A workplace mishap in the culture industry was the starting point for a nomadic exhibition project referencing living conditions in the bombed-out Chechen capital, Grozny, which are still dire. After stopping off in Paris, Brussels, Riga, Vancouver and Milan, the no-budget enterprise with the spectacular label of »Emergency Biennale« has now set up its suitcases as a »special project« at the tenth Istanbul Biennale.

The project comprises a densely compressed panorama of mainly small-scale works, sometimes presented in an extremely rough and improvised fashion, by nearly one hundred artists, including Ruth Barabas, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Francis Alÿs, Sylvie Blocher, Alfredo Jaar, Lucie Orta, Yang Fudong, Sislej Xhafa, Hank Bull, Ahmet Ögüt or Bane Cennetoglu. This highly diverse puzzle, which is made up of hurriedly montaged maps, a range of visualisations of victim scenarios combined with an utterly bewildering wealth of videos and a macrocosm of artistic installations that sometimes merge seamlessly into each other, can be grasped primarily on the associative level, although, bringing its influence to bear from the periphery of the event, it is likely to add further dynamism to the political-emancipatory programming thrust of this year’s Istanbul Biennale, directed by Hou Hanru.

At the same time the sprawling, tangled ensemble of artistic works poses fundamental questions as to the legibility of this kind of coded socio-political exhibition content, which mostly builds on the basis of a complicated system of social references, combined with references taking a critical look at the whole question of representation. This aesthetic of visual pointers and footnotes emerges in turn from the way in which the travelling exhibition is constantly growing, which is rooted in a thoroughly plausible aspect of its concept. As was the case for each of the preceding stops, the list of participating artists was also extended for the Istanbul presentation – in dialogue with the local co-curator Ceren Erdem.

However, in terms of the »Emergency Biennale«’s message, the really decisive aspect is that all the artists send a second version of their works - all of which can easily be transported in a jacket or a suitcase - to Grozny, where the mirror version of the project is to form the foundation of a future museum. The somewhat glamorous and yet inflationary term »Biennale« in the project title may help make this a more noticeable signal, but ultimately tends instead to open up a critical-ironic reference to the conflict-ridden history of how this explosive project came into being. It was actually initiated as a consequence of insurmountable ideological disputes in the run-up to the first Moscow Biennale in 2005. Back then, curator Evelyne Jouanno (Paris/San Francisco) – in conjunction with Petersburg curator Olesya Turkina – had been invited to organise a special project in the prominent New Tretyakov Gallery. However, when a focus on practices of resistance in contemporary art emerged as a possible topic, and considerations on the cultural situation in Chechnya were also introduced, the project was sucked into the mills of state and religious regulatory machinery and disappeared from the Biennale concept without a sound, as Evelyne Jouanno recalls; in response she organised the »Emergency Biennale« in Paris’ Palais de Tokyo together with a parallel presentation in Grozny.

As the symbolic nucleus of what is actually a fictitious biennale, the highly political »Emergency Biennale« seems to be sited in an absolutely ideal-typical location in its current context in Istanbul. In his theoretical statement, Hou Hanru recalls that the Biennale in the mega-city on the Bosporus was created as a docking station to connect up with international debates in the late 1980s and pointedly describes the global political scenario that forms the backdrop to the formulation of contemporary discourses as the era of global wars. However, conflicts incessantly presented in the media, such as that between Israel and the Palestinians or the occupation of Iraq by the USA, make up only one part of his line of argument. As a leitmotif Hou Hanru refers to Vijay Prashad’s thesis of the end of a third world that can be localised in geographical terms, as presented in his socio-historical analysis »The Darker Nations«1. Taking the place of the previous geography, which was divided up along colonial lines, all urban centres now produce their own third-world zones. The ensuing lines of conflict however also contain potential for specific bottom-up projects of democratisation and modernisation, Hou Hanru notes.

It is precisely at this point that the visionary potential of the »Emergency Biennale« project dovetails with the substantive framing of the Istanbul Biennale, which has adopted a clear socio-political stance within the round of art biennales seeking to win hegemony over meaning. Its vast media presence means that it serves as a conduit for topics in contemporary art, with its impact extending far beyond debates immanent to art. That means it is located in a cultural field in which a discourse-based democracy can take the place of the secularisation process supported by the Kemalist military in Turkey.

Over and above this, the Istanbul Biennale strives to pick up on the dialogue with current urban processes of change in the mega-city on the Bosporus. That is why the exhibition venues chosen by Hou Hanru are in places that are particularly significant for architectural modernity and for Turkey’s modernisation and secularisation. This approach, which encompasses numerous artistic interventions in the Kemal Attatürk Center and involves the newly constructed university and museum campus santralistanbul on the Golden Horn, leads audiences right into the Anatolian section of this topographically fissured city of twelve million, which was also one of the way stations of the »Emergency Biennale«.

The Kad?köy Public Education Centre, Kadiköy Halk Egitim Merkezi (KAHEM) is located in Üsküdar in the midst of the hyper-commercialised urban space. The restrainedly elegant building, constructed in the Modernist vein in 1939 by Rüknettin Güney (1904–1970), and familiar to locals as a venue for events, was integrated into the Istanbul Biennale precisely because of this symbolic charge. It is an architectonic and functional symbol of education and enlightenment and thus also of secularisation in Kemalist Turkey. The building is now offering a temporary refuge to the »Emergency Biennale«, which is presented in a communal shower room on one of the lower floors. The location and atmosphere are reminiscent of the mood in a bunker.

Several presentation concepts that inject striking energy into each other are superimposed in this highly dramatic exhibition. In the first instance the staging induces viewers to adopt an associative reading of the overwhelming number of individual works. Rather catchy pieces offer a way in to this process, such as, for example, a work on weapons by Kriss Salmanis, photos of soldiers with a dog in front of houses in ruins in Grozny by Alja Bley, or a photo poster by Marc Boucherot with the top bad guys of the world. As a whole however, particularly in this location, the project functions as a system of references to conflict hotspots in the world of real-politik, staged as an extensive presentation, as an ensemble of gestures hurriedly brought into play, supplemented by extensive name-dropping – an aspect that may appear problematic. However, the »Emergency Biennale«, whose presentation style has so far varied as a function of the institutions in which it was shown, only seems to manage to assume the demonstration-like character to which it aspires through this pooling of material. Its impertinent juxtaposition of material which, seen from the perspective of art theory – and also of politics –, sometimes does not belong together, seems to offer a subversive take on an overly linear understanding of enlightenment. This can definitely give rise to misunderstandings, as was reflected by artists such as Daniel Guzmán or Seamus Farrell in an actionist performance in Grozny, where they set about devising a new interpretation of some works. In the meantime the »Emergency Biennale in Chechnya« gave a critical twist to the whole biennale principle.

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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