is heteronomous in the sense of being an arena where actors from various fields struggle for power by accumulating different types of capital. We focus our analysis on the Russian national pavilion in 2011–2015 and show how the efforts of the country's elite to legitimise its position intertwined with the projects of the state, sponsors, artists, curators and art market actors.
This article examines the China Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale through an exploration of temporality. It argues that the pavilion's deployment of a politics of time ‐ by mobilizing China's dynastic past and its traditional arts to enhance the present ‐ constructs a mode of cultural timelessness that sustains a stultifying visual and discursive regime. Touting the theme of 'Continuum ‐ Generation by Generation', the pavilion paid a lofty tribute to folk-art practices such as embroidery and shadow play, elevating two paintings from the Song Dynasty as the fount of contemporary artistic imagination. This recourse to the past mirrors a predictable and safe representational strategy often mobilized by the country to shape its own public and media image on the global stage. In view of this, the pavilion can be more constructively investigated as an exercise in image and perception management, or nation branding, which reveals the self-narratives that the country embraces. Nation branding serves as a complementary analytical lens that probes the instrumentalization of Chinese traditions, history and past, while crystallizing some parallel visual logics and aims of contemporary art. Aesthetics and nation branding are, therefore, conjoined to question the shared visuality that perpetuates, to borrow a term from Rey Chow, the 'affect of pastness' that obscures a more timely and inventive imaginary of the country.
Negli ultimi vent'anni la "biennale" è diventato il modello espositivo più prolifico, diffondendosi in tutto il sistema dell'arte globalizzato. Laboratorio per sperimentazioni curatorali, il modello biennale è giunto a coinvolgere e rendere visibili le pratiche espositive internazionali. Una mostra come un'altra vuole inquadrare le biennali all'interno della storia delle esposizioni per osservare le continue trasformazioni delle recenti pratiche curatoriali. Iniziando dalla prima Biennale di Venezia, erede dell'esposizione universale e delle mostre della Secessione viennese, nel primo capitolo Federica Martini analizza l'evoluzione tipologica delle biennali e indaga la questione del sistema delle rappresentazioni nazionali adottato dalle mostre perenni. Nel secondo capitolo Vittoria Martini propone la Biennale del 1976 come momento di rottura nella storia della Biennale di Venezia, in quanto segna la nascita delle mostre tematiche come soluzione della frammentazione dello spazio espositivo causato dai padiglioni nazionali. Prendendo come punto di partenza la mostra Magiciens de la Terre (1989), il terzo capitolo esamina infine il contributo delle biennali contemporanee nella revisione critica centro-periferia nella dialettica tra la pratica curatoriale e la globalizzazione del sistema dell'arte. Le conversazioni con Thomas Hirschhorn, Alfredo Jaar, Antoni Muntadas e Stéphanie Moidson, mettono a fuoco alcune questioni che emergono in ogni capitolo per aprire a modi differenti di pensare alla rappresentazione nazionale, al fare storia e alla concettualizzazione del formato delle biennali nell'arte contemporanea.
Politics and art have throughout history, intersected in diverse and complex ways. Ideologies and political systems have used the arts to create a certain image and, depending on the form of government this has varied from clear-cut state propaganda, to patronage, to more indirect arms-length funding procedures. Therefore, artists working within the macro-level socio-political context cannot help but be influenced, inspired and sometimes restricted by these policies and political influences. This article examines the contemporary art markets of two emerging, Socialist economies to investigate the relationship between state politics and the contemporary visual arts market. We argue that the respective governments and art worlds are trying to construct a brand narrative for their nations, but that these discourses are often at cross-purposes. In doing so, we illustrate that it is impossible to separate a consideration of the artwork from the macro-level context in which it is produced, distributed, and consumed.
While there has been an increasing amount of research into globalization since the 1990s, empirical sociological studies in this area remain all too scarce. By analysing specific cases in contemporary visual art, this article shows that the widespread art world discourse on globalization, mixing and the abolition of borders is to a large extent based on illusion. By objectifying the positions occupied by different countries in the field of art, the article brings to light a marked hierarchy that reveals that, beyond the development of international exchanges, the art world still has a clearly defined centre comprising a small number of western countries, among which the US and Germany are pre-eminent, and a vast periphery, comprising all the other states. The specific example empirically analysed here leads to a reconsideration of earlier studies of cultural globalization, most of which are essentially abstract.
Media research that uses the concept of a public sphere in order to measure distortion against its ideal standard of dialogic democracy tends to concentrate upon the cognitive aspects of news and either ignores or disdains affective communications. Jurgen Habermas’s original formulation distinguished between the literary and the political public spheres. While everyday news was a feature of the political public sphere, the literary public sphere was not so constrained journalistically by current events and provided an arena for deeper reflection. This article updates the notion of a literary public sphere into an expanded concept of the cultural public sphere, including the whole range of media and popular culture. This concept refers to the articulation of politics, public and personal, as a contested terrain through affective (aesthetic and emotional) modes of communication. Three typical political stances in relation to the cultural public sphere are identified and evaluated: uncritical populism, radical subversion and critical intervention.
Universal exhibitions are almost exclusively described as representations of an outside reality. The authenticity of the exhibits and the relation between the display and the real thing are put into consideration to investigate the political aims and ambitions of the organizers. However, the records of the spectators show that these were more likely to evaluate the objects according to other criteria. Here exhibitions reveal themselves as events that were not judged in the first place for their capacity to represent but for their ability to create. Visitors used them to develop pleasing mental images according to their individual and hedonistic motivations. In this sense, the exhibitions did not so much hint back to the outside than rather hint forward to an evolving imaginary inside the viewer. Thus, the paper focuses on the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867 to explore how and to what purpose the spectators dealt with what they saw. My aim is to analyze exhibitions as independent imaginary worlds, which serve as starting points for creative cultural actions that are very little concerned with the realness of the display.
Abstract in English. Includes an analysis of five international biennial exhibitions. Thesis (Doctoral)--Uppsala University, 2004. Includes bibliographical references: p. 327-343.
Each second year, those interested in the fine arts from all over the world feel attracted to the “Biennale di Venezia”. Founded in 1895, it’s the best-known and oldest biennial followed only 50 years later by the Sao Paulo Biennial. In modern times the leading format for internationalization, the number of new foundations has once more rapidly increased in the course of globalization since the eigthies. Biennials are in fact the only exhibition format in which the impact of globalization expresses itself in terms of arts. There is, though, little published information on the biennials of Sao Paulo, Habana, Istanbul, Sidney, or New Delhi, to name but the oldest. To which tradition do biennials belong and what’s the importance of this format today? Which developments do they reflect, which ones do they initiate? Through the portraits of 22 selected biennials, the book seeks answers for these questions. Thanks to numerous illustrations and a list of the most important biennials founded, this book gives the first compact overview of this complex topic.
Biennials have been central to the development of contemporary art for decades, but there is a paucity of published material specifically related to this subject. Documentation for these important exhibitions is not always made available and it is often difficult to acquire, posing an obstacle to current and future research across a number of areas within contemporary art, curating and art history. This article offers an overview of major current biennials and of the different sources of information they produce (catalogues, other printed material, online resources, archives), and surveys the secondary literature of the phenomenon. It also discusses specific collection development issues in libraries, from a research perspective, proposing a set of recommendations for best practice.
Against claims for a de-territorialized, fully globalized art world, Chin-tao Wu measures the stubborn realities of continued Western dominance. Birthplace and residence of art-festival participants as indices of enduring hierarchy.
Fairs, festivals and competitive events play a crucial role in the creative industries; yet their significance has been largely overlooked. This book explores the role of such events through a series of studies that include some of the most iconic fairs and festivals in the world. It brings together a team of distinguished scholars to examine art fairs, biennales, auctions, book fairs, television programming markets, film festivals, animation film festivals, country music festivals, fashion weeks, wine classifications and wine tasting events. This diverse set of studies shows that such events serve a variety of purposes: as field-configuring events (FCEs), as a way of ritualising industry practices and as 'tournaments of values' where participants negotiate different cultural values to resolve economic issues. Suitable for academics and practitioners, this book presents a fascinating perspective on the role and importance of fairs, festivals and competitive events in the creative industries.
Hybrids of Modernity considers the relationship between three western modernist institutions: anthropology, the nation state and the universal exhibition. It looks at the ways in which these institutions are linked, in how they are engaged in the objectification of culture, and in how they have themselves become objects of cultural theory, the targets of critics who claim that despite their continuing visibility these are all institutions with questionable viability in the late 20th century.
This essay argues that smaller and more innovative art biennials offer a better chance for what postcolonial theory has termed an ‘emancipatory politics’ – one relatively free from Western hegemony, whether of global capitalism or the Euro-American art world. Such biennials typically exercise ‘powers of the weak’ through trickster tactics that allow them a momentary freedom before disintegration or institutionalization. In their experimental approach and unstable leap into the future, they may resemble avant-gardes. By contrast, several mega-exhibitions of 2002–2003 led to debates about biennial merits and goals that have remained inconclusive despite three recent conferences in Gwangju, Karlsruhe and Berlin. ‘In the early days biennials were synonymous with the innovative and experimental nature of contemporary art,’ the Gwangju co-directors recalled; ‘Three decades into the boom of biennials, a systematic evaluation and debate is imperative’. A Gramscian response to such demands explaining why emancipatory politics are an important biennial goal that can be achieved by leveraging hegemonic shifts in biennial structure seems promising in this regard, although a recent Istanbul Biennial offered challenges. As an alternative, the essay turns to discuss eight unusual biennials that propose models not only for recapturing the ideals of ‘early days’ but for illuminating where the biennial movement still might go and what its range might be.
There is an emerging 'aesthetic turn' within sociology which currently lacks clear focus. This paper reviews the different issues feeding into this interest and contributes to its development. Previous renderings of this relationship have set the aesthetic up against sociology, as an emphasis which 'troubles' conventional understandings of sociality and offers no ready way of reconciling the aesthetic with the social. Reflecting on the contributions of recent social theorists, from figures including Bourdieu, Born, Rancière, Deleuze, and Martin, we argue instead for the value of a social aesthetic which critiques instrumentalist and reductive understandings of the social itself. In explicating what form this might take, the latter parts of the paper take issue with classical modernist conceptions of the aesthetic which continue to dominate popular and sociological understandings of the aesthetic, and uses the motif of 'walking' to show how the aesthetic can be rendered in terms of 'the mundane search' and how this search spans everyday experience and cultural re-production. We offer a provisional definition of social aesthetics as the embedded and embodied process of meaning making which, by acknowledging the physical/corporeal boundaries and qualities of the inhabited world, also allows imagination to travel across other spaces and times. It is hoped that this approach can be a useful platform for further inquiry.
The biennial form was adopted and adapted by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in order to reform its official art exhibition and in response to the rise of multiculturalism and postmodernism in Taiwan's post-martial law era. This article, through a close analysis of the curatorial strategies of the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale from 1995 to 2011, reformulates our understanding of the biennial not merely as an exhibition format showcasing works of art but as a more flexible mechanism that signifies global postmodernism as both a continuation of and a break from the project of modernism that had been previously carried out by museums. The trajectory of the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale has shifted from that of an exhibition motivated by a marginalized country's longing for national representation in a global art fair to one that critiques the logic of cultural, political and economic hegemony that dominates the biennale and causes Taiwan's own marginality.
The question this article asks is how exhibition histories of contemporary art shift when seen not from the perpetually insistent demands of the north, but from the viewpoints and aspirations of the South. What might a Southern perspective of biennials look like? These largely occluded histories do not quite fit the habitual framings of biennials as beginning with a first wave at the close of the nineteenth century and segueing neatly into the neo-imperial tidal force of the 1990s and 2000s. They instead coincide with what we consider to be a second wave of biennialization that developed from the mid-1950s into the 1980s, and which insisted upon a self-conscious, critical regionalism as the means for realigning cultural networks across geopolitical divides. Biennials of the South had grasped their place in the postwar arc of neo-colonial globalism. But, even more importantly, they then converted that place into the resistant image of cultural, art historical and international reconstruction.
In social and cultural theory, topology has been used to articulate changes in structures and spaces of power. In this introduction, we argue that culture itself is becoming topological. In particular, this ‘becoming topological’ can be identified in the significance of a new order of spatio-temporal continuity for forms of economic, political and cultural life today. This ordering emerges, sometimes without explicit coordination, in practices of sorting, naming, numbering, comparing, listing, and calculating. We show that the effect of these practices is both to introduce new continuities into a discontinuous world by establishing equivalences or similitudes, and to make and mark discontinuities through repeated contrasts. In this multiplication of relations, topological change is established as being constant, normal and immanent, rather than being an exceptional form, which is externally produced; that is, forms of economic, political and cultural life are identified and made legible in terms of their capacities for continuous change. Outlining the contributions to this Special Issue, the introduction discusses the meaning of topological culture and provides an analytic framework through which to understand its implications.
This article sets out new methodological principles for the sociology of art, a sub-discipline that it seeks to broaden conceptually by shifting the ground from art to cultural production. This shift suggests the utility of overcoming the boundaries that demarcate the sociology of art from adjacent fields, augmenting the sociological repertoire with reference to anthropology, cultural and media studies, art and cultural history, and the music disciplines. At the same time the article proposes that an explanatory theory of cultural production requires reinvention in relation to five key themes: aesthetics and the cultural object; agency and subjectivity; the place of institutions; history, temporality and change; and problems of value and judgement. The first half of the article approaches these issues through a sustained critique of Bourdieu. It proceeds through an exposition of generative research from contemporary anthropology, including the work of Alfred Gell, Christopher Pinney, Fred Myers and others, which highlights the analysis of mediation, ontology, materiality and genre. The second half develops fur ther an analytics of mediation and of temporalities, exemplifying this and expanding on the five themes through a discussion of two institutional ethnographies of cultural production (of the computer music institute IRCAM in Paris, and of the BBC). In pursuing this programme the paper advocates a novel conception of the relation between theoretical model and empirical research, one that might be termed post-positivist empiricism, while also suggesting that the framework outlined offers the basis for an enriched cultural criticism.
Biennials are a broad category of large-scale, high-budget exhibition, recurring at a minimum rate of two years apart. This piece is concerned with the values that biennials and biennialists disclose. It will argue that artists gain recognition from biennials and that the state uses biennials as prestigious events in a competitive geo-political game-typically via strategies of regional co-identification and cross-marketing. It will go on to show how the recent Documenta and Munster biennials were conceived to revitalize their cities' cultural heritage. However, it will also suggest that biennials can suffer from forms of curation weighted by both post-colonial representation and established cultural hierarchies, and that given their often smooth integration into the flows of capital, may benefit from old tactics such as 'defamiliarization' and analyses of the forms of representation that art exhibitions enact.
The article begins by noting that the widespread assumption that the social basis of more difficult or cosmopolitan art has been undermined in later modernity should lead to blander, less controversial art. An alternative interpretation is briefly described in which cosmopolitan art has become a spectacular tourist attraction. Significant questions that would follow such a development are: how national cultural institutions have been co-opted into a global spectacular culture and whether the work displayed in these settings can be radically critical of dominant social values; and the implications of the development of a public culture focused on spectacular attractions for notions of cultural citizenship. In the article these questions are explored through a brief history of changing attitudes and values in British public culture, leading to a suggestion that we are experiencing an era of cultural fragmentation. The article concludes with a consideration of the possibilities for cultural citizenship in these changing circumstances.
This essay explores the basis of the distinction commonly made between works of art or art objects, and 'mere' artefacts, which are useful but not aes thetically interesting or beautiful. It is argued that if the art object is identi fiable as such in the light of the fact that it has an interpretation, as Danto claims, then many artefacts could be exhibited as art objects. The essay shows that animal traps could very well be exhibited as art, because they tend to embody complex ideas and intentions to do with the relationship between men and animals, and because they provide a model of the hunter himself and his idea of the world of the prey animal. It is concluded that an aesthetic definition of the art object is consequently unsatisfactory.
World FairsExhibitionary Complexes and G. Brown GoodeComplicating the Story of Exhibitionary ComplexesShowcases of Science and TechnologyVisitors and PerformersConclusion
The unstable institution
- Basualdo C
- Filipovic E
- Van Hal M
- Ovstebo S
The biennial: A post-institution for the immaterial labour
- P Gielen
Politics and Painting at the Venice Biennale, 1948-64: Italy and the Idea of Europe
- N Jachec
Biennials and Beyond: Exhibitions That Made Art History
- B J Altshuler
The Birth of the Museum
- Bennett T
Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere
- L Giorgi
- M Sassatelli
- G Delanty
A social aesthetics as a general cultural sociology?
- Jl Martin
- Merriman
Mega-Events and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of Global Culture
- M Roche
La Biennale. Arte, polemiche scandali e storie in Laguna
- Roddolo E
Geo-cultures: Circuits of arts and globalizations
- I Rogoff
In the World Interior of Capital: Towards a Philosophical Theory of Globalization
- P Sloterdijk
Talking Prices: Symbolic Meaning of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art
- O Velthius
We hop on, we hop off: The ever-faster spinning carousel of biennials
- Block R
- Bauer UM
- Hanru H
Massimiliano Gioni’s journey into ‘the delirium of the imagination
- F Fanelli
Mapping international exhibitions
- B W Ferguson
- R Greenberg
- S Nairne
Hegemonic shifts and the politics of biennialization: The case of Documenta
- Marchart O
- Filipovic E
- Van Hal M
- Ovstebo S