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.