The Taboo-breaking 7th Berlin Biennale

When art does not ask questions anymore, is it still art?

by Marina Naprushkina

If one thought that art could break no more taboos, the 7th Berlin Biennale has proved the contrary to him or her. The art shown during the 7th Berlin Biennale gives answers instead of asking questions. It promptly sends art establishment to the field of non-art.

Nothing about this Biennale was as usual.

For me, the cooperation started already in Summer 2011 and it still takes place. First of all: an artist as a curator–this allowed us to spare a lot of time, which would have been dedicated to finding a common language. The communication and the lack of distance made the work so different from what I have experienced during my former exhibition projects.

The 7th Berlin Biennale cannot be seen only as an exhibition period or space. An art institution, the KW, became suddenly a political platform without having the necessary know-how to do so. In many situations one could observe the lack of experience or contacts. The projects were driven by the energy of the artists but also without the efforts of the Biennale-team their completion would not be possible. I felt, that art is taken seriously here–not only by the curators, but also by the team–some projects were liked, some other not, but there was not a hint of the often-observed professional indifference.

The idea of the exhibition is clear and simple; one does not need to have an art history background to understand the idea of art that can influence the reality with measurable effects. It is a paradox that exactly this idea got so many enemies in the art scene. Why? Do not we believe in our work anymore? Is it naïve and, what comes with it, unprofessional, to believe in the effectiveness of art?

I come from Belarus. In this country, let by the authoritarian regime, the censorship and self-censorship in art belong to the everyday life of an artist. One reaches the limits of the allowed quite fast. Only a few artists work on stretching those limits, the most of them retreat and try to build an autonomous space around themselves. And the president Alexander Lukashenko would be happy to completely remove art from the public space.

This is the reason, why I get irritated when here, in Western Europe, art gets confined without any clear reason.  When here, in the democratic and enlightened Germany, one can reach the limits of art so quickly. I seldom got such a clear demonstration where those limits lay, what is considered as good und right art (according to the art critics), as here, during the Biennale. Obviously also the engaged art has a given frame. Thrilling.

Is it possible, that the rejection of the Biennale for many is a result of their own disorientation? How else to explain the fact, that despite the calls for artists to take radical positions, the Biennale was dismissed as a provocation. Or another, not so rare statement, that artists that would like to do politics, should become politicians. Why cannot we stay here?

It seems, there is a clearly defined field of politics and so is the field of art. Does one need to leave the field of art, when he or she wants to shift something in a political sense? The headwind that has blown from the early days of planning of the 7th Berlin Biennale, states that all the projects deeply touched the real. It is astonishing, how much skepticism the concept of the exhibition and the “display” of Occupy-activists have gained. Nowadays many protest movements come to life, a fact that seems unnoticed in the art circles. Also the fusion of the political and artistic methods is being denied. The Biennale was not ahead of the society, but way ahead of the art establishment.

The art historian and curator Ekaterina Degot from Moscow wrote on the side of the comment on Documenta 13, that “literally everyone disliked the 7th Berlin Biennale. But the exhibition started important debates on nationalism an censorship, on activism and esthetics of the documentary, of the Catholic Church and, finally, about art.”

The aversion towards esthetical forms exposed the political conflicts. Should we wish for more?