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| A cohort of clowns, film still taken from the 1924 silent film He Who Gets Slapped |
For Whom the Show Serves
What Does it Look Like When a Biennial Considers Community?
By Elise Beuke
As the showmanship of the international biennale network abandons the grand and creeps more towards the grandiose, the impermanent structures of these ephemeral productions have begun to resemble that of a circus tent. Pitched, strung with lights and false promises of magic and awe, yet truthfully exemplifying a neo-imperial tidal force. For some time, the suspense is wondrous, and for an even shorter time, it is intriguing. Captivating if done successfully. But what happens when the ring leaders and clowns pack up their trunks and the illusion migrates to its next stop? The community held hostage to the show’s allure has nothing to show for itself, just the fleeting taste of cotton candy. For a magician, the secret to a good trick rests in distraction and timing, something that the blockbuster biennales know all too well. Spectacles with a codified focus on crowd draw and shock. With the growing awareness of the unsustainable nature that such spectacles have on the resident communities, one may wonder how this momentum can be harnessed in servitude to, informed by and for said communities? In order to serve the space, it rests in and takes from the new biennale structure proposed is one that sits in the slow. Taking example from the 11th Berlin Biennale The Crack Begins Within 2020, artists and curators designated physical spaces and collective moments for engagement. Talks, workshops, and performances catered to the folks of Berlin.
When time is carved out for asking and listening, community’s needs can be heard and acted on. When spaces are rehabilitated for future use, collectivity amongst community roots deeper. When the grandiose is thrown out, and things like care and exchange are fostered, cultural showmen take a back seat. And here we realize that it is the community which holds the “magic”.
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| The Fatigued Compassionate Oracle Q&A, participative format by Sickness Affinity Group / Feminist Health Care Research Group, 11th Biennale c/o ExRotaprint, 08.02.2020. Photo Mathias Völzedd caption |