Again for the First Time
Emilie Trice
Walking down a nondescript street in East Berlin in the middle of the night in the dead of winter poses infinite possibilities. Behind every crumbling façade is the pent-up aggression of a city trembling with creative anxiety. Illegal parties–not to be confused with raves and the 90s ecstasy/candy kid/glow stick phenomenon–are a nightly event, integrating the obvious music, drugs and sex with the aesthetic, the intellectual and the political. Over the past decade Berlin’s underground has justly earned the city an international reputation as the go-to scene for contemporary art and counterculture in general. The mass exodus from East Berlin to the west in the aftermath of the wall’s collapse left behind blocks of vacant buildings begging to be abused. Artists have answered the call en masse, immigrating from all over the world and exploiting these spaces for their own creative agendas. The practically non-existent living costs and seemingly endless winters provide enough incentive for artistic productivity to make Berlin a cultural center, and yet the art market continues to love to hate Berlin.
In a way though, the market’s cold shoulder has proved both a blessing and a curse, strengthening Berlin’s avant-garde authenticity. Then again, the continuing influx of galleries from Germany’s former art capital, Cologne, only serves as evidence that market attitudes will eventually shift as well. This issue, by no means new, is a difficult balance to control. Once an artist’s market value rises, his/her street credibility invariably declines, which would be tragic (albeit lucrative) for Berlin. Artist sanctuaries (aka slums) will eventually gentrify because of their hip populous, forcing rents up and artists out. Remember the East Village in the 80s? Enough said. The freezing climate in Berlin is enough to deter all but the most devoted artists and avant-garde addicts and still, the streets are filling up with galleries, a Guggenheim museum has opened in a bank and art fairs trying to lure high-profile collectors are becoming more and more common. These apparent signs of cultural progress are actually a major threat to the guerilla art movement that has become a staple of pride for leather-clad Berliners and immigrant artists alike. This coming year, however, one major event has the capacity to do justice to both the low-brow and high-brow forces which drive it, namely the Berlin Biennial.
Since its inception in 1998, the Berlin Biennial has struggled to live up to the expectations of both high-art critics and the city’s anti-institutional counterculture. More pressing, however, has been the Biennial’s struggle just to live up to its own name. Financial issues delayed the second Biennial, which eventually took place in 2001, followed by the third in 2004. Under the guise of universal mathematics, then, the Berlin Biennial is actually a triennial in denial. Fortunately, the Hauptstadtkulturfonds (German Federal Council Foundation) has guaranteed financial support for designated cultural programs for five years beginning in 2003. The Council delegated 2.5 million for the 4th Biennial, thus allowing the Biennial to finally earn its title and plan to open on time in March of 2006.
With the monetary concerns of the Biennial’s board members quelled, their next priority was to enlist a curatorial team that wouldn’t alienate either side of the cultural spectrum. The last Biennial was directed by Ute Meta Bauer, whose academic background proved ultimately detrimental to the event. Jennifer Allen described in Art Forum how "a twofold selection criterion seemed to hang over every work like a death sentence: Art must teach something, ideally about Berlin, or art must deal with the ‘other’, whether workers, women or the homeless." These conditions ultimately succeeded in transforming what should have been a celebration of all that is contemporary into a pseudo-history lesson and political/moral sermon with no singular frame of reference. This year, however, will be different.
According to the founding Director of the Berlin Biennial, Klaus Biesenbach: "For the first time, the Berlin Biennial will be directed by a group composed of an artist, curator and an editor, mixing strategies, ideas and talents to bring new exciting impulses" to an event previously described as " a grind," "flat," "dry" and a number of other negative adjectives. The selected team was very clearly chosen as the antithesis to Bauer’s rigid academia; although they still have a proverbial foot wedged firmly in the academic door. Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick are the chosen three; individually each is successful, even revered, in their respective fields, but together they form an international, multidisciplinary machine, engaged in multiple projects all benefiting the progression of contemporary culture.
Besides the celebrity of Cattelan, who is in major museum collections around the world, his two collaborators are well established within the global contemporary scene. Gioni is the director of the Trussardi Foundation in Milan, which supports emerging Italian artists, and he recently curated Manifesta 5 in San Sebastian. Ali Subotnick, a visiting critic at the School for the Arts at Columbia University, is widely published and edited Parkett. The Biennial’s press team declares that Cattelan, Massimiliano and Gioni’s previous collaborations strive to "give contemporary art a new street-credibility." These include a non-profit space in Chelsea (the Wrong Gallery) and the publication Charley, which the Village Voice’s Vince Aletti described as "ugly, infuriating, and historic, summing up this very moment in the art world with offhand authority and fuck-it-all cool." Street credibility is obviously a high priority for the organizers of an institutional art event located in a city best known for (and most proud of) its anti-institutional, avant-garde scene. In fact, street credibility will be this Biennial’s badge of honor and saving grace…that is if Cattelan, Massimiliano and Gioni pull it off.
Here’s a short list of reasons why they will:
1.The fact that pressure is dispersed among three directors who have experience (and fun) working together and should make the event lighter, without sacrificing content.
2. Cattelan, Massimiliano and Gioni each bring something different to the table so no one approach will dominate (and as in the case of the 3rd Biennial, suffocate) the event.
3. Cattelan already fosters immediate and unadulterated respect among the snobs of couture and urban culture alike. His piece La nona ora (the ninth hour) sold at an auction for $3,032,000, but he was never formally educated as an artist and his sculptures are so ironic and flat-out funny that even the most pretentious academic and/or pompous hipster has to laugh.
4. Catellan’s direction of the 6th Caribbean Biennial is a perfect example of a curator who doesn’t take his job too seriously, exactly what Berlin needs, although there will hopefully be some art allowed this time.
5. These three professionals still engage in non-profit artistic activity, validating their commitment to art for art’s sake and emerging artists. Among the 140+ galleries in Chelsea how many are nonprofit? Around 5.
Cattelan, Massimiliano and Gioni have taken on the considerable task of giving Europe’s avant-garde mecca a Biennial worthy of pilgrimage. The Biennial’s board has chosen their curators well and in this Berlin-lover’s humble opinion, the 4th Berlin Biennial should finally do the city proud. When all is said and done though, the best part of the Biennial will still be the nightly parties in unmarked cellars under random back alleys that could care less that the art world’s glitterati are in town. See you there.
