13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

Premises

The large presence of foxes within the inner city of Berlin is a starting point for thinking through the 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art as an investigation of fugitivity. The encounter with urban foxes has been described by poets as presencing, a spinning in place, delaying in the fox’s presence for a time. The mind encounters otherness, but does not move on to associative thought chains—or prejudice. This encounter has less to do with the human identifying with the fox, but of entering a new sphere of equality with it.

This proposal for the 13th edition of the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art is a working concept of fugitivity understood as the cultural ability of a work of art to set its own laws, in the face of lawful violence. This illegality, this foxing, this traversing of laws that are unjust, sometimes happens within the imaginary a joke opens, or are glimpsed in the flicker of artworks.

As a curatorial grounding, this works at two levels within the biennale in the making.

First, slowly coming to the idea of doing away with the notion of minority altogether. To be wary of identity-labels that draw circles around minorities, defining artists as indigenous, nomadic, Dalit, that finally pit one minority against another, but never let them be equal to the false myth of a homogenous majority. This biennale seeks, instead, an encounter rooted in the restoration of lines and channels of dignity. If this sounds obvious, one may only recall to what extent that equality of voice to speak on its own terms, from its unique life of experiences has been stifled in various art contexts, globally.

The second is resisting any a priori decision of what an artwork is, where it may take place, and under what conditions, but relying on its opacities, its illegibility, and taking our illiteracy as a starting point, even for artworks arising from familiar imaginaries.

– Zasha Colah, Curator of the 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art