Berlin Biennale as a Structure of Aesthetic Transit

The fourth Berlin biennale, by taking a modern classic of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men as its title and emphasising "ornament above all else" (Fricke 2006), operates from within a post-modern situation of constant availability of information on past works, styles and events. As a major binary opposite of the architectural principles of modern architecture, ornament makes a come-back in post-modernity understood as a historical reflection on the cultural, social, economic and political foundations of modernity (Munch 1984). If modernity was associated with linear progress as a transition that can be described as a movement within a well-defined set of coordinates having a hierarchical organization, post-modernity is defined by a spatial structure that no longer allows relations of hierarchy, linearity, or utility (Perniola 1995). Rather than a complete break with modernity as a form of cultural, social, political or economic accumulation (Munch 1986), post-moderntiy is closely related with the growing role of information in contemporary society (Lyotard 1979; Perniola 1995). Via information technology, data storage, transmission protocoles, ubiquitous access, internet usage, telecommunication infrastructures and visual interface, the simultaneity of transmission of information brings any two points in its networks into immediate contact that replaces linear transitions of modernity with instant transits of post-modernity (Perniola 1995).

The Berlin biennale offers many points of departure and arrival in its complex topology of exhibitions, schedule of events, and information coverage. Not offering a hierarchical, linear or instrumental vision, the biennale "meanders through countless rooms and apartments" (Fricke 2006). Its visitors are confronted with the Berlin biennale as an event that for the time of its duration remains available, accessible and unavoidable. Daily and weekly press made the Berlin biennale into a highly publicized urban, regional and international event. Journalists of Tageblatt, Switzerland, La Repubblica, Ilaly, The Guardian, UK, Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland, and The Japan Times, Japan, to name a few, extensively covered the Berlin biennial. Newspapers with global circulation, such as International Herald Tribune and The New York Times paid much attention to the biennial as well. More specialized audiences were able to read reviews in Artforum International, USA, Frieze, UK, Flash Art, Italy, and Das Kunstmagazin, Germany, among other sources. However, it becomes the urban space of the Berlin biennale that receives constant attention in the reviews. The Berlin biennale serves as a structure of aesthetic transit that brings into immediate contact the urban space it takes place in and the information media that secure its public resonance.

The curators of the biennale are seen as "attempting an archaeological exploration of the shaky foundations on which the New Berlin rests" (Maak 2006). On one hand, Berlin biennale brings urban space of Berlin in contact with global culture. On the other hand, contemporary art that Berlin biennale exhibits becomes mixed with the urban space that surrounds it. This immediate contact between urban space and contemporary art is one of many configurations that it can have, as the number and frequency of art biennials around the world constantly grows. The joint impact of banalization of art (Perniola 2004) and of globalization of cities that increasingly become both homogenized architecturally and individualized historically turns art biennials into a type of institution that undergoes neutral variation each time it takes place (Perniola 1995). Success or failure of contemporary art biennials becomes less predicated on whether they implement an institutional variation that is inherently better than others. It is their neutral variation both from one edition to another and from one art biennial to another than increasingly favours the environmental factors, such as urban culture, international curators and inter-urban relations, that determine their urban, regional or international visibility. Indeed, for art biennials of utmost importance are "la topologie, le paysage, le voisinage, les conditions du milieu" (Perniola 1995) in which they take place.

As a site of aesthetic transit, the Berlin biennale brings into immediate contact "long-past fates and fortunes" (Maak 2006), the memory of which urban spaces of Berlin hold, with "the history of the way art is seen and shown" (Maak 2006) that does not grant privilege to contemporary art among other forms of cultural expression. The qualities of precision, melancholy and earnestness (Maak 2006) that the Berlin biennale evinces do not describe it in terms of either advantage or disadvantage vis-a-vis other art biennials. As an example of institution of art biennale, the Berlin biennial represents a neutral variation that thanks to the fixation over time of its institutional contours becomes included into the circuits of contemporary art as a form of global culture. The essence of this neutral variation is the immediate contact between urban space and global culture that as a form of transit does not involve any qualitative change in either of them (Perniola 1995). However, this phenomenon of transit between urban space and global culture that art biennials make possible "permet que s'établisse une situation complètement différente" (Perniola 1995). The efforts of the Berlin biennale are directed at achieving "pathos, shock and catharsis through art" (Maak 2006). To function as a site of aesthetic transit (Perniola 1995), Berlin biennale depends on the technologies of storage and transmission of information that its uses with increasing intensity over its history.

As a space where the more urgent problems of contemporary art are addressed, the Berlin biennale is "clearly structured along specific works rather than oeuvres in general" (Heiser 2006). It is as a site of aesthetic transit between different works, genres and cultures (Perniola 1995) that Berlin biennale finds its place among other art biennials. As a post-modern departure from a hierarchical attribution of superior value to particular artworks, artistic media and national cultures becomes more widely institutionalized (Munch 1991, 1995), it is less the case that the Berlin biennale becomes more differentiated from other art biennials. It is the growing consistency (Heiser 2006) of the generic features of ever more numerous art biennials that precisely prevents a reductionist approach to artists, media and cultures that would make their differences of no significance (Perniola 1995), as critique of globalization maintains. It is the replication and mutation of art biennials that opens a theoretical horizon beyond the pitfalls of hierarchical or reductive evaluations (Perniola 1995). In this perspective, Berlin biennale not having a definitive identity becomes accessible as a performative product of action networks (Latour 2005) that across modifications, displacements and localications produces "un sens, une qualité, une sélection" (Perniola 1995).