“Biennials of Resistance” Oliver Marchart

CuMMA (CURATING, MANAGING AND CuMMA PAPERS #7 MEDIATING ART) IS A TWO-YEAR, MULTIDISCIPLINARY MASTER’S DEGREE PROGRAMME AT AALTO UNIVERSITY FOCUSING ON CONTEMPORARY ART AND ITS PUBLICS. AALTO UNIVERSITY IS LOCATED IN HELSINKI AND ESPOO IN FINLAND. 1. BIENNIALIZATION BETWEEN THE GLAMOUR AND LURE GLOBALIZATION One important aspect of so-called globalization is a OF ART AND process that could be described as the decentralization of the West. It’s only recently that we in the West THE “BIENNIALS have become aware that the rise of China and young Latin American nations (first and foremost Brazil), OF RESISTANCE” and the growing importance of the Pacific Rim in re- lation to the North Atlantic regions, have brought A HISTORY OF THE about a multipolar world order that has substantially relativized the standing of the so-called West. In or- BIENNIALS der to understand this shift of forces, we have to look at more than just economic indicators. It also needs FROM to be understood as a struggle for hegemony, that is, 1 a struggle for consensus and consent: for a specific le- THE PERIPHERY gitimate yet imaginary cartography of our world. This symbolic struggle is simultaneously carried out in lo- OLIVER cal, national and transnational contexts. Within this struggle, the art field plays a crucial, and perhaps even MARCHART a cutting-edge role — one that remains concealed CuMMA PAPERS #7 – THE GLOBALIZATION OF ART AND THE “BIENNIALS OF RESISTANCE” BY OLIVER MARCHART 2 from view as long as the questions asked are solely concerned with the economic and not the hegemonic function of the art field. More than any other institution in the art field, biennials mediate the local, national and transnational. In this context, biennials can also be called “hegemonic machines”, which link the local to the global within the field of symbolic struggles for legitimation.2 Today, there are an estimated 100 to 200 biennials, which fulfil a wide array of functions. Many contribute to marketing cities or strength- ening the tourist industry. They assist in the con- solidation of cultural infrastructures in metropo- lises, making them a more attractive location for businesses located in these places. Smaller towns or those located on the periphery of larger cities seek to draw attention to themselves by put- ting on biennials. As critic Simon Sheikh puts it, the advantage of the biennial format is that it is where “the lure of the local meets the glamour of the global.”3 This reference to the biennial as a place of “lure” and “glamour” already con- firms that it’s not enough to examine biennials 1 A preliminary version of this essay through a purely economic lens. Biennialization was written as an inaugural lecture held upon my appointment as Professor of not only facilitates the accumulation of capital, it Sociology, with a focus on the sociology also aids in constructing local, national and con- of art, at the Düsseldorf Art Academy on 15 January 2013. The version further tinental identities. In reference to this, the bien- expands on and radicalizes arguments presented in my book Hegemonie im nial format, as has often been observed, directly Kunstfeld (Marchart 2008). links up with that of the World Fair, which pro- vided institutional backing for the internal na- 2 One could say they are a case in point tion building of the colonial and industrial na- for “glocalization.” This artificial term was created in order to underscore the tions during the nineteenth century. World Fairs fact that globalization does not simply take place and become globalization; cf. were colossal hegemonic machines of a globally Robertson, 1998. The local and the global dominant Western culture. are intricately entwined and both the local and the global, in equal measure, Within this historical context, the global was constantly need to be reconstructed. conceived of through a lens of competing national — i.e. colonial — states and therefore from a 3 Simon Sheikh. “Marks of Distinction, Vectors of Possibility. Questions for the perspective firmly rooted in the West. That being Biennial.” in Open. Cahier on Art and the said, even if one considers the World Fair to be the Public Domain. Issue The Art Biennial as a Global Phenomenon. 2009/Nr. 16, pp. forerunner of the biennial format — particularly 66-79. CuMMA PAPERS #7 – THE GLOBALIZATION OF ART AND THE “BIENNIALS OF RESISTANCE” BY OLIVER MARCHART 3 the first one ever, which took place in Venice in 1895 —, the globalization of the biennial format has nonetheless substantially transformed it. It is no longer merely a format in which former colonial nations of the West bask in the glamour All of the manifestations of the biennials of resist- of their own artistic production. On the contrary, ance that I have enumerated here articulate what we worldwide biennialization has instead contrib- may“ term the emergence of a global South, a network of uted to decentralizing the West. For this reason, sites of cultural production sharing common questions, biennialization cannot simply be read as an ideo- themes, and, indeed, a common precariousness. Observe logical reflex to economic globalization, but in- that these platforms take their stand on the ground of stead, at the very least, also as part of decoloni- newly evolving regionalities — whether mobilized un- zation struggles — which certainly did not end der the sign of Latin American and Caribbean solidar- with the era of decolonization (especially in the ity, of Afro-Asian unity, of a post-Cold War position of post-war era), but carried on for a long time af- Asia-Pacific solidarity, or of an emancipatory politics that terwards, as many former colonies continued to has transcended long-standing antagonisms, as in post- strive, also symbolically, for emancipation. Thus, apartheid South Africa. All these experiments, as well as we may currently be witnessing the dawn of a the biennials of resistance that continue to extend them- new era, where (some of) the tables are start- selves despite prevailing constraints, mark a cumulative ing to turn, as crisis countries like Portugal and counterpoint to the Venice Biennial as the universal tem- Spain now find themselves asking for assistance plate for the biennial as form and medium. Their exist- from their former colonies in Latin America. In ence demonstrates that there is a substantial non- and the art field, the most prominent cases of this perhaps even counter-Venetian history of the biennial are so-called peripheral biennials and the strug- form that has yet to be narrated.4 gles around the legitimacy and status of non- Western art. Not without good reason did Ranjit ” Hoskote, co-curator of the Gwangju Biennale in 2008, speak of “Biennials of Resistance”, and de- This is certainly not the place to outline such a mand that a “counter-Venetian” history of the heterodox history of the biennial, which has yet biennial be told. Such a history would also con- to be written in any case. And even if it had been, sider the emergence of the São Paulo Biennale, it would be impossible to tell it in just one singu- the Triennale-India, the Havana Biennial, the lar article or lecture. I will therefore keep to a few Asia-Pacific Biennale, the Gwangju Biennale and aspects that, in my opinion, are crucial to writing the Johannesburg Biennale: such a history of the biennial. 4 Hoskote 2010, p. 312. CuMMA PAPERS #7 – THE GLOBALIZATION OF ART AND THE “BIENNIALS OF RESISTANCE” BY OLIVER MARCHART 4 2. ANTI- AND POSTCOLONIAL BIENNIALS A brief genealogy of anti- and postcolonial bi- (1983), Cairo Biennial (1984) and Istanbul ennials already illustrates the magnitude of the Biennial (1987), were situated somewhere in be- contribution biennials have made in the artis- tween these two models — a postcolonial version tic decentralization of the West. The story be- of the Venetian model and an anti-colonial mod- gins in 1951 with the founding of the São Paulo el that instrumentalized “non-Western” art tradi- Biennial, which still based on the Venetian tions in the name of identity politics. In Africa, at model of national pavilions. Although the first the end of apartheid the Johannesburg Biennale Biennials were more focused on retrospectives (1995) was established, (of which there were only and European modernity, as time went on, they two editions), and in 1992 DAK’ART, a Biennale increasingly included non-Western nations — de l’art africain contemporain, was founded in for instance, the 1954 edition included contri- Dakar. butions from Indonesia, Israel and Egypt, and There are a few interesting points to be in the years that followed, from India, Lebanon, made here. It has often been noted that bien- the Philippines, Senegal, Taiwan and Vietnam, nials emerge in countries that have yet to come among others: “By taking part in the Biennial, to terms with national traumatic events, such as these emerging nations not only confidently pre- wars, civil wars or dictatorships. This is especially sented ‘their own’ cultures, they also inserted true in the case of documenta in Kassel (1955), themselves into an international art history — founded in the post-war era, the post-apartheid even if this has only rarely been acknowledged by biennial in Johannesburg (1995 and 1997) and Western modernity.”5 With their newly won in- the Gwangju Biennale (1995), where, during the dependence, many of those nations also utilized military dictatorship, hundreds of students had the art field as an institutional platform to dem- been massacred. Even so, it should not be for- onstrate their sovereignty. On the other hand, gotten that both Johannesburg and Gwangju, the São Paulo Biennial also lent the Venetian bi- although their national characteristics may vary, ennial model a postcolonial note.

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