project47

Biennales on the Edge, or, A View of Biennales from Southern Perspectives

Anthony Gardner

Scholarship on biennales is only in its infancy, yet two lines of thinking already shape it. Biennales are either the root of all evil, symptoms of neoliberal economics and their international relations, or they’re a platform of hope, generating multicultural dialogue to contest our neoliberal numbness. Despite their claims to globality, however, what’s striking about this scholarship and the histories they present is how resolutely northern they are, grounded in cultural economies that hug the North Atlantic Ocean. The question I want to pose, though, is what might a southern perspective of biennales look like. How might a different understanding, a southern viewpoint, of biennales agitate our understanding of these exhibitions? And where might these still largely occluded histories begin? This paper suggests we look to the significant “second wave” of biennales, dating from 1955 to the late 1980s in places as diverse as Alexandria, Sydney, Ljubljana and Medellin, to suggest a possible answer.

Event Information
Location: Screen 2, Media Research Building
Cost: Free
Website: For more information, click here.
Department: Media & Communications
Time: 1 February 2012, 17:30 – 18:45