The 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, curated by New York-based collective DIS, seeks to “materialize the digital condition and the paradoxes that increasingly make up the world in 2016”: as the curators explain, “the virtual as the real, nations as brands, people as data, culture as capital, wellness as politics, happiness as GDP”. Titled The Present in Drag, the Biennale explores the way we perceive time in a hyper-corporatized world. If the future feels like the past – familiar, predictable, immutable – it is the present that is unknowable, unpredictable and incomprehensible – forged by a persistent commitment to a set of fictions.
Pariser Platz has been conceived by DIS as the Biennale point of departure. An iconic tourist trap, it is the site where Michael Jackson once dangled his baby from his Adlon Hotel balcony in a private-public performance that anticipated the throngs of selfie sticks that now frame every historical site in Berlin. This square is surrounded by largely unseen networks of corporate and national power, such as Lockheed Martin, Allianz Stiftungsforum, DZ Bank and BP Europa SE, alongside the US and French embassies.
The Biennale takes place in different locations throughout the city of Berlin, each releasing what DIS describes as a “whiff of contemporary ‘paradessence’ (paradox + essence)”: the Akademie der Kunste, containing a mini gym for weekly guided workouts, an installation of image-based works by different artists in large lightboxes (LIT) and a virtual reality work by Jon Rafman (View of Pariser Platz, 2016); the ESMT European School of Management and Technology, showing an installation by Simon Denny and Linda Kantchev (Blockchain Visionaries, 2016) and a work by Dubai collective GCC (دﺩرﺭوﻭبﺏ ٕاﺍﯾﻳجابﯿﻴة / Positive Pathways (+), 2016); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, including videos by Cécile B. Evans (What the Heart Wants, 2016) and Josh Kline (Crying Games, 2015), alongside an installation with performance by Amalia Ulman (PRIVILEGE, 2016); The Feuerle Collection; the Blue-Star sightseeing boat of Reederei Riedel, with an installation by Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic (There’s a word I’m trying to remember, for a feeling I’m about to have (a distracted path toward extinction, 2016).
The 9th Berlin Biennale has also a soundtrack, produced by Ashland Mines (Total Freedom) in partnership with The Vinyl Factory and The Store. Originated from collaborations with artists (among the others, Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Isa Genzken, Juliana Huxtable and Hito Steyerl), it will be released throughout the summer of 2016 as an eight part series.
The exhibition continues in the online realm: Fear of Content is the Biennale’s official digital platform. Taking its title from a seminal essay by Rob Horning, the website materializes as a feed of essays, interviews and digital projects.
The Present in Drag
9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art
Curated by DIS
Various locations, Berlin
Through September 18