The Politics of Spectacle: The Gwangju Biennale and the Asian Century

As can be expected, organizing a large international exhibition with global ambition requires some proximity to various scenes of artistic production scattered in near and far-flung corners of the globe.An important requirement for the curator or researcher working to know these artistic scenes, entails being equally alert to the dark murmurings in the cultural and political scenarios that are adjacent to the spaces where the activities of art occur.For example, to reach artists working in Havana from New York necessitated passing through Toronto, thus exposing one such political scenario, namely that artists and curators living on each side of the dividing walls of the U.S./Cuba ideological separation must constantly negotiate.My several trips to Cuba for more than a decade have invariably involved the kind of triangulation that requires passing through way stations such as Montego Bay, Mexico City, the Bahamas, and Toronto.My recent visit was no different.In all these tripsfrom Havana to Caracas, Singapore to Berlin, Seoul to Beijing, Mexico City to New York, Cairo to Mumbai, Sydney to London, Kuala Lumpur to Istanbul, or taking the ferry from Tangier to Tarifa-one witnesses not so much a change of geocultural agendas, as much as witness, especially as the trip to Havana shows, the accelerating ideological irrelevance to which many of these diverse geopolitical spaces once subscribed.During this period, I spent most of the time preparing for the 7th Gwangju Biennale by visiting artists; speaking with writers and filmmakers; visiting galleries, art schools, and assorted cultural brokers.Otherwise, I lie awake in hotel rooms, many of which appear no different in design, ownership, and amenities than the ones in

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.