Spaces of Utopia Under the Theoretical Scrutiny of Post-Marxist Gaze

The thick volumes of biennial catalogues inspire awe and anxiety at the same time since beyond the enjoyment of the richness that they represent for their readers and fortunate attendees of their bi-, tri-, or quinqu-ennial events that take more after elaborate theatrical shows, which are on many occasions incorporated into the programming of biennials as distributed institutions, than they do just an exhibition in a white cube of gallery or museum.

Here lies the conundrum of the expanded field of representation that Lefebvre may help to answer since his thesis on production of space can prove to be critical beyond the reception it has received at the time of its publication or translation into other languages it being understood that these events in their majority have happened before the 1990s decade.

Of similar importance would be the unexplored quadrants of the theoretical space that Guy Debord charts in his writings as he addresses the society of the spectacle in its relation to the transition from the first to the second modernity. In his interpretation I see the symptom of the transition to the second modernity rather than accurate description of its principles of operation since I perceive Debord's condemnation of social uses of spectacle in what amounts to late modern society, or the first modernity in my terminology, as the pressure that the contradictions of modernity exercise on its institutions to adopt the loops of reflexivity into their normal operation.

It is exactly this surfeit of complexity as a matter of course that captures my imagination as I develop my ethnographic understanding of second modernity as it manifests itself in biennials, museums, and cultural districts. In this regard it appears important to leave room for realization that the second modernity is less the process of temporal succession then the outcome of what is variously referred to as internal contradictions of capitalism, spatial fix of the next cycle of capitalist restructuring, or change in the mode of accumulation.

Thus dissociated from the vestiges of teleological thinking, the discussion of the second modernity allows for predictive thinkers, cities, or spaces to come into their own in providing both models and prototypes for developments that are at a temporal distance from their historically situated works, cultures, and manifestations. In this frame of reference one can readily appreciate the place of Paris as paradigmatic city of the nineteenth century or even twentieth.

With regard to my theoretical concerns, I see museums, biennials, and urban complexes as those utopic spaces that under the conditions of the second modernity can hold genuine promise for positive alternatives to come true.

Documenta's Relevance to the International Art Biennials as Instances of Dealing with Artistic Archives

From the perspective of Chinese contemporary art museums, Documenta's and other biennials' development over last century can appear distant. However, the recent trans-nationalization of the gallery and museum institutions of the country that until a generation ago was still considered an opponent of the Western bloc, China, together with other Asian countries, undergoes the process of re-evaluation it its cultural archive with the purpose of making it readable on a global scale.

The influx of the curators from around the worlds to the projects that numerous museums in mainland China, as well as in its major cities, heralds a process of coming to terms with difficult past that these institutions have inherited as they confront radical change in the conditions of what can be possible in exhibiting, commenting, and curating. This period of relative freedom finds echo in the situation in which Documenta in Kassel, Germany, has started its operation in 1955.

Half a century later this five-year biennial has grown into truly global phenomenon that not everyone hails in positive terms. The shadows of imperialistic past haunt the intentions to encompass in a single urban location the breadth of the contemporary moment. Whether the problematics of staging of the artworks that have challenged successive exhibiting and curating committees of Documenta completely displace the question of artistic archive into the theoretical shadows of its international exhibitions remains important to the extent that there are lessons that international biennials elsewhere can draw from it.

Every biennial in its media presence, list of participants, and institutional relevance of its themes has the international dimension in-built into its mode of operation. At the same time, the comparative perspective has to recognize the process whereby the international art biennial has turned into institution with its distinct set of expectations, forms of support, and relevance to kindred discourses that bring every international art exhibition into communication with all others that share with it positions on the relational field of artistic events.

That this field stretches from the local to the global scale speaks of the transformation in the large context in which artworks and the spaces where they become public are frequently called to reflect, to act upon, or to make a statement about. Even where the discussions around modernism, avant-garde movements, and multiple reactions to these seem foreign, the quality of exploration of what portends to be shared condition remains promising as societies the world over attempt to come to terms with risks, flows, and imaginaries that know no borders.

In this respect the coincidence of the international art exhibition with the change in the mode of capitalist regulation may prove more fortuitous than strictly causal as so many spatially and temporally contingent factors are at play in each instance where centers and peripheries, post-colonies and post-empires, and linguas francas and vernaculars meet.