Text by Robin Peckham
The 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture (not to be confused with the similarly named but politically distinct 2009 Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture on the southern side of the border) opened yesterday in the environs of the Shenzhen Civic Center. Extraordinarily distributed and only rarely thematically coherent, it seems that nearly everyone has both a few good words and a few shrugs for the work on display. Observers coming from an art background will be disappointed by the lack of imagination evident in much work belonging to the realm of architecture proper, but it seems here that even projects placed by artists operate within a relatively narrow framework of curatorial understanding. The architecture biennial is a unique site on which a number of forces seem to converge; this year, with artist-designer-filmmaker-critic Ou Ning as primary curator, Shenzhen presents a test case for the future of the biennial model. Any such exhibition, be it dedicated to art or architecture, is generally related to urban space–indeed, many of these events are founded by municipal governments in an attempt to boost tourism and cultural economies. For the same reasons, high-profile internationally-operating curators are often invited to organize these exhibitions, and because these individuals work through similar networks and methodologies, we have the emergence of what critic Jerry Saltz has referred to as “the curator problem”: a tendency towards installation and video art that is either “about” something or “refers” to something else.
A biennial of architecture and urbanism makes these goals explicit, presenting itself as something akin to the limit case of the biennial model. Works included must be documentary, analytical, or “about” the city itself. There is no place here for art about art; instead, art must be about architecture. Virtually everything in Shenzhen falls under the rubric of installation, and often includes text and/or video. Painting, long considered the fetish object of art history, is entirely absent, and photography is only present in several documentary segments. But in a moment when architects seem to be moving further away from the design of environment and space and in the direction of installation and monumental public sculpture, what does it mean to abandon the less sensible sides of artistic production? Is there some way to integrate architectural practice and curatorial art into a larger vision of urbanism that maintains a certain degree of uselessness?
Of course, this is not to say that there is no aesthetic work in the Shenzhen biennial. Tor Lindstrand and Marten Spangberg’s “Four Ecologies of International Festival,” despite the damning words of the project curator in the official description of the work, seems to be about nothing at all: the artists present a site for the social activity known as the party, which then takes on its own cultural life in each of the cities in which it is presented. In Shenzhen, they give away t-shirts printed with the name of the city, operate a bar at which drinks can only be ordered by desired color, and play edited karaoke videos projected on the rear wall. This work negotiates space but refuses to be about space, initiating an activity that cannot be constrained or defined by the accompanying analytical text. The “Bug Dome” created by WEAK! Architects provides a similar space, but their project carries a certain ethical baggage related to ruralism, resource use, and humanitarian construction. This complex work will be discussed in greater length in another post at a later date.