8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art 29.5.-3.8.2014 Juan A. Gaita?n Curator 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art Photo: Thomas Eugster, 2013
It’s Biennale season, Berlin, and we hope you’re ready. As the 8th Berlin Biennale gets underway, Sleek spoke to the curator of the two-month-long exhibition, Juan A. Gaitán, about the exhibition’s focus on individual artworks, and what a biennial is for, anyway.
Sleek: What was your methodology in curating the 8th Berlin Biennale?
Juan A. Gaitán: The Biennale developed in two parallel ways: a curatorial framing, and the artworks themselves.
The idea is that once they meet, the framing takes a step back and allows the exhibition to be what it is. There are many threads through the exhibition, so I think once you’ve seen all three venues you will notice the links. The artists come from many parts of the world and you cannot responsibly attempt to find a common thread thematically, conceptually or formally between such varied practices. The exhibition is more about individual encounters than statements.
The framing itself had to do with taking Berlin as an example of how a city is constructed today, and especially how it treats its historical references: how it could still put those references on display and attempt to create a certain idea of the past. In Berlin now, especially in Mitte, this applies to the Prussian past, mythologising it as the most important moment in its history.
Of course this means that other histories are relegated to the sides and also that history has to be told in a very specific way.
How do you feel these individual artworks engaged with the framework?
What I want is precisely that the framework is a dialogue, a discursive framework. It is something you read about in the guidebook, but the artworks themselves are not asked to illustrate it or in any way relate to it, unless the artists themselves felt like bringing some of that into their work. There are some cases in which some processes of the curatorial process appear in the work but in most cases it is separate.
Can you give me some examples of artists who used the conceptual framework more extensively?
Perhaps Olaf Nikolai, who refers to a moment in the curatorial process of developing the Biennale. That was important because it relates to a venue in former East Berlin, in modern Lichtenberg. He bought the pattern of the floor and the lamps in that venue and turned them into his installation.
Another example might be Bianca Baldi who already developed work related to the design on the Louis Vuitton trunk, made for a traveller of the 19th century. We helped her redo part of the film, and she reconceived the installation.
A common analysis of Berlin is that it’s a city is that it’s not really part of Germany. Do you think that comes into play in this Biennale?
I think it’s more related to Berlin as part of Europe. The idea that a city has to exude its history is a very European one. Cities like Doha, Qatar and Dubai try to bring back some references to traditional Arabic architecture, but in Europe, you have cities like Paris and London: Berlin wants to confirm itself as a historical city.
So what do you think a biennial for, as a cultural phenomenon?
Each one is different, though there are some biennials that are structurally similar. The Berlin Biennale has almost nothing in common with the Venice or Sao Paolo Biennales, or Havana. I don’t see that they are similar enough to have a global thought.
The Berlin Biennale project is an interesting platform, with the capacity to reinvent itself every 2 years. For me that’s an interesting element.
This Berlin Biennale is very different from the previous. Some might say more grown up – what do you think of this analysis?
Different, yes. Artur [Zmijewski, curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale] and I don’t have the same approach to art – he’s an artist and I’m a curator. I have worked with him as an artist and respect his work very much.
I think his Biennale was trying to do something important relating to testing the possibilities of the art system – the spaces to generate larger social political impact and more importantly a dialogue (or non-dialogue).
My Biennale focuses on artworks, what they are and how they operate as propositions: a very different way of looking at it. But I wouldn’t say that one is more grown up than another.
How did you approach the very different contexts of the three Biennale locations: the KW institute, the Museum Dahlem and Haus am Waldsee?
The three venues are very different. The Museum Dahlem is the most focused on display, and upon what differences there are between the appearance of cultural objects in museum context: how the logic of the object and the logic of the museum interact.
Haus am Waldsee used to be a private villa so there is a central sense of an absent individual. Then, in the case of the KW, I have a complete focus on contemporary art, where it’s not about the outside or the building.
The 8th Berlin Biennale is on show from 28 May – 3 August 2014 at Haus am Waldsee, Museen Dahlem, KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Crash Pad c/o KW Institute.