Friday, September 12, 2008

Taipei Biennial Blues


Here are the curators Vasif Kortun and Manray Hsu at the press conference for the Taipei biennial, a knee-jerk exercise in political art.
With only 40 artists, but almost all video installations, it is amazing how much boredom can be achieved by taking a singularly uniform approach to political art with an emphasis on documentary film and photography. Almost all of the artists approach their subject--anti-globalization--head on with little humor or irony. To top things off, there is a central section on the protests at various G8 conferences that provides little information on the issues at hand, but lots of footage of well meaning agitators, almost all white and American or European.
By now, this style of biennial has become a cliche: take a locale, apply some theory of global engagement, and come up with something closer to a political science seminar than an art exhibition. I asked Kortun if this is the "antiglobalization biennial" and to my surprise he answered, "Absolutely." So at least we know his agenda, in case we missed the point at the show. I was surprised only because usually the politics are usually a subtext to an aesthetic issue. Here, all aesthetics have been eliminated, so as not to get in the way of the message.
The interesting thing about taking on globalization as an issue here in Taipei is that the superpower most on everyone's minds is China, not the U.S. So though many of the installations here challenged the "hegemony" of multinational corporations, the biggest issue in Taipei is the loss of manufacturing to mainland China. This was not an issue raised in any of the art works here, even though it is on everyone's mind.

1 comment:

Susan said...

Hi Barbara,
Nice post. I noticed this biennial doesn't have much engagement with Asia.
I mentioned this on my blog http://everythingisdangerous.blogspot.com.
I'd love to discuss this exhibition with you. kendzulak@hotmail.com.
best,
Susan