First Berlin Biennale: Instroduction

What, from the first, makes Berlin biennale into an international and interdisciplinary event is its begining at the 1995 Venice biennale. In that year, the Venice Aperto, an independent exhibition of contemporary art, was discontinued. To the first Berlin biennale, to take place in 1998, there still was three years, but an inclusive forum for cultural producers was felt missing among those who convened at that traditional event of the international cultural calendar. In other words, rather than a deviation from the concept of art biennial as a stage to which different nation-states send their representatives, Berlin biennale was conceived as a complementary event. It intentionally takes a distance from nationally-oriented representation towards conceptually-driven presentation of contemporary art. Thus, Berlin biennale, as do other international art events around the globe, continues the tradition of intependent artistic spaces that give wide berth of liberty to both curators and artists.

This kind of event takes leave of the intention to represent the possibly fullest palette of artists according to their place of origin. Complex international careers, overlapping geographical imaginaries, and on-going cultural exchanges appear to have legitimized the post-traditional approach to art biennials that Berlin biennale exemplifies. To the Europe of nations and ethnicities there appeared to be added another one - Europe of art biennials. It is not only that the number of various city-based art biennials has greatly grew over the last two decades, symbolically commenced with the fall of the Berlin wall. But it is also the umbrella, regional events have increased in number - Venice biennale and documenta quinquennial were joined by the travelling biennale of Manifesta. A second geography (de Certeau) of cultural exchange has put a host of cities-of-culture on the European, as well as international, map.

In Europe, and increasingly internationally, art biennials have become a matter of course. However, a look back towards the first Berlin biennale brings home how new - lasting for slightly over a decade - the phenomenon is. Notably, the scope of the issues that articles, artworks, conferences, books and commentaries that document each art biennial reaches wide beyond the ambit of art history. They cover the shadows of history, theory and space that lie thickly on these biennial events. If anything, they are ephemeral. Drawing the energy of their staying power from the forces that make fetish-objects irresistible - namely, from the intersection of materiality and abstraction (Perniola) that their exhibition halls and catalogues do not tire of mapping out -, art biennials are intermittent splashes of discursive, performative, and artistic activity.

Whether they dissipate with little trace left or whether they leave a lasting stamp on their hosting cities, art biennials challenge their commentators, narrators, and historians to explore the limits of their assumptions in their consideration of repetition and difference, contemporary art and institutional forms, and philosophical reflection and aesthetic analysis. It could be that art biennials are paradigmatic spaces of the present global moment of modernity (Appadurai). If so, one might be well advised to consider both the theoretical accounts of modernity and philosophical inquiries into aesthetics.

Art Biennials as Spaces between Philosophy and Aesthetics

Art biennials pose the question of an aesthetic tour d'horizon that they represent. Rather than resolve the aporias of the theory of art - such as representation vs. reality, artworks vs. merchandise, artist vs. laborer -, art biennials lead to concentration of genres, events, and scenes. Such a situation throws the epistemological question that one might address to them upon themselves to turn these into self-reflexive ethnographies of flanerie, part theoretical and part aesthetic. The plane of discussion shifts into a space between philosophy and aesthetics. This is where the more enigmatic figures of German theorists of modenity, such as Simmel, Kracauer, and Benjamin, might have lines of connection with the philosophy of aesthetics of Mario Perniola.

Taken more concretely, art biennials invite exploration of the aesthetical situation of the time and place of their appearance. Visiting artists and curators increase the contrasts between works, places and imaginaries that in their meeting points create interpretive highlights that give guidepoints to narratives that connect philosophy and aesthetics. The events, cities, and artworks of art biennials self-reflexively relate to modernity as a topic of constant discussion taking place without a hope for a definitive resolution. The previous attempts at theoretical closures of the problematique of modernity - be they sociological or art historical -, appear singularly dated to the time and place of their appearance. The repetition of the questions of what is modern, what does it mean to be modern, and what relation modernity has with the present moment and a particular place relativizes the difference that previous theoretical constructions aiming to definitely answer these questions could claim for themselves as unique moments in their intellectual history. These questions seems to be trapped in the space between philosophy and aesthetics where art biennials explore both the possibilities of repretition and of difference.

A not uncommon junction between art biennials and art museums, whether through a series of events working around a set of pre-existing architectural spaces or as a development towards the erection of their respective built environments, feeds upon the tension that defines the relations between modernity and cities, art and society, and ethics and aesthetics. Allowing both for aesthetic and philosophical treatments these relations become activated whenever a museum becomes an architectural metaphore for a city, whenever a cultural event tests the boundaries between representation and reality, and whenever a city becomes a site for aesthetic exploration of its identity and difference. Art biennials occur at the intersection of various media, discourses, and spaces where these tensions, relations and questions play out.