The globalization of art and the ‘Biennials of Resistance’: a history of the biennials from the periphery

Abstract

More than any other institution in the art field, biennials mediate the local, national and transnational. In this sense, biennials can be called ‘hegemonic machines’ that link the local to the global within the field of symbolic struggles for legitimation. In this article, a brief genealogy is presented to show how anti- and postcolonial biennials have contributed to the artistic decentralization of the West. From this history, we may conclude that the global history of the future is being written from today's periphery. Not only is the power of definition held by the West, which imagined itself as the centre of world affairs, waning; but we are slowly beginning to understand that, as in the case of the history of biennials, the so-called ‘periphery’ anticipated developments that would later be of great significance to the centre.

Keywords:

• biennials
• postcolonialism
• hegemony

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Erika Doucette and Sam Osborn for translating this article into English.

Notes on contributor

Oliver Marchart (Dr.Phil., University of Vienna, Philosophy; PhD, University of Essex, Government) is Professor of Sociology at Düsseldorf Art Academy, Germany. His research interests include political and social theory, art theory and discourse analysis. Among his publications are Laclau: A Critical Reader, edited with Simon Critchley (Routledge, 2004); Post-foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau (Edinburgh University Press, 2007); and the forthcoming Post-foundational Theories of Democracy: Reclaiming Freedom, Equality, Solidarity (Edinburgh University Press, 2014).

Notes

1. One could say they are a case in point for ‘glocalization’. This artificial term was created in order to underscore the fact that the local and the global are intricately entwined, and both the local and the global and constantly need to be reconstructed.

2. This includes all possible variations in between liberation and domination.

3. Mosquera writes: ‘The event has always focused on modern and contemporary art, developing the notion of a plurality of active modernisms, and giving little room to traditional or religious aesthetic-symbolic productions, which at the time were frequently stereotyped as the authentic art created in Third World countries, while other work was disqualified as an epigonal Westernised production’ (Mosquera 2011: 77).

4. This is no coincidence, considering that in reality a significant number of ‘non-Western artists’ live in Western metropolises.

5. This was indeed the case, but not regarding the artistic positions in a strict sense. The 2012 Whitney Biennial emptied out the entire fourth floor of the Whitney Museum to present ‘time-based arts’, which included dance. This allowed the ‘performative turn’, and even the ‘choreographic turn’, which had both been a discernible part of the fine arts for a long time, to be put into practice. However, although somewhat isolated, the most interesting performative piece was a production at the rival exhibition in the New Museum. ‘Salons: Birthright Palestine?’ by the Israeli group Public Movement consisted of a series of discursive-performative political ‘salons’ with relatively strict choreographies, and was, in my opinion, the most successful performance piece in recent years (and, incidentally, also the Triennial's most expensive production.)

6. I am speaking, more precisely, of a continental European provincialism, as ‘Documenta’ has no real significance in the UK, which also remains steeped in its own provincialism.

7. I must add that, by now, these traditions have indeed come into contact with Western intellectual traditions. The concern here is not authenticity, but plain and simple recognition and acknowledgement of specific art and discourse produced in countries and regions beyond the North Atlantic.

8. For more on these decentralizations, see Marchart 2008.