How and to what extent can institutions such as Biennials contribute to critical and progressive canon shifts within the art field? What is the function of Biennials between hegemony and counter-hegemony? Biennials today understand and describe themselves as sites of intervention in neoliberal conditions of which they themselves are a part of, addressing these conditions in critical terms while also fueling and fostering them. This faces us with a paradoxical phenomenon of neoliberalism and to an extent we must accept, that biennials today are both brands and sites of resistance – or, as Panos Kompatsiaris puts it, both “spaces of capital” and “spaces of hope”.
Such is the backdrop against which we will address documenta and biennials as contested spaces. After a brief overview of the history of biennials and their transnational politics this will be exemplified with the case of the last four documenta shows and their position within the larger context of mega exhibitions.

Tuesday, March 15th, 6pm
The talk will be held in English.

Image: Banu Cennetoğlu, BEINGSAFEISSCARY, (2017)
Ten aluminum letters borrowed from the Fridericianum and six letters cast in brass after the existing ones. Based on graffiti existing on a wall at the National Technical University of Athens as of April 6.
Photo: Roman März