translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
190410: Biennale Cuvée 10 – Global selection of contemporary art
O.K. offenes Kulturhaus Oberösterreich
Biennale Cuvée 10 – Global selection of contemporary art
03.03.10 – 02.05.10
The world is big and you are small
In Austria, the economic mechanisms of attracting attention as well as the analytical potential of discussions and social interactions of biennials have little meaning. But this has less to do with the country itself than with the phenomenon that important biennials no longer take place in traditional centres, but at the periphery. One of the reasons being that new biennials no longer represent homogenous societies, but prefer to offer a critical contribution both to the centre and periphery. In connection with the Upper Austrian city of Linz, this can be interpreted in a double sense – especially this year, when a new Linz Triennial in cooperation with the Lentos museum and the State Gallery Linz (Landesgalerie) will be launched in June.
The fourth edition of the Biennale Cuvee shows 33 works. The space-filling installations are meant to represent a new generation of conceptual art, contrasting the sobriety of art historical methods. Reality, perception and fiction are represented in many variations and imply the return to formal aspects as well as the performative.
One thematic priority becomes evident: the sensitization for the power of image politics, which, for example, can be acquired through biographical coordinates, as shown in the works by the Palestinian artist Taysir Betniji or the South Korean Haejun Jo, whose father kept a diary with sketches narrating his childhood days during the Korean War. These personal worlds of experience are contrasted by “objective” reporting. While Lado Darakhvelidze comments these pseudo-didactically in a school class with chalk drawings, Sylvie Blocher transforms Obama’s election speech into what it actually was: a chic pop song with cult status. The Columbian artist and activist Carlos Motta deals with political spheres of influence and the question regarding the ownership of public space, using graffiti as an example. In contrast, Sue Williamson mounts slogans onto walls of those houses in an Egyptian fisher town, where people are threatened to be evicted.
Modified parameters and shifted power structures continuously force us to apply new presentation forms - this is the purport of the “global selection”. The attempt to summarize all of this in a cuvee is ambitious. But it shows sagacity when content coherence and potentiality develop.
By Maren Richter
O.K. offenes Kulturhaus Oberösterreich
4020 Linz, Dametzstrasse 30
Tel.: +43 732 78 41 78
Fax.: + 43 732 77 56 84
email: office@ok-centrum.at
http://www.ok-centrum.at
190410
OK Linz
4020 Linz, OK Platz 1
Tel: + 43 732 78 41 78, Fax: + 43 732 77 56 84
Email: office@ok-centrum.at
http://www.ok-centrum.at
OK Linz
4020 Linz, OK Platz 1
Tel: + 43 732 78 41 78, Fax: + 43 732 77 56 84
Email: office@ok-centrum.at
http://www.ok-centrum.at