Biennialogy

 

The recently published 'Biennial Reader' is the first anthology devoted exclusively to the study of the 'biennial phenomenon' that came to dominate the  field of contemporary art the past two decades. The book itself was the outcome of  a 2009 conference on biennials  that took place in Bergen, Norway from 17 - 20 September.

The editors, Elena Filipovic, Marieke van Hal and Solveig Øvstebø, suggest that a systematic study on biennials appears  today as urgent as never before. To that end, they somewhat provocatively propose that a new field called biennialogy should appear, in order to  inaugurate a study on the biennial phenomenon in a more rigorous way (as there is 'museology' for instance). 'Biennialogy', as I understand it, will not only aim to 'generate a body of knowledge' about the biennial, but it will also deal with the particular specificities of the  study of the 'biennial'; say with all the peculiarities that a multi-sited ethnographic research on biennials might have, given their enormous spatial distribution and qualitative variations. The  formation of this new 'field', is for the authors particularly crucial for the discourse of contemporary art today, as it is also crucial for more 'traditional' cultural studies, in order - as they say- “to understand something crucial about our culture today”. That is because, the biennial seems to be gradually complementing the museum as an institutional site for promoting  and producing knowledge about contemporary art:

If it can be said that for more than a century museum and gallery exhibitions have largely been “the medium through which most art becomes known,” then it is the biennial exhibition that has arguably since proved to be the medium through which most contemporary art comes to be known...Indeed, biennials have become, in the span of just a few decades, one of the most vital and visible sites for the production, distribution, and generation of public discourse around contemporary art.

But the question that springs up spontaneously is: what exactly counts as a 'biennial'? Since the term is not copyrighted, it can be used by the respective festival organizers at will.  There is no prior agreement on what will eventually count as a 'biennial' and what will not, and that may cause some confusion to prospective researcher. There are several issues at stake  concerning the 'biennial' tag that need to be looked at.

Is the 'periodicity' attribute for example that makes  a festival 'biennial'?If that is the case, any recurrent festival can be called biennial, even a periodic car expo. It surely needs to be more than that. If we decide that it is only  contemporary art exhibitions that fall under the biennial umbrella, then how will dance or architecture biennials be called since they are not 'biennials' anymore? By narrowing down the 'recurring art festivals' to 'recurring contemporary art festivals' another problem of etymology arises. Is Documenta -that goes on every five years- a biennial, or are the several triennials legitimized to be called 'biennial'? The authors from their part, are in that respect are quite clear :

Often grandiose in scale, sometimes dispersed across several locations in a city, at times locally embedded through site-specific commissions while being global in ambition, and often involving discursive components such as symposia, extensive publications, or even accompanying journals alongside a group show featuring, for the most part, a panoramic view of a new generation of artists, “the biennial” has become shorthand for many wildly different recurring exhibitions of contemporary art, including triennials and even Documenta, which occurs every five years.

But then, why set aside the 'recurring contemporary art festivals' and go as far as to complement it with the 'biennial', and indeed suggest a separate area of study called 'biennialogy'? In other words, is the conceptual encirclement of the term 'biennial' really necessary or is it just another form of the buzzword bubble peculiar to today's tag-mania?

Time will obviously show. Necessarily though, something has to be named, has to be 'tagged', in order to qualify as an analytical category. Since the 'biennial' format has become the dominant format for contemporary art display these days, then  at  least for analytical purposes the 'biennialogy' argument seems to hold water.