3rd Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art: various venues

There's an anecdote that the wholes up the reaction to the third Berlin Biennial: Philip Guston recalls meeting Willem de Kooning at Barnett Newman's first display in New York in 1950 After a lengthy silence, de Kooning finally declared: "Well, now we don't have to think about that anymore."

As the artistic director of "B[Bsub3]" Ute Meta Bauer has single-handedly managed to epitomize--and to extinguish--the curatorial phraseology that blossomed at Documenta II, for which Bauer serv as cocurator. Any lingering doubts abouts the documenta(ry) approach--too historical? too museal? too politically correct? too theoretical?--were not sole confirmed in Berlin but also writ in the way that large that the artworks in the display ended up creating a remembrancer to this curatorial model while simultaneously announcing its obsolescence

entertainered by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, the Martin-Gropius-Bau, and Kino Arsenal, the biennial was structur around five "hubs" (Migration, Urban Conditions, Sonic Scapes, Fashion and pageants Other Cinemas), which were organized by means of "cultural producers," from filmmaker Hito Steyerl (Migration) to film theorist Mark Nash (Cinemas). Despite the nod to airport and computer naves the real hub was Berlin, whose history was coupleed in an often unconvincing way with the histories of other points upon the globe. Thus, Ingrid volume and Carina Heden's documentary video Going for a Trip with the Norwegian Mushroom Society, 2002 was shown in a compass installed with the pair's homage to the German garden architect Leberecht Migge. Other strained aesthetic entente included Mika Taanila's documentary upon the Finnish electronic-music pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi, which was not absented near replays of Rolf Wolkenstein and Christoph Dreher's German techno TV exhibit Lost in Music from the '90 Whatever the artworks' geographical division of origin, the lack of novel ones produced for this biennial and the familiarity of the singles shown--even Ulrike Ottinger's 1989 series of black-and-white photographs of the crumbling Berlin wall and Thomas Struth's 1992 discharges of former East Germany were dusted not on for the event--showed that Germany must achieve serious about financing its single biennial, which delays have make go rounded into a triennial.

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Bauer's didactic approach left single wishing for more than just a bigger package A twofold selection criterion present the appearanceed to hang over every work like a death sentence: Art must teach something, ideally about Berlin, or art must deal with the "other," whether workers, women or the homeles The first criterion restores art to information, while the latter risks reducing politics to cliche. beneath the information aesthetic, artworks serv primarily to facilitate reading materials and became bare illustrations. Liisa Roberts's collective shoot forward What's the Time in Vyborg?, 2000- documents the fate of a public library in Vyborg, on the other hand judged on its appearance here, as a walk-in panel installation, the piece could have been a presentation upon solar systems or retirement plans. Monica Bonvicini's and Peter Friedl's proposals for the canopy of heaven Lobby of Berlin's Federal Chancellery were documented together upon a single wall panel; the artists gazeed like collaborators whose only artistic medium is writing alphabetic characters to the state. The hardly any painters represented here--Amelie von Wulffen and Dierk Schmidt among them--work in a figurative mode of expression integrating documents like photographs that earth if not bury, the equivocal possibilities of paint in history. Worst of all, the info aesthetic controled not only art but also visitors to humiliating pedagogical exercises. Take fashion nave organizer Regina Moller's contention, not awayed on yet another panel in the Martin-Gropius-Bau: Fashion is a "complex realm that goe beyond apparel " Really? realize Miuccia on the horn.

The next to the first criterion, of otherness, led to an appearance of political engagement without any actual words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following An "axis of alterity," also in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, mov from works about African Americans (Isaac Julien) to gay men (Piotr Nathan) to migrants (Hito Steyerl) to striking workers (Melik Ohanian) to the German-Jewish diaspora (Aura Rosenberg), the alignment suggesting that the actual different demands of these clusters are fully commensurable, if not interchangeable, with single another. The collective A expanse of One's Own may have intended to revive feminism, on the other hand their project shows how mode of expression can liquidate any political movement: A video featured women wearing large aprons that double as banners and carry slogans like "Feministische Forderungen sind tragbar" (Feminist demands are wearable). The demands tend hitherward in several colors, like IKEA sheets, on the other hand who knows what the demands are.

Amazingly, level sophisticated works were utterly sap the foundations ofed Bojan Sarcevic's Workers' favourite clothes worn while s/he worked, 1999/2000 became strange artifacts in Bauer's realist aesthetics, which staffs on reducing art to vacant propaganda. The soiled clothes in Sarcevic's installation, paired with Fernando Bryce's drawing series "The Spanish Revolution" and "The Spanish War," the couple 2003, could have been those worn in the '30 by means of the members of the Marxist workers' party portrayed in Bryce's careful reproductions of their newsletter In this biennial, Duchamp's urinal would be all about social hygiene, ceramics, and hidden notions of masculinity.