Jan Christensen: Yessirnosir
This year there have been three biennials in Norway. Strictly speaking, one of them was a triennial, but even so! There were three major events with international participation, and not just that of the artists and curators. Journalists have flown in and press releases been sent out, and an art-savvy audience has also stopped by, in varying numbers.
Two of the biennials, Momentum in Moss and LIAF in Lofoten, or more specifically at Svolvaer and Kabelvåg, have by now developed something resembling pedigrees. Both started out as international festivals before the new millennium and, disregarding the occasional setback, both have managed to keep going while maintaining impressively high standards. The third apple in the basket is Bergen Assembly, which is the one with the triennial format. All three events invite us to reflect critically on their chosen worldviews, featuring art that offers a variety of perspectives on personal existence.
The contents of the biennial tool box includes everything from analyses of contemporary cultural policies and the airing of historical taboos through to spectacular new productions, critical thinking and recontextualisations of older works.
What is it that persuades experienced people to commit themselves to such demanding projects? No matter what resources one has at one's disposal, ultimately they will always be too limited. A biennial of an international standard takes time, more than one imagines, in terms of preparations, the many late-night discussions, the numerous studio visits. Old catalogues have to be read carefully. The very latest art has to be weighed up against the way artists of perhaps unfamiliar past eras responded to corresponding situations. Funds have to be applied for. Private sponsors have to be found to make up for what one doesn't receive from public sources. There are staff to be engaged, curators to be chosen. You have to find suitable venues for highly specific works. The local area needs to be ransacked in search of volunteer helpers. One has to come up with an exciting, innovative programme to mediate contemporary art. To ensure a festive atmosphere, perhaps one needs to plan a few evenings with more readily accessible media, such as music and drama. There's a symposium to be organised, with international guests who have something to say, and who know the arcana of rhetoric. Technical expertise needs to be found in time. The logistics require planning. There are reports to write. The piles of bills have to be stashed away in fat files. One has to take part in panel debates and evaluation committees.
A while back, the son of a friend drew a picture that has now found its place on my refrigerator. On it he has written: "How can we tell if a thing or a place is real?" It's not an easy question to answer. But it exposes a need, not just to ask fundamental questions, but more significantly to come across as real and present in the world, to be visible and have a recognisable identity. This is often how things start. The purpose of a biennial is not so much to show local art to local people. Deep down in the biennial's raison d'être we find a justification that finds expression in rhetorical variations on a dominant theme: profiling, attention, visibility. To exist in the world.
Bergen Assembly, which has the subtitle "an initiative for art and research", had a long gestation. One important milestone was a conference that brought together influential international figures to discuss their experience of biennials. The conference resulted in a book: The Biennial Reader. Bergen's art community has been involved on various levels more or less continuously ever since the idea was first mooted by a far-sighted politician, Henning Warloe, in 2007. Another publication spawned en route to the Assembly is Lokalisert (Localised), a collection of texts that articulates and discusses people's expectations and ideas. In general, the content of these two titles boils down to a recognition of the need for cooperation, good foundations and a flexible and preferably experimental approach, and of the importance of keeping one's ear to the ground.
One question is who the audience should be. And this, we feel, could equally well be asked of Momentum and LIAF, just as it should be of any other biennial. In an article entitled "Phantom Pains", printed in Verksted #1, New Institutionalism (2003), Eivind Furnesvik undertook a comparison of the Momentum and Johannesburg biennials. In this he discusses the ambitions of the very first biennial, that of Venice, and concludes that the primary aim of such events is to be an arena for international exchange – of artists, works, information etc. In short, the biennial is a filter for the evaluation of new art. But for it to work in this way, it has to attract an international – and, significantly, the right international – audience.
When biennials are arranged in places that are somewhat off the beaten track, they tend to be justified by other arguments. In some ways, a biennial is a spectacle – but it also generates knowledge, even if it's hard to pin down exactly what kind of knowledge it is. At a curators' symposium organised by Witte de With in Rotterdam in 2009, Irit Rogoff claimed that we now see a shift in curatorial practice away from spectacle towards an event of knowledge. In the case of the Bergen event, this ambition is embodied in its name. Momentum has produced catalogues that prioritise the provision of knowledge about motivations and respective artistic practices, and which are likely to have enduring relevance long after the biennial as such has been taken down and packed away. LIAF has pursued a close dialogue between local and international perspectives on local circumstances, whether viewed as mundane or exotic – an approach that stands out as unusual among biennials.
Our attitude to all this is that of the traveller. We are lucky if we get to these events while they're still on. Few of us do. In Kunstjournalen B -Post 2013, we offer you a glimpse of what a diverse bunch of dedicated people have devoted much of the past year to putting in place. But before we turn our sharp, critical gaze on what has been achieved in order to assess these events, it would be appropriate to note a few debts of gratitude.
Anne Szefer Karlsen and Bassam El Baroni, Power Ekroth and Erlend Hammer, the curators of Momentum and LIAF respectively, have reflected on their curatorial choices, what biennials can be, and the gulf between expectations and ultimate realities. The director of Bergen Assembly, Evelyn Holm, describes the evolution of the institution that is now taking shape as a triennial.
Feeling that it was necessary to include a view from the outside, we have invited Adam Kleinman to reflect on his encounter with Lofoten and LIAF. This past autumn, Kleinman was engaged as a travelling journalist by both LIAF and Bergen Assembly. This is a fairly common strategy for major art events that need coverage in the international press. They agree to meet the travel expenses of a few journalists in return for a few articles in international journals. We couldn't cover any travel expenses, but asked him for his impressions even so. To get a view of these three biennials in a broader context, we asked Natalie Hope O'Donnell to undertake a comparative assessment. Bergen Assembly's long journey from political initiative to exhibition is discussed by Beate Petersen. She brought her astute gaze to bear on the preview days, including the two-day symposium.
By and large, these texts are retrospective; they amount to reflections on something that was, works that were shown, art that was there for a given period of time. Such is the nature of the biennial's curious existence. It comes trundling into town with high hopes and low resources, and makes its mark with thick catalogues full of weighty texts. Biennials live on in the form of documentation and critiques. It would appear that Momentum understood the value of archives and documentation at an early stage. The catalogues from the various editions of this venture provide insights into the pivotal themes of the events, and allow us to surmise the thinking that shaped these biennials through the choice of writers and their design.
To provide some relief from this retrospective stance, we invited some of the artists who exhibited at the biennials to supply art projects suited to the format of Kunstjournalen B-Post. These include both new productions and relocalised works.
No doubt we could have done more. We could have invited someone with a deep theoretical knowledge of biennials to contribute – but that's an approach that has been excellently applied by others before us. The biennial is a format widely discussed in the global art world. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't put new versions to the test. Here are a few glimpses of the three biennials that happened in Norway in 2013.
Kunstjournalen B-post #1_13: Assembly, Momentum, LIAF
