The Biennial Condition: On Contemporaneity and the Episodic
Friday 7 October, 5-6pm
Saturday 8 October, 10-6pm
Venue: The Johnson Foundation Auditorium – John Lennon School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University Duckinfield Street, Liverpool, L3 5RD, United Kingdom
This conference gathers researchers, curators, artists and writers to explore the Biennial form as the site for the production of contemporaneity in art and exhibition making. How does the transnational Biennial format organise the world as an amalgamation of different cultures, operating episodically across times and places, in the dynamic relation between the local and the universal? How, and for whom do these biennials operate, under what conditions?
Participants include Terry Smith, Elmgreen & Dragset, Marina Fokidis, Juliana Engberg, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Geoff Cox, Jacob Lund, Verina Gfader, Anne Kølbæk Iversen, Francesco Manacorda, Sally Tallant, Raimundas Malašauskas and convened by Joasia Krysa.
PROGRAMME
Friday October 7
15.00 – 16.00 Cains Brewery, Stanhope St, Liverpool L8 5XJ
Welcome by Sally Tallant, Director of Liverpool Biennial.
INTRODUCTION – On Simultaneity in the Episodic, with Francesco Manacorda and Raimundas Malaŝauskas, Curatorial Faculty of Liverpool Biennial 2016.
The talk will explore the notion of simultaneity as opposed to linear narration as the grounding principle of the episodic structure of Liverpool Biennial 2016. They will expand on how the exhibition was designed using polyphony, multiverses, contingency, time travel and repetition as display mechanisms and narratological tools.
17.00 – 18.00 LJMU Auditorium, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA
Welcome and Introduction by Joasia Krysa, Curatorial Faculty of Liverpool Biennial 2016.
KEYNOTE – Biennials in the Contemporary Composition, Terry Smith, University of Pittsburgh and the European Graduate School. Introduced and moderated by Jacob Lund, Aarhus University.
18.00 – 19.00 LJMU Auditorium, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA
Drinks reception and launch of book series, The Contemporary Condition, published by Sternberg Press.
Saturday October 8
10.30 – 11.00 Coffee at LJMU, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA
11.00 – 12.30 LJMU Auditorium, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA
PANEL ONE – The Contemporary Condition: Key Concepts
Geoff Cox, Jacob Lund, Anne Kølbæk Iversen, Verina Gfader, Aarhus University. Introduced and moderated by Geoff Cox.
In a form that reflects the object of study of their research project The Contemporary Condition, speakers will introduce 12 key concepts: contemporary contemporary; chronophobia; random access memory; real-time; presentism; arrested movement; migration; algo-rhythm; pre-acceleration; iconomy; time stamp; loop.
12.30 – 13.30 Lunch Break
13.30 – 14.30 LJMU Auditorium, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA
KEYNOTE – Elmgreen & Dragset, Curators of the 15th Istanbul Biennial 2017. Introduced and moderated by Joasia Krysa.
15.00 – 16.30 LJMU Auditorium, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA
PANEL TWO – Biennialisation
Marina Fokidis, Head of Artistic Office, Documenta 14, Athens; Juliana Engberg, Artistic Director of European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017; Simon Njami, Artistic director 12th Dakar Biennale.
Introduced and moderated by Sally Tallant, Director of Liverpool Biennial.
The panel includes speakers who have been or who are involved in a diverse range of biennials and similar periodic exhibition events discuss the specific conditions of their production/reception to register their distinctive spatio-temporal characteristics.
16.30 – 17.00 LJMU Auditorium, 70 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UA
General discussion moderated by Geoff Cox, Joasia Krysa, Jacob Lund, Sally Tallant.
17.00 Close of conference.
Admission: FREE but requires registration