The 1997 Johannesburg Biennale starts this week. We examine some of the issues and some of the debates around this hugely important international cultural event
Brenda Atkinson
If your urban wanderings are punctuated over the next few weeks by new and intriguing billboards; if your bus-stop of choice starts to carry information about whites, blacks, women, and lost others; if you bump into international celebrities and their families, dont be alarmed, be grateful.
From Sunday, October 10, Johannesburgs urban landscape will throb to an unfamiliar beat, as thousandsof local and international visitors begin to throng, not to rugby stadiums or cricket fields, but to galleries, cinemas, streets, theatres and all-night parties.
The occasion is the public opening of the second Johannesburg Biennale, the largest exhibition of contemporary art on the African continent. Titled Trade Routes: History and Geography, this years event will bring together an unprecedented network of international culturati, helping to put South Africa on the global cultural map. So if you think youre the next hottest artist out of Africa, go and schmooze yourself silly. If your ambitions are less predatory, theres an impressive cultural feast to be sampled, and you have four months in which to do it.
Trade Routes has broken from the grand tradition of international biennales by electing not to represent international artists through national pavilions. Instead, artistic director Okwui Enwezor has chosen this years theme to interrogate the validity of the concept of nationalism. As such, Trade Routes will not be waxing effusive on the comfortable politics of the global melting pot, but will approach issues of identity and territory by questioning the possible meanings of recent shifts in global boundaries.
Enwezor, a Nigerian-born, New York-based writer, critic, and curator, has also forgone the monomania of the lone artistic director hes pulled in six co-curators to structure the main exhibitions, two of which will take place in Cape Town.
With 84 artists, Alternating Currents, at the Electric Workshop in Newtown, is the largest biennale exhibition. Curated by Enwezor and Octavio Zaya, it explores what might be behind the smokescreen of current global politics, and features a crop of South Africas and the worlds most celebrated contemporary artists.
The Workshop is also the venue for Sundays launch, with a premiere performance of my hiccups continue to growl … by South African dancer/choreographer Robin Orlin an artist not known to soothe the jangled nerves of audiences out for a nice evening at the theatre.
Colin Richards is a well-known South African critic and academic whose exhibition Graft will be on view in Cape Town at the South African National Gallery. Graft focuses on the work of some surprisingly young South African artists living inside and outside South Africa, who look at the possible interpretations of the term graft.
Other exhibition venues are Cape Towns Castle, the Rembrandt van Rijn Gallery in Newtown, MuseumAfrica, and the Johannesburg Art Gallery.
If you get tired of galleries, a series of projects is planned that will extend the scope of the biennale into the local urban fabric, weaving into streets, on to billboards, bus shelters, magazines and the internet. Paris-based artist Lucy Orta will work in collaboration with local communities to produce collective wear garments part of an ongoing project involving cities around the world.
Hong Kong, etc., Hou Hanrus exhibition at the Rembrandt Gallery, will incorporate a 110- page website, including contributions from renowned urban theorists Rem Koolhaas and Saskia Sassen.
On Thursday October 9 the South African premiere of Kini and Adams opens a film festival that comprises over 50 films from, among others, South Africa, France, Brazil, and the United States. Running over a six- week period, the festival will take place at Ster Moribo, as well as the newly revamped Rex cinema formerly the Seven Arts in Norwood. Theres also a series of free screenings of films from Portuguese speaking countries taking place at the Sab Centenary Centre.
Finally, a comprehensive education programme, geared to meet the needs of a diverse public, will be run to encourage students and the general public to enhance their understanding of contemporary art.
Workshops, seminars, trained guides, and a printed education guide will help all visitors negotiate the sometimes tricky territory of Trade Routes.
That art should have as much status as sport in South Africa will undoubtedly be open to heated debate for decades to come: boeings might not fly over the Newtown precinct or the Cape Town castle in celebratory circles; Nelson Mandela might not put on his favourite Picasso print shirt to open the proceedings. And biennales are never exempt from criticism and a certain amount of political friction.
But, as Enwezor himself has pointed out, art is not about instant gratification; its about the ongoing engagement of people with their context, and its durable. With over 165 artists from 63 countries sharing the particularities of culture in the next few months, those games with balls might just begin to lose their edge.