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The Bucharest Biennial 2010 has a surprise in store: its German curator is just 23 years old. And he doesn’t think much of conventional biennials. Will he manage to develop the concept further?

These days, the word “Biennial“ is used so often in conjunction with art exhibitions that the two concepts have become virtually synonymous. But the word itself has nothing to do with art – it simply derives from the Latin “Biennium”, meaning every two years. The art world owes this expression used for modern art exhibitions to the poet Riccardo Selvatico who came up with it not in his role as a poet but rather in 1893 as mayor of Venice.

So it is no surprise that the Romanian capital Bucharest has its own “Bucharest Biennial”, or “BB” for short. The first, which was held in 2005, was BB1. 2010 is the year for BB4.The first amazing thing is the BB4 motto. It is called “Handlung”, the German for “action”. And that’s it. No English translation, no Romanian translation, just ‘Handlung’. Maybe this is down to the fact that the organisers of BB4 were looking for a German creator. And that is the second big surprise: they chose Felix Vogel, who lives in Berlin. If you look up his biography, you’ll see why it’s surprising – can it really be right? Felix Vogel was born in 1987, so is just 23 years old! And he was appointed two years ago when he was 21. The organisers realised one thing: “When he was appointed curator, Felix Vogel was probably the youngest biennial curator of all times ...”

Vogel himself is relaxed about it. When asked whether his age, his generation and the absence of any artistic heritage would influence him, he responds: “I imagine that my lack of artistic heritage was a very good reason for appointing me in the first place. I am not “tainted” by the art world, I under­stand it as a productive opportunity to look into different approaches to an exhibition of this kind ....”

In simple terms, his idea for BB4 is to intensify the interaction between art in the public domain and within its urban and political context in Bucharest. Which is why it is not only artists who have been invited to participate, but also anthropologists, architects and politicians. As well as this, the Biennial is not being held in a central venue, but at various sites across Bucharest, including a bank, the “Institute for Political Research” and the Geological Museum. It is a conscious transposition of art out of the ghetto-like context of museums and galleries into the public domain in order to generate reactions.

Participants include photographer Ion Grigorescu and Dutch installation artist Nicoline van Harskamp, who have both dealt with the subject of “Monitoring”, i.e. controlling the public, in their artistic works in the past. From Germany, there is Christine Mesner, who has produced installations, videos and drawings of processes inspired by colonialism, especially in Africa.

Curator Felix Vogel also has a slightly different view on the concept of a “Biennial” – he felt it needed redefining and has come up with a bold new formula: “Of course, the idea of a biennial started out in Vienna with a nationalist and more or less competition-oriented leaning, as a single venue for contemporary art, and this is no longer of the moment ...” Whether Vogel has successfully developed the concept further remains to be seen in BB4.

Dates
Bucharest Biennial 2010
to 25th July 2010
www.bucharestbiennale.org

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