It is the turn of Asia
Ten biennials and one fair force to watch the continent
By Javier HONTORIA
中譯摘要：
《這是亞洲的轉變─十個雙年展和一股強大的力量來發見這塊大陸》
上海將在2010年舉辦國際博覽會，儼然成為取代北京身為中國大陸文化首都的地位，而這次的上海雙年展更加奠定了其文化身份的重要性。(接下去幾段都是在討論上海雙年展，關於展覽主軸、展覽氛圍以及展點介紹。)
台北雙年展今年穩定地邁向它的第六次。今年是第六屆台北雙年展，有著很明確的政治議題的訴求，是會讓觀眾稍微花上心力去理解，但不會引起情緒的參與。無疑地，這個展覽提出了一種展示，它所呈現的結果是無懈可擊的嚴密。在這個由許多本地許多華麗的藝術作品所包圍展覽場中，這個展覽提供觀眾一個藝術界對於當今現實問題極深刻的的角度：氣候變遷、國際政策、遷移、原始社群的略減、藝術與機構之間的衝突關係。當然其中有一些展出的藝術計畫是超出了展覽所設定的政治訴求，例如Oliver Ressler 的展中展就很瑣碎與令人覺得過度的。
此次雙年展有一些有趣的作品，是將生活中的現實面放入作品內涵。大部分的作品都是特別製作，而這也是展覽成功的其中一個要素，這些作品包括了三名西班牙籍的藝術家。Lara希望保存淡水河中的某塊荒地，期待將其保育實現儘可能延長，另外，藝術家也敲掉位於市中心某一歷史建物的圍牆；Democracia則是在一個相當特別的空間─台北啤酒工場，呈現出其最新的錄像作品〈福利國系列〉；最後，Marcelo與Nuria則是參與了展中展「世界大一同」。
Still fresh the sweet memory of the Games and with the view put in the Universal Exhibition of 2010, Shanghai takes the relief from Peking like cultural capital of China with the inauguration of its biennial, Translocalmotion, and its fair of art, Shanghai Contemporary. But the city is not the unique open front today in Asia. Other nine biennials have abierto to their doors this week.
Julian Heynen, director of the K21 de D5usseldorf is, next to the Dutch Henk Slager and the Chinese Zhang Qing, the commissioner of this Biennial and do not hide the difficulties to which they have faced to contribute an own reading on a subject that came tax from the highest official instances. The used term, Translocalmotion, allude to the trepidante mobility of a scene like the one of Shanghai, subject to constant transformations. But this mobility is not fitted strictly to the migratory flows, so rotten subject in the art of today, but to displacements of all order, or of passers-by, vacacionales exits or those that occur in the daily space. The exhibition is born from the consideration of Renmin Square, the main place of the city and in which is the museum, like zone of conflict and axis of high-priority transit. Raised envelope which was a race course constructed in 1863 by the English, today it is a landscaped park laid out by institutional buildings like the Great Theater, the Museum of Urbanism, the own Museum of Art and the Museum of Shanghai, that keeps many from jewels of the millenarian Chinese tradition. It is, therefore, a place of encounter of noticeable cultural accent under which one hides, in a colossal underground commercial center, the desbocada version more of contemporary Capitalism. The paradox is amazing. In Renmin Square a marriage of convenience between the present Chinese regime and the Capitalism coexists, that is as stable as unusual. Both they mitigate the excesses of the other. And the base is this one on which the biennial formed by 60 artists is raised of who half is Asian, selected by Zhang Qing, and the other half western.
The exhibition articulates about three that can be seen in the three floors of the museum and in the outside. The public interventions have been an only relative success by the refusal of the authorities to allow the artists to work in the Renmin place. Instead of that, these have had to conform to showing their works in the surrounding space of the museum. It would not be a relative success but true dislate if the refusal of the authority did not have the enormous conceptual openwork that it has and that continues shedding light on some of the still effective limitations in the different forms from expression, among them by all means the artistic one. Thus, one of the best works of the Biennial is the one of the Dutch Jeanne Van Heeswijk, that went out to ask the viandantes for its dreams and illusions for the future of its city. The transcriptions of those illusions have been printed on red t-shirts that hang of the museum as if a commerce it was.
The exhibition is dominated by an atmosphere of absolute correction, with a documentary profile very marked in many Chinese artists and with a more poetic and metaphorical air in the works of the western artists. Beyond trying to fragment the space in three different sections, I believe that this one is the most showy division. He is peculiar to verify the different forms to come near to the subject in and others. The Chinese fit to the proposed motto of an almost literal way whereas they make the western ones it from one more a more abstract position, with artists - this one is one of the failures of the exhibition - almost exclusively of the Central European surroundings. Only there is Brazilian and a Mexican. He surprises the absence of French, English, Italian or Spanish artists (no, this he does not surprise) but also draws African attention the absence of then something will have to say the artists coming from large cities like urban Cairo, Lagos or Kinshasha on mobility and flows.
If the correction is the tone of the Biennial, another thing is what distills the fair of art Shanghai Contemporary, that is already the referring one of the Asian market. It is a deprived project, and note. In this second edition, the fair plays an important role between the Asian collecting but I have my doubts on the possible success of the European galleries (eight Spaniards) and Americans, who rather come to see what cooks by these latitudes. Many come to create the first connections, perhaps they try to interchange some artist, and more ambitious others consider abrir a space here, as it already begins to be habitual in many western galleries. In the corridors the stridency was the dominant note, especially visible in some pieces of the space dedicated to the projects, that are the verbena of all the fairs.
But the artistic attention does not reside exclusively in Shanghai in this Asian September. Busan, Taipei, Honk-Kong, Singapore, Gwangju or Seoul also have inaugurated their biennials. The one of Taipei one is of the most consolidated, now in his sixth edition and this year have been organized by the Taiwanese Manray Hsu and the Turk Vasif Kortun. There is a clear political positioning here that it demands certain effort to the spectator, who does not have to wait for great emotions. But there is no doubt that it enters the proposed expositions and the final result of the exhibition is an unquestionable coherence. A route by the rooms of the Museum of Beautiful Arts of Taiwan offers a dense perspective of the today problems. The climatic change, the speculating vortex, the silly thing of the international policies, immigration, the decline of the primitive societies, the production systems or the conflicting relation between art and institution are some of the subjects that deal - here with coherence, I insist, and in depth - although there are some projects which they exceed in his political proposals, like the selection that the German Oliver Ressler has realised in a section of the exhibition that, under the title To world where many worlds fit, is panfletaria and exhausting.
There are interesting projects that are born to live the place and that put the accent on the reality of the context. A high percentage of the works has been produced specifically, which is one of the successes of the exhibition, that includes three Spanish projects. Lara Almarcegui will preserve a small island of the Danshui river to avoid that it falls in speculating claws and also has demolished the wall from entrance to a house of downtown; Democracy presents/displays its last video, Welfare State, in an extraordinary space of a beer factory, and, finally, Marcelo Expósito and Nuria Vila, that participate in the section of Ressler.
http://www.elcultural.es/version_papel/ARTE/23904/Es_el_turno_de_Asia
http://universes-in-universe.de/car/taipei/eng/2008/index.htm