Conversation
  between Merve Bedir
  and Bager Akbay

Merve Bedir is an architect based in Hong Kong. She works at the intersection of the technologies of labour, landscape, mobility, and commons. https://www.aformalacademy.com/ & http://landandcc.com/
Bager Akbay is an artist-as-researcher based in Istanbul.


Merve Bedir:



Bager Akbay:



Merve:



Bager:



Merve:



Bager:


My point is that humans are adaptation machines. If you put a human in a society it will take the form of the society. The form of society is political, which is shaped by laws and the cultural codes. If we change the rules of the law, the society inside will change. A company works with its own operational codes. It can act with different values in different parts of the code/algorithm, for instance it could be more communist in human resources, while being liberal in distributing profit. We need to see that these codes are political. If we can analyze what is good or bad in these codes, what works better in which way, the differences of the governance models, etc. then we can also see what mode requires what quality, what problem requires what control mechanisms, and so on. These codes and modes need to be open and developed based on consensus.


Merve:



Bager:



Merve:



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Bager:

Sabina Shikhlinskaya - artist, independent curator, educator. She explores multimedia practices, creating art works with the priority of social subjects. http://sabinashikhlinskaya.info/

Neophobia is the fear of anything new. In its milder form, it can manifest as the unwillingness to break from routine.

“Accepted and approved by those who were before us, and devoted to us in the inadmissibility of any deviation, innovation, or abolition in their content ...
No one will be allowed to change the above rules, or accept instead of the proposed rules others, drawn up by certain people who have dared to trade the truth. "

2nd Canon of the V-VI Ecumenical Council



Today, many agree that the biennales have become obsolete, even though currently there is no other format comparable in its prominence. Recently, every corner of the world has wanted to place itself on the map of modern art tourism by way of participation in the Biennale. It was vitally important for every artist to be included in the group of participants, despite the awareness of the hypocrisy of the corporate-managerial elite, which runs the contemporary artistic system, and its political correctness, which limits individual freedom of creative expression.

In the era of universal automation, sovereign Internet, trade wars, and other signs of the times, the price for international megaprojects has become too high for organizers increasingly doubting the need to pay for their own critique. The biennales used to be a compromise and are even more so now, during the recession of the biennale boom, although it is still they who define the progressive social and aesthetic agenda in contemporary world culture.

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A modern man, freed from the shackles before the individualistic society, which both limited and provided him with security and peace, did not acquire freedom in terms of realization of his personality. In most cases, a person is not yet mature enough to be completely independent and objective. The cultural and social crisis of our days is reflected directly in the meaning of freedom for a modern person, as well as on the problem of interconnection and interaction between psychological and sociological factors of social development.

The new history was conditioned by efforts aimed at acquiring freedom from the political, economic, and spiritual shackles that bound a person aimed at victory over the forces of totalitarianism. Despite numerous defeats, freedom usually prevailed. History has confirmed that a person can control himself, make decisions by himself, think, and feel as he deems right.

It is paradoxical that although freedom brings a person independence and rationality of his own existence, it simultaneously isolates him, awakening in him a feeling of powerlessness and anxiety. This isolation is unbearable, and a person is faced with a choice: to either get rid of freedom with the help of a new dependence, new submission, or grow to the full realization of positive freedom based on the uniqueness and individuality of each.

If we consider the problem of a person and his freedom and lack of freedom and imagine that space is freedom, while the constraint of space is non-freedom, then the image of a wall that ascends in its functional basis to an absolute forbiddance is precisely what represents a system of prohibitions in the social structure. The horizon, however, can be viewed as an image of experience - contours, and outlines that are not inherent in objects in reality but traced in them by our perception, brought into the world by our finite presence. Any experience, in its most important feature, reveals the property of finitude, which means that experience always has boundaries. Since these boundaries are not laid down once and for all but are shifting, changeable, they form horizons.

Thus, the experience that humanity has is always on this side of the horizons, while they continue to shift. The world is something that precedes all experience, a miracle, and a mystery that instills concern in the existence of man and makes him seek salvation in the existing order of things.



Neophobia is the fear of anything new. In its milder form, it can manifest as the unwillingness to break from routine Неофобия — боязнь чего-либо нового. В более мягкой форме это может проявляться в нежелании отказываться от рутины ru.qaz.wiki/wiki/Neophobia


«Принятые и утвержденные бывшими прежде нас, и нам преданные в недопустимости всякого отступления, нововведения или упразднения в их содержании…
Никому не будет позволено вышеозначенные правила изменять или принимать вместо предложенных правил иные, составленные некими людьми, дерзнувшими торгашествовать истиной»
2-ой канон V-VI Вселенского Собора



Сегодня многие согласны с тем, что биеннале изжили себя, хотя при этом никакого иного сопоставимого по значимости формата на данный момент не существует. Недавно каждый уголок мира хотел обозначить себя на карте современного арт-туризма посредством биеннале. Для каждого художника жизненно важным было оказаться в обойме участников, несмотря на осознание лицемерия корпоративно-менеджерской̆ элиты, заправляющей̆ современной̆ художественной̆ системой̆ и ее политическую корректность, ограничивающую индивидуальную свободу творческого самовыражения.
В эпоху всеобщей автономизации, суверенных интернетов, торговых войн и прочих примет времени, цена за интернациональные мега проекты стала слишком высокой для организаторов, все чаще сомневающихся в необходимости оплаты собственной критики. Биеннале и раньше были компромиссом, а теперь во времена спада биеннального бума тем более, хотя по- прежнему именно они заявляют прогрессивную социальную и эстетическую повестку в современной мировой культуре.

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Современный человек, освобожденный от оков до индивидуалистического общества, которое одновременно и ограничивало его, и обеспечивало ему безопасность и покой, не приобрел свободы в смысле реализации его личности. Человек в большинстве случаев еще недостаточно созрел, чтобы быть совершенно независимым и объективным. Культурный и социальный кризис наших дней отражается непосредственно на значении свободы для современного человека, а также на проблеме взаимосвязи и взаимодействия между психологическими и социологическими факторами общественного развития.
Новую историю обусловили усилия, направленные на завоевание свободы от политических, экономических и духовных оков, которые связывали человека, направленного к победе над силами тоталитаризма. Несмотря на многочисленные поражения, свобода в целом побеждала. История подтвердила, что человек способен управлять собой, сам принимать решения, думать и чувствовать так, как ему кажется верным.
Парадоксально то, что хотя свобода приносит человеку независимость и рациональность его существования, она в то же время изолирует его, пробуждая в нем чувство бессилия и тревоги. Эта изоляция непереносима, и человек оказывается перед выбором: либо избавиться от свободы с помощью новой зависимости, нового подчинения, либо дорасти до полной реализации позитивной свободы, основанной на неповторимости и индивидуальности каждого.
Если рассматривать проблему человека и его свободы и несвободы и представить, что пространство – это свобода, а запрет на пространство – это несвобода, то образ стены, восходящей в своей функциональной основе к абсолютному запрету, и представляет собой систему запретов в общественном устройстве. Горизонт же можно рассматривать как образ опыта - контуры и очертания, не присущие предметам реально, но прочерчиваемые в них нашим восприятием, вносимым в мир нашим конечным присутствием. Любой опыт, в качестве важнейшей своей черты обнаруживает свойство конечности, что означает, что опыт всегда имеет границы. Поскольку эти границы не положены раз и навсегда, но подвижны, изменчивы, они образуют горизонты. Имеющийся у человечества опыт, оказывается тем самым, всегда по эту сторону горизонтов, при этом они непрерывно сдвигаются. Мир же — это то, что предшествует всякому опыту, чудо и загадка, вселяющие беспокойство в существование человека и заставляющие его искать спасения в существующем порядке вещей.

Nora Akawi is a Palestinian architect teaching at The Cooper Union. She studies architecture as a project of erasure and exclusion in settler colonialism. Eduardo Rega is a Canarian architect teaching at UPenn. He studies architectures of social movements that refuse the capitalist world order. https://www.architecturesofrefusal.org/

Sofia Pia Belenky is a designer currently based in Milan, Italy. Her work with Space Caviar uses built work, event, exhibition design, research and film as forms of an extended mode of architectural practice. spacecaviar.net

‘Decameron’ by Giovanni Boccaccio, tells the story of a group of young people that escaped Florence during the black plague, taking refuge together in the countryside of Tuscany. For Boccaccio, the suspended time given by the plague and the condition of isolation provides the literary expedient for a moment of general rethinking. As the stories of the protagonists follow one another, the images, relational structures, and values of society are reconstructed. This past spring, within the current global pandemic, a group gathered within that same landscape to produce new tools, practices, and rituals that reflected on this particular moment in time.

The Venice Architecture Biennale had just been officially postponed and we found ourselves with a very rare moment of suspension. The biennale’s title “How will we live together?”, felt tragically ironic in this time of isolation and quarantine. With all our projects delayed and much of our work on hold, we proposed to gather in the countryside of Tuscany rather than as planned in Venice. This new island – the countryside of Tuscany – also floated for this brief moment without its usual bookings from tourists who yearly feed and drink off the landscape. Over the last two decades, this territory has become exploited by tourism transforming the countryside into an island of preservation. The condition generated by the virus, paused this touristic consumption allowing for a rare reclamation of a countryside - not as a space of manicured beige landscape but instead a space of transversal productive forces.

Enough zooms, skypes, and lives! Emerging for the first time out of a period of isolation, social distancing, and quarantine – we moved decidedly offline to meet person to person and produce physical works collectively. We invited everyone – and soon they began arriving down the long dirt road, between the olive trees and vineyards – some driving for days to reach the destination. The remote location and collective isolation intensified the projects developed on site. Here days were as long as weeks. I mentioned one evening that perhaps we had found the secret to living forever – because if here a day felt like a week then a year would contain multiple lifetimes.

All works produced were necessarily temporary and were to disappear upon our departure. Like the agricultural fields need to be burnt to yield new crops, we needed to burn it down to find its future. We set it all on fire, turned it to clouds, and dust. This removal of the exhibition product and erasure of any design object only magnified the program's intrigue. Due to the pandemic travel restrictions and the remote nature of the location – many of the island’s “visitors”, viewed the unfolding activities only through Instagram stories. There was no cell reception at the site – so our stories were posted in the brief moments between events with the weak WiFi signal – nothing was streamed live, instead, days were posted all at once in a flurry of activity.

There are numerous stories that will be told of that brief moment in the Tuscan countryside but for me, its record was made through the memory of one night. Neon lights turned on at sunset signaling that the aliens had landed – they descended dressed in silver jackets and masks. A ceremony ensued and they served us drinks through a collective glass as drones flew above. We danced barefoot in the wet grass. The surrounding landscape became a greenscreen with all of its embedded potentials. A security gate was set on fire and a micro-nation declared its independence. As the morning light arrived, a thick fog filled the valley swallowing the hill in a sea of mist and became an island.


Possibility of an Island was a school founded during quarantine 2020 in Tuscany, Italy. Directed by Sofia Pia Belenky, Margherita Marri, and Luigi Savio. With faculty: (Ab)Normal, Captcha, Space Caviar, Forgotten Architecture, Fosbury Architecture, Parasite 2.0, and PLSTCT in collaboration with AA Visiting School.

Theodore de Bry (1528-1598)
Scene of cannibalism, from ''Americae Tertia Pars”

Post Biennale Depression Syndrome

Marco Montiel-Soto Traveller and immigrant, his work explores the intersections between political and poetic territories, traditions, archaeology, myths, death, cosmos, and chaos. http://www.marcomontielsoto.com

The Biennales until very recently used to be those marathons where everyone who participated: Artists, curators, co-curators, artists' assistants, assistants of the assistants, technicians, registers, organizers, advisors, architects, producers, designers, translators, tour guides, exhibition hall caretakers, and all visitors ended up completely exhausted, worn out, wasted, absorbed, corroded, bent, with debt and depressed.

On the first days of the opening, there is always a lot of enthusiasm, starting at the info point, checking the catalog, getting a map, marking the points of interest, sign up for tours, follow directions, listen to recommendations, hydrate on the way, greeting the rest of the participants, cocktails, previews, openings, lectures, dinners and performances.

Go to bed late, get up early, accumulate contacts, business cards, postcards, flyers, tote bags, publications and keep on going with all the accumulated weight. As days go by, the first symptoms begin to appear, but enthusiasm will be stronger than tiredness and participants will go on with the euphoria of getting as far as possible.

Many participants cannot keep up with the rhythm of the Biennale and prefer to stay on the comfortable couches of the nearby bars. While many leave the marathon, others arrive fresh and rested, some speed up the pace of walking, and others walk calmly, but no one will escape to the domino effect of collective depression.

Post Biennale Depression Syndrome is difficult to cure, especially if many Biennales are attended, which can lead any participant to suicide. A critical moment of the depression is right after the Biennale ends, at that moment a fog darkens the mind, accompanied by a sentimental storm, diffuse memories, emotional paralysis, momentary sadness, loss of ego, lack of creativity, contradictory thoughts, confusion, social isolation, nausea, anger, aggression, pessimism, anxiety, and foot cramps.

At the end of the Biennale, the participants wish to be alone, to isolate themselves from the world in a dark room while demotivation devours them in silence. Not attending other events, turning off the phone, and not answering emails for a long time, depressed participants will be tempted to open the Biennale’s catalog and turn the pages slowly, bringing back memories that will only make the symptoms worse.

Very few participants manage to recover, some fall into hard drugs and others into alcoholism, some can recover over the years, but many will never come back to a Biennale, they will disappear forever.

Gili Merin is an architect, photographer, and Ph.D. candidate at the AA (London), where she is also a Diploma Unit Master. www.gilimerin.com


Suppose an image could no longer stand on its own, but would have to conform to a larger narrative structure. Using text to contextualize the image is one possibility; another is to construct a series of images in a way that forms a visual argument. The combination of both is perhaps the surest way to do so. Take, for instance, the photo-essay “Before They Disappear” by Walker Evans from 1957: a series of thirteen close-ups of logos printed on freight cars, each captioned with the design date of these “brave and naive emblems,” as he calls them in a short introductory text. Steeped in nostalgia yet acutely aware of the corporate present, Evans’ text does not only mourn the day when this signage will disappear from the American landscape but also anchors historical typography in a cultural context. Its cumulative effect withdraws the spectator’s attention from a visual attraction to aesthetic abstraction, and instead orients the mind to further contemplation on the state of the nation.
The combination of text and image in a progressive sequence is thus a form of resistance to photography’s transformation from utility to commodity. In his critique of the politics of representation, photographer Allan Sekula argues that text can “anchor, contradict, reinforce, subvert, complement, particularize, or go beyond the meanings offered by the images themselves” (1978). In this way, a picture would not remain a spectacle of lines, colors, and composition, but a critical document of society. The formats of the reportage, photo-essay, or travelogue are archetypal examples of mechanisms of representation that transfer photos and words from the wall to the page. They draw our attention from the visual to the visible, and from the aesthetics of the sign to the meaning of the signified.

However modern this formula may seem, the combination of image, text, and narrative extends a Millenium back to the devotional culture of Medieval Europe. In a society obsessed with sin and remission, devotional manuscripts were a popular device for private worship. These meditational guidebooks were illustrated with episodes from the life of Christ by fragmenting the Scriptural narrative into frames that could be clearly represented and perceived. In addition to the visual, each page was annotated with affective prayers, psalms, and hymns, anchoring the illustrations in religious practice. This didactic coupling of image and language is meant to negate the danger of sensorial attraction to form in favor of achieving the next stage of devotion which is concentration and meditation. The linearity of the manuscript, with its steady progression of the narrative and intensification of emotions, makes it possible for the pious believer to follow all stages of the Passion in order to ultimately arrive at Christ’s resurrection—and their own salvation.

This representation of the Passion is then a travelogue par excellence, a journey evolving through space and time. In this composition, every element is crucial for the internal logic of the devotional apparatus: the order of images and affectivity of the annotations influence the legibility of the narrative. In this algorithmic condition the syntactic become prominent: an image, like a word, only makes sense vis-à-vis the whole. It was a disciplinary tool that normalizes the relationship between image and beholder, where a coherency was contingent not only on the bond between image and annotation but also between the sequence and its parts. In other words, while the fusion between sign and signified begins to wear off, the prominence of the sequence naturalizes the condition in which the relational triumphs the autonomous.
















The Stations of the Cross ( the Via Crucis, or Via Dolorosa) is one of the most common rituals in the Catholic Church. It is formed of a sequence of numbered stations that represent the Passion: the sentencing, crucifixion, and entombment of Jesus Christ. In this peripatetic mode of devotion, the ​station is instrumental as it sets the rhythm of a ritual through an unraveling narrative deployed within a church, a religious complex, a sacred landscape, or the urban.















Each canonical station contains a representation of the Christological event, staged like a scene in a play, whose individual scenes are easier to grasp than the totality of the event. The mode of representation varies from paintings, bass-reliefs, or, as in the case of the Sacred Mountains of northern Italy— colorful life-sized tableaux vivants created with theatrical realism. This tangible representation was popular in its intensity and clarity; distant from being subtle or stoic, it catered to all audiences.






















The Station is a paradox: it marks a stop in order to perpetuate movement. And yet it is crucial: as a violent event full of tragedy and drama, a reenactment of the Passion must be controlled by choreographing the narrative through a serial progression of emotions. From original sin to personal salvation, the stations must be erected with a physical interval apart, and yet they must be available to follow as a complete devotional sequence.















The secluded mountain-top, where staged scenes took place inside sequenced chapels, was imprinted on the minds of the pilgrims. In time, repetition, and ritual, the images would be constructed in the minds - on the basis of memories of things seen. The legibility of narrative and clarity of order allowed its transportation to other places ( with typological variations), even to those surrounding a pilgrim’s own home.














While the didactic content of the Stations was imprinted into spatial memories, the Via Crucis lost its representational value, becoming more about the linearity of the path than the anecdotal destination. This serialization and optimization of the Way of the Cross resulted in the complete codification of Christ’s public execution. It thus restrained and disciplined not only of representations and movement, but also religious behavior and pious imagination.























The systematization of the Stations and crystallization of the path allowed its replicability across Europe. Finally, it was imported to Jerusalem itself, where the Stational ritual was born but never fully realized. There, in Christ’s city, nothing remained but numbers on old-new walls. Overlaid on a city fabric where religions have coexisted for millennia, the Passionate route remains but a floating sign amongst the city’s many.

365 SO FRESH

Abhijan Toto is the co-director of the Forest Curriculum and a curator at SAC Gallery Bangkok, based between Bangkok and Seoul. He is the recipient of the 10th Lorenzo Bonaldi Prize for curatorial practice. Theforestcurriculum.com

Fundamentally, the question is one of currency - and currency is always contemporary.

This series of stickers responds to the question of the production of the new as a consumable category within the machinery of the system of contemporary art’s circulation in the post-liberalization era.

They are intended to present critical interventions into its modes of production and capture of cultural capital, and its transformation into financial capital. Entangled within this are the processes of imperialist consumption of cultural production from countries in the global south by those in the global north, responding in particular to the situation of biennalization in Bangkok, where the corporate-sponsored Bangkok Art Biennale, the artist-run Bangkok Biennial and other initiatives projected as biennials vie for space in the context of a divided political landscape. In this context, we ask who the biennial is for, and to whom it belongs, and how one might develop modes of critiquing its hegemonization of visibility/visuality.

Failed Biennials

Tinatin Gurgenidze works between Tbilisi and Berlin dealing with urban topics. She is one of the co-founders of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial. www.biennial.ge

Recycling the materials we use for the installations or exhibitions is also, in some way, recycling past ideas and problems, and bringing them to light again. In this sense the scarcity of innovation and progressive thinking becomes obvious. Reusing the same concepts, materials, and topics does not let us go beyond the margins, and this practice somehow blocks the innovative and urgent critical thinking in us.

One exhibition follows the other, and over, and over again the same routine takes place. The organizing of a “Biennial” as an event becomes a usual business for the cultural sector, the city, the curator, and everybody else involved in it.

One day will come when we will say it is enough when the overload of materials, permanently renewing events, new exhibitions, non-stop new information available for the audience transforms into intellectual chaos. This tremendous amount of material cannot be perceived anymore as something important that one should keep in their brain. We organize exhibitions about the environmental crisis, about our broken planet, and at the same time produce so much garbage that we do exactly the same thing we are criticizing.

Enough is enough, and the day will arrive when so much information will be converted into big useless chaos, and this practice of organizing Biennials will eventually fail. The question is how long can we live with all these different events offering one installation after another, and one exhibition following the other? Do all of these efforts really bring us something important? Can the Biennials really act as catalysts for change? Who are the remaining caretakers when the “Biennial” is over? What sense does it make to organize an overload of exhibitions every two years?

These questions keep bothering us, and the various intellectuals in the architectural and art world start criticizing this kind of event, and in many cases call them a waste of time, materials, and money.

As the years pass and one edition of the Biennial follows the other in different parts of the world this idea of creating an event in such a manner slowly becomes absurd. One might say that the concept of the “ Biennials” as we know it is already fading away. A progressive revival of the concept is urgently needed, and anything else in our society “Biennials” should also reflect the current environmental and urban state we live in.

The gift, or when the pleasure of eating a piece of birthday cake frightens the child

Araks Sahakyan is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher and translator based in Paris. https://www.papercarpets.com/en























“When we are unhappy, we are afraid of pleasure. Not only do we not have the desire for pleasure, but we are ashamed of the idea of ​​having pleasure.”
Boris Cyrulnik

“and that child they buried this morning cried so much it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.”
Federico García Lorca


One day per year, the birth of a being is celebrated, and turning six is ​​an important event in one’s life. It is a turning point where the child starts school, enters into the ranks and statistics of "passes" and "fails". Progressively, this being stops wondering about the invention of butterflies, communicating with a ladybug, sending messages with paper airplanes, or creating earrings with a couple of cherries. Thus, the autocracy of adult wishes is imposed.

Between conflicts and desires, an interaction is established between children and adults. But what is this relationship like? Neuropsychiatrists warn that children who do not receive sufficient attention during their early years can develop almost irreparable sequelae in the brain. In the absence of affection and lullabies, these once grown children experience shame for having pleasure.

One day per year the birth of a being is celebrated and turning six is ​​to feel firsthand what being thrown into the world means. If before there was a little interaction, now there is an excuse: "You are older, you can do it alone." Thrown into the world… the child cries because there is no one to pick him up at the end of the day, because he feels ashamed to wonder about the invention of bridges or because he stands in front of a candy display case without a coin.

Between loneliness and superficial commitments, the child of six years old once at home continues expressing anger and sadness. In the presence of the adult, he represses his emotions and starts to smile and laugh to satisfy him. Perhaps a survival strategy to get the hot plate of the day.

One day per year the birth of a being is celebrated and turning six is ​​an important event in one’s life. From that moment on, we hold the child responsible and deprive him of the pleasures of childhood. We also deprive him of that linguistic ability with which he was born. To the surprise of adults, children from all continents find a common language to communicate: the language of onomatopoeia and interjections, the language of universal emotions such as joy, sadness, surprise, or fear. But also, the love they share for a three-layer sponge cake with delicious chocolate cream and strawberries.

And whoever does not have that cake will imagine it and then create it, even using the soil. The child will even eat a piece of it, because his conviction that he deserves a birthday cake is stronger than the puerile idea of ​​thinking that one can live without celebrating his birthday.

Turning six is ​​an important event in one’s life. From the age of six, the child starts school, enters into the ranks and statistics of "passes" and "fails", into the dictatorship of adult desires. The child begins to repress his own pleasures. The child begins to obey this other repressed child, which is the adult. However, what is the right of the adult to take away the imagination of a child? As if that adult knew about the invention of butterflies, as if he knew about the way to talk to a ladybug, about sending messages with paper airplanes, about creating earrings with a couple of cherries... As if that adult knew that it is not necessary for the mechanics to move a car, as if that adult knew that religions or ideologies are not indispensable to answer to universes mysteries and know what is wrong or what is right, because the child has its own way to understand the world and just by the gesture of removing the petals of a flower will get an answer to all the questions.

The Biennial of Chaotic Maybe

Matīss Groskaufmanis is an architect and educator, based at the Aarhus School of Architecture. His research and design work examines architecture’s relationship to economies of production, with a particular focus on the management of design practice.
www.matiss.work

By design, most forms of participation have their limitations. Often these are set by someone or something. As the walled garden of Venice’s Giardini is limited in its space to a small number of world nations to exhibit whatever they like, a project can be participative only for those who are granted the opportunity to take part, and have the means to do so. Participation needs time, stamina, and a set of skills—the possession of these entail a degree of privilege, especially in today’s accelerating pace of life and the infinite array of choices imposed by the mechanisms of the market and the state. Aside from the debate about the extent to which a fully horizontal participation is possible in practice, and in which circumstances that would be desirable, perhaps it is more productive to ask—what can a flat organizational model produce, provoke, and reveal?

The market rewards efficiency, and this is achieved through organization and compression. Managing the vast majority of complex processes requires some division of labor, where tasks are delegated, and hierarchies created. These hierarchies, then, require coordination and planning so that the production schedules and deadlines are met. Time is money, efficiency is life, and organization is value—this is no less true to the sphere of cultural production, such as the making of a biennale, where the pressures of creative output, financial resource allocation, and time schedules all go hand in hand. Whether taking place online or in-real-life, the smooth circulation of cultural capital requires the knowledge to be compressed, and hence reduced. Uncertain volumes of world-complexity are flattened into circulation-friendly units of knowledge and objects, think-pieces, five-minute video reels, press releases, Instas, Snaps, and TikToks.

In this regard, perhaps a hyper-participative model can serve as a means of building up friction against these smooth flows of cultural capital. Perhaps, this is where the true potential of Referenda is located. Rather than reenacting an idealized decision making ritual belonging to the western mythology, perhaps the biennial should be seen as a perpetually unfinished project, where the absence of any hierarchy constitutes not only the means but also the end goal. Instead of signaling the virtues of inclusive decision making, the plural process reveals the complexities and contradictions of today’s world. Lacking an overall objective, well-meaning but disorganized, Referenda is an inefficient, slow, and messy version of “chaotic good”. The decision making process is too “cringe” to ever be finished, and too “based” to be canceled, so the preparation of the event goes on indefinitely. All of this ensures that no part of Referenda could ever be converted into marketable units of cultural capital—no press images, no catalog, no ribbons to cut.

Devoid of managerial oversight, it is not unlikely that Referenda will not be finished at its opening date. Most of the audience will arrive one day before the opening, only to find the exhibition venue littered with coffee cups, leftovers of on-site catering, half-unboxed shipments, and an insurmountable amount of post-it notes, covering all available vertical surfaces. The place will be abuzz with fatigued yet passionate groups of people discussing, Zooming, deliberating, and trying things out. In the search for a broad consensus, things will be done and undone on a regular basis. Some parts of the exhibition will look spectacular and complete, while others—half-finished or not present at all. However, the biennial as a finished cultural product will be nowhere in sight. Like an eternal flame, the bi-annual event will have turned into a long-form performance and a permanent tourist attraction, rated on TripAdvisor at 3.9 of 5.

REXIA, TOO

Georg Seeßlen studied painting, art history, and semiotics in Munich. He is a lecturer and curator of film programs and art exhibitions. He has written books on Film, Art & Politics. He features on the German radio alongside Markus Metz.

No artistic gathering has a more obscure inception story than that of the Biennial on Planet Rexia, near the End of the Universe, just some lightyears away from that famous restaurant where healthy people used to look at the great apocalypse night after night. It was the last cultural event mankind would be able to perform. It is no surprise that most of the people, looking forward to the ultimate explosion didn’t give a damn to the mysterious event called “Rexia Art Gathering Surprise“ - RAGS in short. But on the other hand, there were groups of enthusiastic art lovers, true believers in the eternal power of art. Pure art, and nothing but art. Art that won’t save our lives, but will last forever and ever. Every one of them concurred that this last edition would take place nine hundred thirty-two days from the day the art councils of planet Earth had assembled to take their last decision: Every piece of art of the doomed planet should be brought to Rexia, a planet without dust, without humility, without wind… and without life. There was enough evidence for that aim, mainly because for a lot of people there was nothing else to do. (Who would struggle for careers, when the end is apparently near?) Not all the attendees stuck to it, but in the end, it was a religious pilgrimage event, where artisans from all continents would flock to flaunt, flash and emblazon their best creations and that of their ancestors and heroes in the long history of art on earth, smothered in devotional fervor about Nature and the men and women who had seen it through artist’s eyes. Over the centuries as winds - and their names - changed, crises and catastrophes had shivered the Earth, and civilizations rose and fell. Only the works of art had survived and been passed from one dying civilization to the other emerging. The name of Rexia, where the first Biennial took place some centuries ago, was given to the small planet, where the last Biennial should be staged, surviving all men, surviving every civilization, surviving every Goddess. Rexia had naturally evolved into a spiritual event, sacralized and emancipated from any trace of market, hype, and fuzz.

The remaining problem for this biggest and last artistic effort was to elect its main, and sole, curator because there was no time left for discussions and democracy. The election ceremony was easy and quick: The hundred most influential persons in the International art scene choose the SUPER-KURATOR. And because life tended to be short in the last days of mankind, every SUPER-KURATOR appointed his or her successor for the next step in this sacred project: finding the 100 000 works of art worth for bringing them to Rexia. This promulgation, known as Denuntiatio ad Fatum Artis, had been known to TV-audiences and Newschatters all over the world because it seemed the most interesting thing about the whole Rexia-Mission. A lot of people who would not distinguish Rafael from Van Gogh, did know the name of the SUPER-KURATOR. After a while, the SUPER-KURATOR was as popular as presidents, kings, and revolutionaries, and the Denuntiatio was televised frequently. (No SUPER-KURATOR seemed to survive in his position more than a week, which may underline how challenging the work of curators was till the end of curating itself.) In front of all attendees of the mission, among all the fervency and zeal, the current (and exhausted) SUPER-KURATOR solemnly proclaimed the name of the next curator. The secrecy around the promulgation, as well as the anticipation, triggered tremendously emotional scenes within the audiences, often followed by a profound murmuration of gossip and commentary, muffed by e.mails, sky-phones, and mental storm waves. People would jump out of their windows, kill their neighbors, or riot in the streets when their favorite curator was not nominated. "Who will be the SUPER-KURATOR“ was the most popular TV-Show internationally broadcasted. Curators and nominees had to be carefully protected, because of the danger of getting killed or kidnapped by fans.

The position of SUPER-KURATOR of the Rexia-mission, the pinnacle of absolute curatorial virtues, was coveted by curators from all cardinals points, eager to enter the cannons of History of Art. Every SUPER-KURATOR left his traces in defining the essence of art and deciding, which work of art would be saved for cosmic eternity on Rexia. In its four hundred sixty-six days’ history, the position had only been rejected on one occurrence. The unabridged power characterizing the role of the SUPER-KURATOR (every one of them hoped for longevity, but mysteriously no one had enough time than to choose roundabout 50 works of art for the Rexia-mission), a position like no other, where appointees did not have to answer to anyone but their own ambitions, where budgets knew no limits, and disjointed, monuments to their custodian’s egos. For a brief slot in time, the SUPER-KURATOR was kind of God or Goddess. For this reason, no one was listening to critics. How dared they argue the last Biennial in the Art History of Men!

Yet, if I must speak to you about its importance, it is not on its cultural repercussion, but on its civil impact, that one must consider. Rexia generated a proud narrative. Because of the art, that was to be saved from the big explosion, humans would leave a heritage and would not vanish without leaving something important. Many people tried eagerly to be part of the Rexia-mission, knowing very well, that landing on Rexia, finding the right place for the works of art, and following the last curatorial orders would be the last thing in their lives. No one would survive on Rexia, but after all, no one would survive on earth. Of course, there were only a small crew needed, so in order to become at least a spiritual member of the mission, people began to study the history and the theory of art, they acclaimed (or did not so) the work of the SUPER-KURATORS and they hated the critics, especially those, who denied the deep cultural and (more or less) religious sense of the Rexia-mission. The archives of art were intensely studied by scholars, collectors, and artists, containing all physical and digital documentation of every single precedent step by the SUPER-KURATORS and their explanations, both in the historical and the Ästhetik context. Art was the new - and last religion. Art was the new - and last ideology. Art was the new - and last reason to live. People gathered in the archives. Ancient parchments and scrolls there coexisted with unsold catalogs, samples of posters, lost tote bags, and exhibition brochures with curatorial statements, all of which are archived around the world in very different orders. But the tremendous archives had matured into a pilgrimage destination known to all, not only in the art world, and the visits to every kind of art archive, museum, library, collection emerged into a new rite of passage, the great farewell in the name of Rexia. Once before the big explosion, nearly everyone (including those who wouldn’t give a damn at the beginning of the Rexia-mission) must perform such a rite: Being part of the SUPER-MISSION: Man will die, but art will survive.

The same fate, however, is not shared by the mission of the Last Biennial itself, which had perceived, more and more, for the last hundred days, if not longer, as an ephemeral addendum whose only paramountcy is the Denuntio ad Fatum Arts-ceremony and the inauguration of the SUPER-KURATOR every now and then. There are no official statistics about the real knowledge of the works of art chosen for the Rexia-mission, for they would disclose this mournful truth. The new religious art had no real content. You might face difficulty looking for people who cherish the actual event of the mission and how it is happening, as most do so prospectively, when it could be studied and dissected from the broadcasted elements left behind, within the circuits of followers and friends of Rexia. The art-religion of the Rexia-mission were both, fundamentalistic and superficial.

The small group of art philomaths however were delighted to confabulate theories around the curatorial shifts, the strange sacralization of the mission, the discursive tensions that had emerged between different regimes of the SUPER-KURATORS, or, a personal favorite, the conspiracy around the appointments. Some particular “chapters“ have been absorbed into the narration of the end as ecumenical (fate or guilt?) such as those when SUPER-KURATORS had misread the intentions of their heirs resulting in decisions of antagonistic persuasions, or when for certain periods nepotism and partisanship affected the appointments for SUPER-KURATORS for a certain time, turning the Rexia-mission into a stale event (including declining “likes“ and followers). These episodes, as even any reputable art critic would confirm, had been normally followed by a series of decidedly surprising and chaotic curatorial politics. "This you call a masterpiece?“ We heard some people gasp (and "whataboutism“ got a new meaning). The cumulative succession of turns - often good, at times detrimental -, the lamentable decisions, the expected and unexpected results, and the manifestation of curatorial egos stretched over the elephantine existence of the mission, were the main attractions of Rexia. Regardless of the unexpected shifts, its continuation remained certain: If I were to speak of what ascertains the survival of the Rexia-mission till the end, ist the resolute compliance and reverence to the SUPER-KURATORS orders, no matter who they were, or how delirious their wishes presented to be.

When the Rexia-mission started, taking 100 000 works of art to post-human eternal life, it left us not only with some kind of transcendental hope but also with a new concept of leadership. Three days after the WARHOLA 1 started its flight, an Icelandic scientist discovered a bug in the algorithm that predicted the end of the world. The big explosion is canceled. Mankind will live on. If only without the 100 000 masterpieces of art, which will live on Rexia, without dust, without humidity, without wind, and without life. Forever and ever and ever and ever and ever…