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AS: Many artists working today have a tendency or interest in revisiting
different sceneries in the recent or less recent past. Sometimes this can
take the form of a tribute, or homage, sometimes it’s a critical reading
‘What we’re doing is
and sometimes it is a parody, so there is a multitude of ways that a
historical work of art can be referred to. And for some reasons, which I
think will perhaps become a little bit clearer in the exhibition itself, many
giving artists who are
artists are interested in looking at these existing works, or at the work
of their predecessors somehow. I think it’s a line in the biennial, but I
not so visible the means
don’t think it’s the main theme. I mean, the past is what we have and the
future is what we don’t yet have, so quite naturally, work made today
often looks back.
to realise projects that
There is relatively little historical work in our exhibition. There is some,
but it doesn’t really build a singular image, or a picture of how we see
they might only have
the development of art. By bringing a number of historical figures, we
are not trying to propose a new canon, but these are quite subjective
been able to realise by
or idiosyncratic choices. So it’s not the figures that are absolutely
fundamental. I think they are more important as a way of departing
from this notion of fundamental importance. It is more like denying
fully entering some kind
the existing, standard picture, whatever it is, because this picture is also
changing.
of market system’
If that is just a side strand, what are the other themes in the show? Are
there even themes in the show? You have said before that the title is
not thematic, and doesn’t want to box it in.
EF: It’s really indicative, I think, of the fact that we didn’t start out with
popular recently for many reasons and important in the cultural a title and we didn’t decide to find any singular theme. I mean, sure,
marketing of cities, and for different reasons biennials appear or we could pull out the main nucleus. But we definitely didn’t think in
emerge. What makes it special? Why should it be special? I mean, we’ll those terms. Rather, we were giving a lot of freedom to artists. Take
see the exhibition and look at the artworks in the show. I guess there are the Schinkel Pavilion, the fact of picking this very particular piece of
going to be quite some interesting ones, and it’s the main theme of us architecture, which interested us because it is a marvellous historical
working with these artists. Not so much the staging of an event. fiction of a place, made to look like a neoclassical reconstruction, which
in fact it isn’t. And this seemed like a really apt place to question the
EF: It has been important to us, first and foremost, to think of making
an interesting exhibition. That was first thing in our minds before or
instead of thinking how to make a biennial about Berlin or related
to Berlin. That wasn’t the starting point at all. On the other hand, it’s
unavoidable that we are in Berlin, that we have venues here… Already
in the choice of venues it’s clear that we haven’t picked neutral spaces,
because neutral spaces couldn’t be found, and that we’ve deliberately
looked for very different kinds of art venues. Each one of them offers
interesting conditions for showing art, but also has a very individual and
complicated history in relation to Berlin’s own history. So the locations
are either in the former West or former East side of Berlin, but there is
also this plot of land on the former death strip between the borders.
And in the back of our minds this already suggests how to find places
that might give conditions for the artists to think about their practice,
first of all. And in some cases these artists have been thinking about the
history of the buildings, which is both about Berlin and not. I mean, for
example, when an artist is responding to the Neue Nationalgalerie, and
to Mies van der Rohe and his history as an architect. This means that in
some way Berlin comes into the show without being the theme of the
show… that in the end it’s about Berlin.
Judging from the names released so far, there seems to be quite an
emphasis on artists who look at their own practice, or who look at the
practice of other artists through their work. Is that a thematic strand
of this show?
Berlin.indd 83 5/3/08 10:38:29
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