Arte e Educação - Fundação Bienal do Mercosul

(Navarra) to commemorate his presence at the
1957 São Paulo Biennial, said that perhaps Otieza
was a glaring exception. At the end of the text
Badiola said “perhaps now would be a good
moment to reflect on the exhibition routines in
which many contemporary artists are involved.
Exhibitions, subject to professionalized,
bureaucratic conformity, and often addressing
external commitments and not the real and
intimate communicative requirements, have on
numerous occasions ended up being converted
into routine and conventional responses”.
That is how I see the situation we find ourselves
in: the predominance of a cultural model based
above all on the spectacularisation of subjective
production, on the vulgarisation of discourse, the
decontextualisation of works and their subsequent
commercialisation.
As I have said, the proliferation of museums,
centres of contemporary culture and art events –
biennials, fairs, commemorations, capitals of
culture – are above all concerned with a utilitarian
vision of culture, which largely functions as a huge
showcase for passive – or active – consumption,
an element for tourist promotion, urban
redevelopment or open political propaganda, and
not as an authentic means of social construction.
In November 2006 the second BIACS (Seville
Biennial of Contemporary Art) was finalised,
which, under the subtitle of “Lo Desacogedor.
Escenas fantasmas de la sociedad global” (The
Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in Global Society)
and directed by Okwui de Enwezor, the director
of the 2002 Documenta 11, found no difficulty
in raising issues such as war, hunger, disease or
death in a model of contemporary representation
that drew the clichés of the most conventional
artistic internationalism to their final conclusion;
the monumentalisation of the aesthetic
experience; the construction of “fascinating”
spaces that developed strategies of spectator
seduction and alienation; the negation of any
possibility of interaction beyond simple passive
and decontextualised contemplation (I am not
referring to contemplation as one of the more
traditional forms of access to knowledge, through
the calm interpretation and analysis of form) the
neutralisation of criticism – the repeated attempts
at suppressing the PRPC (Platform for reflection
on Cultural Policy) 15 , and of course hiding and
denying any kind of information and
documentation allowing a change in citizen
behaviour and their relationship with the works
on display. That is the customary procedure when
exhibitions conform to institutional interests and
not to the real needs of the artists.
Fortunately, things are changing. Academic and
institutional authority is beginning to falter as
more networks of citizens begin to organise their
own information. The Web 2.0 phenomenon is
just the tip of the iceberg in a new system of
communication formed as a self-generated
alternative by citizens themselves. This form of
understanding horizontal communication
fundamentally coincides with the philosophy of
hackerism and media-activism in general.
New structures of organisation of knowledge are
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