606

PART I: THE FIRST DECADE OF MANIFESTA 19
Chapter 1: Globalization, Manifesta and the “East of the West” 21
Globalization of the Art World after 1989 and the Expansion towards “the East of the
West” 21
Biennialization of the Art World 24
Re-Westernization of Art after Critique 29
Manifesta in Search of “the East” of Europe 32
Chapter 2: Institutional, Infrastructural and Discursive Backdrop
for Manifesta 39
Manifesta and the EU's Cultural Policies 39
Manifesta, New Internationalism and the InIVA 44
Manifesta and Soros Centers for Contemporary Art 46
Sponsoring Manifesta: The Case of Philip Morris 51
Chapter 3: Curatorial and Artistic Strategies of Manifesta in Its
First Decade 57
Case Study I: Manifesta in Our Backyard 65
PART II: THE SECOND DECADE OF MANIFESTA 75
Chapter 4: New Regionalism, Creative Cities and Manifesta 77
New Regionalism, the EU and Contemporary Art 79
Labelling Cities as Creative 83
New Regionalist Policies of the Basque Country and Manifesta 5 85
When Failure Becomes Success: Manifesta 6 in Nicosia 90
Manifesta 7 or Promoting the Trentino–South Tyrol Region as “Europe within Europe” 93
Desire to Make Profit over Manifesta Brand: Manifesta 8 and the Region of Murcia 96
Cultivating Creative Industries on Mining Landscapes: Manifesta 9 in Genk – Limburg 101
Chapter 5: Manifesta’s Interests in its Second Decade: The Urban
and Education 107
Architecture, Urban Regeneration and Manifesta 108
The Educational Turn of Manifesta 115
Chapter 6 – Curatorial and Artistic Strategies of Manifesta in its
Second Decade 121
A Statistical Analysis of Curators and Participant Artists of the Second Decade 121
Conceptualizing Manifesta’s Artistic Politics 127
Institutional Strategies vs. Artistic Interruptions 128
Case Study II: Artist Colonialist – Thierry Geoffroy 133
Artist Colonialist at Manifesta 8 135
PART III: THE THIRD DECADE OF MANIFESTA 141
Chapter 7 – Manifesta’s “Second Eastern Expedition” to
St. Petersburg 143
Contemporary Art and Philanthropy in Russia 143
What is the Red Line for a Biennial? Manifesta, Russian Politics and Boycott Calls 147
Curatorial and Artistic Strategies of Manifesta 10 152
Chapter 8: What People, Contemporary Art Biennials and
Municipalities Do for Money. The Case of Manifesta 11
- Zurich 157
Why Appoint Zurich as a Host City? 158
What People Do for Money under Precarity 161
The Implicit Theoretical Framework of Manifesta 11 162
Changing Working Conditions, Immaterial Labour and Precarity 164
Manifesta and Precarity 167
The Basel Effect on the Artistic and Curatorial Strategies of Manifesta 11 170
Chapter 9: Revitalizing Palermo Through Art: Manifesta 12 177
Mafia Activity and Its Cost to the Urban Life of Palermo 178
Manifesta and the Urban Revitalization Policies 181
Audience Responses to Manifesta 12 185
Case Study III: The Perception of the Manifesta Biennial among
Manifesta 12 Audience and Participant Artists 199
CONCLUSION 207
BIBLIOGRAPHY 215
APPENDICES 257
SUMMARY 277
SAMENVATTING 281
i
List of Figures and Tables
Figure 1 The Average Age of Manifesta Artists (M1 – M3) 87
Figure 2 Percentage of Manifesta Artists at the Age of 35 or Below (M1 – M3) 88
Figure 3 Percentage of Local Manifesta Artists and Manifesta Artists from Post-communist
Countries (M1 – M3) 90
Figure 4 Core Features of a Definition of Region. Peter Schmitt-Egner, “The Concept of 'Region':
Theoretical and Methodological Notes on its Reconstruction,” Journal of European
Integration 24, no. 3 (2002): 179-200.
117
Figure 5 The Average Age of Manifesta Artists (M4 – M9) 179
Figure 6 Percentage of Manifesta Artists at the Age of 35 or Below (M4 – M9) 180
Figure 7 Percentage of Local Manifesta Artists (City/Region) (M4 – M9) 182
Figure 8 Percentage of Local Manifesta Artists (National) (M4 – M9) 180
Figure 9 General Audience Profile of M12 270
Figure 10 Palermitan Audience Profile of M12 272
Table 1 Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire (Curatorial Strategies) 273
Table 2 Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire (Europe) 275
Table 3 Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire (Tourism) 276
Table 4 Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire (Impact on the Local) 277
Table 5 Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire (Ecology) 279
Table 6 Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire (Representation of Italian Artists) 282
Table 7 Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire – Part III (General Audience) 288
Table 8 Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire – Part III (Palermitan Audience) 289
Table 9 Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire – Part III (Audience Who Previously Visited Manifesta) 290
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Like all long-running projects, this thesis was written thanks to the contributions and
support of so many invaluable people. First of all, I am extremely grateful to my supervisors
Christa-Maria Lerm-Hayes and Chiara de Cesari, who supported me at every stage of this
thesis and enriched it with their criticism and suggestions. It was a great pleasure and honor
to work with them. Their contributions to this process have been very stimulating, not only
for improving my thesis, but also for learning how to establish good relationships with my
students-to-be. I would also like to thank Johan Hartle, the previous co-supervisor of this
project, who was the driving force behind the transformation of the thesis from an idea to a
proper PhD project. I would like to express my gratitude to Luiza Bialasiewicz, Anthony
Gardner, Monica Sassatelli, Margriet Schavemaker and Emilie Sitzia, who accepted to be
members of my doctorate committee and evaluated my thesis thoroughly. I would also like
to thank the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) and its Managing Director
Eloe Kingma and the Republic of Turkey Ministry of National Education, with a special
mention to Recep Demir, for their institutional and financial support for this project. I am
grateful to Hedwig Fijen (Director of Manifesta), Francesca Verga (General Coordinator of
Manifesta 12), Manifesta Headquarter officers Jeroen de Smalen and Max Bouwhuis and all
volunteers, audiences and artists of Manifesta 12 - Palermo.
I would like to acknowledge my paranymphs Peyman Amiri and Fani Konstantinidou.
They have taken all the responsibility to organize the viva-related issues. I would also like to
thank Aga Wielocha, Nour Munawar, Nermin El-Sherif, Nesli Gül, Sarah Randeraad,
Sumihiro Oki, Bo Wang, Charley Ladee, Fan Yang, Özge Baykan Calafato, Beste İşleyen,
Ahmet Demirkıran, Mariana Lanari, Lora Sarıaslan, Suat Öğüt, Claudia Röck, Karin
Christof, Machteld Löwensteijn, Tamara van den Berg, Aylin Kuryel, Deniz Buga, Nim
Goede, Zoénie Liwen Deng, Çağla Çınar, Miray Balat, Janneke Hoogstraaten and Natalia
Anna Skalska who both supported my academic journey and enriched my Amsterdam
experience. I am indebted to Richard Thrift, who edited the entire thesis with great speed and
success. I want to acknowledge the employees of Binnengasthuis 2, who provided me a
comfortable workspace for the last four years, as well as the UvA and Stedelijk Museum
Library officers.
Many of my close friends have been voluntarily suffering from my academic, artistic and
personal troubles for many years. I do not know how to thank Selen Yamak for her years of
comradeliness. She has a hand in every beautiful thing I have done in my life, including the
emergence of this thesis. Muchas gracias! Likewise, I would like to express my sincere
thanks to Erdinc Habib, Cemal Salman, Mehmet Zan, Sema Bakır, Nisan Alıcı, Kadir Dede,
Güzin Dede, Esin Hamdi Dinçer, Yasin Durak, Kader Genç, Mehmet Mutlu, Esin Gülşen,
iii
Dilege Gülmez, Cansu Tekin, Onur Usta, Barış Acar, Simiao Sun and Plamen Stanislavov
Andreev whose love and support I have always felt by my side.
I would like to express my thanks to Gretha Postma, Han Blokker, Lizzie Blokker
and Teun Bakker, who made me feel at home in the Netherlands. I am also indebted to Magda
Zimmerman, who we shared a painting studio for the last one and a half years.
This whole process would not have been possible without the full support of my
family. I owe more than a thank you to my mother Emsel Çolak, my father Ali Çolak, my
brother Canberk Çolak, my sister Çiğdem Çolak Kalaycı, my brother in-law İlker Kalaycı
and the new member of our family, my sweet niece Beste Kalaycı.
Last but not least, I am extremely grateful to Jolien Blokker, who supported me in
every imaginable way possible. Her love, intelligence and solidarity guided me to overcome
every problem I encountered. The completion of this work was thanks to her unrequited
efforts. I am much obliged to her for enriching my life.
1
INTRODUCTION
This study aims to develop a comprehensive and critical analysis of Manifesta –
European Biennial of Contemporary Art by taking into account the historical, political,
economic, urban and artistic conditions of its host cities and regions as well as post-Cold War
Europe. I argue that Manifesta changes its perspective, discourse and structure depending on
the city / region it operates in, even though trends across the decades can be identified. I have
explored common ideas, themes and practices across its three decades, and analysed them in
the socio-political context of Europe. In order to understand the nomadic and
interdisciplinary characteristics of Manifesta, I have evaluated the common discourses and
practices of Manifesta editions, classified them in each part and employed diverse theoretical
approaches and concept sets that enable me to discuss these discourses and practices in a
critical manner.
Manifesta is an engrossing issue because of its many unique features: it defines itself
as a European biennial, marking the transformations brought about by a crucial political
moment, the fall of the Iron Curtain, as its starting point; it organizes each edition in a
different city; it is supported by both private and public funds; its institutional structure and
aims have evolved over time; it establishes relations with the political authorities of each host
city in which it takes place; and it forms curatorial teams. These and many other issues
provide very rich material for research, to understand not only the trajectory and artistic
preferences of an art biennial from an art historical and curatorial perspective, but also its
role and function within the policy environment, dominant societal discourse and urban
transformation of post-Cold War Europe at the time. Therefore, I chose to conduct
interdisciplinary research and employed various approaches and discussions of diverse
disciplines such as political science, European studies, urban studies, art history and
museum/curatorial studies.
When I consider Manifesta as a whole, I argue that it is one of the new institutions
of neoliberal governance, which has gained currency after the collapse of the bipolar
(capitalist–communist) world, in the field of art. Although Manifesta might not have initially
aimed to shape its discourse, financial structure or institutional outlook chimed with
neoliberal governance strategies at the time of its initiation in the 1990s, it has started to
function within the neoliberal agenda of host cities or regions since the 2000s. When
Manifesta showed an interest in post-communist countries, it developed a discourse that
frequently emphasized concepts such as democracy, network, open-endedness and
flexibility. However, by the fourth edition held in Frankfurt (2002), the emphasis on
"democracy" had disappeared, and instead the concept of "the urban" had achieved currency.
2
This ever-developing interdependent relationship between Manifesta as a nomadic biennial
and host cities and regions allows us to better understand the contemporary neoliberal cultural
policies that see culture and art primarily as a source of tourist attraction.
At the outset, I would here like to explain my perspective on examining
contemporary art biennials which has been shaped by my academic background in political
science and my experience in the art world as an artist. I approach them as places where
different actors meet and sometimes clash, including the organizing institution and its staff,
curators, participant and local artists, sponsors, city administrators, collaborative institutions,
art dealers, gallerists, critics and international and local audiences. These encounters, if not
challenged by audiences or artists, or more rarely by curators, are often only evaluated from
the framework of the organizing institution's official rhetoric. This prevents us from
understanding what kinds of relationships these site of encounters produce. In other words,
biennials’ official rhetoric maintains their discursive superiority over their events, unless
critics and researchers critically tackle them over time. Therefore, the functions, preferences,
opinions, interventions or expectations of these actors, who come across each other at
biennials, are often underestimated.
Although there are more than 200 biennials active today,1 there are a very limited
number of studies that comprehensively evaluate different dimensions of one single biennial
by comparing all editions of it: how this biennial is perceived by audiences, what sponsorship
relationships it relies on, how it relates to the gentrification and neoliberal urban planning of
the city where it is organized, and what its political, artistic and curatorial choices are. This
is what I endeavour to do with Manifesta in the chapters that follow.
Manifesta, too, lacks of comprehensive researches that unveil its institutional
structure, political and artistic positions and transformation over time. The only monograph
available is an edited book entitled The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art
Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe,2 commissioned by the International
Foundation Manifesta (IFM), which includes critical articles derived from comparison of
Manifesta's first five editions. Therefore, while Manifesta, which realized its thirteenth
edition in Marseille in 2020, has received different criticisms from artists, academics and art
critics regarding each edition, I attempt to study the characteristics of Manifesta as a cultural
institution and biennial.
1 See “Directory of Biennials,” Biennial Foundation, accessed February 2, 2020,
https://www.biennialfoundation.org/network/biennial-map/
2 Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic, eds., The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art
Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).
3
Since each Manifesta edition contains intertwined political, artistic, economic and
sociological levels, and each has to establish a completely different structure than previous
editions, I questioned how to systematically research it. How could I evaluate, on a theoretical
basis, 34 curators and curatorial collectives, dozens of venues, sponsors, local administrators
and Manifesta board members, hundreds of parallel events, nearly 1000 artists and the
hundreds of thousands of audience members who participated in one of the 12 editions of
Manifesta held before 2018?3 How could I, on the one hand, compile the voices of Manifesta
officers, board members and curators to disambiguate Manifesta’s official rhetoric, while on
the other hand hear the other actors of the biennial, such as local administrators, local and
participant artists, audiences, sponsors etc.? Would it be possible to conduct research that
could both be considerably descriptive (since it attempts to sum up all editions of Manifesta)
and critical at the same time?
I realized that, in order to manoeuvre in this large terrain and distil meaningful
outcomes, it was necessary to narrow the scope of the research and set its goals. I had to first
look at how Manifesta defines itself and what goals it sets, and then, by creating various
analytical categories, identify what kind of a need Manifesta satisfies within post-Cold War
Europe. The following section of this introduction describes the theoretical approaches and
methodology I developed in order to comprehensively investigate Manifesta’s three decades.
Later, by referring to two fundamental texts, I briefly outline the official narrative of how
Manifesta was initiated. This official narrative identifies the main thematic points of attention
that are discussed throughout the dissertation. In the final part of the introduction, I outline
the plan for the remainder of the dissertation.
Theoretical and Methodological Approaches
How should we critically investigate Manifesta? In order to understand a nomadic
biennial that organizes each edition in a different context, it is necessary to create an
interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological basis with the same flexibility and to
evaluate the results of the analysis of each edition in different layers but with a holistic view.
To put it differently, my approach is based on evaluating the new network established by
Manifesta in each city or region by taking its domestic political, economic, urban and artistic
layers into consideration. I discuss the outcomes in a comparative manner to ascertain
Manifesta’s characteristic features. This approach enables me to reveal the basic
3 I decided to not include the Manifesta 13 – Marseille (2020) edition in this dissertation since my plan to follow
the biennial and do field research failed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Although Manifesta 6 – Nicosia (2006)
was cancelled three months before the inauguration, I evaluated the discussions circulated around the Manifesta 6
case.
4
transformations that Manifesta has undergone throughout its institutional history and to posit
its position on the map of post-Cold War Europe as a cultural institution.
As a result of such comparative analysis of the editions, and in order to mark the
crossroads of Manifesta and to follow the arguments of the research project more easily, I
have divided the thesis into three analytical parts, each containing three chapters and a case
study and corresponding roughly to a decade of Manifesta. Part I covers the period from
1991, when Manifesta emerged as an idea, to its third edition that took place in Ljubljana in
2000. Part II starts with the fourth edition held in Frankfurt in 2002 and comes to a close with
the ninth edition held in Genk in 2012. Part III deals with the tenth (St. Petersburg - 2014),
eleventh (Zurich - 2016) and twelfth (Palermo - 2018) editions of Manifesta.
Part I scrutinizes the initial motivations of Manifesta in its first decade, namely its
aim to establish a network among artists living and working in post-communist countries and
their counterparts in the West, its diverse institutional partnerships to realize this network,
and its curatorial and artistic strategies. I ask two fundamental questions when examining the
'90s, the period when Manifesta went from dream to reality: what function did Manifesta
serve in a globalizing art world, and what exactly did Manifesta mean by “the East” when it
targeted post-communist countries? To answer these questions, in Chapter One, I first focus
on the theoretical discussions about the relationship between globalization and the art world
and the increasing importance of biennials in this new configuration. I then analyse
Manifesta’s desire to reach the post-communist regions after the dissolution of the communist
bloc, and the reasons for its overemphasis on “the East” in the light of orientalism
discussions.
It is worth stressing that Manifesta's ambition to create a network among artists from
post-communist countries and their Western counterparts was not an idea it developed by
itself, but with the help of some other institutions that paved the way for it. Among these
institutions were the EU and its well-known project, the European Capital of Culture
(ECOC), the Institute of New International Visual Arts (INIVA)4 and the Soros Centers for
Contemporary Art (Chapter Two). These institutions prepared the theoretical and practical
basis for Manifesta's aim to contribute to the "democratization process" of "the East" in "New
Europe" that emerged after the Cold War.
A widely shared optimistic illusion, which Manifesta was also a party to, achieved
currency in the field of art in post-1989: namely that two concepts, liberalism and democracy,
always coexist. Actually, in political theory, the traditions of liberalism and democracy are
4 The abbreviation was first INIVA in 1991, then changed to InIVA in 1994 since the institute omitted the part
“New” from its name. Today, the abbreviation is used as Iniva.
5
in a tense relationship.5 The collocation of these two concepts is not a must, but assumed to
be due to "contingent historical articulation" over the course of time.6 According to art
historian Anthony Gardner, who traces back how the concept of democracy has been
transformed into a decisive and dominant myth in the relationship between art and politics
since the late 1980s, loyalty to the concept of democracy and democratization processes
emerged as a denominator for both contemporary art critics (e.g. Bourriaud, Zask, Bishop)
and critics of the post-political condition (e.g. Mouffe, Badiou, Rancière, Hardt and Negri)
despite all the differences that their theories contain. Democracy became a “master signifier”
in the field of art and politics (and of course in the relationship between each other) and this
created a paradox.7 The concept of democracy was not mentioned in the catalogue of the first
edition of Manifesta, but was included in the second edition, and turned into a primary
reference point in the third edition—so there was a discursive shift “from 'Europe' to
'democracy' ”.8 In the same vein, art historian Camiel van Winkel stresses that the concept of
democracy has often been used by Manifesta to mean "open", "inclusive" and "open-ended",
and therefore "Manifesta could indeed be seen as the manifestation of this new democratic
ideal of openness or glasnost in the field of the arts".9
Although I agree with Gardner's and Van Winkel’s analyses about Manifesta's
emphasis on the concept of democracy in its official discourse, I argue that the emphasis on
democracy has been replaced by Europe again in Manifesta’s later editions, especially after
it abandoned its mission to settle in post-communist countries. However, this time the notion
of “Europe” is separated from its former connotations and converged with the idea of “Europe
of the Regions”. As I analyse in Chapters Four and Five, the emphasis on the concept of
democracy increased until an edition of Manifesta was organised in a post-communist
country (Slovenia), and then the focus shifted to urban space, rather than democracy, when
Manifesta came back to “fortress Europe” in its fourth (Frankfurt) and fifth (Donostia / San
Sebastian) editions, which ushered in a new period.
In this new period, which is the focus of Part II, the concept of democracy fell out
of favour, as Manifesta chose to relocate to EU member countries that were automatically
5 Gordon Graham, “Liberalism and Democracy,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 9, no. 2 (1992): 149-60.
6 Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (New York, NY: Verso, 2000).
7 Anthony Gardner, Politically Unbecoming: Postsocialist Art Against Democracy (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
The MIT Press, 2015), Ch 1.
8 Ibid., 20–21.
9 Camiel van Winkel, “The Rhetorics of Manifesta,” in The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art
Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe, ed. Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2005), 220–21.
6
assumed to be democratic. However, arguably Manifesta stayed loyal to the other favoured
concepts of the first period such as “open-endedness”, “flexibility” and “network”, which are
fundamental elements of a neoliberal vocabulary. Therefore, the shift from political concepts
such as “democracy” and “the idea of Europe” to geographical ones like “regions of Europe”
and “the urban” made Manifesta complicit and embroiled with the neoliberalization
processes of host cities and regions.
The crucial developments that marked this new period in Manifesta history were as
follows: Manifesta's interest shifted from an East-West axis to the North-South, from cities
to regions, and from creating experimental networks to institutionalizing and engaging with
urban policies of the host cities and regions. In this decade, the establishment of Manifesta's
headquarters in Amsterdam at the beginning of the 2000s and its effort to increase its brand
value and prioritize its institutional continuity should be emphasized.
I argue that in the process that followed Manifesta’s institutionalization and
branding after its interest in "the East" faded away, its approach provided a meaning and
discourse in harmony with the neoliberal governance strategies of the regions it relocated to.
Manifesta's shift in interest from cities to regions was directly linked to emerging new
regionalist policies in Europe. Manifesta has been invited by different cities and regions as
part of their neoliberal governance strategies. In accordance with these policies, some cities
in the regions have attempted to become tourist hubs by transforming themselves into
attraction centres. In Chapters Four and Five, I investigate the editions of Manifesta in its
second decade within the framework of theoretical discussions around new regionalism and
creative cities. I also peruse Manifesta's interest in education, which started in its sixth edition
in Nicosia and became permanent in its later editions, in the light of the discussions
conceptualized in art theory as the educational turn.
Here, I use the term neoliberal governance to refer to the neoliberalization of the
state and its policies by way of public sector reforms ongoing since the late 1970s, and the
widespread use of a management approach based on the cooperation of different power
groups as a result of the disaggregation of the central activity of the state.10 As
cultural theorist George Yúdice has put it, various political, social and economic actors have
started to see culture as an expedient means in the era of globalization.11 Accordingly, many
cities and regions have implemented a more “efficient”, “flexible”, “collaborative” and
10 See Christopher Hood, Beyond the Public Bureaucracy State? Public Administration in the 1990s (London:
London School of Economics and Political Science, 1990); Rod A. W. Rhodes, Understanding Governance:
Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity and Accountability (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997); Bryan
Evans, Ted Richmond and John Shields, "Structuring Neoliberal Governance: The Nonprofit Sector, Emerging
New Modes of Control and the Marketisation of Service Delivery" Policy and Society 24, no. 1 (2005): 73–97.
11 George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era (Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 2003).
7
“participative” urban management approach—in line with the neoliberal perspective12 which
is based on the principle of private-public partnership.13 Moreover, they have adapted the
scope of this urban entrepreneurialism to the cultural and artistic fields through the creative
cities approach.14
Although each city or region experiences different forms of neoliberalization
adapted to its own local context,15 I suggest that “the post-political consensus” becomes the
main characteristic of Manifesta due to the reciprocal dependence and mutual interest
between Manifesta and bidder cities. The terms “post-political”16 and “post-democracy”17
refer to consensus-based, post-ideological and neoliberal policy-making of the post-1989 era.
Yet, the neoliberal consensus of this era has been harshly criticized by many intellectuals.
According to Rancière,
consensus consists in the attempt to dismiss politics by expelling surplus subjects
and replacing them with real partners, social and identity groups and so on. The
result is that conflicts are turned into problems to be resolved by learned expertise
and the negotiated adjustment of interests. […] The aim of consensual practice is to
produce an identity between law and fact, such that the former becomes identical
with the natural life of society. In other words, consensus consists in the reduction
12 See David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Daniel Stedman
Jones, Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2012). For a brief classification of the literature on neoliberalism and neoliberalization, see
Gilles Pinson and Christelle Morel Journel, “The Neoliberal City – Theory, Evidence, Debates,” Territory,
Politics, Governance 4, no. 2 (2016): 137–53.
13 Bob Jessop, “The Entrepreneurial City: Re-imagining Localities, Redesigning Economic Governance, or
Restructuring Capital?” in Realising Cities: New Spatial Divisions and Social Transformation, eds. Nick Jewson
and Susanne MacGregor (London: Routledge, 1997), 28–41; David Harvey, “From Managerialism to
Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism,” Geografiska Annaler 71, no. 1
(1989): 3–17.
14 Jamie Peck, “Struggling with the Creative Class,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29,
no. 4 (2005): 740–70; Chris Gibson and Natascha Klocker, “The ‘Cultural Turn’ in Australian Regional Economic
Development Discourse: Neoliberalizing Creativity?” Geographical Research 43, no. 1 (2005): 93–102.
15 Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell, “Neoliberalizing Space,” Antipode 34, (2002): 380–404.
16 See Jacques Rancière, On the Shores of Politics (London: Verso, 2006); Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On
Politics and Aesthetics (London: Continuum, 2010); Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004); Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London and
New York: Verso, 1993); Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2005); Mouffe,
Democratic Paradox; Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London:
Verso, 2009); Japhy Wilson and Eric Swyngedouw eds., The Post-Political and Its Discontents: Spaces of
Depoliticization, Spectres of Radical Politics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015).
17 Colin Crouch, Post-democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004).
8
of democracy to the way of life or ethos of a society – the dwelling and lifestyle of
a specific group.18
Manifesta's relationship with host cities and regions is also based on consensual
practices. Following the diverse transitional periods experienced by cities and regions in their
administrative level (be it from communist city to capitalist city, or from post-industrial city
to creative city, or from non-EU city to EU city), Manifesta contributes to the cultural
revitalization as well as the promotion of the cities and regions' new look through the cultural
tourism it creates.
This mutual relationship has substantially shaped Manifesta’s structure and
perspective. Ultimately, Manifesta is a project that expands by the cities' bid, and its
continuity is dependent on the economic and cultural impacts it provides to the cities rather
than the works it displays within the scope of the exhibition. In addition, its financial system
is based on a complex array of cross-scale public and private partnerships, involving actors
from the local to the EU levels. As I show in Chapter Four, in many cases, public funds that
are invested to organize Manifesta are allocated from the diverse EU funds transferred to
cities and regions to stimulate socio-economic. This connection makes Manifesta’s relation
to the neoliberal governance strategies even more visible.
Part III begins with Manifesta’s tenth edition held in St. Petersburg (2014), where
Manifesta reoriented its direction towards "the East", and also covers the Zurich (2016) and
Palermo (2018) editions. In these editions, I argue, discourses and practices from the first or
second decade of Manifesta are eclectically re-articulated. Due to the absence (as it appears
from a current vantage point) of a common discourse and practice of the editions discussed
in this part, each one has been evaluated as a separate chapter. Therefore, the theoretical
debates in the editions that constitute Part III have been shaped according to the network of
relationships that each edition has established in the local context, due to the fact that these
editions and their eclectic discursive and practical structures do not form a meaningful whole.
For example, while Manifesta was being hosted in St. Petersburg within the framework of
the State Hermitage Museum's own strategies, and not those of the city's administrators, it
was invited to Zurich and Palermo as a result of the cities’ regionalist policies. Likewise, it
is not possible to evaluate the role of the oligarchs in the Russian contemporary art scene and
Manifesta 10, and the general theme of Manifesta 11 in Zurich, "What People Do for Money",
with Palermo's progressive stance vis-à-vis increasing European populist fear of migrants on
a common ground. Nevertheless, it may be possible to find some common themes after the
18 Rancière, Dissensus, 79 – 80.
9
evaluation of these editions together with the thirteenth edition held in Marseille (2020) and
the future editions of Manifesta.19
In all three parts, I unveil the socio-politics of Manifesta’s curatorial and artistic
strategies as they play out in the different editions and compare them with the biennial's
official rhetoric. In order to evaluate Manifesta's official discourse about its curatorial and
artistic choices, I prepared data sets consisting of diverse information about participant artists
and curators that I compiled from Manifesta's catalogues and website. In each part, I provide
data on the ages of artists and curators according to the years they participated in Manifesta,
the representation of local participant artists and the nationalities of the participating artists.
I also calculated the percentage of artists living in post-communist countries in its first decade
to evaluate the discourse of Manifesta about making room for Eastern European artists.
On the basis of the data I analyse in Chapters Three, Six, Seven, Eight and Nine, I
argue that Manifesta has never given much space to local artists within its main programme.
Moreover, its initial claim to represent young artists shows a falling tendency after the
Ljubljana edition (2000). Another striking finding is that even in its first period, where
connecting “Western” and “Eastern” artists was of prime importance, the proportion of artists
from post-communist countries reached 35% at most.
Before I begin to examine the official narrative about the beginning of Manifesta, I
would like to mention a few points that have altered the course of my research. At the
beginning of the research, besides examining Manifesta's catalogues, academic articles and
art reviews written about different editions of the biennial, I planned to conduct field research
in Palermo and do archival research at the International Foundation Manifesta (IFM) in
Amsterdam. Since its establishment, Manifesta has highlighted the importance of research,
record-keeping and corporate transparency. Unfortunately, multiple attempts to receive
permission for archival research were postponed or ignored by IFM. Although my request
for archival research was never officially rejected, and on a few occasions I was welcomed
in the office and promised support, I was never allowed to access Manifesta's archive. This
was justified on the grounds of the busy work pace of the institution, the absence of an
employee who could assist me in the archive and/or the issue of confidentiality on some
issues.20 On one occasion I was taken to the attic of the building, where a part of the archive
materials is stored. It consisted of messily deposited boxes: I could barely get into the space.
I was told by a young employee that attempts to hire an archivist had failed, so the materials
19 At the time of writing, it was just announced that Barcelona and ten metropolitan cities in Catalonia will be the
host cities of Manifesta in 2024 and the Ruhr Area - Germany in 2026, following the fifteenth edition planned to
be held in Pristina in 2022.
20 In the meeting we had at Manifesta's office, Manifesta director Hedwig Fijen stated that documents such as
proposals of cities that had unsuccessfully bid to host Manifesta, all materials regarding the cancelled Manifesta 6
or sponsorship agreements could not be shared with me due to the principle of confidentiality.
10
were still waiting to be categorized. Moreover, I learnt that these attic materials were only
30% of the whole archive. The rest is stored in professional storage somewhere in
Amsterdam's docklands. As neither the attic nor the storage space have a professional archive
available for researchers to consult, I was forced to abandon my ambition to do archival
research, and collected my own data instead.21
As I consider biennials as places of encounter, and think that each participant
group’s expectations, benefits and evaluations should be put into perspective, I stayed two
and a half months in Palermo in the summer of 2018 to conduct field research and compile
the opinions of the audience and participating artists of Manifesta 12. During this time, I
conducted semi-structured interviews with people from the local art scene as well as with
some participant artists. I also distributed questionnaires between 3 and 29 July at five venues
of Manifesta 12 and received a total of 373 audience responses. I discuss the data I obtained
from this field research in Chapter 9 and in the case study of Part III, which I have devoted
to the Palermo edition.
The main challenge I faced in this process was that the Manifesta office announced
only ten of the participating artists beforehand. Since I could not find the names of the artists,
I lost the chance to schedule early appointments with them. Just three days before the
preview, on 11 June, while I was out walking to get some night air, I saw a banner being
hung on one of the venues, Constantino Palace, which included the names of the artists whose
works would be exhibited. I noticed that there were new artist names among them. All night
long, when I wandered past the city's venues one by one and completed the list of artists, I
understood that it was going to be an impossible task to find the e-mail addresses of all of the
participating artists, write to them and manage to do an interview. Neither at the time nor
later on could I discover the reason for this attitude of the Manifesta office, but it is possible
that short-term decisions were taken. A certain reluctance to collaborate with a doctoral
researcher may also be a practical reflection of the argument that I am making throughout
this thesis.
One of the main deficiencies of this thesis is that due to the inaccessibility of
Manifesta's archive, the proposals of the cities that had unsuccessfully bid to host Manifesta
could not be included. For the same reason, I was not able to access the criteria of curators in
the process of selecting artists or the details of the sponsorship agreements. In the coming
years, I hope these deficiencies will be overcome with new studies when Manifesta's archive
is opened to researchers.
21 Actually, I am not the only researcher whose application to conduct archive research at IFM was rejected.
Researcher Vesna Madžoski has also been rejected and she later decided to problematize this very rejection of an
archive research using Derrida’s concepts. See Vesna Madžoski, De Cvratoribvs: The Dialectic of Care and
Confinement (New York and Dresden: Atropos Press, 2013), ch. 3.
11
In the following pages, I study Manifesta’s established narrative on the sociopolitical
conditions that sparked its establishment, as well as its primary aims and its novel
approaches, which provide a basis for further investigation.
The Birth of Manifesta
One of the most important official sources that narrates Manifesta’s journey from
its birth to maturity is the interview by René Block, Hedwig Fijen, Henry Meyric Hughes
and Katalin Néray in The Manifesta Decade, a book commissioned by the biennial in order
to analyse Manifesta's impact in its first decade.22 According to this text, which can also be
seen as an official narration of the establishment of Manifesta, those who developed the idea
for a new European art project for the first time were Gijs van Tuyl and Els Barents, who
were working at the Netherlands Office for Fine Arts (Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst), which
was linked to the Foreign Ministry of the Netherlands at the time. According to Henry Meyric
Hughes, the thought behind initiating such an event after a series of discussions held in the
Netherlands Office for Fine Arts between 1990 and '91 was to “take account of the political
changes precipitated by the fall of the Berlin Wall, the gap created by the demise of the Paris
Biennial after 1985, and the failure of other events, including ‘Aperto’ (established in 1980
at the Venice Biennial) or Documenta, to take its place”.23 The structural changes that the
Netherlands Office for Fine Arts underwent in 1993 and the termination of funding Dutch art
outside the country due to new regulations appear to be two of the main factors that
accelerated the organization of this new formation under the umbrella of an independent
foundation. To fulfil this need, Stichting Europese Manifestatie Beeldend Kunstenaars (The
Foundation European Art Manifestation or EAM) was founded at the national level in the
summer of 1992 and it established an International Advisory Board in November 1993.
Converting the name of this organization into Manifesta was the recommendation of René
Block: “It was obvious that the project needed a handier title than its initial working titles.
The simpler Manifesta seemed more appropriate. I admit that we nodded toward Documenta.
22 René Block, Hedwig Fijen, Henry Meyric Hughes and Katalin Néray, “How a European Biennial of
Contemporary Art Began,” in The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in
Post-Wall Europe, ed. Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 189–200.
Interestingly enough, the name of interviewer is not mentioned in the text. René Block was advisory board
member of Manifesta 1 (1993–1997), Hedwig Fijen is founding director of Manifesta (1993–present), Henry
Meyric Hughes was advisory board member of Manifesta 1 (1993–1997) and Chair of the Supervisory Board of
Manifesta (1999–2007) and Katalin Néray was first a member of International Advisory Board of Manifesta 1, and
then gave her place to Lilijana Stepančič (Director of the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts, Ljubljana) to
become a curator of Manifesta 1.
23 Ibid., 189.
12
We thought the title should be a demonstration and suggest the biennial's aims: to be young,
dynamic, international…”.24
At the same time, it should be stressed that Manifesta’s founders were in an organic
relationship with Venice Biennale. Many key figures behind the creation of Manifesta were
commissioners for national pavilions at Venice. Anthony Gardner lists these names and
pavilions that they were commissioning: Gijs van Tuyl and Els Barents (Netherlands), René
Block (Germany), Svenrobert Lundquist (the Nordic countries) and Henry Meyric Hughes
(Great Britain).25 After the inclusion of non-Western European curators as board members,
this inclination of collaborating with Venice commissioners continued: “Katalin Néray
(commissioner for Hungary from 1986 to 1990, and Director of Budapest’s Ludwig
Museum), Anda Rottenberg (commissioner for Poland between 1993 and 2001, and Director
of Zachęta National Gallery in Warsaw) and Lilijana Stepančič from Ljubljana’s Soros
Center for Contemporary Art, the only initial board member who was not a pavilion
commissioner”.26
Another important text entitled “Manifesto of the Advisory Board of Manifesta –
Why Another Biennial Called Manifesta?” and published in the catalogue of Manifesta 1
clearly reveals the initial intentions of Manifesta's founders and carries important reference
points that are tackled in the rest of the study. A part of this text puts Manifesta’s position on
Venice more explicitly: “Wasn’t the Venice Biennale the embodiment of success? The widespread
discontent was dealt with ceremoniously, and seemed to be balanced out by abundant
public attendance, albeit mostly by professionals. Venice taught us how to turn a
disadvantage into an advantage, but over the years it came to lack innovation”.27
In the light of this information, Manifesta can be defined as an imagined artistic
community that was initiated by a group of Venice commissioners in response to new
political and artistic conditions after 1989. Here, I borrow Benedict Anderson's famous
definition of a nation as an imagined political community.28 Against Venice’s nation-based
representation model, Manifesta attempted to transgress national borders and set a supranational
network that embraced Western and Eastern European artists. In the words of art
historian Nuit Banai, who discussed Manifesta’s novel approach in the context of its relations
24 Ibid., 192.
25 Gardner, Politically Unbecoming, 105.
26 Ibid., 105.
27 “Manifesto of the Advisory Board of Manifesta – Why Another Biennial Called Manifesta?” in Manifesta 1
(exh. cat.), ed. Mirjam Beerman, Andrew Renton and Rachel Esner (Amsterdam: IDEA BOOKS, 1996), 12–23.
28 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London:
Verso, 1983).
13
with borders, nation states and the EU, “at its apogee, this [Manifesta’s] counter-model was
linked to a confidence in the benefits of open markets, free flow of capital, and culture
without the interference of borders”.29 Yet, as I argue throughout Part I, this flow was
unidirectional, from the “West” to the “East”.
In the following pages, I take further quotes from the “Manifesto of the Advisory
Board of Manifesta”, and comment on some parts of it. The first point that this text highlights
is that the historical ground underpinning Manifesta's existence was the end of the Cold War
and the rapid transformations in the post-communist regions thereafter:
The need for a new platform for artists was most keenly felt in 1989, after the fall
of the Berlin wall. It wasn’t hard to see then that there would be a new need for
information, for open discussions, for new infrastructures and alternative exhibition
spaces. It was, however, difficult to create something different on the context of
large-scale international exhibitions. Things simply returned to normal too easily,
and too quickly. The demise of the various anciens régimes was not the only
motivation for talking a new direction. Concepts for exhibiting contemporary art in
the west also seemed worn out; particularly the large-scale international bi- and
triennials, always increasing in number, came under pressure. Hovering somewhere
between the average art-fair and the sacro sanctum of the museum, the real problems
posed by these shows kept being covered up by the bedazzling merry-go-round:
memory is short when it comes to these exhibitions – after all, there’s always a next
time.30
This historical and political context connects Manifesta with other biennials initiated
after political turbulence in the 1980s such as Gwangju, Johannesburg and Istanbul. Although
each of these biennials had a specific relationship with the problematic history of the country
in which it was initiated, it can be said that the common point of all of them was to contribute
to the reorganization of social and artistic spheres after painful political turmoil. In this
context, such biennials can be considered either as markers of a new page or tools for
addressing and transcending the collective traumas that generated them.
So, what kind of relationship is there between the political transformations of former
communist states after 1989 and an international art event called Manifesta? In Chapter One,
I try to analyse this point in the context of the biennialization of the art world since the 1990s,
together with the geopolitical transformations at a macro level, and to position the artistic
and political axis of Manifesta within this map. The political-artistic background of a
Netherlands-based organisation that discovers a "new need for information, for open
29 Nuit Banai, “From Nation State to Border State,” Third Text 27, no. 4 (2013): 467.
30 “Manifesto of the Advisory Board of Manifesta,” 12–14.
14
discussions, for new infrastructures and alternative exhibition spaces"31 in the geography of
Central and Eastern Europe can only be investigated by a comparative reading with the
political and ideological transformation of the region and domestic components of the global
art biennial economy.
Manifesta, like other contemporary art biennials, institutionalizes on the one hand
and tries to find various solutions to avoid the static structure of classic institutions on the
other: “Manifesta is an institution built on the critique of institutions”.32 The abovementioned
quotation also sums up Manifesta's desire to differentiate itself both from a “sacred” museum
space and the idea of an art fair where trade rules are dominant, since, according to Manifesta,
the question of memory cannot adequately be addressed within these spaces. This description
points to an intention shared by many biennials: to become a gathering space for diverse
people. In this context, Manifesta’s aim is to build relationships with cities and their
memories and to keep doing this in a different city every two years (unlike many other stable
biennials). This makes Manifesta a more interesting gauge than a static event would be of
European identity-forging, and of art policy shaping and changing within artistic discourse.
Yet, claiming to have such close cultural, historical, political and social connections
with each host city leads to high expectations for Manifesta. Especially the expectation of
having “greater impact in the Eastern European countries than in the west”33 initially paved
the way for perceiving Manifesta as an “Eastern European” biennial. So much so that, in
order to change this perception, the curators of Manifesta 2 felt compelled to address this
point:
Of course, Manifesta should not be considered as an exclusively ‘Eastern European’
art event. The artists should not be judged according to geographical, national or
regional criteria but should be treated and considered as equals taking part in a highquality
exhibition. Manifesta 2 should by no means be a diplomatic exhibition.34
However, this perception about Manifesta would continue for a long time. Settling
in only one post-communist country (Slovenia) in Europe in two decades would be the core
31 Ibid., 12.
32 Van Winkel, “The Rhetorics of Manifesta,” 219. In a recent study, Manifesta is even described as an ‘antibiennial’.
James Voorhies, Beyond Objecthood: The Exhibition as a Critical Form Since 1968 (Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, 2017).
33 “Manifesto of the Advisory Board of Manifesta,” 20.
34 Robert Fleck, Maria Lind, Barbara Vanderlinden, “Manifesta,” text published on the website of Manifesta 2,
accessed October 16, 2019, http://m2.manifesta.org/e/manifest.html. Although the curators’ description of
Manifesta as a ‘high-quality exhibition’ might sound obsolete today, it was quite important at that time in order to
strengthen Manifesta’s imaginary position and self-legitimization within the art world.
15
of criticism, as longer or more frequent engagement with these geographies would have been
required to re-examine the communist memory with a critical eye. In addition, as Manifesta
became more powerful and recognizable as an institution, the collaboration between
Advisory Board members with reputed museums to curate exhibitions and their recruitment
by these museums,35 as well as the rise in visibility of Manifesta artists at art fairs,
approximated it to the working principles of art fairs and museums.
The text “Manifesto of the Advisory Board of Manifesta” continues with the
innovations that Manifesta intends to offer the art world:
Why then yet another biennial called Manifesta? First of all, we have no pretense of
revolutionising the art world. The changes represented by Manifesta’s organization
may seem slight at first glance, but they aim to alter the general mentality over time.
New in this formula is the team of five curators, who are together responsible for
the exhibitions and the catalogue, and who even decide to make their decisions
unanimously. Another novelty is the fact that the European countries that agreed to
participate in Manifesta, and also to carry the artists’ costs, did so without knowing
which, if any, artists would be asked to exhibit. These two aspects help to clarify
the often obscure relationship between economic forces and artistic freedom. […]
Although the end of the story of this first edition of Manifesta has not yet been
written, we do already know that this approach had a greater impact in the eastern
European countries than in the west. Nonetheless, the information gathered here will
be evaluated and put to use at further venues. […] It is our responsibility, therefore,
not only to appoint the curatorial team and select future sites of Manifesta, but also
to come up with a means of keeping the procedure open and flexible, and the
organization as small as possible.36
As emerges here, Manifesta is making an attempt to differentiate itself from other
biennials by establishing a young curatorial team that consists of people who usually do not
know each other—instead of a single curator model—in order to facilitate different curatorial
approaches: “[…] instead of creating a structure of consensus, we imagined that the possible
confrontations that might emerge within the curatorial teams could be productive and in fact
35 Dozens of curators, city administrators, scholars and artists who have been Advisory Board members of
Manifesta have also curated large-scale exhibitions or held positions in art museums. To name but a few:
Francesco Bonami (board member IFM, 2002–2007 and Senior Curator at Museum of Modern Art, Chicago,
1999–2008), Vicente Todoli (board member IFM, 2002–2007 and Director of Tate Modern, 2003–2010), Daniel
Birnbaum (board member IFM, 2002–2009 and Director of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2010–2018), Chris
Dercon (board member IFM, 1994–2002 and Director of Tate Modern, 2011–2016), Kaspar König (board member
IFM, 1994–2002 and Director of Museum Ludwig) and Massimiliano Gioni (board member IFM 2004–2009 and
Associate Director of Exhibitions (and later Artistic Director) at the New Museum in New York, 2007–present).
36 “Manifesto of the Advisory Board of Manifesta,” 17–21.
16
lead to new perspectives and working methodologies”.37 In this context, a total of 34 curators
and curatorial collectives were assigned for the first twelve editions.38 The initial aim of
Manifesta was to hire young curators with various countries of origin. As I discuss later, this
aim was not realized in each edition, and became a target of serious criticism over time.
The second point that emerges from this quotation is the economic model of
Manifesta and its evolution. The economic model that Manifesta offered was quite different
from other art events of the period, namely: “non-national representation based on a mutually
shared financial construction in which all partner organizations were supposed to support
Manifesta financially with a fee of five thousand Dutch guilders every two years".39 The
purpose of this approach was expressed as “maintain[ing] the maximum independence from
political, commercial and sectarian influences”.40 Pursuant to this model, Manifesta tried to
construct itself as an independent institution and chose to ask for support from its different
partner institutions (including national art councils), instead of asking national art councils
to only support their participant artists. This model was in line with how Manifesta was
positioning itself in supranational terms, since the biennial had defined itself as a "pan-
European event" from the beginning. Over time it has been partially financed by the EU and
EU member countries41, although it has not transformed into a direct initiative of the EU. As
I show later, though, the relationship between Manifesta and EU funds has been quite crucial
in terms of the biennial's survival and development over time. The correspondence between
37 Hedwig Fijen, in René Block et al., “How a European Biennial of Contemporary Art Began,” 194.
38 Manifesta 1 (Rotterdam): Katalin Néray (Budapest), Rosa Martinez (Barcelona), Viktor Misiano (Moscow),
Andrew Renton (London), Hans Ulrich Obrist (Paris/Zurich); Manifesta 2 (Luxembourg): Robert Fleck
(Paris/Vienna), Maria Lind (Stockholm), Barbara Vanderlinden (Brussels); Manifesta 3 (Ljubljana): Francesco
Bonami (Chicago, Turin), Ole Bouman (Rotterdam), Maria Hlavajová (Amsterdam, Bratislava), Kathrin
Rhomberg (Vienna); Manifesta 4 (Frankfurt): Iara Boubnova (Bulgaria), Nuria Enguita Mayo (Spain) and
Stephanie Moisdon-Trembley (France); Manifesta 5 (San Sebastian): Massimiliano Gioni (Italy / US) and Marta
Kuzma (Ukraine / US); the cancelled Manifesta 6 (Nicosia): Mai Abu ElDahab (Egypt / Belgium); Anton Vidokle
(Russia / US) and Florian Waldvogel (Germany); Manifesta 7 (Trentino and South Tyrol): Anselm Franke - Hila
Peleg (Germany - Israel / Germany), Adam Budak (Poland) and Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica
Narula, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta) (India); Manifesta 8 (Murcia): Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum -
ACAF (Bassam el Baroni) (Egypt), Chamber of Public Secrets - CPS (Khaled Ramadan and Alfredo Cramerotti)
(international) and tranzit.org (Vít Havránek, Zbynek Baladrán, Dóra Hegyi, Boris Ondreicka, Georg
Schöllhammer); Manifesta 9 (Genk): Cuauhtémoc Medina (Mexico); Manifesta 10 (St. Petersburg): Kasper König
(Germany); Manifesta 11 (Zurich): Christian Jankowski (Germany); Manifesta 12 (Palermo): Ippolito Pestellini
Laparelli (Italy), Bregtje van der Haak (The Netherlands), Mirjam Varadinis (Switzerland) and Andrés Jaque
(Spain).
39 Hedwig Fijen, in Rene Block et al., “How a European Biennial of Contemporary Art Began,” 192–93.
40 “The Aims of Manifesta,” Manifesta 1 website, accessed October 16, 2019,
http://m1.manifesta.org/statemnt.htm .
41 Katalin Néray, in Rene Block et al., “How a European Biennial of Contemporary Art Began,” 193.
17
Manifesta’s non-national (city-focused and regional) approach and Europe’s need to (re-
)imagine itself after 1989 explains the current study’s focus on this constellation.
However, this other-than-national model did not achieve much success. After the
first edition in Rotterdam, the economic model shifted towards one where the investments of
the host city became the main funding source of the biennial.42 One of the reasons for this
failure was due to the fact that national art councils, as required by the national logic of their
institutions, were committed to having a say in artist selection. In addition, since the budgets
that the countries allocate to culture and art (especially contemporary art) show significant
differences, the idea of asking for equal payment from all partner organizations met with
difficulties.
Another reason was that sponsorship relations broke the spell of the independence
of this model. For example, while one of Manifesta’s initial goals was to represent artists of
post-communist countries in a united European art scene, the main sponsor of the first two
editions held in Rotterdam and Luxembourg was the world-leading tobacco company Philip
Morris, who by then had already started to invest in post-communist countries to dominate
the market (Chapter Two). The main sponsor of the tenth edition in St. Petersburg was
Novatek gas company, which is known for its proximity to Putin, and the main sponsor of
the twelfth edition in Palermo was Sisal, which is Italy's largest gambling company. These
choices prove that the economic relations of Manifesta are among the elements that require
more detailed consideration as part of an overarching study of the biennial's contexts and
meanings.
Outline of the Chapters
Following the official discourse of Manifesta about its inauguration, in Part I, I focus
on a few key issues to tackle the first decade of Manifesta from various aspects. In Chapter
One, I first discuss the transformation of art practices as well as art writing in the post-1989
era and its reflection on the proliferation of art biennials, also conceptualized as the
biennialization of the art world. Then I move on to talk about the sources of Manifesta’s
special interest in “the East” and what Manifesta meant by it. I devote Chapter Two to
shedding light on three crucial institutions that paved the way for and collaborated with
Manifesta in its first decade: the EU through its cultural policies, the Soros Centers for
Contemporary Art (SCCAs), and the Institute of New International Visual Arts (InIVA).
42 Thomas Boutoux, “The Tale of Two Cities: Manifesta in Rotterdam and Ljubljana,” in The Manifesta Decade:
Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe, ed. Barbara Vanderlinden and
Elena Filipovic (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 207.
18
Although Manifesta’s relationship with the SCCAs and InIVA was limited to its first decade,
its relationship with the EU funds developed further in its second decade. Furthermore, this
chapter examines the main sponsor of Manifesta 1 and 2, which was the world’s largest
tobacco company Philip Morris, and its sponsorship tactics. Chapter Three evaluates the
artistic and curatorial strategies of Manifesta. Providing statistical data on the profiles of
artists and curators, I discuss how the relational aesthetics approach affected Manifesta’s
choices in the first decade and what kind of transgressional art practices participant and local
artists produced to challenge Manifesta’s strategies. The case study of this part is devoted to
the local critique of the third edition held in Ljubljana—the only edition of Manifesta in
Eastern Europe in its first and second decades—by analysing the outcome of the research
project initiated by the SCCA Ljubljana, entitled Manifesta in Our Backyard.
Chapters Four, Five and Six elaborate on the intermingled relationships of Manifesta
in its second decade. In Chapter Four, I discuss the theoretical premises of Manifesta’s
discursive and practical shift towards focusing more on the urban development of regions
than cities in the North-South axis. In parallel with this shift, two fields, architecture and
education, gained more importance than other fields, which is the issue dealt with in Chapter
Five. As in Part I, I keep tackling the artistic and curatorial position of Manifesta, now in its
second decade. Chapter Six provides a wide range of data about artists’ and curators’ profiles
and exemplifies dissensual artworks. This part’s case study is the art practices of
Danish/French artist Thierry Geoffroy produced as part of Manifesta 8 – Murcia (2010).
Chapters Seven, Eight and Nine, which together comprise Part III, interrogate
Manifesta 10 (St. Petersburg - 2014), Manifesta 11 (Zurich - 2016) and Manifesta 12
(Palermo - 2018), respectively. Chapter Seven scrutinizes Manifesta’s “second eastern
expedition” in conjunction with Russian oligarchs’ investments in contemporary art,
Manifesta’s political stance on Russia’s offensive policies, boycott calls and Manifesta’s
curatorial and artistic selections. Chapter Eight discusses the Zurich case, problematizing its
main theme “What People Do for Money”. The last chapter, Chapter Nine, delves into
Palermo’s mafia past and attempts to show how important it was for city administrators to
open up the city to a large-scale cultural event in order to revitalize it and shed this image of
corruption and criminality. This chapter also makes room for audiences’ opinion on
Manifesta 12. The thesis concludes with a case study based on the data compiled from the
field research in Palermo, focusing on the perception of the Manifesta biennial as a whole
project, seen through the eyes of Manifesta 12's audiences.
Thus, building around the story of Manifesta, this research addresses how art has
approached many of the topical challenges Europe has experienced since 1989—from the
attempt to create a united Europe in the 1990s to the many crises and burning problems of
the last decade, such as poverty, unemployment, the rise of populism, the migration crisis,
the ecological crisis and the EU's disintegration—as well as how art has attempted to propose
creative solutions to them.
19
PART I: THE FIRST DECADE OF MANIFESTA
‘One generation passes away’, I thought the
priest was singing, ‘and another comes; but the
earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun
goes down, and hastens to the place where it
rises. The wind goes toward the West, toward
Serbia, and all the rivers run away, East of the
West. What has been is what will be, and what
has been done is what will be done. Nothing is
new under the sun’.43
“East of the West”, the title of a story by Miroslav Penkov (*1982 – Gabrovo /
Bulgaria) which is also the eponymous story of his first book, talks about two lovers meeting
at a sunken church in the middle of the river that split two sides of a once whole village into
two different countries after the First World War. The east side remained in Bulgaria and the
west side became a part of Serbia. This separation marks the Serbian side as the West and
the Bulgarian side as the East, or more precisely the "East of the West"—both physically and
psychologically. The situation that communist bloc countries in Europe experienced right
after the fall of the Iron Curtain was not so different than this. After the transition to a free
market economy was paved, these countries were suddenly counted as a part of Western
capitalist countries on the theoretical level, yet this was not the case in reality.
During the process called the transitional period, there was a stir in art as in many other
fields. In fact, rising globalization had increased interest in all countries around the world
that fall within the scope of the "East of the West", to borrow Penkov's brilliant turn of phrase.
Transposing Penkov’s conceptualization into social sciences and arts may provide us a
comprehensive way of thinking about the effects of globalization in the art world. Moreover,
it gives us an opportunity to ponder ambiguous concepts of Western epistemology such as
Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe and the Balkans, and Manifesta’s
institutional point of view on these concepts and regions.
Throughout this part, I will try to investigate how we can read Manifesta’s initial
intentions to reach the “East of the West” on theoretical and practical levels. In this context,
questions such as how globalization reshaped the art world and art history writing, where and
43 Miroslav Penkov, East of the West: A Country in Stories (London: Sceptre, 2011), 43.
20
with which actors Manifesta positioned itself within this new matrix, which curatorial and
artistic choices it made while realizing its aims and what kind of reactions it received from
the local art scene figures will be the core subjects of the next three chapters and case study.
21
Chapter 1: Globalization, Manifesta and the “East of the West”
Globalization of the Art World after 1989 and the Expansion
towards “the East of the West”
Once, the sun never set over the British Empire.
Now instead it may be contemporary art that
enjoys this privileged company.44
The effects of the forceful hegemony of capitalism all around the world after a series
of events post-1989 not only resonated in the former communist regions. When the
boundaries of capitalism approached the limits of the globe, the concept of globalization
became a trend and started to be discussed in depth by many theorists45. Due to the perception
of the massive effect of globalization across all disciplines, the word global gained currency
in all academic branches as an adjective: global politics, global economy, global culture,
global art, etc. On the other hand, the renewed capitalist desire in expansion paved the way
not only for theoretical but also practical transformations, especially in terms of relations
with the former communist / new capitalist countries. The collapse of the communist bloc
caused the birth of many new nation-states and the ambiguous relationship between local and
global became one of the main topics of discussions in all disciplines.46
44 Charlotte Bydler, “Global Contemporary? The Global Horizon of Art Events,” in Globalization and
Contemporary Art, ed. Jonathan Harris (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 464.
45 See e.g. Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (London: Sage, 1992); George
Ritzer, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Globalization (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016); Mike Featherstone,
ed., Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity: A Theory (London: Sage, 2011); Frank J. Lechner
and John Boli, eds., The Globalization Reader (Chichester, West Sussex: J. Wiley & Sons, 2012); Bryan S.
Turner, ed., The Routledge Handbook of Globalization Studies (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011).
46One of the sharpest observations about this ambiguity can be made by taking a glance at the concept of
glocalization and its transformation throughout the years. After the assertion of the concept by Roland Robertson
in the 1990s, it became strange due to the adaption of international goods of large companies to local cultures’
consumption habits. For glocalization discussions, see Roland Robertson, “Glocalization: Time-space and
Homogeneity–Heterogeneity” in Global Modernities, ed. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA, and New Delhi: Sage, 1995), 25–44; Victor Roudometof, Glocalization: A Critical
Introduction (London, New York: Routledge, 2016). John Tomlinson’s comprehensive approach that discusses the
transformation of culture under globalism through the concept of global modernity should also not be overlooked
in this context. John Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). For discussions
about globalism – localism in the context of art, see Thierry de Duve, “The Glocal and the Singuniversal
Reflections on Art and Culture in the Global World,” Open! 16 (2009): 44–53, and for a response to De Duve, see
Angela Dimitrakaki, “Art, Globalization and the Exhibition Form,” Third Text 26, no. 3 (2012): 305–19.
22
The rise in debates over globalization during and after the Cold War, in conjunction
with postcolonial, poststructuralist and postmodern discourses that had been widely
employed since the 1980s, led to the generation of the term “global art” in the field of art.47
Many people began to question the normative and hegemonic power of Western art over the
discourse of art in general, and had heated debates over the democratization of the art world
in the context of recognizing non-Western societies’ arts and overthrowing Western white
male supremacy in art. Different approaches to global art emerged after stepping out of the
Eurocentric progressive narrative of art towards the globe. Cynthia Colburn gathers these
approaches under two categories. She explains that some scholars such as James Elkins,
David Summers and Whitney Davis search for “the possibility of a truly global or world art
history” whereas others such as Hans Belting, Peter Weibel and Andrea Buddensieg stress
the hybridity and heterogeneity of global art which, by definition, has been produced in the
age of globalization.48 Unlike the definitions of world art history and global art history, John
Onians, Kitty Zijlmans and Wilfried van Damme suggest a new concept called world art
studies. According to them, this concept emphasizes that new studies in the field of art should
not only be global in scope, but also multidisciplinary in approach.49 In the last instance all
these concepts and approaches seek to find an answer to the question of how to generate a
new art historical perspective instead of Eurocentric narratives and consider the periphery in
a non-hierarchical way.50 To put it differently, all these concepts contribute to “the
development of the horizontal approach to art history”.51
47 Charlotte Bydler, The Global Art World, Inc.: On the Globalization of Contemporary Art (Acta Universitatis
Upsaliensis: Uppsala, 2004); Hans Belting and Andrea Buddensieg, eds., The Global Art World: Audiences,
Markets, and Museums (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2009); Hans Belting, Andrea Buddensieg and Peter
Weibal, eds., The Global Contemporary and the Rise of the New Art Worlds (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013);
James Elkins, Alice Kim, and Zhivka Valiavicharska, eds., Art and Globalization (Pennsylvania: The
Pennsylvania University Press, 2010); James Elkins, ed., Is Art History Global? (New York: Routledge, 2014).
48 Cynthia Colburn, “Whose Global Art (History)? Ancient Art as Global Art,” Journal of Art Historiography 15,
(2016): 3–4.
49 John Onians, “World Art Studies and the Need for a New Natural History of Art,” Art Bulletin 78, no.2 (1996):
206–9; Kitty Zijlmans and Wilfried van Damme, eds., World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches
(Amsterdam: Valiz, 2008); Wilfried Van Damme and Kitty Zijlmans. "Art History in a Global Frame: World Art
Studies," in Art History and Visual Studies in Europe: Transnational Discourses and National Frameworks, eds.,
Matthew Rampley, Thierry Lenain, Hubert Locher, Andrea Pinotti, Charlotte Schoell-Glass and Kitty Zijlmans
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 217–29.
50 For a comprehensive genealogy of these concepts within the art history discipline, see Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel,
“Art History and the Global: Deconstructing the Latest Canonical Narrative,” Journal of Global History 14, no. 3
(2019): 413-35. Also see a recently published questionnaire conducted among numerous art historians, curators and
artists on decolonizing art history. Catherine Grant and Dorothy Price, “Decolonizing Art History,” Art History 43
(2020): 8–66. For a discussion on the new formation of art and theory since the 1990s, see Margriet Schavemakers
and Mischa Rakier, ed., Right About Now: Art & Theory since the 1990s (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2007).
51 Piotr Piotrowski, Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), 40.
23
This point of view is critical especially for Western-based art institutions and
initiatives, since the essential ground for dialogue that these Western art organizations
(including Manifesta) intended to construct with institutions and artists from the “East of the
West” is based on these postulations. As Petersen has put it, the cultural identity discourse,
which has been used frequently in contemporary art scene since the 1990s, repeats a limited
vocabulary. Cultural identity discourse, whose main nodes can be marked as “culture”,
“ethnicity”, “migration”, “globalization”, and “multiculturalism”, accommodates several
sub-nodes that can replace each other: culture (Western / non-Western; modernity / tradition;
national / foreign; “the art world”; heritage), ethnicity (non-Western; race & racism;
otherness; authenticity; ancestral “roots”), migration (post-colonial diasporas; turbulence &
rupture; exilic & diasporic experience; transnational connections; nomadism “routes”),
globalization (decolonization & recolonization; hybridization as cultural translation;
commodification of ethnic and racial difference; cosmopolitanism; cultural crossing) and
multiculturalism (identity politics; ambivalent outside / inside position; difference; “New
Internationalism” & “global art”; recognition).52 Although this classification contains
deficiencies in itself, it is necessary to underline the fact that many of these concepts have
been employed in numerous exhibitions and biennials since 1990. It is possible to encounter
a lot of these concepts in any official text from any edition of Manifesta, just as in other largescale
exhibitions of the last three decades.
Objections that strongly began to be raised from the second half of the 1980s
onwards and had as their target Eurocentric and patriarchal art history found a vehicle in
some exhibitions. Magiciens de la Terre (Centre Pompiduo – Paris) and The Third Havana
Biennial, both organized in 1989, were two crucial exhibitions in terms of questioning
Eurocentric art history.53 Magiciens de la Terre, which is regarded as a landmark exhibition
of global art, was an attempt to display Western and non-Western art works in a nonhierarchical
way and in equal number, but failed to convince. Aimed to avoid the Eurocentric,
hierarchical representation of “the modern” and “the tribal” at the Primitivism in the 20th
Century exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1984, the
curator Jean-Hubert Martin showed work from approximately 100 artists, half of whom were
non-Western in origin. Nevertheless, it can be said that the exhibition's attempt to balance
out Western domination in the art field ignored the structural dimensions of inequality and
contributed to the fact that exhibiting at one of the centres of the Western art scene continues
to be the main determinant of art and art history. Moreover, in order to take a place in the
West, non-Western art also needs self-exoticism: “in the fields of visual arts, then, the
dichotomy of ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’ meant that artists from non-Western cultures could
52 Anne Ring Petersen, “Identity Politics in the ‘Global Art World’,” in Challenging Identities: European Horizon,
ed. Peter Madsen (New York: Routledge, 2017), 226–9.
53 See the special issue of the Third Text dedicated to Magiciens de la Terre (vol.3, no.6 (1989)). Also see Rachel
Weiss, ed. Making Art Global (Part 1): The Third Havana Biennial 1989 (London: Afterall, 2011); Lucy Steeds,
ed. Making Art Global (Part 2): 'Magiciens de la Terre' 1989 (London: Afterall, 2013).
24
approach the dominant centre only by submitting to stereotypical Western expectations of
the peripheral cultures”.54 As I show in Chapter Three, this was also the case for the artists
from post-communist countries who participated in Manifesta.
The abovementioned discussions held in the art history discipline and the
exhibitions that tried to bring non-Western artists to the forefront gained a new dimension
when the biennial phenomenon became apparent, which is the topic of the next section.
Biennialization of the Art World
The proliferation of the biennial format to every corner of the world since the mid-
1980s, or biennialization as some critics conceptualize the phenomena55, is also crucial for
understanding what kind of position Manifesta has within the network of biennials.
According to Charles Green and Anthony Gardner, “biennialization may, truly, be
irrevocably tied to the spectacle culture of neoliberalism, with exhibitions sponsored through
a potent mix of state and corporate support designed to lure international tourism to sites
struggling on the edges of global trade. This has certainly been true of the “biennial boom”
in post-communist Europe since the mid-1990s”. 56 Some approaches describe biennials as
the agency of privatization of cultural space, gentrification and consumerism, whereas others
see them as “opportunities for radical interventions, critiques of exhibition formats, and
powerful interchanges with diverse audiences, communities and constituencies”.57 In
54 Philipsen, Globalizing Contemporary Art, 50.
55 See Carlos Jiménez, “The Berlin Biennale: A Model for Anti-Biennialization?” Art Nexus 53, (July–Sept 2004);
Chin-tao Wu, "Biennials without Borders," New Left Review 57, (2009): 107–15; Charles Green and Anthony
Gardner, Biennials, Triennials and Documenta (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016); Francis Frascina, “Berlin, Paris,
Liverpool: ‘Biennialization’ and Left Critique in 2012,” Journal of Curatorial Studies 2, no. 1 (2013): 2–31;
Jeannine Tang, “Biennialization and Its Discontents,” in Negotiating Values in the Creative Industries: Fairs,
Festivals and Competitive Events, ed. Brian Moeran and Jesper. S. Pedersen (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011), 73–93; Monica Sassatelli, “The Biennialization of Art Worlds: The Culture of Cultural Events,” in
Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Art, ed. Laurie Hanquinet and Michael Savage (London;
New York: Routledge, 2015), 277–89; Oliver Marchart, “Hegemonic Shifts and Politics of Biennialization: The
Case of Documenta,” in The Biennial Reader, ed. Elena Filipovic, Marieke van Hal and Slveig Ovstebo (Bergen
and Ostfildern: Bergen Kunsthall and Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010), 466–90. For how “biennial art” produces
exclusive environments while attempting to do the otherwise, see Panos Kompatsiaris, The Politics of
Contemporary Art Biennials: Spectacles of Critique, Theory and Art (New York and London: Routledge, 2017);
Panos Kompatsiaris, “Biennial Art and Its Rituals: Value, Political Economy and Artfulness,” Journal of
Aesthetics & Culture 11, no. 1 (2019): 1–8.
56 Green and Gardner, Biennials, Triennials and Documenta, 4. Yet, I should mention that Green and Gardner’s
approach to the critical role of biennials outweighs biennials’ neoliberalist features.
57 Frascina, “Berlin, Paris, Liverpool,” 4. An example of seeing biennials as site of resistance can be found in
Oliver Marchart’s writings. Marchart does not evaluate the biennial format as an ideological reflection of
economic globalization in the context of decentralization of the West. On the contrary, he stresses its potentiality
25
addition, there are studies claiming that biennials have so many things in common with the
art fairs and exhibitions of the past that we can think about an integrative “biennial culture”,
while others suggest tackling each biennial separately, with its own trajectory.58
In this study, I support the idea that a biennial culture has emerged through the
hundreds of biennials established over the course of time that have fed each other, by
constituting dialogues, representing artists and curators for the art market and going beyond
the limits of a traditional exhibition format (e.g., by including education sections or
architectural approaches in the biennial itself).59 Nevertheless, I suggest examining the
objections and political, economic and cultural backgrounds of biennials separately and in
their specific conditions. In the context of our subject, it can be predicted that Manifesta as
well as biennial culture in a broader sense can be evaluated thoroughly if one can specifically
look at the three decades of Manifesta, and the purposes, local / global relations and outcomes
of each edition, without excluding the features it shares with other biennials.
for contributing to the decolonial struggle. By analyzing some biennials using Gramscian concepts of hegemony
and counter-hegemony, he categorizes some non-Western biennials such as Dakar and Havana as ‘Biennials of
Resistance’ in terms of their anti- and post-colonial ways of organization. According to Marchart, these kinds of
challenges that have been enhanced from periphery will pave the way for re-writing current biennial history.
Oliver Marchart, “The Globalization of Art and the ‘Biennials of Resistance’: A History of the Biennials from the
Periphery,” World Art 4, no. 2 (2014): 263–76. For a similar approach, see Michel Oren, “Biennials that Promote
an ‘Emancipatory Politics’,” World Art 4, no. 2 (2014): 277–305. Progressing further, Nikos Papastergiadis and
Meredith Martin have a quite positive attitude about the biennial format itself rather than a few selected biennials,
stressing the biennial format’s potential for “articulating the palpable tensions and latent possibilities in
contemporary aesthetics and politics”. Nikos Papastergiadis and Meredith Martin, “Art Biennials and Cities as
Platforms for Global Dialogue,” in Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere, ed. Liana Girogi, Monica Sassatelli
and Gerard Delanty (London, New York: Routledge, 2011), 46. On the other hand, George Baker is very sceptical
about the emancipatory features of mega-exhibitions like biennials. George Baker, “The Globalization of the
False: A Response to Okwui Enwezor,” in The Biennial Reader, ed. Elena Filipovic, Marieke van Hal and Slveig
Ovstebo (Bergen and Ostfildern: Bergen Kunsthall and Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010), 446-53.
58 Frascina, “Berlin, Paris, Liverpool,” 4. Caroline A. Jones stands for the former whereas Charlotte Bydler is close
to the latter. See Caroline A. Jones, The Global Work of Art: World's Fairs, Biennials, and the Aesthetics of
Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017); Caroline A. Jones. “Biennial Culture and the Aesthetics
of Experience,” in Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present, ed. Alexander Dumbadze and Suzanne Hudson
(Malden, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 192–201; Bydler, The Global Art World, Inc.
59 Since the 2000s, many meetings have been held to gather representatives of biennials, curators and academics to
thoroughly investigate the diverse issues regarding biennial culture. The first conference of “Biennials in
Dialogue,” organized by ifa (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations), was held first in Kassel in 2000, followed by
Frankfurt am Main (2002), Singapore (2006) and Shanghai (2008). Among others, the initiation of Biennial
Foundation (2009), Bergen Biennial Conference (2009), World Biennial Forums (Gwangju – 2012, São Paulo –
2014), Biennials: Prospect and Perspectives Conference at ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe (2014)
and the foundation of International Biennial Association (IBA) (2014) shows how contemporary biennials are in
contact with each other and consciously contribute to forming a biennial culture. See Ute Meta Bauer and Hou
Hanru, eds., Shifting Gravity: World Biennial Forum No. 1 (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2013); Elena Filipovic,
Marieke van Hal and Slveig Ovstebo, eds., The Biennial Reader (Bergen and Ostfildern: Bergen Kunsthall and
Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010); Andrea Buddensieg, Elke aus dem Moore and Peter Weibal, eds., Biennials: Prospect
and Perspectives, ZKM e-paper, accessed October 25, 2019, https://zkm.de/media/file/de/2015-publicationprospect_
and_perspectives-zkm.pdf.
26
Although discussing biennials in a chronological order may cause some problems,
it is interesting to see how art appears as a necessity during the social turbulence that occurs
with political transformations. In this context, it is useful to take a look at the limited but
practical classification of art historian Charlotte Bydler:
The biennials fall into three broad groups; (1) the capitalist-philanthropic
enterprises, initiated at the end of the nineteenth century up to the mid-twentieth
century, several of them initiated by strong-headed patrons (the Venice biennial, the
Carnegie International, but also the more recent São Paulo and Sydney biennials);
(2) the events that originated in the post-World War II period, marked by bloc politic
or (underdevelopmentalist) reaction against such alignment (the Documenta, the
post-War Venice biennial, the Havana biennial, Dak'Art, and the international
biennials of graphic arts in Cracow, Ljubljana, or Buenos Aires); and (3) the flexible
production - and event oriented variety of the 1990s and 2000s (the Istanbul
biennial, Kwangju biennial, Manifesta, and the al-Sharjah biennial).60
Although this classification touches briefly on the political motivations behind the
biennials in the first two categories, it defines the third category as quite “flexible” when
explaining the raison d'être of those quite different biennials. For example, the inauguration
of the Istanbul Biennial in 1987 aimed to improve the image of Turkey abroad in the wake
of the military coup in 1980 and to vouch for the country's secular and neoliberal standards
for a possible EU membership.61 While the first two editions of the biennial took place under
the auspices of the state, the president of this period was four star general Kenan Evren, who
staged the coup in 1980, “demilitarized” himself and became president in 1983, stayed in this
position until 1989 and had a reputation for torture and art censorship.62
The Gwangju (Kwangju) biennial was initiated in 1995 as a commemoration of the
uprising against the military dictatorship in May 1980 which left hundreds (or thousands,
according to some reporters) dead. The Gwangju Biennial took “advantage of Korea’s huge
60 Bydler, The Global Art World, Inc., 151.
61 Julian Stallabrass, Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),
37.
62Alongside other acts of censorship, the removal of a painting of a Polish artist from the Asian-European Biennial
in 1989 on the orders of Evren, due to its ‘erotic’ features, is important evidence to reveal Evren’s point of view on
biennials. The statement he made on Picasso's Les femmes d'Alger, which he saw during his US trip in 1998, can
also be seen as a summary of his approach to art: “A black brush hit here, made a dot next to it. A black here as
well, the mid is white. Here a black, dots. I looked, looked and said, I will start to paint when I am back to Turkey.
I can do it, too”. “Kenan Evren'in "Ben de Yaparım" Dediği Tablo 179 Milyon Dolara Satıldı”, Haberler, May 12,
2015, accessed October 29, 2019, https://www.haberler.com/kenan-evren-in-yaparim-dedigi-picasso-tablosu-
7301084-haberi/.
27
economic boom by the early 1990s to signal the end of authoritarian rule”.63 Another biennial
which was initiated during the same period, the short-lived Johannesburg Biennale, marked
the rebirth of South Africa after the apartheid era, and the "end of more than thirty years of
cultural quarantine".64 So, the political agendas behind those biennials are not of lesser
importance than those of their predecessors.
Manifesta is another biennial that occurred in the wake of an important political and
economic transformation, namely the entrance of another part of Europe into the free market
economy. But the main feature that distinguishes Manifesta from other biennials is that it is
not dependent on economic and human resources of one city or one country. Instead, it was
initiated by a group of people outside of the political-economic transformation of the region
in which they aimed to settle. This situation, as I discuss later in this chapter, sparked serious
criticism against Manifesta.
At this point, it is useful to emphasize the two characteristics of Manifesta that are
frequently emphasized especially in its first decade: being pan-European and nomadic. In
fact, the first biennial initiated to consider a region instead of a country was the Biennale de
la Méditerranée. This biennial, which was inaugurated in Alexandria (Egypt) in 1955 in the
third year of Nasser's period of office, concentrated on Mediterranean regionalism and made
room for manoeuvre against the possible isolation of Egypt due to the tension caused by the
Cold War. As Green and Gardner stated, "bringing together artists from both sides of the Iron
Curtain, as well as from countries subject to post-fascist dictatorships, isolationism, and
despair, was no small feat".65 Another biennial, the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts, which
started in Ljubljana (Yugoslavia) in 1955, accepted works from both sides of the Iron
Curtain.66 These two biennials can be seen as “markers in the respective leaders’ [Nasser's
and Tito's] struggle for hegemony among non-aligned nations”.67
63 Green and Gardner, Biennials, Triennials and Documenta, 113.
64 Ibid., 156. For a comparison of two editions of Johannesburg Biennale, see Sabine Marschall, “The Impact of
the Two Johannesburg Biennales (1995 and 1997) on the Formation of a ‘New South African Art’,” Social
Dynamics 25, no. 2 (1999): 119–37.
65 Green and Gardner, Biennials, Triennials and Documenta, 84.
66 Wiktor Komorowski, “Hard Ground-Soft Politics: The Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana and Biting of the
Iron Curtain,” Humanities 7, no. 4 (2018).
67 Green and Gardner, Biennials, Triennials and Documenta, 87. This kind of art event sometimes acts in contrary
to leaders' political discourses. As Djokic reminds us, American artist Robert Rauschenberg’s abstract painting hit
the grand prix at the 5th International Graphic Art Biennale in Ljubljana, which was just a year after Tito launched
a campaign against abstract art in 1962, and in response to this the biennial underwent a serious investigation by
the government. See Stefana Djokic, “Cultural Encounters and the Role of Art in Yugoslav – US Relations 1961 –
1966,” in Reinventing Eastern Europe: Imaginaries, Identities and Transformations, ed. Evinc Dogan (London:
Transnational Press London, 2019), 44–6.
28
Among the pan-regionalist biennials, the one that should be marked as the closest
to Manifesta’s purposes was the Arab Art Biennale. One of the main goals of this biennial,
first organized in Baghdad in 1974, was to establish the Arab identity and to place it in a
distinct position among other regional identities.68 Although its political infrastructure was
different, this pan-Arabic biennial, which was planned to be held in a different Arabic capital
every other year, can be considered as the ancestor of Manifesta. Similar to Manifesta’s pan-
European perspective, the Arab Art Biennale intended to establish sympathy among Arabs
following the decolonization processes seen across the Arab world in the 1970s.69
After the second edition held in Rabat (Morocco) in 1976, the Arab Art Biennale
said an unglamorous farewell in Tripoli (Libya) in 1980.70 Although there was clear political
instrumentalization behind it, this little-studied biennial provides important data on how art
organizations can play a role in identity-building processes in accordance with changing
geopolitical conditions. Manifesta’s aim of questioning European identity parallel to its pan-
European character also accommodates a political move, but with a significant difference
from the past pan-regionalist movements: the content of the concept of identity after 1989 is
quite different from the Cold War period.
As I have mentioned above, Manifesta based its existence on the need for new
platforms where young artists could show up after the end of the Paris Biennale and the fall
of the Iron Curtain. To meet these needs, it was designed as a nomadic biennial, paying
particular attention to Eastern Europe.71 The Biennale of Young Artists from Mediterranean
Europe was also a biennial focused on young artists. Structured as nomadic within the
Mediterranean region, it launched long before Manifesta, in 1984. This biennial, which
changed its name to the Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean in
1994, has made an important contribution to the development of young artists, though it is
not as close to the art market as major biennials.72 The coordinator of the Spanish part of this
68 Amin Alsaden, “Baghdad’s Arab Biennial: Regional Subversions, Global Ambitions,” Third Text 33, no.1
(2019): 137.
69 Ibid., 137.
70 Alia Nakhli, “Les Grandes Messes Panarabes : Festivals et Biennales D’art Arabe Dans Les Années
1970,” Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée 138, (2014).
https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/8577#ftn20. According to Nahkli, the reasons for the termination of the
biennial were the decline in the idea of Arabism and the budget cuts due to the declaration of war by Iraq, the
biggest financial supporter of the biennial idea, against Iran. Amin Alsaden states that he could not confirm the
existence of the third edition in Libya due to a lack of resources, while Green and Gardner do not mention the third
edition at all.
71 On how nomadism is celebrated within biennial culture, see Claudette Lauzon, The Unmaking of Home in
Contemporary Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), Chapter 4.
72 In the beginning, the biennial focused on the art productions of young artists between the ages of 18 and 30 was
planned to be held one year in Barcelona and the following year in another Mediterranean city, but then it
switched to organize in a different city once every two years: Barcelona (1985), Thessaloniki (1986), Barcelona
29
biennial between 1988 and 1992 was Rosa Martínez, who would later become one of the
curators of Manifesta 1.
Re-Westernization of Art after Critique
On that basis, how can we theoretically explain the void that Manifesta saw after
the geopolitical change in the “East of the West” and the strategy that it followed as an actor
to bridge the gap? Interpreting the explosion of the biennial format from the 1990s onwards
and picturing the trend of promoting non-Western art just as a response to a series of
criticisms in the discipline of art history would lead us to underestimate the whole situation.
With the collapse of the communist regimes, citizens of these countries had to be
“redesigned” as both producers and consumers within capitalist market relations, and this
could only be realised by incorporating local productions of those countries into the general
capitalist market. One of the main ways of integrating the periphery into the system is to
promote the authenticity and originality of that region.73 In this way the geo-political needs
overlap with the geo-aesthetical art market. To put it differently, imagination leaps over the
real dynamics of the local culture and local art and establishes a connection in terms of the
art market. This reinvents rather than ends the Eurocentric discourse.
In this and the following section, I argue that Manifesta’s claims about the needs of
“Eastern Europe” seem more to represent (or advertise) artists of post-communist countries
to the Western art scene as “fresh blood”. At the same time, I show how Manifesta aimed to
contribute to the establishment of a Western art scene and art market in post-communist
regions with strategies similar to many Western companies and to promote the idea of
European multiculturalism in harmony with the cultural policies of the EU. Joaquín
(1987), Bologna (1988), Marseille (1990), Valencia (1992), Lisbon (1994), Turin (1997), Rome (1999), Sarajevo
(2001), Athens (2003), Naples (2005), Bari (2008), Skopje (2009), Rome and Thessaloniki (2011), Marseille
(2013), Milan (2015), Tirana – Durrës (2017).
73 Many exhibitions were organized in parallel with this idea after 1989. To mention but a few: Europa-Europa
(Bonn - 1994), Beyond Belief (Chicago - 1995), Der Riss im Raum (Berlin - 1995), After the Wall: Art and
Culture in Post-communist Europe (Stockholm - 1999), Aspekte/Positionen – 50 Jahre Kunst aus
Mitteleuropa 1949-1999 (Vienna - 1999), Central European Avant-gardes: Exchange and Transformation (Los
Angeles - 2002), In Search of Balkania (Graz - 2002), In the Gorges of the Balkan: A Report (Kassel 2003), Blood
and Honey: The Future’s in the Balkans (Vienna 2003). Art historian Claire Bishop describes the first-wave
exhibitions held in the 1990s as “curatorial safari”. This changed following the “After the Wall” exhibition in 1999
towards exhibitions that either focused on the Balkans or on retrospective exhibitions that investigated Eastern
European art from within. Claire Bishop, “Introduction,” in Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and Eastern
Europe: A Critical Anthology, ed. Ana Janevski, Roxana Marcoci and Ksenia Nouril (New York: The Museum of
Modern Art, 2018), 67. Also see, Raluca Voinea, “Geographically Defined Exhibitions,” Third Text 21, no. 2
(2007): 145–51; Louise Avgita, “Marketing Difference: The Balkans on Display,” In The Global Art World:
Audiences, Markets and Museums, ed. Hans Belting and Andrea Buddensieg (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag,
2009), 88–97.
30
Barriendos stresses that the European epistemology that rests upon the politico-economic
power relations of Europe again appoints itself to redesign the art scene, but now based on a
postcolonial critique:
Some art museums have begun adapting their collections, expanding their
acquisition policies and realigning their discourses so as to engage with art
production worldwide. […] From the point of view of the cultural interplay dictated
by global knowledge economy, these museums subscribe to the inclusion of what I
call the emerging geoaesthetic regions into the historical geography of the Western
canon of art. In spite of promoting cultural diversity, this sort of geopolitical
revisionism appears to fail due to a Eurocentric geo-epistemological point of
departure, a universalistic understanding of what global art and world art history
should be after post colonialism and, finally, due to the belief that cultural
geography will directly rectify the biased accounts produced by modern/ colonial
Western museums. As a result, a new museographic paradox appeared: the re-
Westernization of the global art concept.74
Curator and art critic Gerardo Mosquera, who has written extensively on
Eurocentrism in global art since the late 1980s, names this paradoxical situation as Marco
Polo Syndrome, in reference to a work of Cuban artist Flavio Garciandia entitled El Sindrome
de Marco Polo that was exhibited at the Second Havana Biennial. He explains it as such:
“The character [in the installation], like Marco Polo, was a pioneer in the experience of
understanding the Other, but his chances of bridging two cultures were lost through the
suspicion provoked by both sides, especially from his”.75 This suspicious Western gaze
creates a paradoxical situation for non-European countries.
To appease this suspicious western gaze and to integrate themselves into the global
art world, a non-Western artist needs a minimum of intermediate level English, an acceptance
from a recognized institution and some trendy skills such as creativity, flexibility, will to
collaborate, etc., which are all standardized by and function for the sake of Western
epistemology76. This was also the case for the post-communist countries after the Cold War.
During the process of European integration, Western epistemology has not articulated the
74 Joaquín Barriendos, “Geopolitics of Global Art,” 98.
75 Gerardo Mosquera, “The Marco Polo Syndrome: Some Problems around Art and Eurocentrism,” in The
Biennial Reader, ed. Elena Filipovic, Marieke van Hal and Slveig Ovstebo (Bergen and Ostfildern: Bergen
Kunsthall and Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010), 417.
76 This criticism is perhaps best illustrated by Mladen Stilinović’s well-known work entitled “An Artist Who
Cannot Speak English is No Artist” (1994).
31
knowledge produced in these countries without labelling them with an ethnic background.77
To put it differently, Western epistemology performs an illusion through a quick equation of
“Western” with “universal” or “global” behind the scenes:
The myth of universal value in art, and the establishment of a hierarchy of works
based in their ‘universality,’ is one of the heritages of Eurocentrism that continue to
survive, despite our becoming less naive with respect to the ‘universal’, which has
so frequently been a disguise for the ‘Western’.78
On the other hand, critical non-Western voices play crucial roles in raising
decolonial challenges to reflect the current dynamism of those societies in the global realm.
In the 2010s, Argentinian semiotician Walter Mignolo and a group of scholars who
collaborated with him conceptualized and extensively discussed these decolonial art and
curatorship practices, which began in the global South in the 1960s and increased in visibility
from the 1990s onwards,79 as "decolonial aesthetics/aesthesis" since the 2010s.80 The main
purpose of these studies has been to challenge the Western-centred modern and postmodern
aesthetic categories that have been standardized and universalized by Europe for centuries.
In this context, before delving into the details of Manifesta’s orientation towards
“the East”, it is necessary first to look at how Manifesta—as a self-proclaimed European
biennial—defines “the East” as one of the emerging geoaesthetic regions after 1989.
77 Ovidiu Tichindeleanu, “Decolonizing Eastern Europe: Beyond Internal Critique,” in Art and Theory of Post-
1989 Central and Eastern Europe: A Critical Anthology, ed. Ana Janevski, Roxana Marcoci and Ksenia Nouril
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2018), 195.
78 Mosquera, “The Marco Polo Syndrome,” 422. Also see, Gerardo Mosquera, “Alien-Own/ Own-Alien:
Globalization and Cultural Difference,” boundary 2, 29, no. 3, (2002): 163–73.
79 To name but a few of these countless artists and curators: Anna Bella Geiger, Guerilla Girls, Fred Wilson, Maria
Thereza Alves, Pedro Lasch, Okwui Enwezor, Ahmed Bouanani, Jean Marie Téno and Patricia
Kaersenhout.
80 See Walter Mignolo and Rolando Vazquez, “Decolonial AestheSis: Colonial Wounds/Decolonial
Healings,” Social Text, July 15, 2013, accessed February 2, 2021,
https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/decolonial-aesthesis-colonial-woundsdecolonial-healings/; Madina
Tlostanova, What Does It Mean to Be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2018); Juan G. Ramos, Sensing Decolonial Aesthetics in Latin American Arts (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2018); Alanna Lockward, “Call and Response: Conversations with Three Women
Artists on Afropean Decoloniality,” in A Companion to Feminist Art, eds. Hilary Robinson and Maria Elena
Buszek (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2019), 419–35.
32
Manifesta in Search of “the East” of Europe
In his well-known article published in 1984, eminent Czechoslovakia-born writer
Milan Kundera pointed out how the ideological polarization since World War II had changed
the perception of the East–West dichotomy in Europe rapidly, and how as a result the
countries "in the middle" were stuck in a difficult situation:
“Geographic Europe" (extending from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains) was
always divided into two halves which evolved separately: one tied to ancient Rome
and the Catholic Church, the other anchored in Byzantium and the Orthodox
Church. After 1945, the border between the two Europes shifted several hundred
kilometers to the west, and several nations that had always considered themselves
to be Western woke up to discover that they were now in the East. As a result, three
fundamental situations developed in Europe after the war: that of Western Europe,
that of Eastern Europe, and, most complicated, that of the part of Europe situated
geographically in the center – culturally in the West and politically in the East.81
The metaphor of being “culturally in the West and politically in the East” is quite
striking in terms of describing the situation of those in communist countries who produced
in the fields of art and culture during the Cold War. However, there are great differences in
the perception of this geographical ambiguity between inhabitants of these geographies and
those who lived outside them. As philosopher Aleš Erjavec stated in the context of Eastern
Europe, it should not be forgotten that there is no regional common identity among
inhabitants, but people from outside of the region expect such a sense of regional belonging
and cultural representation.82 Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the cultural and artistic
interest of Western Europeans towards Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 within this
context.
For Manifesta, which has aimed to connect young artists from "there" to the art
world "here" since its establishment, where exactly is "there”? Where does the “East of the
West” begin and end? The answers to these questions have been an important matter of debate
for Manifesta's managers, curators and artists, as well as for academics studying it.
In this section, I assert that although Manifesta defined itself as “a typical child of
[the] ‘post-communist era’”,83 its discourse on “the East” in its first decade was nourished by
81 Milan Kundera, “The Tragedy of Central Europe,” The New York Review of Books (pre-1986), tr. Edmund
White, Apr. 1984, 33.
82 Aleš Erjavec, “Eastern Europe, Art, and the Politics of Representation,” boundary 2 41, no. 1 (2014): 52.
83 Robert Fleck, “Art after Communism?” Manifesta 2 - European Biennial of Contemporary Art (exh. cat.)
(Luxembourg City: Casino Luxembourg-Forum d'art contemporain, 1998), 194.
33
the Western image of it produced during the Cold War. This is why two concepts, freedom
and democracy, repeatedly came to the forefront in the first three editions. Before illustrating
this assertion with Manifesta officers’ and curators’ statements, I will summarize how diverse
nomenclatures invented to describe "the east of Europe" have been associated with
ambiguous, pejorative meanings and determined by political conditions.
There are countless studies revealing that geographic nomenclatures such as Central
Europe, Eastern Europe and Southeastern Europe are not innocent at all.84 When it comes to
the concept of the Balkans, the political tone of those nomenclatures increases.85 The basic
dichotomy that this concept's confusion rests upon is the East/West dichotomy, which is a
malleable duality that can be used in any kind of opportunist way due to its ambiguity. Yet,
the history of this dichotomy is also relatively new. Until the end of the eighteenth and the
beginning of the nineteenth century, the civilized / barbarian division was described as south
/ north, and “until the dawn of the nineteenth century, British, French, and German textbooks
of political and physical geography, for example, presented Russia predominantly as a
“Northern” (not as an Eastern European) country”. 86 Yet, over the course of time, Russia's
position "on the mental maps of Europe", in accordance with the religious distinction
(Catholic and Protestant "Western" churches vs. Orthodox "Eastern" / "Oriental" churches),
shifted from the north to the east, which reshaped the concept of Eastern Europe within this
dialectic. 87
According to Larry Wolff, who followed in Edward Said’s wake and examined the
writings of key Enlightenment writers about Eastern Europe, "Eastern Europe defined
Western Europe by contrast, as the Orient defined the Occident, but was also made to mediate
84 For example, Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Erjavec, “Eastern Europe, Art, and the Politics of
Representation,” 51–77; Luiza Bialasiewicz, “Spectres of Europe: Europe’s Past, Present, and Future,” in The
Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, ed. Dan Stone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 98-119;
Bo Stråth, “Multiple Europes: Integration, Identity and Demarcation to the Other,” in Europe and the Other and
Europe as the Other, ed. Bo Stråth, (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2010), esp. 414–20. In fact, great ambiguities are seen
even in the efforts made to determine the limits of these concepts only from a geographical viewpoint. For
example, geographer Karl Sinnhuber’s article, published in 1954, discusses the geographic borders of Central
Europe by examining twelve prominent French, British and German maps and shows that the common point in
these maps was only the major part of Czechoslovakia and the minor parts of neighboring countries (Germany,
Austria, Hungary and Poland); on the other hand, the aggregation of those maps leaves only the Iberian peninsula
out. Karl A. Sinnhuber, “Central Europe: Mitteleuropa: Europe Centrale: An Analysis of a Geographical Term,”
Transactions and Papers (Institute of British Geographers) 20, (1954): 15–39.
85 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Maria Todorova, “The
Balkans: From Discovery to Invention,” Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (1994): 453–82; Dušan I. Bjelić and Obrad Savić,
eds., Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation (Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2005).
86 Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, “Eastern Europe,” in European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History, ed.
Diana Mishkova & Balázs Trencsényi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017): 189–90.
87 Ibid., 190.
34
between Europe and the Orient. One might describe the invention of Eastern Europe as an
intellectual project of demi-Orientalization”.88 As a result of this perspective, Eastern Europe
was labelled neither as civilized nor barbarian, but somehow a place in between and amenable
to development.89
From the second half of the 1990s, some scholars used Said's concept of orientalism
to theorize the invention of the Balkans. Yet, they also criticized the concept of orientalism
and some of them offered the term Balkanism as an umbrella term in order to define the
Balkans as “a 'place' in a discourse geography”.90 This definition also posits the Balkans as
slightly distinct from Eastern Europe. According to Maria Todorova,
"Balkanism" evolved independently from "Orientalism" and, in certain aspects,
against or despite it, partially because southeastern Europe (or "the Balkans") has
been considered geopolitically distinct from the near or the middle east. Its
Christianity opposed it to Islam and fed the crusading potential of western
Christendom. Despite many depictions of its (Orthodox) Christianity as "oriental
despotism," inherently non-European or non-western, still the boundary between
Islam and Christianity continued to be perceived as the principal one. Moreover,
Balkan self-identities constructed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
were invariably opposed to "oriental others": geographical neighbors, e.g. the
Ottoman Empire and Turkey, as well as regions within the area itself and portions
of one's own historical past (usually the Ottoman period and the Ottoman legacy).91
Yet, the process of othering the oriental also appeared among Balkan countries, and
even within them. By conceptualizing it as nesting orientalism, Milica Bakić-Hayden’s
seminal article reveals how different newborn nation-states of the former Yugoslavia
orientalized each other to justify their existence and superiority: “The phenomenon of nesting
orientalisms is evident in the former Yugoslavia and its successor states where the
designation of "other" has been appropriated and manipulated by those who have themselves
been designated as such in orientalist discourse”.92
88 Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 7.
89 Ibid., 14.
90 Dušan I. Bjelić, “Introduction: Blowing Up the ‘Bridge’,” in Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and
Fragmentation, ed. Dušan I. Bjelić and Obrad Savić (Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2005), 4. Maria Todorova, Milica
Bakić-Hayden and Vesna Goldsworthy can be regarded as the major scholars of this critique.
91 Todorova, “The Balkans: From Discovery to Invention,” 455.
92 Milica Bakić-Hayden, “Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia,” Slavic Review 54, no. 4 (1995):
922. Although the concept of Balkanism is of great importance to Bakić-Hayden, she is more inclined to locate it
as a sub-branch of orientalism: “While it is important to recognize the specific rhetoric of balkanism, however, it
would be difficult to understand it outside the overall orientalist context since it shares an underlying logic and
35
The trajectory of the concept of Central Europe is not much different from Eastern
Europe and the Balkans. Although the emergence of the German term Mitteleuropa dates
back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, especially after the publication of the book
of the same title by German liberal politician Friedrich Neumann, it started to be discussed
during World War I as a concept to distinguish the historical and cultural orbit of Germany
from Eastern and Western Europe. 93
For Manifesta, too, "the East" refers to a specific political / emotional border,
namely the Berlin Wall, and points to post-communist countries as a whole. “Eastern Europe”
or “the Eastern European artists” were the most frequent terms used to describe “the East” in
Manifesta’s official documents in its first decade. Yet, for example in the first catalogue of
Manifesta, former communist countries were likened to anciens régimes.94 Although curators
of Manifesta’s second edition accepted that “ ‘Eastern Europe’ cannot be reduced to one
general concept”95, in his catalogue text, Robert Fleck, one of the curators of Manifesta 2,
declared that art productions from all corners of Europe became indistinctive in terms of the
aesthetic categories they employed:
The clearest result is the extensive non-differentiability of artistic works which
come from Eastern or Western Europe, Northern or Southern Europe. There is no
typical “Eastern Art” anymore, whereas in the earlier communist states the
development progressed with extreme rapidity. And “Western Art” appeared, on
the reconstruction of a critical art concept, in an age in which there is no longer
any alternative social model to capitalism.96
As is seen, Manifesta as a Western institution attempts to define, categorize and
contemplate the current characteristic of art production in the “East of the West”. Fleck’s
rhetoric with orientalism. Balkanism can indeed be viewed as a ‘variation on the orientalist theme’ that
distinguishes the Balkans as a part of Europe that used to be under Ottoman, hence oriental, rule and, as such,
different from Europe ‘proper’”. Ibid., 920–21. For another approach that focuses more on the process of the
making of the Balkans, see Andrej Grubačić, “Balkanization of Politics, Politics of Balkanization,” Globalizations
9, no. 3 (2012): 439–49.
93 Balázs Trencsényi, “Central Europe,” in European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History, ed. Diana
Mishkova & Balázs Trencsényi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017), 167–9. Also see Robin Okey, “Central
Europe / Eastern Europe: Behind the Definitions,” Past & Present 137, (1992): 102–33; Attila Melegh,
“Positioning in Global Hierarchies: The Case of Central Europe,” in Understanding Central Europe, ed. Marcin
Moskalewicz and Wojciech Przybylski (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 25–31.
94 “Manifesto of the Advisory Board of Manifesta,” 12.
95 Fleck et al., “Manifesta.”
96 Fleck, “Art after Communism?” 193–94. Art historian and curator Bojana Pejić swiftly reacted against this
“normalization” discourse. See, Bojana Pejić, “The Dialectics of Normality,” in After the Wall: Art and Culture in
post-Communist Europe, eds. Bojana Pejić and David Elliott (Stockholm: Moderna Museet, 1999), 18–29.
36
meta-analysis reveals the “tendency to capitalize the identity of the eastern European” that
is coined by the term “capitalization of criticality” by art historian Cristian Nae.97 This is a
place Manifesta imagines in relation to the “West” as fundamentally lacking and “behind”
but willing and able to catch up, especially if being lended a generous hand. Articulations
of these assumptions can also be found in different texts published in the first decade of
Manifesta. For example, in a statement written by curators of Manifesta 3, Ljubljana is
described as such:
Manifesta 3 will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It is a place on the border of
Fortress Europe. It is 'former Eastern Europe', it aims to be Western. It is close to
ethnic turmoil, yet refined in its cosmopolitanism. It is off the centre, it is the
centre - depending on where one stands. Manifesta 3 should explore the paradoxes
of borderlining and strategies of protection.98
Again, a very reductionist and hierarchical perspective is applied to define a city
and a country. Here, Manifesta appears as a facilitator (or even as a psychiatrist, given that
the theme of the Ljubljana edition was “Borderline Syndrome”) that helps aspirational cities
and countries who desire to be Western / European / civilized / healthy. In this context,
referring once more to Erjavec helps us understand Manifesta's perspective on the region.
Erjavec collects the history of Eastern Europe under four main headings. Firstly, there were
national subjectivizations that took place at the end of the nineteenth century, although selfreflection
was not observed in the region until World War I. Secondly there were national
identity-building processes that occurred between the two world wars.99 This was followed
by the Cold War period, which marked “the highest level of recognizability of Eastern Europe
as a whole” and “it was thus the Cold War that produced the dominant twentieth-century
Western image of the European political East as an opaque human space, a ‘their’ place,
permeated by ideology, its primary characteristic to the Western eye seemingly being the
subjugation of ‘freedom’”.100 And the fourth period describes the post-wall era in which art
and culture have become the main tools for self-representation and recognition.101
97 Cristian Nae, “Retrospective Exhibitions and Identity Politics: The Capitalization of Criticality in Curatorial
Accounts of Eastern European Art after 1989,” in Curating 'Eastern Europe' and Beyond: Art Histories through
the Exhibition, ed. Mária Orisková (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014), 51–52.
98 Francesco Bonami, Ole Bouman, Mária Hlavajová, Kathrin Rhomberg, ““Statement: Do You Suffer from a
Borderline Syndrome? Where do YOU Draw the Line?” text published in the website of Manifesta 3, accessed
December 17, 2020, http://m3.manifesta.org/statement.htm.
99 Erjavec, “Eastern Europe, Art, and the Politics of Representation,” 55.
100 Ibid., 56.
101 Ibid., 57.
37
Although Erjavec schematizes the very complex history of Eastern Europe with
broad strokes, highlighting the importance of the Cold War in terms of concretizing the
Western gaze on “Eastern Europe” and describing art and culture as driving forces for
recognition and self-representation in the post-wall era is crucial to unveiling the basis from
which Manifesta stemmed. In the next chapter, I discuss the institutional, infrastructural,
discursive and financial support Manifesta received in order to realize its projects and
strengthen its position on the global art world map.
38
39
Chapter 2: Institutional, Infrastructural and Discursive
Backdrop for Manifesta
Manifesta and the EU's Cultural Policies
One of the characteristics of Manifesta that emerged in its first decade and that
triggered serious criticism in the following years was its alignment with practices and
discourses of EU's cultural policies. Such alignment stemmed from both institutions having
to tackle common issues such as European identity and the cultural integration of postcommunist
countries. Although Manifesta has frequently emphasized its autonomy from EU
institutions and policies,102 its pan-Europeanist discourse and self-description as the only
European biennial paved the way for a common perception that Manifesta is a component of
EU's cultural policies. When we look at the official discourse, practices and funds of
Manifesta more closely, it can be seen that there is concrete evidence for this perception. But
the similarities between Manifesta and the cultural policies of the EU can be better
understood by tracing back the political and economic transformation of the 1990s from
which both derived.
From the end of the 1980s, the EU started to consider itself not only as an economic
organization but increasingly as a political organization too. The main reasons for this rising
interest in politics can be marked as the collapse of the Soviet Union, the increasing power
of the EU after the unification of Germany, the change in geopolitical equilibrium and the
arrival of the American and East Asian global market relations to Europe.103 The inclination
to see Europe as superior (the nineteenth and early twentieth century), inferior (from World
War I to the 1950s and 1960s, peaking in the interwar period), an apostle of global
modernization (between the 1950s and 1970s), or a civilization among several others (after
the fall of the European overseas empires), evolved in the 1990s to a different identification:
"there exists an inward-looking identification with Europe that focusses on Europe's internal
102 The following statement clearly illustrates this intended autonomy: “It has sometimes been argued that
Manifesta resembles the European Cultural Capital project, but this has never been a true comparison. Manifesta
was not initiated by the EU, but is instead a concept that emerged from a close collaboration between national arts
organizations throughout Europe”. Hedwig Fijen, in René Block et al., “How a European Biennial of
Contemporary Art Began,” 194.
103 Hartmut Kaelble, “Identification with Europe and Politicization of the EU since the 1980s,” in European
Identity, ed. Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 195–96.
40
diversity, as summarized in the formula 'European unity in diversity'".104 “Explicit
institutional attempts at creating (or “reawakening”) a sense of European belonging or
identity” also started to appear within the EU from the 1980s in a serious way. 105 Thus,
Manifesta’s purpose and discourse developed parallel to the EU's cultural policies after the
politicization of the EU's institutions.
These new perspectives of the EU require an urgent query of two difficult and
inconsistent rationales: “a rationale of Europe as heritage and a rationale of the Union as a
project”.106 Cris Shore, who conducted ethnographic field research between 1993 and 1997
among European Union politicians and civil servants in Brussels on the cultural politics of
European integration, noted that many of the EU policymakers prefer an architectural
metaphor, “European construction”, to express what they strive for.107 Especially after the
Maastricht Treaty in 1992 in which the category of “European citizenship” was defined, the
cultural aspect of the union gained importance. As can be easily noticed, this construction
has multiple and problematic dimensions, including that it is hard to reach a consensus.
Nonetheless, EU elites saw that investigating the commonality of the EU member states and
reuniting people under newly invented symbols of Europe that ushered in a European identity
was essential to overcome the EU’s legitimacy problems. Thus, in 2000 Shore said that:
“imagining the new Europe is an inherently political activity [and] European consciousness
is being developed and diffused from above by a vanguard of EU politicians, bureaucrats and
marketing professionals”.108
The European Capital of Culture project (ECoC), which was initiated in 1985 and
involves the EU funding a series of artistic and cultural events in host cities, is of great
104 Ibid., 199. However, it should not be forgotten that the idea of Europe has followed different historical paths at
different moments. For example, Richard Jenkins summarizes the idea of Europe under six categories by
considering basic discussions of social sciences: territorial Europe, 'racial' Europe, cultural Europe, the outsiders'
Europe, Union Europe, and economic Europe. By focusing on the use of the concept of Europe in different periods
of history, Richard Swedberg visualizes the fifteen different meanings of Europe in a chart. Many academics, too,
have different categorizations for the concept of Europe and what it has meant in history. Richard Jenkins, “The
Ambiguity of Europe,” European Societies 10, no.2 (2008): 153-76; Richard Swedberg, “The Idea of ’Europe’ and
the Origin of the European Union - A Sociological Approach,” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 23, no. 5 (1994): 378-87.
105 Monica Sassatelli, Becoming Europeans: Cultural Identity and Cultural Policies (Houndmills: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009), 2.
106 Riva Kastoryano, “Foreword,” in An Identity for Europe: The Relevance of Multiculturalism in EU
Construction, ed. Riva Kastoryano, trans. Susan Emmanuel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), x.
107 Cris Shore, Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration (London and New York:
Routledge, 2000), 1–2.
108 Ibid., 64. According to Pascal Gielen, the EU is facing political and economic crises today, precisely because it
has not developed enough policies to support this new Europe imagination, and it failed to see culture as the
substructure, rather than the superstructure, of any society: “[…] the European Union’s lack of structural attention,
investment, education and research in the matter of culture is one of the main reasons for the slump it is currently
experiencing”. See Pascal Gielen, “Introduction: There’s a Solution to the Crisis,” in No Culture No Europe: On
the Foundation of Politics, ed. Pascal Gielen (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2015), 9-15.
41
importance for the EU's cultural politics. Hosted by over 60 cities to date, ECoC has been
crucial in constructing an idea of European identity among EU members.109 Yet, there have
been differences between ECoC’s initial intentions and points reached over time. For the
Glasgow edition in 1990, a new model that merged artistic and cultural events with urban
development and regeneration strategies was introduced.110 As political scientist Jürgen
Mittag states, “the implementation of the ECOC concept was initially considered as a means
to enhance European identity. In later years, the program has turned into a vehicle of urban
regeneration, into a catalyst of image purposes and tourism promotion at the local, urban
level”.111 Today there is an extensive body of literature criticizing the ECOC project via its
various implementations that mostly concentrates on its relations with the creative city
approach and urban regeneration processes.112
In this regard, the approaches of host cities to Manifesta and to the ECoC project
are not so far from each other. As I try to show in Chapter Four, Manifesta followed a very
similar route to the ECoC project, especially in its second decade, in terms of engaging with
the neoliberal urban regeneration of its host cities to fulfil their desires to be creative cities.
For host cities, both projects put them at the centre of the European cultural agenda and
encourage the revival of tourism. But the similarities between Manifesta and the ECoC
project do not end there—there are structural similarities, too. According to Gardner:
Both programmes selected host-cities according to their abilities to assimilate into
the pre-established criteria, set by a centrally administered board, of how to conceive
a contemporary state of ‘Europe’ and its culture. […] As a consequence, these two
celebrations of culture across Europe may not have challenged typical forms of
Europatriarchy in the 1990s; rather, they threatened to remobilise and reify
Europatriarchy in the name of the ‘new’ European state.113
109 For the genealogy of the ECoC project, see Uta Staiger, “The European Capitals of Culture in Context: Cultural
Policy and the European Integration Process,” in The Cultural Politics of Europe: European Capitals of Culture
and European Union since the 1980s, ed. Kiran Klaus Patel (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 19–38;
Sassatelli, Becoming Europeans, ch. 3 and 4.
110 Eric Hitters, “Porto and Rotterdam as European Capitals of Culture: Towards the Festivalization of Urban
Cultural Policy.” in Cultural Tourism: Global and Local Perspectives, ed. Greg Richards (New York: The
Haworth Press, Inc., 2007), 284. Hitters also mentioned a third type occurring in Antwerp in 1993, which besides
attracting a great number of tourists, aimed to strengthen cultural and touristic infrastructure.
111 Jürgen Mittag, “The Changing Concept of the European Capitals of Culture: Between the Endorsement of
European Identity and City Advertising,” in The Cultural Politics of Europe: European Capitals of Culture and
European Union since the 1980s, ed. Kiran Klaus Patel (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 39.
112 For some examples, see Peter Campbell, “Creative Industries in a European Capital of Culture,” International
Journal of Cultural Policy 17, no. 5 (2011): 510–22; Yı-De Liu, “Cultural Events and Urban Regeneration:
Lessons from Liverpool as the 2008 European Capital of Culture,” European Review 24, no.1 (2016): 159–76;
Tuuli Lähdesmäki, “European Capital of Culture Designation as an Initiator of Urban Transformation in the Postsocialist
Countries,” European Planning Studies 22, no.3 (2014): 481–97.
113 Gardner, Politically Unbecoming, 107.
42
Several curators and critics have compared Manifesta with ECoC. Okwui Enwezor,
curator of Documenta 11 and an early critic of Manifesta, defined the biennial “as an
extension of Brussels's cultural policy” and criticized it for not including “the other”,
specifically referring to communities which are not being represented by nation-states.114 Art
historian Caroline A. Jones finds the sources of Manifesta's ECoC-style organization in the
institutional re-embracement of Latin American artistic interventions: “Energies that were
once generated by a diasporal Hispanic / Brazilian community of artists around 'transobjects',
fueling the grassroots efforts for a transnational Contrabienal, became institutional
in 1996 as EU cultural agencies and NGOs announced an 'anti-biennial', Manifesta, in
synchronicity with tourism via the 'European Capital of Culture' initiative ”.115 Therefore,
“the expansionary / exclusionary logic of ‘Europe’ was built into Manifesta’s brief”.116
It is instructive to further compare discourses and attempts of Brussels policymakers
with Manifesta’s premises and practices. A feature that Manifesta has not changed in its
official discourse from the beginning is that it has a pan-European mission. As I have
mentioned before, what is intended to be emphasized by this concept is not only creating an
art event within the geographical territory of Europe, but also binding the cultural scenes of
Eastern / Central and Western Europe together by articulating the art of post-communist
countries to the Western capitalist art world, and constructing a Western capitalist art market
in Eastern / Central Europe.117 The initial economic model that asks for the equal financial
contribution of each country to Manifesta as a supranational institution was also very
important for the biennial's pan-European perspective.
In this regard, I argue that in its international / pan-European aspirations, Manifesta
shares the same methodology as the new approach of the EU's cultural and integration
policies that promote supranational European identity among the EU member states and pay
114 Okwui Enwezor, “What Our Village Needs Now… Biennial Localization Factors”. (Panel Statement at the
Biennials in Dialogue Conference, Kassel, Documenta Halle, August 5, 2000), cited in Bydler, The Global Art
World Inc., 146; Okwui Enwezor “Tebbit’s Ghost,” in The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art
Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe, ed. Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2005), 175–86.
115 Jones, The Global Work of Art, 159. Contrabienal is an art book that called artists to boycott the XI São Paulo
Biennial (1971) due to the censorship and torture committed by Brazil's dictatorial regime. For more information
on Contrabienal, see Aimé Iglesias Lukin, “Contrabienal: Latin American Art, Politics and Identity in New York,
1969-1971,” ARTL@S BULLETIN 3, no. 2 (2014): 68–82.
116 Jones, The Global Work of Art, 160.
117 “[T]he effect of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 brought about a euphoria regarding the potential for new
structures of cooperation as well as new forms of communication and exchange with the organizations in a socalled
Pan-European context, focusing on the exploration of the identity of a new Europe, encompassing the
former Warsaw Pact countries and those formerly comprising Western Europe, the latter of which still at that time
dominated the art world”. Hedwig Fijen, in Rene Block et al., “How a European Biennial of Contemporary Art
Began,” 192.
43
specific attention to the former communist / upcoming European countries. In this context,
Manifesta brings important cultural capital to host cities, providing them with a symbolic
connection with the new, integrated Europe itself and with its culture and art.118 For example,
in the preface of the catalogue of Manifesta 3 - Ljubljana, Vika Potočnik (the then Mayor of
Ljubljana) and Jožef Školč (the then Minister of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia) express
their gratitude to Manifesta for visiting their city, and then go on to say: “We are equally glad
that 'in such a way' Slovenia can confirm its position on the map of the art centers of the
world, a position it has, due to its important potentials, occupied for a long time”.119 The
statement by Minister for Culture of the Basque Government, Miren Azkarate Villar,
published in the catalogue of Manifesta 5 - Donotsia / San Sebastian, was also within the
same direction: "Manifesta 5 demonstrates the openness of Basque society and culture".120
The idea that hosting Manifesta approximates cities to the idea of Europe continued in time
and found its last example in the opening statement of the mayor of Palermo in 2018.
The generous grants Manifesta received from DGX Kaleidoscope and the Culture
2000 and Culture 2007 programmes of the EU for its eight editions between 2000 and 2014,
as well as financial support from the European Cultural Foundation, an NGO align with the
EU's institutions and logic which also has a pan-European perspective, make the link between
the EU's cultural policies and Manifesta more visible both discursively and structurally. For
example, the New European Contemporary Art Network project (2002–2005), which was
launched in 2002 under the leadership of Manifesta and received a grant of EUR 889,107 as
part of the Culture 2000 programme, promised to organize various panels, workshops and
meetings, to prepare and digitalize the Manifesta archive and to publish a journal (MJ –
Manifesta Journal) that made room for contemporary curatorship discussions.121 The
aforementioned book The Manifesta Decade was also commissioned as part of this project.122
118 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education,
ed. John Richardson, trans. Richard Nice (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986), 241-–58.
119 Vika Potočnik and Jožef Školč, “Preface,” in Borderline Syndrome: Energies of Defence (Manifesta 3 exh. cat),
ed. Francesco Bonami et al., (Ljubljana: Cankarjev Dom, 2000), 7.
120 Miren Azkarate Villar, “Manifesta 5,” in With All Due Intent (Manifesta 5 exh. cat), ed. Marta Kuzma and
Massimiliano Gioni (Barcelona: Actar, 2004), 13.
121 “Culture 2000 – Exercise 2002: 17 Multi-annual Co-operation Projects Supported in the Field of Visual Arts,”
European Commission, accessed January 20, 2020,
https://ec.europa.eu/assets/eac/culture/tools/documents/culture-2000/2002/visual-multi.pdf. Interestingly enough,
Manifesta declares on its official website that the grant it received from Culture 2000 to operate this project was
1.5 million euros. See, “Partners,” Manifesta, accessed January 20, 2020, https://manifesta.org/support-us-
2/partners/. The rejection of the research I wanted to conduct in Manifesta's digital and physical archive shows that
some of the objectives of the New European Contemporary Art Network project have not been realized or
sustained.
122 The other partners of the project were AICA – Association Internationale des Critiques d'Art (FR),
Ayuntamiento de Donostia San Sebastian (ES), Basis Wien (AT), Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm (DE), Liverpool
Biennial of Contemporary Art (UK), Moderna Galerija Di Lubljana (SI) and Roomade VZW (BE).
44
Manifesta was accredited as an Ambassador of European Culture between 2008 and 2010 by
the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Union
as part of the Culture 2007 programme, and later this accreditation was extended to 2013.
Therefore, it has become clearer that the compatible association between Manifesta
and the EU policies has not only been discursive but also economic and political. In the
following section, I will draw attention to another perspective, new internationalism, and its
supporting institution, the Institute of New International Visual Arts, that also played an
important role in developing the Manifesta project.
Manifesta, New Internationalism and the InIVA
Joaquín Barriendos argues that the revisionist expansion of Western art canon
towards the rest of the world (or towards the “East of the West”) should be discussed from
two perspectives: “taking into consideration the whole colonial dimension of modernity as
well as the current coloniality of the global art system”.123 In this context, it is useful to
consider the growing interest in the art of post-communist countries by recalling Barriendos’
concept of emerging geoaesthetic regions. This was surely not just an interest developed by
Manifesta. Indeed, as I show in this section, this approach that Barriendos criticizes can also
be found within discourse and practice of the InVIA and Soros Centers for Contemporary
Art.
It is necessary first of all to take look at the concept of "new internationalism", which
is one of the most important concepts that circulated around discussions on the impact of
globalism on the art world at the beginning of the 1990s—before being replaced by the
concept of "global" or just "international" after a short while.124 New internationalism started
to be discussed in an event titled Expanding Internationalism: A Conference on International
Exhibitions organized as part of the 49th Venice Biennale in 1990, and it became visible with
the establishment of the Institute of New International Visual Arts (INIVA) in London in
1991. The concept basically aimed at challenging the concept of internationalism, which
brings Western art to the forefront and keeps it in a central / hierarchical position, by
including non-Western art in the equation. INIVA was funded by the British Arts Council
and the London Arts Board, and the concept of new internationalism was “in clear harmony
123 Joaquín Barriendos, “Geoaesthetic Hierarchies: Geography, Geopolitics, Global Art, and Coloniality,” in Art
and Globalization, ed. James Elkins, Alice Kim, and Zhivka Valiavicharska (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania
University Press, 2010), 46.
124 Lotte Philipsen, Globalizing Contemporary Art: The Art World’s New Internationalism (Aarhus: Aarhus
University Press, 2010), 9.
45
with the cultural politics of the Arts Council of Great Britain, based on a gradual integration
of ethnic minorities – above all, the community of black artists – into the heart of British
society and culture”.125 It is worth looking at some excerpts of its manifesto-like text that was
issued at its foundation:
[New internationalism] aims to bring the issues of cultural difference and cultural
hybridity into the dominant discourse as a vital contribution to the development of
visual art in the twenty first century. […] ‘New Internationalism’ is not exclusive.
It will not disregard the achievements of Western Europe and the USA. Neither does
it seek a negative confrontation with Western Eurocentric art history. It desires
instead to broaden our understanding of the history of art beyond the narrow
confines of the past. […] ‘New Internationalism’ introduces new ways of addressing
production, exhibition presentation and interpretation and will generate critical
debate within the mainstream institutions with which a healthy dialogue is
envisaged.126
The initiation of INIVA, which involved important cultural theorists, art historians
and academics of the period such as Stuart Hall, Homi K. Bhabba and Catherine David,
received much criticism on account of its reformist approaches that try to discuss cultural
difference and cultural hybridity within Western mainstream institutions while neglecting
those institutions’ power in determining what is artistic and international and abandoning
these fields to the tutelage of the West. Many of the panellists who attended the "A New
Internationalism" conference organized by InIVA at Tate Gallery (London) in 1994
expressed their concerns that this concept could be a new tool to restore the decisive power
of the Western art world.127 As Rasheed Araaen clearly states,
If the objective of the INIVA project is to eliminate the differentiation of different
peoples, or, to put it more bluntly, making distinctions between white people and
peoples of other races or cultures, why is this objective still wrapped up in the
institutional rhetoric of cultural diversity and pluralism? If ‘new internationalism’
means a global projection of the idea of cultural pluralism, or multiculturalism, as it
has been formed in the West, then I’m afraid we are on shaky ground.128
125 Anna Maria Guasch, The Codes of the Global in the Twenty-first Century (Barcelona: Edicions de la
Universitat de Barcelona, 2018), 30.
126 Gavin Jantjes and Sarah Wilson, Final Report: The Institute of New International Visual Arts (London: Arts
Board/Arts Council, 1991), 7.
127 The institute decided to change its name to Institute of International Visual Arts (InIVA) in 1994.
128 Rasheed Araeen, “New Internationalism or the Multiculturalism of Global Bantustans,” in Global Visions:
Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts, ed. Jean Fisher (London: Kala Press and InIVA, 1994), 4.
46
New internationalism’s tacit reductionism poses the danger of, in Barriendos
Rodrígues’ words, “turning the international artistic language into a kind of new
Esperanto”.129 Although new internationalism has not been used as a concept for a long time,
its reformist approach offered a new valuable perspective to many Western art institutions
and organizations after 1989, including Manifesta. This approximation is observed not only
at the intellectual level but also at the practical and organizational levels. Over the course of
time, Sarat Maharaj, Henry Meyric Hughes, Chris Dercon (InIVA's board members) and
Gilane Tawadros (Founding Director of InIVA) became Manifesta board members and even
International Foundation Manifesta's Chair as in the cases of Gilane Tawadros and Henry
Meyric Hughes.
In fact, it was the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art (SCCAs), which had already
begun working in many post-communist countries, that made Manifesta’s idea of expansion
towards the “East of the West” feasible and realizable. As I show in the next section, the
SCCAs’ established network provided the material support Manifesta needed in the field.
Manifesta and Soros Centers for Contemporary Art
The Soros Centers’ autonomous regional programmes130 stemmed from the Soros
Foundation Fine Arts Documentation Center that was founded in 1985 in Budapest to
document the works of artists produced from official cultural policies. In 1991, the Soros
Foundation Fine Arts Documentation Center morphed into Soros Center for Contemporary
Arts - Budapest.131 Bratislava, Moscow, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw branches were founded
in 1992, followed by Bucharest, Riga, Vilnius, Kiev, Ljubljana, Zagreb and Sofia in 1993.
Also see the criticisms of Hou Hanru, Gerardo Mosquera and other writers in the same book and Nikos
Papastergiadis, “Disputes at the Boundaries of ‘New Internationalism’, Third Text 7, no. 25 (1993): 95–101.
129 Joaquín Barriendos Rodrígues, “Global Art and the Politics of Mobility: (Trans)Cultural Shifts in the
International Contemporary Art-System,” in Art and Visibility in Migratory Culture Conflict, Resistance, and
Agency, ed. Mieke Bal and Miguel A. Hernandez-Navarro (Amsterdam: Ropodi, 2011), 321.
130 The SCCAs were founded and funded by the Open Society Institute (OPI), an institute that was founded by
Hungarian–American investor George Soros, but were autonomous from the OPI in their decision-making
processes.
131 See Nina Czegledy and Andrea Szekeres, eds., “Agents for Change: The Contemporary Art Centres of the
Soros Foundation and C3,” Third Text 23, no. 3 (2009): 251–59.
47
Between 1994 and 1999 St. Petersburg, Belgrade, Chișinău, Sarajevo, Odessa and Almaty
were added to the list.
Having been influenced by his teacher Karl Popper’s well-known book The Open
Society and its Enemies,132 Soros offered various financial support programmes and funds to
contemporary artists based in post-communist countries through the Open Society Institute
and filled the gap of cultural policies in the transition period throughout the 1990s. As
indicated in the Soros Foundations Network 2001 Annual Report,
The goal of the Soros foundations network throughout the world is to transform
closed societies into open ones and to protect and expand the values of existing open
societies. In pursuit of this mission, the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the
foundations established and supported by George Soros seek to strengthen open
society principles and practices against authoritarian regimes and the negative
consequences of globalization.133
The Centers were crucial in terms of archiving pre-1989 art practices as well as
investing in the production and development of the local contemporary art scenes of each
country in which they were based.134 Nevertheless, as the former vice-president of the OSI
Annette Laborey stated, Soros “abhors charity”, and he was expecting to gain substantial
profit in return for his investments in the SCCAs in the long run—which clearly reveals that
Soros' main intention was not to strengthen democracy but neoliberalism in the postcommunist
countries.135 The SCCA network was disbanded in 1999. It is worth noting that
one of the underlying reasons for this disbandment and gradual budget cuts in OSI cultural
programmes was the expected EU accession of many Central and Eastern European
countries.136
132 Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies (London: Routledge, 1945).
133 Open Society Institute, The Soros Foundations Network 2001 Annual Report 6, accessed January 8, 2020,
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/uploads/0025bb89-fc0b-4dd6-b134-5d861e9095ef/a_complete_9.pdf.
134 The Soros Quarterly, a magazine published by the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art Network between 1994
and 1996, provides abundant information on the activities of the Centers. For a detailed analysis of two exhibitions
organized at the Centers, see Polyphony: Social Commentary in Contemporary Hungarian Art (the SCCA
Budapest, 1993), Exhibition 01010101 ... (the SCCA Bucharest, 1994), and Izabel Galliera, Socially Engaged Art
After Socialism: Art and Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017),
81–111.
135 Cited in Gardner, Politically Unbecoming, 108–9.
136 Lidia Varbanova, “The European Union Enlargement Process: Culture in Between National Policies and
European Priorities,” The Journal of Arts, Management, Law and Society 37, no. 1 (2007): 53. In 2004, Poland,
Slovakia, Hungary, Latvia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Lithuania and Estonia became part of the EU, followed by
Bulgaria and Romania in 2007.
48
The SCCA network was one of the most important supporters of Manifesta in terms
of building a dialogue with Central and Eastern Europe, and this support was far more than
just financial assistance of artists from the SCCA network that participated in Manifesta. The
data collected by the SCCAs from post-communist countries functioned effectively for
international exhibitions that were organized to introduce art productions of those regions to
the Western art market: “[…] actors of the international art scene gained access to sources
and materials for their research and exhibitions, and they had the opportunity to use the local
sources as a base material for their projects. For example, the SCCA network facilitated
contacts and provided lists for exhibitions, such as the Manifesta Biennial and After the Wall:
Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe that was shown in Stockholm in 1999”.137 In this
regard, the SCCA network became a crucial partner of Manifesta in Central and Eastern
Europe:
Using the Open Society lnstitute's model, we hoped to form a new structure,
including all the old and new European countries that were invited to participate on
an equal basis, not only artistically but also financially […]. This was
groundbreaking, and it was the Open Society Institute at the time that was actively
setting up local offices in all the former Eastern bloc countries. The rise of its
contemporary art network in 1992, with its SCCAs, made this possible. In my
opinion, the EAM would never have developed into the current Manifesta biennial
without the crucial support from such a powerful organization.138
The SCCA network was also an important partner in terms of eliminating a crucial
criticism that Manifesta tried to avoid from its inception: “The SCCAs also had their own
budgets for artistic production. Therefore, artists from all the regions involved could be
funded by their own organizations, thereby avoiding the "colonial" attitude of having
Western arts councils pay for their colleagues from Central and Eastern Europe”.139 This
close relationship can also be followed in the administrative and organizational bodies of
Manifesta. Some people who served on the local SCCAs or the SCCA Network International
Advisory Board such as Lilijana Stepančič, Maria Hlavajova, Sirje Helme, Marta Kuzma,
Iara Boubnova and Maaretta Jaukkuri became members of the international board or
curatorial team of Manifesta over time. On the other hand, after the SCCAs started to
terminate their activities in 1999, Manifesta's interest in the region diminished:
“Unfortunately, the Soros Centers collapsed just as we began to focus on eastern relations,
137 Kristóf Nagy, “From Fringe Interest to Hegemony: The Emergence of the Soros Network in Eastern Europe,”
in Globalizing East European Art Histories: Past and Present, ed. Beáta Hock and Anu Allas (New York and
London: Routledge, 2018), 60.
138 Hedwig Fijen, in Rene Block et al., ‘How a European Biennial of Contemporary Art Began’, 195.
139 Ibid., 195.
49
which stymied our research to some extent, although we have pursued these concerns in our
journal, MJ, under the editorship of two arts professionals from the former Soviet Bloc”.140
With the withdrawal of Soros Centers, the idea of liberalism—commonly used to
mean “salvation” from a communist past / authoritarianism / censorship / dominancy etc. and
expected to come in conjunction with democracy—fell to pieces in the art world of postcommunist
countries.141 According to Kristóf Nagy, who reads the existence of the Soros
Foundation in Hungary and other countries through the concept of cultural hegemony, the
Foundation’s aim was to try to establish “open society” against the state-socialist authority
to catch up with Western norms. The background of this idea is to see Eastern European
countries as secondary and subordinated vis-à-vis the West, just like other postcolonialist
countries, and to raise them to the level of Western norms and cultures by patronizing their
art scenes.142 Yet, according to Nagy, "the activities of the Soros Foundation were about the
extension of the international contemporary art scene’s hierarchic network into Hungary and
eastern Europe with good intentions, rather than a deliberate colonization".143 On the other
hand, Octavian Eşanu, the founding director of SCCA Chișinău - Moldova, thinks that the
SCCAs operated in the field of culture and art in a similar way that the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and the World Bank did in the political and economic fields during the transition
period of post-communist countries:
What was the overall impact of this program on the local scene? It can be argued
that the SCCA model has affected the fine or visual arts in the same way in which
other mechanisms of transition have changed the ‘rules of the game’ in other social
fields. Using an economic terminology, one can say that the effect can be understood
in terms of liberalization or deregulation of this field of art. Here, I must insist on
the term ‘liberalization’ over ‘democratization’, given that the cultural policies
promoted by the SCCA network have largely stimulated liberal or individualistic
140 Hedwig Fijen, "Manifesta Destiny,” interview by Helena Reckitt. C Magazine: International Contemporary Art
93, (Spring, 2007): 33.
141 Over the course of time, even some of the SCCAs' directors, such as Călin Dan, Maria Hlavajova and Octavian
Eşanu, became critical of the Soros network. See Mária Hlavajová “Towards the Normal: Negotiating the ‘Former
East’,” in The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe,
ed. Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 153–65; Călin Dan, “Soros–
The Dictatorship of Goodwill,” nettime posting, May 10, 1997, accessed January 9, 2020,
https://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9705/msg00050.html. Maia Hlavajova, one of the former
curators of Manifesta, later founded BAK (Basis voor actuele kunst) in the Netherlands in 2003, a platform that
critically engages with the relationship between art and the political sphere and initiates long-term experimental
research. One of BAK’s long-term projects called Former West, which lasted for eight years, scrutinized what
happened after 1989 by questioning the hegemonic power of “the West”. See Maria Hlavajova and Simon Sheikh,
eds., Former West: Art and the Contemporary After 1989 (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2017).
142 Nagy, “From Fringe Interest to Hegemony,” 53–63.
143 Ibid., 60.
50
principles rather than aiming to attain more egalitarian ends among practitioners of
both new and traditional, contemporary and fine arts.144
According to Karolina Łabowicz-Dymanus, who discusses the functioning of the
Soros Centers in detail, the SCCAs took the lead in the transformation of local art scenes in
line with the corporate-like management model by only supporting young artists who used
new media and were open to postmodernist discourse. Justification for this perspective was
provided by declaring the collapse of the communist system as a milestone and thereby
creating amnesia for pre-1989 cultural and artistic production.145 Thus, the SCCAs set the
criteria for the accepted art of the new era.
One of the strongest criticisms of the Soros Centers has been voiced by art theorist
Miško Šuvaković. According to Šuvaković, this type of institutionalization, which he
conceptualizes as Soros Realism, paves the way for the standardization of artistic productions
by Western criteria and forces artists to follow a formulation146 that will allow them to hold
down a steady position in the art market:
Soros Realism is not a Realism in the sense of return to the Realism of the paranoid
nationalistic type, which emerged, in most Post-Socialist societies in the 80s and the
90s. It is neither a brutal variation of Socialist Realism that has established the
canons of expression in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s in the East. Contrary to that, it is
a soft and subtle uniformisation and standardisation of Postmodernist pluralism and
multiculturalism as a criterion of enlightened political Liberalism that has to be
realised by European societies at the turn of the century.147
What Šuvaković defines as Soros Realism is a different expression of the re-
Westernization of the "East of the West", which I discussed in the previous chapter. It is
crucial to remember that while the 1990s was a period when Western multiculturalism was
promoted by the SCCAs, Manifesta and other cultural institutions, it was also the same period
144 Octavian Eşanu, Transition to Post-Soviet Art: The Collective Actions Group Before and After 1989 (Budapest
and New York: Central European University Press, 2013), 193.
145 Karolina Łabowicz-Dymanus, “The Corporate and Market Strategies for Contemporary Art in Eastern Europe
in the 1990s,” in Proceedings of the Art Museum of Estonia, ed. Anu Allas (Tallinn: Art Museum of Estonia,
2019), 76–98.
146 The formula presented by Šuvaković on the creation of an artwork under these conditions is as follows: “(a)
new media (trans-national) + (b) local (regional) themes = (c) presentation 'of' erased traces of culture”. Miško
Šuvaković, “The Ideology of Exhibition: On the Ideologies of Manifesta,” PlatformaSSCA 3, (2002): 17.
147 Ibid., 17–18. According to curator and scholar Anders Härm, Soros Realism was also related to the libidinal
investments of the local Eastern European art scene such as the thirst for the critical Other, for multiculturalism
and for severing its connection with the previous political and artistic formations. See Anders Härm, “On the
Genealogy of ‘Soros Realism’: The ‘Making of’ International Eastern European Art (1989-2004),”
Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi 27, no. 3 & 4 (2018): 7–30.
51
when an intense ethno-nationalist discourse became widespread in some countries which
were attempting to become independent nation-states after the Cold War. This was especially
the case for the countries that rose from the ashes of Yugoslavia. Therefore, the values that
these cultural institutions tried to disseminate did clash with local public cultures at the time,
and were therefore perceived as imported and imposed from abroad.
Yet, this standardization that Suvakovic describes in a negative way is perceived
positively by Robert Fleck, one of the curators of Manifesta 2: “Whoever, today, travels [to]
all parts of the continent, determines no fundamental difference in the aesthetic paradigms of
younger artists from the various regions”.148 According to Fleck, “Manifesta is a typical child
of [the] ‘post-communist era’”.149 It was founded by outstanding figures of the art world who
had already initiated a dialogue across the European continent in the 1960s and were now
seizing their chance to fully realize this ambition. Fleck does not forget to acknowledge the
Soros Centers in an endnote of his text, too.
However, in order to be able to fully map what kind of political, economic and
ideological network Manifesta established since its inauguration, in addition to its theoretical
/ practical connections with the EU cultural policies, the InVIA and the SCCAs, we must also
take a glance at its sponsorship relations. The sponsorship of two out of Manifesta's three
editions in its first decade by the world’s leading tobacco company Philip Morris is worth
interrogating in order to consider the intermingled relationships based on mutual interests.
Sponsoring Manifesta: The Case of Philip Morris
There has been a strange partnership between “free art” and the spreading of free
trade to the globe since the Cold War. Art historian Julian Stallabrass categorizes this
partnership under three titles. Firstly, the economy of art echoes the economy of finance
capital, namely the direction of the art economy is closely shaped by the tendencies of global
finance capital. Secondly, contemporary art always has to be, or at least represent itself as,
distinct from vulgar admiration by displaying “signs of its freedom and distinction” in order
to dismiss economic nuisances. Lastly, free art works are a supplementary of free trade by
providing their own finance while making up their deficiencies, just like a form of mutual
relationship.150 This network of relationships can be easily observed in Manifesta’s first
decade, too. The main sponsor of the first two editions of Manifesta was Philip Morris Inc.,
148 Robert Fleck, “Art after Communism?” 195.
149 Ibid., 194.
150 Julian Stallabrass, Art Incorporated, 4–7.
52
the biggest tobacco company in the world, and Slovenian telecommunication company
Mobitel was the main sponsor of Manifesta 3.151 Especially the case of Philip Morris clearly
shows how political and economic interest groups use art to whitewash their controversial
actions and to maximize their profits.152
One of the biggest dilemmas for Manifesta in its first period was that it attempted
to gain autonomy from political, economic and cultural power mechanisms by asking for an
equal amount of money from every partner institute on the one hand, and making a deal with
the world's largest tobacco company as the main sponsor of its first two editions on the other.
All the more amazing is that this issue has never been questioned, even in the studies
dedicated to discussing Manifesta. For example, in The Manifesta Decade: Debates on
Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe, where many authors
critically comment on Manifesta, one cannot come across even one criticism about the
contradiction in Manifesta’s desire to “democratize” and “liberate” the Eastern European art
scene under the sponsorship of Philip Morris. Scholars who voice criticism in their academic
studies against Manifesta (such as Anthony Gardner, Charlotte Bydler, Vesna Madzoski) and
against Philip Morris’ art sponsorship (e.g. Chin-tao Wu and Mark W. Rectanus) have also
overlooked this relationship.153 There is even no information about Philip Morris's Manifesta
sponsorship in the retrospective online exhibition "Museum Malignancy: Tobacco Industry
Sponsorship of the Arts" curated by Alan Blum, who is the head of the Center of the Study
of Tobacco and Society at The University of Alabama and who has fought against harmful
effects of tobacco and tobacco companies for many years.154
151 Although it is not clear how much Philip Morris invested in Manifesta 1 and 2, a few numbers appeared in a
Slovenian newspaper about the budget of Manifesta 3. The total budget of 150 million tolar (approximately
940,000 US dollars) came from the Ministry of Culture – Slovenia (60 million tolar), Ljubljana City (31 million
tolar) and Mobitel, the EU and some countries’ art councils (59 million tolar). See Živa Verdir and Dušan Rogelj,
“Slovenska Kultura v Letu 2000,” Sta.si, December 1, 2000, accessed December 30, 2020,
https://www.sta.si/528839/slovenska-kultura-v-letu-2000.
152 For the development of art sponsorships in different contexts, see Rosanne Martorella, ed. Art and Business: An
International Perspective on Sponsorship (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1996); Chin-tao Wu, Privatizing Culture:
Corporate Art Intervention since the 1980s (London: Verso, 2002); Volker Kirchberg, “Corporate Arts
Sponsorship,” in A Handbook of Cultural Economics, ed. Ruth Towse (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003), 143–
51.
153 See Green and Gardner, Biennials, Triennials and Documenta; Charlotte Bydler, The Global Art World, Inc.;
Caroline A. Jones, The Global Work of Art: World's Fairs; Chin-tao Wu, Privatizing Culture; Vesna Madžoski,
De Cvratoribvs; Mark W. Rectanus, Culture Incorporated: Museums, Artists, and Corporate Sponsorships
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). The only exceptions are art historian Din Pieters and writer
David Balzer, who mentioned Philip Morris’ sponsorship of Manifesta in one sentence in their works. See Din
Pieters, “Herschikt Boijmans oogt als een studiecollectie,” NRC, June 8, 1996; David Balzer, Curationism: How
Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else (Toronto: Coach House Book, 2014).
154 This online exhibition that provides rich documentation regarding the issue came online in 2019 and includes a
specific section entitled “Philip Morris and the Arts”. See, “Museum Malignancy: Tobacco Sponsorship of the
Arts”, University of Alabama, accessed January 15, 2020, https://csts.ua.edu/museum/intro/.
53
It is worth dwelling on this issue, because the Philip Morris sponsorship is
interesting in terms of exemplifying the intermingled relationships between art and business.
Prior to Manifesta, Philip Morris had acquired a rich art collection, financed many art
organizations in America after 1965, initiated an art award in Southeastern Asia (the ASEAN
Art Award) in 1994, been protested for a long time by some artists and healthcare providers
and later used its power over the art world against policies limiting tobacco usage. After all
of this, it was still able to sponsor Manifesta 1 (1996) and Manifesta 2 (1998) smoothly,
without any explicit protest or criticism.
Though the whole story of Philip Morris' art sponsorship is beyond the scope of this
dissertation, it is necessary to mention a few points in order to understand its relationship
with Manifesta. The story started in 1965 with the sponsorship of the Pop and Op exhibition,
continued with avant-garde exhibitions such as A Plastic Presence (1969), Live in Your Head
- When Attitudes Become Form (1969),155 New Alchemy: Elements - systems - Forces (1969)
and Air (1970), and then turned its direction to the history of American art in the 1970s.156 It
is a fact that the main purpose of the company, which increased its effectiveness in Southeast
Asia with the aforementioned ASEAN Art Award, is not philanthropy. As Wu has stated,
“[…] sponsorship such as that undertaken by Philip Morris is aimed at creating better access
for them to people of influence and power in the country, while at the same time building up,
as far as possible, some goodwill among the general public”.157 In this way, prestige and
cultural capital gained from art can be used as hard or soft power, according to the need. The
company increased its prestige with an art prize and art sponsorship in the South Asian region
before 2003 when the ASEAN Free Trade Zone came into effect and customs taxes were
reduced.158 In 1994, Philip Morris blackmailed the New York Metropolitan Municipality
Assembly by threatening to terminate its support for New York art institutions if the
Assembly passed a bill banning smoking in public spaces.159 According to Wu, who discusses
why the ASEAN Art Award was highly respected by the locals, this situation is closely
155 When Attitudes Become Form, curated by Harald Szeemann, was a canonical show that displayed examples of
contemporary art (conceptual art, minimal art, opt art etc.) for the first time on such a large scale in Europe. It has
been one of the most discussed and referred-to exhibitions for art critics and academics that work on contemporary
art in Europe. See Alison Green, “When Attitudes Become Form and the Contest over Conceptual Art's
History,” in Conceptual Art: Theory, Myth and Practice, ed. Michael Corris (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 123–43; Christian Rattemeyer, ed. Exhibiting the New Art: 'Op Losse Schroeven' and 'When
Attitudes Become Form' 1969 (London: Afterall Books, 2010); Marina Biryukova, “Reconsidering the Exhibition
When Attitudes Become Form Curated by Harald Szeemann: Form versus “Anti-form” in Contemporary Art,”
Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 9, no. 1 (2017): 1–12. For a very strong criticism of Philip Morris' sponsorship of
the When Attitudes Become Form exhibition, see Caroline A. Jones, The Global Work of Art, 171–85.
156 See Sam Hunter, Art in Business: The Philip Morris Story (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1979).
157 Chin-tao Wu, Privatizing Culture, 180.
158 Ibid., 181
159 Ibid., 147–151.
54
related to the “Eastern figure” that struggles in order to be recognized by “the West” and
become an “international subject”. The acclamation of the 1998 Philip Morris Art Awards
by a local newspaper in Vietnam:
points to a collective sense of psychological inferiority among people who long to
see themselves as actors on the international stage and look to the West as some sort
of arbiter for admission to the inner sanctum. This Eastern chip-on-the-shoulder, for
lack of a better term, goes a long way to explaining why a Western art intervention
such as the Philip Morris ASEAN Art Awards has been so successful. Would it be
thinkable for Philip Morris ever to contemplate undertaking a similar scheme, the
Philip Morris EU Art Awards, say, on a European-wide scale?160
The answer to this important question can be both yes and no. Regardless, the main
point here is to analyse the network of capitalist relations established between “the East” and
“the West” which gives important clues about Philip Morris' sponsorship of a pan-European
biennial aiming to reach post-communist countries. The penetration of transnational tobacco
companies into post-communist countries, which were in a process of transition to capitalist
market economies, was of vital importance. First, the smoking rate in Central and Eastern
European countries was very high and cigarettes were produced by public corporations. For
example, in 1989 there were 12 million smokers in Poland out of a population of 37.8 million,
4 million in Hungary out of a population of 10.6 million, and 8.6 million in Romania out of
a population of 23.3 million, and demand for foreign tobacco production was already
increasing thanks to bootlegging.161 But more importantly, in the transition period, the state
and local monopolies were also taking a positive attitude towards privatization. As Connolly
summarizes in 1995,
Thirty-four (34) former state owned companies have been acquired or new facilities
built [by transnational tobacco companies]. Investment figures are available for
twenty-two (22) and come to $ 1.6 billion for initial purchase and this figure rises to
$ 1.8 billion when long term investments are added. If pending Polish acquisitions
are included short and long term investments rise to $ 2.0 billion and $ 2.7 billion
respectively.162
160 Ibid., 179.
161 Gregory N. Connolly, “Tobacco, Trade and Eastern Europe,” in Tobacco and Health, ed. Karen Slama (New
York: Plenum Press, 1995), 57.
162 Ibid., 56.
55
The leading company was Philip Morris, which invested $600 – 850 million (short
and long term, respectively) in nine companies across seven countries.163 Just like in the
Asian market, transnational tobacco companies tried to flout the advertising ban in Central
and Eastern European countries by lobbying and sponsoring art and sport events.164 Philip
Morris’ sponsorship of Manifesta should precisely be thought in this context. It was not
possible for Philip Morris to consider initiating a project such as an EU Art Prize, as Wu has
speculated, because of the EU's structural and legal arrangements which are quite restrictive
for tobacco companies. On the other hand, since the Central and Eastern European countries
(which have potential for international tobacco companies) were not part of the EU in the
1990s, they were still within the scope of the “East of the West”, both economically and
figuratively. Being seen and recognized by the Western art community was quite important
for some Central and Eastern European artists, too, just like abovementioned Southeastern
Asian artists. Therefore, financing an art event such as Manifesta, which had set out to create
cultural and artistic networks between the east and the west, was in full harmony with the
interests and perspective of a company like Philip Morris.
I have shown throughout this chapter that the discoursive framework of InIVA, the
new cultural policies and financial support of the EU, the logistics and infrastructural support
of the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art and the sponsorship by Philip Morris helped
Manifesta to grow and become a recognizable art biennial in its first decade. In the next
chapter, I tackle the curatorial and artistic strategies of Manifesta in the same time period.
163 Ibid., 56. These countries were the former GDR, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Russia and
Ukraine.
164 Cf. for the Asian case: Judith Mackay, “Transnational Tobacco Companies vs. State Monopolies in Asia,” in
Tobacco and Health, ed. Karen Slama (New York: Plenum Press, 1995), 63: “The local monopolies do not, in
general, promote their cigarettes. In contrast, the tobacco industry utilises sophisticated and expensive promotion,
including direct and indirect advertising; 'brand-stretching' - using the cigarette or company name for other
products like men's or sports wear, even holidays; giving out free samples; product placement in films, where
producers and actors are paid to show the product or smoke within the film itself; tobacco sponsorship of sport,
arts, academic institutions and many other organizations, which are then less likely to speak out against tobacco.
Promoting cigarettes to women in places where women traditionally do not smoke is a clear attempt to create a
market”.
56
57
Chapter 3: Curatorial and Artistic Strategies of Manifesta in Its
First Decade
The intricate relationship between finance capital and art can be traced by empirical
studies analysing the distribution of power in the art world at well-known art events.
According to Larissa Buchholz and Ulf Wuggenig, who investigated the origins of artists
listed in Kunstkompass (art compass)—the German business magazine Capital’s annual list
that compiles the most powerful figures in the art world according to certain criteria—
between 1975 and 2005, 11% was the peak proportion for artists of “non-Northwest”
countries and “this share had already reached 8% in the early 1970s – making a difference of
only 3% in 35 years of the ‘age of globalization’”.165 After evaluating different data, too,
Buchholz and Wuggenig come to the conclusion that asymmetric cultural exchanges based
on unequal distribution of economic power are still a matter of fact in the art field.
Related to that, “international success in the field of art is still based on territorial,
social and (macro)cultural characteristics, that is to say, highly contextual attributes”.166 Art
biennials can also be read as an important part of this odd political, economic and artistic
unity. Another empirical study conducted by Chin-tao Wu focuses on the birthplaces and
current places of residence of artists who participated in Documenta between 1968 and 2007.
The results are again not so surprising: the vast majority of artists were born in North America
or Europe. Moreover, most artists who were not born in those regions moved there in order
to become more visible.167
Manifesta's initial claims in regard to curators and artists was that it would make
room for young artists / curators, support their experimental, flexible, ongoing, temporary
works and create networks among post-communist and Western art scenes. In doing so, it
165 Following sociologist Johan Galtung’s geographical model, Buccholz and Wuggenig define the Northwest as
“Anglo-Saxon North America and Western Europe (countries of the EU in the borders before 2004)”. Larissa
Buchholz and Ulf Wuggenig, “Cultural Globalization between Myth and Reality: The Case of the Contemporary
Visual Arts,” Art-e-fact 4, (2005), http://artefact.mi2.hr/_a04/lang_en/theory_buchholz_en.htm. Malcolm Bull’s
research that is based on the artist ranking of artfacts.net has parallel outcomes: 87 out of the top 100 artists were
born in either Western Europe or the United States. For more detailed results, see Malcolm Bull, “The Two
Economies of World Art,” in Globalization and Contemporary Art, ed. Jonathan Harris (Oxford: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2011) 179–90.
166 Buchholz and Wuggenig, “Cultural Globalization between Myth and Reality”.
167 Wu, "Biennials without Borders,” 107–15.
58
declared in principle not to prioritise or create hierarchy among countries of origin.
Manifesta’s efforts to meet these criteria are mostly supported by data for its first decade.
Ten of the twelve curators were aged 41 or below—the exceptions being 55-year-old Katalin
Néray (Manifesta 1) and 45-year-old Francesco Bonami (Manifesta 3). The average age of
all the curators of the first three editions was 37.8. Considering the future careers of those
curators after Manifesta, we can deduce that curating Manifesta allowed most of them to
improve their networks and advance in their career in the following years.
The average ages of the participating artists also seem in parallel with Manifesta’s
discourse on youth. Of the 78 artists who participated in M1 in Rotterdam, 51 were 35 years
old or below (65.3 %) and the average age was 34.8.168 The figures for M2 in Luxembourg
were at a similar level. Of the 45 participant artists, 29 were 35 years old or below (64.4 %),
and the overall age average was 33.04.169 Among the 76 artists who participated in M3, the
Ljubljana edition, 53 were 35 years old or below (69.7 %), and the overall average was
34.31170 (see Figures 1 & 2). The most important conclusion that can be drawn from these
statistics is that Manifesta successfully kept its promise regarding making room for young
artists in all editions of its first period.
Many young artists have seen Manifesta as a platform where they can increase their
visibility and develop networks within an international show. Yet, the number of participant
artists and artist groups based in Manifesta's host city (i.e. the number of "local artists”) is
another important point that needs to be investigated. Moreover, we should also check the
number of participant artists and art groups that are from post-communist countries to
understand the effectiveness of Manifesta's official discourse.
While the number of artists and artist groups participating from post-communist
countries in M1 was 18 (25 %), this number became 16 (34 %) in M2 and 22 (35.4 %) in M3.
According to this data, the proportion of participating artists and artist groups from postcommunist
countries was roughly 30% in the first three editions of Manifesta. Yet, by looking
168 The number of members of the participant art collectives at that time was as follows: IRWIN (5), subREAL (3)
and ve Entertainment & Co. (2). Each member’s age is considered individually. Participant artist Siraj Izhar’s age
is not considered in the calculation since I could not find his date of birth. Therefore, the real number of participant
artists / art collectives was 72, whereas the number of participant artists was 79.
169 Felix Gonzalez-Torres passed away in 1996 and I could not find Franz Pomassl’s date of birth, so their ages are
not considered in the calculation. The real number of participant artists was 47.
170 The number of members of participant art collectives at that time was as follows: Gruppo A12 (4), FAT (3), De
Geuzen (3), Rasmus Knud (2), Schie 2.0 (3) and Škart (5). Each member’s age is considered individually. Since
art group Stalker collaborates with so many people in their projects and only its co-founder Lorenzo Romito is
visible, I considered only his age in the calculation. The real number of participant artists / art collectives was 62,
whereas the real number of participant artists was 76.
59
34,8 33,04 34,31
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
M1 M2 M3
%
Figure 1: The Average Age of Manifesta Artists (M1 - M3)
65,3 64,4
69,7
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
M1 M2 M3
%
Figure 2: Percentage of Manifesta Artists at the Age of 35 or Below
(M1 - M3)
60
at the representation of local artists and art groups, one may be faced with surprising results.
There was only one local artist at M1 - Rotterdam (Jeanne van Heeswijk - NEsTWORK),
meaning the proportion of local artists in the exhibition was just 1.3 %. The total number of
Dutch artists was 4, so the rate of country-based representation remained at 6%. At M2 -
Luxembourg, there were 2 artists who were born in Luxembourg (4 %) and one of them, Bert
Theis, had since moved to Milan. The situation was not much different in the case of M3 -
Ljubljana. There were 3 participant artists (5 %) born in Ljubljana and one of them (Nika
Špan) was commuting between Ljubljana and Düsseldorf (See Figure 3). There were no
artists invited from other parts of Slovenia. Yet, an exceptional art project produced by a
participant artist of M1, not by Manifesta as an institution, increased participation of local
artists. The NEsTWORK project of Jeanne van Heeswijk, the only local participant of
Manifesta 1, created a platform for local art producers and audiences to discuss many issues
regarding locality in art and reached 100 participants in 87 days:
NEsTWORK consisted of Karin van Arink, Wapke Feenstra, Jeanne van Heeswijk,
Edwin Janssen, Menna Laura Meijer, Kamiel Verschuren and Ruud Welten.
Together they created eighty-seven daily programmes with activities, performances,
concerts, films, lectures and debates, focusing on the notion of 'local'. NEsTWORK
saw itself as an entity integrated in the friendships and networks already existing in
Rotterdam and its professional field. In a time when internationalism seems to be
the magic word, NEsTWORK wanted to focus on the place where the work is done.
[…] NEsTWORK asked itself questions about the function of place. 'How does art
25
34 35,4
1,3 4 5
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
M1 M2 M3
%
Figure 3: Percentages of Local Manifesta Artists and Manifesta
Artists from Post-communist Countries (M1 - M3)
Percentage of
Manifesta Artists from
Post-communist
Countries
Percentage of Local
Manifesta Artists
61
relate to the place where it is made or exhibited? What is the current status of visual
images? What role does locality play in contemporary art?171
Apart from the abovementioned example, the data clearly shows that Manifesta
never aimed to accomodate local artists in its programme and introduce them to the
international art community / art market in its first period. That is to say, both Manifesta as
an institution and Manifesta artists were foreign to host cities.
Although Manifesta commissioned many of its artists to produce new artworks
related to host cities, it was reluctant to include local artists who had been producing art
within host cities in its main programme. So the general pattern was thus: some artists went
to the host city, tried to understand its dynamics, produced an artwork and went back home.
The local artists were absorbed by collateral events. As I discuss in more detail in the
upcoming chapters, when we consider the financial support of host cities to Manifesta, which
inevitably led to municipalities limiting the budget allocated to local artists in the subsequent
years, we should keep in mind that Manifesta’s effect on the local art scene goes beyond the
question of representation.
It is possible to see many works that fit well with some concepts that Manifesta
embraces such as flexibility, open-endedness, experimentality, innovation, intervention and
networking. It is not a coincidence that some of these works were also within the coverage
zone of art curator / critic Nicolas Bourriaud who introduced the once highly influential
concept of relational aesthetics and illustrated it with the works of artists of Manifesta's early
years. Bourriaud's relational aesthetics claims that works of art which are flexible, open and
based on encountering “democratized” the art scene and these works determined the
relationship between art and politics in the 1990s. However, as Gardner discusses,
Bourriaud's interest in democratizing the art world cannot be seen outside of the 1990s'
geopolitical conjuncture and post-political claims.172 As I mentioned above, Bourriaud's
conceptual framework and geopolitical strategy were very compatible with the practices and
discourse of Manifesta in its first decade. As a matter of fact, artists who were highly praised
by Bourriaud in the context of relational aesthetics became Manifesta participants: Rirkrit
Tiravanija and Douglas Gordon in Manifesta 1, and Dominique Gonzales-Foerster, Felix
Gonzales-Torres, Maurizio Cattelan, Carsten Höller and Pierre Huyghe in Manifesta 2.
171 Jeanne van Heeswijk, “NEsTWORK,” accessed June 27, 2020, http://www.jeanneworks.net/projects/nestwork/.
172 Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronsa Woods (Paris: Les Presses du réel
2002); Gardner, Politically Unbecoming, ch. 1. By the mid-2000s, Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics has received
many criticisms and had fallen out of favour. See Claire Bishop, "Antagonism and Relational
Aesthetics,” October 110, (2004): 51–79; Stewart Martin, “Critique of Relational Aesthetics,” Third Text 21, no.4
(2007): 369–86; Radical Culture Research Collective, “A Very Short Critique of Relational Aesthetics,” European
Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, November 29, 2007, accessed December 9, 2020,
http://transform.eipcp.net/correspondence/1196340894.html; Grant H. Kester, The One and the Many:
Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), 29–36.
62
In order to understand how relational the aesthetics and art scenes of the 1990s
were, it is helpful to recall a series of performances by Russian artist Oleg Kulik, a participant
artist of Manifesta 1 - Rotterdam in 1996 entitled Pavlov’s Dog, which questioned the
relationship between audience and artist—or more specifically the “Western” audience and
the “Eastern” artist—and led to a great scandal just before the biennial's opening. In his
performance, which was first performed under the name "Mad Dog" in Moscow in 1994,
Kulik acts like a dog with a leash on his neck. He barks, pisses and attacks the audiences.
Just a few months before Manifesta 1, Kulik performed the same work in a show entitled
Interpol: A Global Network from Stockholm and Moscow curated by Jan Åman and Viktor
Misiano (one of the curators of Manifesta 1) in Stockholm173 and was detained due to biting
an audience member. In the same exhibition, another Russian artist Alexander Brenner broke
his drum performance short and smashed the work of Chinese-American artist Wenda Gu
into pieces. The exhibition turned into a scandal and invalidated the exhibition's claim to be
a forum for cultural dialogue between East and West. In a letter signed by many of the
exhibition's organizers and participating artists, the scandal encountered at the opening of the
show was described as hooliganism and skinhead ideology.174
Kulik's view, on the other hand, takes a position that criticizes both deliberative
(Rawls / Habermas) and agonistic (Mouffe) democracy theories and questions the
possibilities of dialogue between antagonisms:
Jan Åman accuses the Russian participants of having been too idea-oriented from
the beginning. Their Western partners, by contrast, were ‘relativised, pluralistic’ and
‘resisted having any viewpoint at all’. However, it is not clear why the value of a
dialogue should increase with the increase of relativism, or if the speakers have no
convictions. Dialogue is impossible in an indistinguishable or an absent position, at
the point of absolute relativism.175
According to Kulik, the main problem is the dissolution of the “Other” and “[n]either
the curator nor the spectator is today capable of becoming the ‘Other’ for the artist (or one
for the other)”, while “culture needs an ‘Other’ in order to constitute itself”.176 Therefore, in
order to conserve its own privileged condition,
173 Stockholm was announced as the host city of Manifesta 2 at that time, but then Luxembourg superseded
Stockholm.
174 Various Authors, “An Open Letter to the Art World,” in Interpol: The Art Exhibition Which Divided East and
West, ed. Eda Čufer and Viktor Misiano (Ljubljana: IRWIN and Moscow Art Magazine, 2000), 22–24.
175 Oleg Kulik and Mila Bredikhina, “The Lessons of Stockholm,” in Interpol: The Art Exhibition Which Divided
East and West, ed. Eda Čufer and Viktor Misiano (Ljubljana: IRWIN and Moscow Art Magazine, 2000), 29.
176 Ibid., 29–31.
63
Western society, the Western art-structure and the Western artist must be either at
the most resistant in relation to a foreign message, appropriate it like a colonial
commodity, or appropriate it completely, that is, transfer the foreign into his own
possession. All these, without a doubt, represents forms of aggression in culture.177
Kulik’s performance itself and discussions around its artistic or frivolous character
is not my concern here178, but reactions following the scandal that stressed the division
between Eastern and Western societies proved that the artistic dialogue post-1989 was forced
to be within a Western understanding of democracy.179 The organising committee of
Manifesta made Kulik put pen to paper to explain his performance and to declare that it was
specific to Interpol.180 At Manifesta 1, Kulik again performed as a dog, but this time he was
Pavlov’s Dog which was subjected to experiments in a laboratory. As Viktor Misiano has
clearly put it, “when Russian artist Oleg Kulik is doing his performance in Moscow he
represents a dog, but when he repeats the same performance in the West – despite his
intention – he is representing a Russian dog”.181
The sabotage by Alexander Brener and Barbara Schurz at Manifesta 3 - Ljubljana
press conference brought a new dimension to the ongoing East–West debate by directly
targeting Manifesta as an institution. Brener got on the stage during the press conference,
wrote "DEMOLISH NEOLIBERAL MULTICULTURALIST ART-SISTEM [sic] NOW!"
on the projection screen and “FORGET EUROPA” on the curators’ table, while Schurz
tossed the manifesto they had prepared in the air. As Gardner has noted, this action was
widely supported by the Slovenian press and local art scene.182 Dramaturgist and essayist Eda
Čufer also expresses that this absurd Dadaist and successful action immediately elicited a
reaction from the crowd: someone asked the artists, "What is the alternative?". She also
177 Ibid., 31.
178 For some evaluations of Kulik’s dog-man performances, see Renata Salecl, “Love Me, Love My Dog:
Psychoanalysis and the Animal / Human Divide of Dogs and Men,” in (Per)versions of Love and Hate (London:
Verso, 1998), 104–17; Jim Drobnick, “Oleg Kulik: Zoophrenic Odors,” The Senses and Society 1, no. 1 (2006):
141–48; Gesine Drews – Sylla, “The Human Dog Oleg Kulik: Grotesque Post-Soviet Animalistic Performances,”
in Other Animals: Beyond the Human in Russian Culture and History, ed. Jane Costlow and Amy Nelson
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 234–51.
179 See the other articles edited in Interpol: The Art Exhibition Which Divided East and West.
180 Oleg Kulik (2000), “Why Have I Bitten a Man?” in Interpol: The Art Exhibition Which Divided East and West,
ed. Eda Čufer and Viktor Misiano (Ljubljana: IRWIN and Moscow Art Magazine, 2000), 37–38.
181 Viktor Misiano, “Interview with Viktor Misiano,” interwiew by Urša Jurman and Sabina Salamon.
PlatformaSCCA 2, Dec. 2000: 13–14, http://www.ljudmila.org/scca/platforma2/misiano.htm.
182 Gardner, Politically Unbecoming, 101–3.
64
expresses her wonderment about why this performance was not immediately adopted by
Manifesta and used to visualize its “tolerance”:
The M 3 ‘border’ guards had the chance for an elegant neo-liberal solution, i.e. the
inclusion of the Brener action, the material ‘damages’’ of which amounted to
approximately the same as the price of other (individual) artefacts, into the official
programme of the event. The question is of course why did they decide otherwise
and what does this mean. It would truly be interesting to get to know the ‘Big
brother’ who suggested this decision.183
What is crucial here, of course, is not why the Manifesta curators did not take this
route. The main thing is that many people, including Čufer, considered Manifesta as a
Western (and foreign in the context of Ljubljana) cultural institution that could rapidly
incorporate such neoliberal solutions. As I examine in Parts II and III, this neoliberal potential
would manifest itself more clearly in later editions of Manifesta.
What made Manifesta 3 more important than previous editions was not only the fact
that the biennial was finally taking place in a post-communist city as it had intended since
the beginning, but also that it received direct criticism from the local art scene that triggered
substantial discussions regarding its mission. Beside the performance of Brener and Schurz,
the Manifesta in Our Backyard provides another good example of these criticisms generated
from the local art scene, giving crucial information on their Manifesta experience.
183 Eda Čufer, “Reflections on Manifesta 3,” PlatformaSCCA 2, (Dec. 2000): 10,
http://www.ljudmila.org/scca/platforma2/eda.htm.
65
Case Study I: Manifesta in Our Backyard
Manifesta in Our Backyard was a research project initiated by SCCA - Ljubljana
(Barbara Borčić, Alenka Pirman, Saša Glavan, Igor Španjol), Jože Barši and Urša Jurman.
Funded by the regional programme SCCA Network Research & Education in Contemporary
Art in the Region, it aimed to investigate the effects of Manifesta 3 on the Ljubljana art scene.
The project consisted of three working groups that focused on three different aspects of the
biennial: its self-image, its influence on the local art scene, and the works of art represented
in it. Discussions and outcomes of the project were published in three newsletters entitled
PlatformaSCCA. According to Urša Jurman, coordinator of Manifesta in Our Backyard, this
project was inaugurated “to avoid passive and uncritical acceptation of the event and with
this the model of presenting contemporary art brought from the outside (Manifesta is a
Western European initiative) on one side and an a priori rejection on the other”.184 In the
description of the project, Jurman makes a striking definition of Manifesta as “an example of
the manifestation of the cultural industry”.185
What makes this project so interesting is its self-contradictory nature. On the one
hand, local curators, art critics and gallerists raised their concerns about Manifesta directly
and simultaneously and interrupted Manifesta’s official discourse before it had fully
established itself. On the other hand, this research was conducted thanks to support from the
Soros network. As I mentioned above, this paradoxical situation occurred due to the fact that
the Open Society Institute decided to terminate its financial support to the Soros Centers in
1999, and people who has been collaborating with the SCCAs for a long time became more
critical towards the Soros Centers at the end of the 1990s. Yet, the intermingled relationship
between the SCCAs, Manifesta, the large number of artists, curators and art managers who
collaborated with both institutions and the intricate relations of all of them with the global art
market casts a shadow over the objectivity of the research project.186
184 Urša Jurman “Research Project Manifesta in Our Backyard,” PlatformaSCCA 1, (June 2000),
http://www.ljudmila.org/scca/platforma1/ursa02.htm.
185 Ibid.
186 The question of objectivity is reevaluated by Jurman in the last newsletter, PlatformaSCCA 3, and its
impossibility in this case partially acknowledged: “Yet, such 'objectivity' i.e. 'distance' soon proved to be an
illusory, impossible and certainly problematic operation as, in the case of analysis of social systems, the observer
(here SCCA-Ljubljana) is always part of the system which he/she is observing and analyzing (in this case, part of
the art system)”. Urša Jurman, “Out of Our Backyard,” PlatformaSSCA 3, (Jan. 2002): 7,
http://www.ljudmila.org/scca/platforma3/ursaeng.htm.
66
Nevertheless, the PlatformaSCCAs included important texts that criticised both
Manifesta and the Soros Centers, as well as the transformations in the field of art in the
transition period of post-communist countries more broadly. These three newsletters—the
first of which was published just before the opening of Manifesta 3 (June 2000), the second
shortly after its closure (December 2000) and the third one and half years after that (January
2002)—reveal how the high expectations of the local art scene of Ljubljana around hosting
Manifesta turned into disappointment due to the lack of collaborations with local actors.
PlatformaSCCA 1 consists of interviews with representatives of Gallery P74,
Kapelica Gallery and Škuc Gallery, which played a crucial role in establishing an alternative
art scene in Ljubljana in the 1980s, and Igor Zabel (coordinator of Manifesta 3 and a curator
of Moderna Galerija), as well as texts by Miško Šuvaković, Barbara Borčić and Jeanne van
Heeswijk. According to Tadej Pogačar, the director of Gallery P74, local gallery
representations "became euphoric and worried at the same time", after hearing the
announcement that Manifesta 3 would be held in Ljubljana.187 Local art spaces’ expectations
were two-dimensional. First, keeping the international network of Manifesta in mind, they
were expecting to create joint projects with Manifesta and to introduce their own projects to
a wider, diverse audience. Second, they were assuming that the state would finally recognize
the efforts of local galleries to establish a contemporary art scene in Ljubljana. According to
Jurij Krpan, curator of Kapelica Gallery,
We were of the opinion that the state has decided to finally repay its symbolic due
to us and in such a way legitimise our operation, and thus also legitimise the art
practises that we represent. […] We expected that the state will add to the inclination
to contemporary art that it showed by hosting Manifesta, by forming a cultural
policy, which would enable the existence and development of contemporary art.
Today the situation is such that Škuc and Kapelica are on the verge of existence,
even though we still have a lot to say.188
After the decision of Manifesta to choose state-led national museums and
institutions as venues instead of independent art institutions / galleries, the galleries, whose
primary expectations were disappointed, came to the conclusion that Manifesta aimed to
satisfy political expectations rather than artistic ones. Gregor Podnar, the artistic director of
Škuc Gallery summarizes it as such:
The decision to host Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana was understood by us as the existence
of a political will, which is in favour of contemporary art, and we were also of the
187Tadej Pogačar, e-mail interview, PlatformaSCCA 1, (June 2000),
http://www.ljudmila.org/scca/platforma1/tadej02.htm.
188 Jurij Krpan, e-mail interview, PlatformaSCCA 1, (June 2000),
http://www.ljudmila.org/scca/platforma1/krpan02.htm.
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opinion that the conditions in this field will start improving. However, this proved
to be an illusion. The hope which we held in relation to the hosting of Manifesta 3
in Ljubljana, has now disappeared. I am increasingly convinced that the hosting of
Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana is only a political gesture, linked to the desire of Slovenia
to join the European Union. […] The hosting of M3 did not offer additional funds
to the disposal of the local art scene, in order for it to present itself alongside M3,
yet alone for it to be able to become stronger in the long term. On the contrary, with
the hosting of M3 the situation became even worse. The Škuc Gallery received even
less funds than in the previous years and is now on the edge of existence.189
Barbara Borčić, who was one of the artistic directors of Škuc Gallery between 1982
and 1986 and had been working in SCCA - Ljubljana since 1993, increased the level of
criticism even more. According to her, the term parasite could be used as a metaphor to
describe Manifesta, because:
Manifesta 3 will constitute its own model of functioning in our space and establish
its rules; it will make use of the host, Ljubljana, with all its available potentials:
organizational, financial, spatial - while expecting collaboration of local
protagonists from the sphere of contemporary art. Nonetheless, the hosting space
will not be able to significantly determine or take part in the shaping of Manifesta
3.190
In this regard, the Manifesta in Our Backyard project can also be read as an effort
by local actors that were excluded from Manifesta (especially SCCA - Ljubljana) to affirm
their existence. On the other hand, it is an irony of fate to see that Soros Centers had to
compete with Manifesta and started to complain about the uneven development within the
capitalist art scene, once they had collaborated with Manifesta by all available means to
construct it in the post-communist countries.
Prominent art galleries in Ljubljana were cautious about Manifesta from the
beginning. The reason for this can be found in the disappointment they experienced after the
declaration of Ljubljana as the host city of the "European Cultural Month" in 1997. European
Cultural Month was a cultural programme initiated by the EU in 1992 for Central and Eastern
European countries undergoing democratization and which were as yet not able to host the
European Capital of Culture project, due to not being members of the EU. The biggest
criticism of the programme was that it did not leave any cultural infrastructure behind that
could be used by the local art scene in the long run. The fact that Manifesta had had limited
189 Gregor Podnar, e-mail interview, PlatformaSCCA 1, (June 2000),
http://www.ljudmila.org/scca/platforma1/gregor02.htm.
190 Barbara Borčić, “Manifesta 3 in Relation to the Host City Ljubljana and Its Contemporary Art Scene,”
PlatformaSCCA 1, (June 2000), http://www.ljudmila.org/scca/platforma1/bb2.htm.
68
dialogue with local actors gave the impression that a similar experience would happen. In a
newsletter published by Manifesta, philosopher and artist Marina Gržinić underscores that
both the European Cultural Month and Manifesta were invited by the Slovenian state to gain
prestige through these cultural events:
It is important to bear in mind that the European Cultural Month - Ljubljana 97
project was, as a structure, conceived in a very similar way to MANIFESTA. It was
a proposal that came from abroad, from a wider European context - and the
Slovenian state and its ministerial, city and other institutions perceived the project
as exclusively the mark of its (their) power and grandeur. The result of the project
today is, if we just ignore the programme for the moment, the big financial
speculations and manipulations produced by those organisational bodies that were
at the core of the project.191
In an article written much later than Manifesta 3, Gržinić conceptualizes this
situation as “kidnapped inventions”,192 borrowing the term from Suely Rolnik. She argues
that the alternative practices which had burgeoned throughout the 1980s in close connection
with independent art spaces in Ljubljana were first averted, and later modified versions of
them were proposed by the Ljubljana City Council to host international cultural events. The
first kidnapping took place on European Cultural Month, which left nothing behind, and the
second one occurred in Manifesta 3, which “legitimized on an international level the power
of the major national institutions of art and culture in Ljubljana (led by Cánkarjev dóm)”.193
In order to illustrate her claim, Gržinić discusses the case of Metelkova, a former barracks of
the Yugoslav People’s Army. Metelkova, which consists of seven buildings, was squatted by
artists and activists in 1993, due to a hasty and illegal attempt by Ljubljana City Council to
demolish it.194 On this occasion, the City Council cut off the water and electricity in order to
break the resistance of activists.195 In 1997, when Ljubljana was being prepared to host
European Cultural Month, the City Council allocated Metelkova to artistic and cultural events
on the condition that the buildings would no longer offer permanent residency.196 Thus,
191 Marina Gržinić, “Borderline Syndrome,” Manifesta 3 – Newsletter 5, accessed Feb. 12, 2020,
https://m3.manifesta.org/newsletter5.htm.
192 Marina Gržinić, “From Transitional Postsocialist Spaces to Neoliberal Global Capitalism,” Third Text 21, no. 5
(2007): 563–75.
193 Ibid., 565.
194 Nikos Ntounis and Evgenia Kanellopoulou, “Normalising Jurisdictional Heterotopias Through Place Branding:
The Cases of Christiana and Metelkova,” Environment and Planning A 49, no. 10 (2017): 2229–30.
195 Gržinić, “From Transitional Postsocialist Spaces to Neoliberal Global Capitalism,” 566.
196 Ntounis and Kanellopoulou, “Normalising Jurisdictional Heterotopias Through Place Branding,” 2233.
69
the city of Ljubljana then ‘kidnapped’ the Metelkova proposal to organize the area
as Ljubljana’s central cultural and artistic space for the new millennium. […]
Kidnapped Metelkova citizens were transformed through this clear bio-political
action into denizens, or ‘denied citizens’, to borrow a term from Tomas Hammar.197
In a similar vein, art theorist and artist Miško Šuvaković, who was a contributor to
all PlatformaSCCAs, describes Manifesta as the conveyer of European multiculturalism to
the margins:
The exhibitions Manifesta 1, Manifesta 2 and, I recklessly presume, Manifesta 3
are, first and foremost, political exhibitions (political productions) of European
multiculturalism (culture-function-structure instead of aesthetics-identificationform).
These exhibitions do not attain their political identification through
representing an explicit political theme, attitude or the 'iconically' oriented symbol
(text); they do it through the very order of non-conflicting arrangement, archiving
and classification of 'erased traces' of European incomparable identities or
discourses, by entirely curator-oriented and comparable means.198
European multiculturalism has a triad model, which is not based on binary promises
as American multiculturalism is. According to Šuvaković, this model consists of “(i) centre
(paradigmatic 'great' European cultures), (ii) margin (closed, small, regional and peripheral
European cultures) and (iii) one's own other (East European cultures in transition (pre-,
present, post-) which is in an even 'more' marginal relation with the European centre and
margin)”.199 In this context, Manifesta 3’s intention seems broad in scope:
from declared manifestative attitudes of the exhibition (the promise of the issue of
border line) to unspoken target contents (re-coding of Ljubljana as 'the city of
European culture') to postponed (according to Derrida, différAnce means also
'extracting', 'extricating', 'differing', 'distancing in time', 'postponing') phantasms
(how to make out of East European, transitional, marginal art a 'cultural value' akin
to European, international or transnational art)”.200
197 Gržinić, “From Transitional Postsocialist Spaces to Neoliberal Global Capitalism,” 566.
198 Miško Šuvaković, “Status and Priorities: A Pre-consideration for Manifesta 3,” PlatformaSCCA 1, (June 2000).
199 Ibid.
200 Ibid. The approach of Šuvaković on European multiculturalism is quite close to Žižek’s multiculturalism
definition: “And, of course, the ideal form of ideology of this global capitalism is multiculturalism, the attitude
which, from a kind of empty global position, treats each local culture the way the colonizer treats colonized
people—as ‘natives’ whose mores are to be carefully studied and ‘respected’. That is to say, the relationship
between traditional imperialist colonialism and global capitalist self-colonization is exactly the same as the
relationship between Western cultural imperialism and multiculturalism: in the same way that global capitalism
involves the paradox of colonization without the colonizing Nation-State metropole, multiculturalism involves
70
As it can be seen, Manifesta was rigorously criticized by local art theorists and
figures from the local art scene before the opening of the show, not only due to its
uncooperative attitudes vis-à-vis local art spaces, but also due to its political discourse,
ideology and destructive economic impact on the local art scene in the long run.
The second and third editions of PlatformaSCCA, which were journals published
after the exhibition, deepened the discussions regarding artworks represented in Manifesta
and the articulation process of post-communist countries' art scenes to the global art market
through Manifesta. For example, according to Eda Čufer, the Slovenian state made a bid to
host Manifesta in order to strengthen its hand in the European Union negotiation process,
without precisely recognizing the role of contemporary art within the global age.201 To put it
differently, not contemporary art itself but organizing a “European” art festival was the goal
of the Slovenian state. The story of the Metelkova buildings that I mentioned above bears
witness to this approach.
I think it is worth ruminating on the point that Čufer makes: first, the model of
bidding to host Manifesta itself has to be problematized. Bearing the political and economic
impact of hosting Manifesta in mind, cities are marketing themselves, competing with other
cities and bidding “to be a part of Europe”, with the winning city determined by the Advisory
Board of Manifesta in Amsterdam. This is not so different from previous ages of history,
with a Western institution becoming a certifying authority to declare who is European /
international in the field of art, while competitors wait excitedly to be selected, and thus obey
this hierarchical relationship from the very beginning. This “supply and demand equilibrium”
reveals the mechanism of cultural industry in the post-wall era.
Yet, bargaining on local authorities’ bids in the East of the West, where the distance
between local governments and alternative art productions is greater than in Western
counterparts and where contemporary art practices are neglected by bureaucratic state
structures, makes Manifesta dependent on the ongoing (populist) politics of host cities. The
most extreme point of this dependent relationship can be seen in Manifesta 6 - Nicosia which
was cancelled just three months before its inauguration (see Chapter Four). Čufer’s following
interpretation of Manifesta 3 can be applied to more or less every edition of the biennial: “In
this case the chiefs of M 3 acted similarly as various European non-government
organizations, which go into endangered areas in order to salvage the civil rights of the local
patronizing Eurocentrist distance and/or respect for local cultures without roots in one’s own particular culture. In
other words, multiculturalism is a disavowed, inverted, self-referential form of racism, a ‘racism with a
distance’—it ‘respects’ the Other’s identity, conceiving the Other as a self-enclosed ‘authentic’ community
towards which he, the multiculturalist, maintains a distance rendered possible by his privileged universal
position”. Slavoj Žižek, “Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism,” New Left Review
225, (1997): 44.
201 Čufer, “Reflections on Manifesta 3,” 8.
71
population but soon start to co-operate with those structures of the local government which
deny the people of these rights ”.202
Šuvaković continues the discussion he started in the first edition of the
PlatformaSCCA by comparing some of the works represented in Manifesta 3 with other
Manifesta catalogues. According to Šuvaković, approaches to realism in art from the 19th
century to the 1990s, be it a depiction of the world outside art or a post-Duchampian critique
of the world of art itself, differ from the ones that appeared in the late 1990s. Realism of this
period—Soros Realism or Multicultural Realism—“emerged as a media presentation of real
as well as fictional information and their erased and transferred traces through the relation of
image and word in the process of constituting the social ideology of Globalization, that is to
say, the post-conflict Europe”.203 In this context, what Manifesta catalogues represent is
neither Western autonomous art nor Eastern political art. They appear, in Šuvaković’s view,
as political manifestations fed by the idea of an ideologically fragmented Europe in the Cold
War era.204 This characteristic paves the way for further discussions on Manifesta in the
crossfire of political and policy debates.
The last text of Šuvaković's triology focuses on how Manifesta represents an
idiosyncratic ideology that is different to the ideologies of Venice and Documenta, and what
kind of role the Soros Centers played in this representation. Since I have already described
the relationship of Manifesta with the Soros Centers above, it seems best to focus here on the
ideology of Manifesta in its first decade. In his last text, Šuvaković embarks upon clarifying
what he means by the term ideology of exhibition, which is worth quoting in its entirety:
The ideology of exhibition is not an aggregate of oriented and entirely rationalised
intentions of its organisers (curators, authors of concept, financiers, cultural
workers, politicians). […] [I]t is that difference between the intended and the
unintended, the acceptable and the unacceptable in relation of the public and the
tacit scene: the conscious and the unconscious, i.e., the literal and the fictional. The
ideology of exhibition is not that which is meant to be accepted by public
opinion (doxa) but, paradoxically, that which constitutes doxa and represents its
expression (a single case) in some sort of exchange of 'social values' and 'social
powers'.205
202 Ibid., 9.
203 Miško Šuvaković, “Critical Phenomenology of Artwork: The Status, the Functions and the Effects of the
Artwork at Manifesta 3,” PlatformaSCCA 2, (Dec. 2000): 19.
204 Ibid., 22.
205 Šuvaković, “The Ideology of Exhibition,” 11.
72
Considering it in this context, while the Venice Biennale, in line with the needs of
the nation-states of that time, aimed to exhibit limited nations’ arts and artists internationally,
Documenta preferred to put forward different art movements and artists without attaching
particular importance to nationalities after the destruction created by World War II.206 Unlike
these two, Manifesta was “created with the explicit political claim [transformation of
international high art into trans-national (multicultural) art] in a moment of alteration of
Block (binary) Europe into a Post-block (heterogeneous or plural) Europe, after the fall of
the Berlin Wall”.207 The question of what Manifesta intended and what happened
unintentionally within this political background reveals Manifesta's ideology, which is also
the aim of this research.
The difference between Manifesta and other biennials is that it repeats this fact
frequently in its official discourse, but keeps its distance from real politics. According to
Manifesta's rhetoric, the political transformations that have taken place since 1989 have led
to new needs and reevaluations, and Manifesta came into existence to reconsider the effect
of these political transformations within the art sphere. Narrating the story in that way
prepares the grounds for missing out the ideological and economic dimensions of
Manifesta.208 In fact, these kinds of discourses run parallel with post-political claims that
declare the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy as its only political doctrine and
decontaminate other fields (economy, art, culture etc.) from any kind of ideology.209 Yet, the
discourse on heterogeneity and plurality that has been promoted after 1989 by various art
initiatives and institutions including Manifesta consciously omits this reality; on the contrary,
206 Cf. for Venice Biennale, Lawrence Alloway, The Venice Biennale 1895-1968: From Salon to Goldfish Bowl
(London: Faber and Faber, 1969); Federica Martini and Vittoria Martini, Just Another Exhibition: Histories and
Politics of Biennials (Milano: Postmedia Books, 2011); Clarissa Ricci, ed., Starting from Venice: Studies on the
Biennale (Milano: Et al, 2010). Cf .for Documenta, Walter Grasskamp, “For Example, Documenta, or, How is Art
History Produced?” in Thinking About Exhibitions, ed. Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson and Sandy Nairne
(London and New York: Routledge, 1996): “Documenta is an exemplar for the production of art history, because
it is the most distinguished exhibition venture of the postwar era that has continually survived its own difficulties.
The initial intention to counterbalance the pent-up West German demand for modern art led, after a few years, to
the organization of an exhibition of international stature, which substantially forms the general consciousness of
what counts as contemporary art. Documenta does not only play this role for its contemporaries, because it
anticipates the production of art history by relieving it of the pains of selection” (p. 51). Also see the special
edition of On Curating, which is dedicated to critically investigating the history of Documenta. Nanne Buurman
and Dorothee Richter, eds., Documenta: Curating the History of the Present, special issue, On Curating 33 (June
2017), accessed March 15, 2020, https://www.on-curating.org/files/oc/dateiverwaltung/issue-
33/pdf/Oncurating_Issue33.pdf.
207 Šuvaković, “The Ideology of Exhibition,” 13.
208 The interview published in The Manifesta Decade is a good example for these kinds of narrations. René Block
et al., “How a European Biennial of Contemporary Art Began”.
209 See Jacques Rancière, Dissensus; Žižek, “Multiculturalism,”; Wilson and Swyngedouw, ed., The Post-Political
and Its Discontents. Marc James Léger also wrote extensively on the effects of post-politics on art and the art
world. See Marc James Léger, Brave New Avant Garde: Essays on Contemporary Art and Politics (Winchester
and Washington: Zero Books, 2012); Marc James Léger, The Neoliberal Undead: Essays on Contemporary Art
and Politics (Winchester and Washington: Zero Books, 2013).
73
those institutions yearn for contemporary interactions between politics and art. The illusion
generated from this paradox underlies the tacit equalization of politics and the post-political.
Within capitalist / neoliberal democratic boundaries, all sorts of political–artistic practices
are embraced in the context of heterogeneity and pluralism, but actions that transgress these
boundaries (such as Brener and Schurz’s pirate performances) are not enabled and perceived
to be situated outside of Manifesta.
As I have tried to show throughout this case study, Manifesta's initial claims and
intentions about "the East" were not evaluated from the same perspective by figures in
Ljubljana's local art scene. People from the local art scene, who had fought for autonomy of
art for many years, were ignored by a Western cultural institution which they had assumed
would defend these values. The Manifesta in Our Backyard project and the abovementioned
articles published within the scope of this project should be read as a reaction to this situation.
74
75
PART II: THE SECOND DECADE OF MANIFESTA
Part II of this thesis focuses on the political and artistic themes of Manifesta in its
second decade. In this period, Manifesta abandoned its function of introducing postcommunist
artistic productions to the Western art world and shifted its attention from the
East-West axis to the North-South axis. It also gradually speeded up its institutionalization
by abandoning its experimental / flexible / anti-institutional features. Starting with Manifesta
4 (2002) in Frankfurt in some respects and extending to the 9th edition in Genk - Limburg
(2012), editions held in this period have several common characteristics, despite each
edition’s idiosyncratic differences.
The most important of these features, as will be examined in detail in Chapter Four,
is that Manifesta shifted its focus from cities to regions in parallel with rising new regionalist
policies in Europe. Regions' efforts to style and rebrand creative cities through generous
investments in cultural events, in order to increase their visibility in the political arena,
coincided with the necessity of finding new “emerging geoaesthetic region(s)” for Manifesta,
as post-communist countries began to join the EU. In this period, we witness the
manoeuvrability, rapid institutionalization and branding capacity of Manifesta. This enabled
a neoliberal partnership of interest with host regions. In this chapter, I first examine the
concepts of new regionalism and creative industries and then focus on what kind of role
Manifesta played within the political agenda of host regions by examining the domestic
policies of each of the host regions / cities.
In Chapter Five, I discuss how architecture and education became pivotal concerns
of Manifesta in its second decade. One of the most important pillars of the investments made
in what then became known as the creative industries was mega-projects designed by
“starchitects”.210 These typically included the construction of flagship museums,
transformation of old warehouses and factories into cultural hubs and the regeneration-cumgentrification
of old neighbourhoods as well as the construction of gigantic shopping malls,
airports and hotels. Being aware of this transformation, Manifesta conceived the wish of
leaving a "permanent mark" where it went, instead of the volatility of the experimental /
nomadic / network-based features of its first decade. This wish always came true as part of
an ongoing urban transformation within the host region. The Office of Alternative Urban
210 See Eric Swyngedouw, Frank Moulaert and Arantxa Rodríguez, “Neoliberal Urbanization in Europe: Large
Scale Urban Development Projects and the New Urban Policy,” in Spaces of Neoliberalism. Urban Restructuring
in North America and Western Europe, eds., Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 195–229;
Amparo Tarazona Vento, “Mega-project Meltdown: Post-politics, Neoliberal Urban Regeneration and Valencia’s
Fiscal Crisis,” Urban Studies 54, no. 1 (2016): 68–84.
76
Planning in partnership with the Netherlands-based The Berlage Institute in San Sebastian
(M5), the restoration of Franzensfeste Fortress in Trentino–South Tyrol (M7), the
gentrification of the Artillery Barracks in Murcia (M8) and the restoration of the Waterschei
colliery in Genk-Limburg (M9) are good examples of Manifesta's new approach oriented
towards architectural projects and urban regeneration processes. Another focus of Chapter
Five is the acclimatization of Manifesta to the trend called the "educational turn" in
contemporary art. This tendency, which came to the fore with the art school project conceived
for the cancelled Nicosia edition in 2006, solidified when Manifesta established the
Education and Learning Department as a permanent feature of its organizational structure
and implemented mediation programmes for different age groups wherever it settled.
Chapter Six provides an overview of Manifesta’s curatorial and artistic choices in
its second decade. Following Chapter Three, here I discuss how the political and discursive
shifts of Manifesta discussed in Chapters Four and Five can be traced through the curatorial
preferences and the works of the participating artists. In this chapter, I argue that Manifesta's
coalition with host cities in its second decade succeeded because Manifesta did not include
uncompromising artworks and curatorial themes critical of the host city and, in a broader
perspective, of the idea of Europe. Referring to the post-political critique, I argue that, on the
one hand, this alliance with the host cities/regions increased the public awareness of the
Manifesta brand. Yet, on the other hand, it meant Manifesta failed to develop a critical
perspective towards its host cities and regions. Building on statistical data regarding the age
and background (regional as well as national belonging) of participating artists, I instead
highlight some artworks from different editions that constituted exceptions to the consensual
/ acritical approach of Manifesta and the host regions.
In the case study section, I discuss the work of Danish–French artist Thierry
Geoffroy, aka Colonel, a participant artist of Manifesta 8 – Murcia. This edition of Manifesta
was organized with a subtitle describing the horizon of the biennial: “in dialogue with
northern Africa”. Geoffroy’s interventions depart from problematizing the existence and
boundaries of this subtitle and take aim at both Murcia’s regional programme and Manifesta
by adopting a decolonial perspective. Thus, Geoffroy’s interventions can be seen as an artistic
complement to the theoretical discussions in Chapters Four, Five and Six.
77
Chapter 4: New Regionalism, Creative Cities and Manifesta
The historico-political conditions that paved the way for initiating Manifesta, and
the mission that Manifesta declared in order to change the outcomes of these conditions, have
changed due to the transformation of the political conjuncture and, correspondingly, the
appearance of new trends in the European contemporary art scene since 2000. The first of
these changes is that most of the Central and Eastern European countries became members
of the EU after the fifth enlargement wave in 2004. After this enlargement, the member
countries were not only subjected to the rules and procedures of the EU, but also had an equal
voice with Western European countries in the EU's decision-making processes. Officially,
then, the transition of many former communist countries into the Euro-Atlantic community
was completed, as was their transformation into capitalist liberal democracies loyal to free
trade (a requirement of joining the EU).211 Any organization with the aim of integrating these
countries into Europe, democratizing them or making them visible in the capitalist market
would no longer have a raison d'être. From this point on, inequality between member
countries came to be perceived officially as an inequality between family members. Realizing
this transformation very early, the Open Society Institute decided to stop its financial
contributions to the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art (SCCAs) in 1999. This decision
taken by Manifesta's most important partner in Central and Eastern Europe in reaction to the
changing political status of the former communist countries forced Manifesta to formulate a
new discourse, mission and policy.
This axial dislocation became visible at once after the Ljubljana edition in 2000.
Frankfurt, which hosted the fourth edition in 2002, was an interesting choice in many ways.
After Ljubljana, which was Manifesta's first visit to “the East”, Frankfurt symbolized the
return to safe waters and functioned as a buffer zone between Manifesta's first and second
decades. The fact that it coincided with Documenta in Kassel and that Art Frankfurt adjusted
the dates according to Manifesta shows that Manifesta consciously attempted to minimize
211 “The key statements defining both the core constitutive norms and values of the Euro-Atlantic community, and
the entrance requirements for membership of the value community, are contained in the Charter of Paris for a New
Europe from November 1990, which was hailed at the time as the ‘Magna Carta’ of Europe. The signatories to the
document undertook to ‘build, consolidate and strengthen democracy as the only system of government’.
Furthermore, the document contained a commitment to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, a
commitment to the rule of law and a commitment to the basic principles of the market economy (Charter of Paris,
1990). These four areas have subsequently become known as the CSCE (OSCE) Commitments, and can be
regarded as the key statement on what constitutes the shared norm set of the Euro-Atlantic community”. Trine
Flockhart, “Socialization and Democratization: A Tenuous but Intriguing Link,” in Socializing Democratic
Norms: The Role of International Organizations for the Construction of Europe, ed. Trine Flockhart (Houndmills
and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 15.
78
the risk.212 The preface written on behalf of the International Foundation Manifesta in the
catalogue of Manifesta 4 is one of the important sources marking the transformation that
Manifesta began to undergo. The opening paragraph of the text can be read as a summary of
this situation:
Manifesta was founded almost ten years ago, in response to a specific moment in
European history […] Quite quickly, the initial goal of facilitating artistic exchanges
between West and East Europe gave way to a realisation that cultural
marginalization and the stifling of individual expression were every bit as prevalent
on the North-South peripheries to the east of the Rhine or the Danube; it also lay at
the very heart of those Western democracies, which had been artificially protected
from the consequences of their own behaviour.213
These expressions should not be seen as rhetorical, based solely on justifying
Manifesta's anchoring in Frankfurt. Manifesta literally shifted its axis from the East-West to
the North-South. While the East-West duality in the first decade could be easily established
and justified logically, due to Cold War ideological differences, it was initially less clear what
was meant by the North-South dichotomy. It is only when the political structures of the host
cities of the 2000s are examined in detail that the new goal of Manifesta becomes apparent:
settling in regions that have had problematic relations with their nation-states for many years
and whose political visibility has increased significantly with the support of a supranational
institution, the European Union. Chiming with this new goal, Manifesta’s new axial focus,
the North-South, refers neither to the Global North-Global South nor to Northern Europe-
Southern Europe. Manifesta uses this expression mostly to refer to the geographical
description of a problematic relationship either within the host region itself or between the
host region and the nation-state to which it belongs.
In this chapter, I suggest that in order to understand the new perspective and new
complex network of Manifesta, one should consider host cities in a broader context, together
with the political-economic conditions of the regions they are part of and the historical
relationship between those regions and the nation-states they belong to. The Basque Country
(Manifesta 5), Nicosia (Manifesta 6), Trentino–South Tyrol (Manifesta 7), Murcia in relation
to North Africa (Manifesta 8) and Flanders (Manifesta 9): this succession reveals that during
its second decade Manifesta chose the issue of regionalism and regional identities in Europe
that was on the rise as a new perspective. This chapter begins by discussing why Manifesta
experienced such a shift of axis, what kind of a network of relations it positioned itself in at
212 Christa-Maria Lerm-Hayes, “Kassel and Frankfurt: Documenta 11 and Manifesta 4,” CIRCA 101 (2002): 70-75.
213 “Preface of the International Foundation Manifesta,” in Manifesta 4 (exh. cat.), ed. Meike Behm (Ostfildern-
Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 12.
79
the local, regional, national and European levels, what functions Manifesta fulfilled in the
eyes of regional politicians, and the political, economic and cultural impacts of its activities.
New Regionalism, the EU and Contemporary Art
Every nation-state in Europe has regions with cultural, political, historical and
linguistic differences, and this situation has long confronted nation-states and regions,
sometimes in the form of armed conflicts. From the 1990s, the nation state-based structure
of the European Union started to suffer from the increasing pressure of globalization and
subnational regions—pressure which generated the idea of "Europe of the Regions".214 Yet,
what this idea refers to depends on the political history of the author’s own region and their
personal political position within the regionalism debate. Academic works that try to classify
regions agrees that a region can be defined in the broadest sense as "an intermediate territorial
level, between the state and the locality".215 Donald McNeill defines five region types that
each has a different source of origin: historic nationalities (e.g. the Basque Country, Scotland,
Brittany, Flanders, Wallonia), city regions or city-states (e.g. Comunidad de Madrid,
Brussels, the Greater London Authority, the Länder of Berlin), administrative inventions (e.g.
Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg, Rhône-Alpes), micro-states (e.g. Andorra, the
Vatican, Monaco, San Marino) and islands (e.g. Canaries, Azores, Sicily, Martinique).216 On
the other hand, since there are many different factors affecting the definition of regions, the
difficulty of finding common parameters to define regions is also pointed out in academic
literature. According to Schmitt-Egner, “whereas political science is mainly interested in the
214 See Susana Borras-Alomar, Thomas Christiansen and Andrés Rodriguez-Pose, “Towards a ‘Europe of the
Regions’? Visions and Reality from a Critical Perspective,” Regional Politics and Policy 4, no. 2 (1994): 1–27;
John Loughlin, “‘Europe of the Regions’ and Federalization of Europe” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 26,
no. 4 (1996): 141–62; Anwen Elias, “Whatever Happened to the Europe of the Regions? Revisiting the Regional
Dimension of European Politics,” Regional & Federal Studies 18, no. 5 (2008): 483–92; Michael Keating, “A
Quarter Century of the Europe of the Regions,” Regional & Federal Studies 18, no. 5 (2008): 629–35; Carolyn
Moore, “A Europe of the Regions vs. the Regions in Europe: Reflections on Regional Engagement in Brussels,”
Regional & Federal Studies 18, no. 5 (2008): 517–35.
215 Michael Keating, The New Regionalism in Western Europe, Territorial Restructuring and Political Change
(Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1998), 9.
216 Donald McNeill, New Europe: Imagined Spaces (London: Arnold, 2004), 69–71.
80
region as an action unit, regional studies and geography focus on the region as an action
space”.217 In order to establish a model for further research, he defines the concept of region
as a “spatial partial unit of intermediary and medium-sized character whose material
substratum is based on the territory”, and theorizes its system as being based on four core
features: System-environment, Regional Actor, Regional Structure and Regional Programme
(see Figure 4). The key feature of this conceptualization regarding the present research is the
Regional Programme, which “captures the aims, means and rules of the regional system,
including its purpose and legitimacy”.218 According to Schmitt-Egner,
The regional programme and its putative purposes help structure the resources and
capacities available to regions. […] Formal reproduction, therefore, engenders a
formal competence, which stands for the legal, statutory and/or constitutional status
of the action unit and action space, including administrative capacities and financial
resources. Material reproduction, in turn, is accompanied by a material competence,
which signifies an ability to promote economic potentials with the aim of regional
prosperity and development. Symbolic reproduction, finally, spawns a symbolic
217 Peter Schmitt-Egner, “The Concept of 'Region’: Theoretical and Methodological Notes on its Reconstruction,”
Journal of European Integration 24, no. 3 (2002): 181.
218 Ibid., 183.
Figure 4 - "Core Features of a Definition of Region", Peter Schmitt-Egner, “The
Concept of Region”, 182.
81
competence, which indicates a cultural capability (e.g., the ability to secure a
regional identity).219
The idea of a Europe of the Regions is a part of a globally rising trend of regionalism
conceptualized as “new regionalism”.220 By the mid-1980s, the rise in globalization
encouraged regions to take a further step towards being more active and determinant at the
international as well as national level, rather than merely defensive and self-sufficient. To
realize these goals, it was necessary that regions became empowered politically,
economically and especially culturally / artistically by becoming centres of attraction and
hubs of, or at least open to, global flows. For this reason, regional authorities started to
allocate more budgets for symbolic production. On the other hand, we should also keep in
mind that there are many controversial political perspectives advocated by political actors
within the same region. Among policy-makers, the idea of a Europe of the Regions oscillates
between its extremist interpretations that desire regions to be directly represented at the EU
level and participate in the European policy-making process, and its moderate ones that
demand a new configuration of European polity in which regions “constitute a 'third level'
capable of making a serious contribution to supranational decision making”.221 This
understanding paves the way for different cultural and artistic representations of regions.
These political views acquired traction with the establishment of the European Committee of
the Regions (CoR) in 1994 through which regions could directly communicate their problems
at the EU level. Although the function of the CoR was limited to giving advice to the policymaker
institutes of the EU, based on the principle voice, but not vote,222 it certainly raised
regions' hopes of bypassing their nation-states and strengthening their positions in
international politics.223
219 Ibid., 183–184.
220 See Björn Hettne, András Inotai and Osvaldo Sunkel, Globalism and the New Regionalism (London: Palgrave
MacMillan, 1999); Björn Hettne and Fredrik Söderbaum, “Theorising the Rise of Regionness,” in New
Regionalisms in the Global Political Economy, ed. Shaun Breslin, Christopher W. Hughes, Nicola Phillips and
Ben Rosamond (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 33–47; Michael Keating, The New Regionalism in
Western Europe; Peter Schmitt-Egner, “The Concept of 'Region’”.
221 Anwen Elias, “Whatever Happened to the Europe of the Regions?” 483–84.
222 Christoph Hönnige and Diana Panke, “The Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social
Committee: How Influential are Consultative Committees in the European Union?” Journal of Common Market
Studies 51, no. 3 (2013): 452.
223 “The Committee would one day become the second chamber of the European Parliament, a pan-European
Bundesrat – or so hoped the Welsh nationalists of Plaid Cymru and the Basque nationalist Eusko Alkartasuna”.
Richard Wyn Jones and Roger Scully, “Introduction: Europe, Regions, and European Regionalism,” in Europe,
Regions and European Regionalism, ed. Roger Scully and Richard Wyn Jones (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan,
2010), 2.
82
In the second decade of Manifesta, the cities that bid to host the biennial—except
for Frankfurt—acted in accordance with their regional programmes. This was especially the
case in Donostia–San Sebastian / the Basque Country (Manifesta 5), Trentino–South Tyrol
(Manifesta 7) and Genk - Limburg / Flanders (Manifesta 9), where the average income is
above the welfare level of their respective countries and the regionalist or nationalist
discourse is strong, due to the historical problems with their nation-states on the North-South
axis. There was an attempt to organize Manifesta 6 in the Republic of Cyprus–—an island
that had been suffering from a major political crisis for many years and that had been
physically divided into north and south since 1974. Cyprus gained a completely different
political dimension when the Greek part of the island became a member of the EU as part of
the fifth enlargement of the European Union in 2004. That cannot be considered separate
from the regional programme of the Republic of Cyprus. Something similar can be said in
the case of Manifesta 8: even though Murcia has a lower average income than the average
income level of Spain, organizing Manifesta 8 was a part of the generous investments made
in accordance with the regional programme to revive both mass and high-end tourism.
Before evaluating in detail the aims of host cities when aspiring to Manifesta within
the framework of their regional programmes, it would be useful to examine the material and
discursive reasons for Manifesta's policy change more closely. Manifesta’s alliance with the
host cities and their programmes of investment was necessitated by the need for a more stable,
institutionalized structure and financial stability. Manifesta, whose initial aim was to
establish communication between the artists of post-communist countries and their Western
counterparts, finally went beyond the Warsaw Pact and settled in Ljubljana after the first two
preparatory editions. During this period, it increased its network and started to build up a
network-oriented perspective. By the 2000s, instead of adhering to the principles of its initial
aims and continuing with the experimental and flexible organizational model, Manifesta
chose to be a contemporary art institution with an official headquarters in Amsterdam, an
international board and paid official administrators. With this change in mentality, Manifesta
prioritized its institutional existence and stability over its earlier experimental character. The
beginnings of this shift can be seen in the preface of Manifesta 4's catalogue:
One of the questions we have been repeatedly asked is why the Board should have
opted once more, after Ljubljana, for choosing a city in the capitalist heartland of
Western Europe. An overwhelming argument for the adoption of the City of
Frankfurt / Main was the enthusiasm for the proposal expressed by representatives
of local government across a broad political spectrum, and of some twenty-five
leading cultural and educational institutions. Above all, we perceived that Frankfurt
had emerged from the recent recession in a position of great strength and that this
was an interesting moment.224
224 “Preface of the International Foundation Manifesta,” 12.
83
From that moment onwards, the international art world started to witness a new
Manifesta that primarily protected its own existence and continuity, guaranteed the financial
structure of the new edition(s), and first considered the aspirations of the bidders for the role
of host city and only then considered their artistic contribution—rather than first and foremost
paying attention, albeit discursively, to the art produced in the candidate city, even if its
infrastructure and cultural institutions are inadequate. In other words, Manifesta as a brand
no longer showed an intention to be held in a city. Rather, a city / region needed to bid for
Manifesta and compete with other regions within the scope of its regional programme. This
increased Manifesta's ability to protect its brand value by taking less risk. At least implicitly,
the biennial made an impact analysis of previous experiences, in order to increase the demand
among potential future host cities. As the founding director and CEO of Manifesta Hedwig
Fijen acknowledged in an interview, “when the continuity of Manifesta at large was at stake,
sometimes feasibility won out over wish fulfillment”.225
One of the strategies of new regionalist policies is the creative cities approach that
promotes urban regeneration in line with neoliberal governance strategies. Therefore, it will
be useful to take a brief look at the creative cities approach in order to better understand the
mutual affinity established by Manifesta with its host cities and regions.
Labelling Cities as Creative
The theoretical approach that connects Manifesta, which has strengthened its brand
position, and regions, which have started to increase their visibility in the political arena due
to the CoR, is generated by discussions that have gained momentum since the 1990s around
the notion of creativity and its numerous adoptions into different fields such as creative
industries, creative cities, creative economies, creative clusters, creative classes etc.226 These
concepts started to appear in the writings of authors such as David Yencken and Charles
Landy in the late 1980s–early 1990s227 and were well received in both academic and everyday
life since the mid-1990s. They sprung from the idea that the innovative use of information,
technology, culture and knowledge are the leitmotiv of economic development. According
225 Hedwig Fijen, “How a European Biennial of Contemporary Art Began,” in Rene Block et al, 198.
226 See Charles Landry, The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators (London: Earthscan, 2000); John
Howkins, The Creative Economy: How People Make Money from Ideas (London: Penguin, 2001); Richard
Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class — And How It is Transforming Leisure, Community and Everyday Life
(New York: Basic Books, 2002); David Hesmondhalgh, The Cultural Industries (London: Sage, 2002).
227 David Yencken, "The Creative City,” Meanjin 47, no. 4 (1988): 597–608; Charles Landry, Glasgow: The
Creative City and its Cultural Economy (Glasgow: Glasgow Development Agency, 1990); Charles Landry, ed.,
The Creative City in Britain and Germany (London: Anglo–German Foundation, 1996).
84
to Landry and Bianchini, creativity is an alternative to “the dominant intellectual traditions
which have shaped urban policies [and that] have been profoundly rooted in a belief in the
virtues of instrumental, rational and analytic thinking.” In order to become a creative city,
the obstacles (accountability, bureaucracy, crisis management, shortsightedness, patronage
and power of the professionals) have to be removed.228 As clearly seen in this definition,
according to advocates of this perspective, concepts derived from the adjective creative
should replace obsolete modernist concepts such as planned economy, development and
industrialization since the application of neoliberal practices to cultural and urban policies is
more profitable.229 As Dave O’Brien has accomplishedly described, “culture, stripped of its
context and meaning and repackaged as creativity, runs the risk of merely replicating the
economic structures of which it is part”.230 In this transformed nature of cultural economy,
Hartley's description of creative industries brings the transformation of citizens to consumers
forward:
The idea of the creative industries seeks to describe the conceptual and practical
convergence of the creative arts (individual talent) with Cultural Industries (mass
scale), in the context of new media technologies (ICTs) within a new knowledge
economy, for the use of newly interactive citizen-consumers.231
The concept of creative cities, which became more popular with the establishment
of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in 2004, paved the way for new business around
this subject. For example, many academics and companies began to advise how cities could
become more creative by comparing cities and applying new indexes that they developed.232
228 Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini, The Creative City (London: Demos, 1995), 17–26.
229 At this point, it is useful to remember the difference between the concepts of cultural industries and creative
industries, which are often—and improperly—used interchangeably. The concept of cultural industries, which is
frequently discussed in Marxist critical theory, critically analyses the commodification and industrialization of
cultural productions. On the other hand, “the term ‘creative industries’ represents a refusal of the forms of critical
analysis associated with the cultural industries approach, and that unqualified use of the former now signals a
considerable degree of accommodation with neoliberalism”. David Hesmondhalgh, “Cultural and Creative
Industries,” in The Sage Handbook of Cultural Analysis, ed. Bennett, Tony and John Frow (London: Sage, 2008),
552–69.
230 Dave O’Brien, Cultural Policy: Management, Value and Modernity in the Creative Industries (London and
New York: Routledge, 2013), 75.
231 John Hartley, “Creative Industries,” in Creative Industries, ed. John Hartley (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing,
2005), 5.
232 There are dozens of creative city indexes, including Florida’s and Landry’s ones, that use different calculations
and measurements to advice local authorities what they can do best for their cities’ creative economy. For a
summary of those indexes, see John Hartley, Jason Potts, Trent MacDonald, with Chris Erkunt and Carl
Kufleitner, “Creative City Index,” Cultural Science Journal 5, no. 1 (2012).
https://culturalscience.org/articles/abstract/10.5334/csci.41/.
85
Creativity has long been the first feature emphasized in describing artists throughout
history. But, as O’Brien reminds us, since creativity refers to a potentiality that everybody
possesses to some extent, it could lead to a different self-expression if it is liberated “through
the application of the right technologies of governmentality”233. Therefore, it is no
coincidence that city council officials provide a significant role to art institutions and artists
in their urban regeneration plans as part of their neoliberal governance strategies to transform
into creative cities. In this regard, it is instructive to consider Bilbao, as we do in the next
section. This is because Bilbao was one of the first places where this partnership was
implemented and resulted in the transformation of this city from an industrial to an exemplary
creative one, thus setting an example for Manifesta 5 to invest in Donotsia–San Sebastian,
another city in the Basque Country.
New Regionalist Policies of the Basque Country and Manifesta 5
Bilbao, the capital of Vizcaya and the largest city in the Basque Country, was one
of the most heavily industrialized cities in Spain in 1977, before it slid into serious economic
turbulence due to the economic crisis. “Between 1979 and 1985, 94,766 industrial jobs (24%)
were lost in the Basque Country”.234 The decline in heavy industry not only left tens of
thousands people unemployed, but it also turned the city into a factory graveyard. According
to Zulaika, in the Bilbao Metropolitan Area there were 135 industrial dumps, 20 sites storing
a highly toxic pesticide called lindane, and 9 million square metres of contaminated land.235
In 1992, Bilbao Ría 2000, a publicly owned company responsible for urban regeneration,
was founded and quickly set to work. As Zulaika summarizes,
In the 1990s, an ambitious $1.5 billion urban renewal plan was put in place. The key
components of the plan were: 1. Expansion and modernization of the port. 2. New
transportation facilities, including a subway (designed by Norman Foster). 3.
Expansion of the airport (designed by Santiago Calatrava). 4. Construction of the
Zubizuri Bridge (also designed by Calatrava). 5. Creation of an “intermodal” central
transport hub for buses and trains (designed by James Stirling, now postponed
indefinitely). 6. The Abandoibarra riverfront development, which includes a one
million square-foot office and shopping mall complex (designed by Cesar Pelli). 7.
233 O’Brien, Cultural Policy, 54.
234 María V. Gómez, “Reflective Images: Urban Regeneration in Glasgow and Bilbao,” International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research 22, no.1 (1998): 109.
235 Joseba Zulaika, Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa: Museums, Architecture, and City Renewal (Reno: University of
Nevada Press, 2003), 63.
86
Construction of the Euskalduna Convention Center and Music Hall (designed by
Federico Soriano and Dolores Palacio). 8. Construction of the Bilbao Guggenheim
Museum (designed by Frank Gehry).236
The main purpose of these gigantic projects was to erase the industrial image of the
city through emblematic postmodern buildings designed by a “starchitect”, and to open it up
to tourism. In this way, the same experience that one can have in the most important cities of
Europe, America or the Far East was transported to Bilbao: you can land in a new airport and
reach the city via renovated transportation, find luxury brands in a huge shopping centre, visit
the masterpieces in the Guggenheim and later listen to a good recital at the Music Hall in the
evening, just like in New York, Paris, Singapore or London. Therefore, the aim was not to
encourage people to come to Spain, but to Bilbao—the new, global creative Bilbao.
Guggenheim Bilbao was commissioned by the conservative Christian democratic
Basque Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista Vasco, PNV)237—which led the Basque
Country from 1980 to 2009—as part of the regional programme mentioned above and mostly
without seeking consensus with other parties or NGOs:
So imperative was the need for secrecy imposed by [Guggenheim New York
director Thomas] Krens on his Basque nationalist counterparts that not even their
regional government partners, the Socialists, knew about it. When it was signed on
December 13 of that year, the public had not been told until the last minute, thus
preempting any discussion of the project. The following week, the Basque
Parliament asked for a copy of the agreement to find out what had been signed.
Never mind that, according to estimates at the time, the project was going to require
80 percent of the Basque funding for all museums indefinitely into the future.238
Thomas Krens, then director of Guggenheim New York, attempted to franchise the
museum to many cities including Bilbao, Berlin, Abu Dhabi, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Berlin
and Las Vegas. As a result, the term McGuggenization239 was coined. Krens was the key
figure in convincing the PNV to realize the “Guggenheim Effect”—a term frequently used
236 Ibid., 78.
237 For a brief history of the Basque Nationalist Party, see Beatriz Acha Ugarte and Santiago Pérez-Nievas,
“Parties in the Basque Country: Partido Nacionalista Vasco and Eusko Alkartasuna,” in Regionalist Parties in
Western Europe, ed. Lieven De Winter and Huri Türsan (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 87–104.
238 Joseba Zulaika, “Desiring Bilbao: The Krensification of the Museum and its Discontents,” in Learning from
the Bilbao Guggenheim, ed. Anna Maria Guasch and Joseba Zulaika (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2005),
148.
239 Donald McNeill, “McGuggenisation? National Identity and Globalisation in the Basque Country,” Political
Geography 19, (2000): 473–94.
87
to describe the rapid urban transformation in Bilbao. Although Guggenheim Bilbao had a
tremendous impact on the number of tourists and the visibility of Bilbao on the global
level,240 its development process and exhibiting policies have been harshly criticized due to
the commercialization and Americanization of art, featuring “mega” artists in its blockbuster
exhibits and neglecting local ones, leaving the destiny of the architecture of the city to the
hands of “starchitects” like Gehry and weakening democratic decision-making processes on
issues regarding all of Bilbao's inhabitants.241 Yet, Guggenheim Bilbao was a crucial project
for the PNV in order to gain strength against the Izquierda Abertzale (Patriotic Left)—an
umbrella term encompassing many separatist / nationalist left parties and organizations
founded against the PNV in the last century and currently referring to ETA-orbited parties—
as well as to achieve the goals of its regional programme and being determinant in the
political future of the Basque Country. As McNeill stresses, “[t]he museum clearly absorbed
resources which would otherwise have been allocated to locally-based cultural producers.
Simultaneously, however, the process of obtaining the museum is a profound message from
one section of the Basque nationalist family as to their preferred vision of Basque cultural
identity”.242
Considering the Guggenheim precedent, Manifesta’s settlement in Donostia-San
Sebastian “was no accident”, as Joxe Juan Gonzalez de Txabarri, Deputy General of
Gipuzkoa, constantly repeats in his text published in the Manifesta 5 catalogue.243 Miren
Azkarate Villar, Minister for Culture of the Basque Government, explains what hosting
Manifesta in the Basque Country means more transparently:
240 Beatriz Plaza is one of the most ardent advocates of the positive effects of Guggenheim Bilbao. She has
published extensively to quantitatively prove the success of Guggenheim Bilbao. See Beatriz Plaza, “The
Guggenheim-Bilbao Museum Effect: A reply to María V. Gómez' 'Reflective Images: The Case of Urban
Regeneration in Glasgow and Bilbao’,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 23, no. 3 (1999):
589-92; Beatriz Plaza, “The Return on Investment of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao,” International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research, 30 (2006): 452–67; Beatriz Plaza, “The Bilbao Effect (Guggenheim Museum
Bilbao),” Museum News 86, no. 5 (2007), accessed 12 April, 2020,
http://mpra.ub.unimuenchen.de/12681/1/MPRA_paper_12681.pdf; Beatriz Plaza, Manuel Tironi and Silke N.
Haarich, “Bilbao's Art Scene and the “Guggenheim Effect” Revisited,” European Planning Studies 17, no. 11
(2009): 1711-29.
241 María V. Gómez, “Reflective Images: Urban Regeneration in Glasgow and Bilbao”; María V. Gómez and Sara
González, “A Reply to Beatriz Plaza’s ‘The Guggenheim-Bilbao Museum Effect’,” International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research 25, no. 4 (2001): 898-900; Sara González Ceballos, “The Role of the Guggenheim
Museum in the Development of Urban Entrepreneurial Practices in Bilbao,” International Journal of Iberian
Studies 16, no. 3 (2004): 177-86; Anna Maria Guasch and Joseba Zulaika, eds., Learning from
the Bilbao Guggenheim (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2005); Donald McNeill, “McGuggenisation?; Joseba
Zulaika, Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa.
242 Donald McNeill. “McGuggenisation?” 478.
243 Joxe Juan Gonzalez de Txabarri, “It is No Accident,” in With All Due Intent – (Manifesta 5 exh. cat), ed. Marta
Kuzma and Massimiliano Gioni (Barcelona: Actar, 2004), 8–9.
88
Manifesta 5 demonstrates the openness of Basque society and culture. It is a symbol
of a people that is working on building its future whilst recognizing culture as an
essential part of the welfare and modernization of 21st century societies. At the same
time it is a form of recognition of the Basque Country's vitality and dynamism in
the contemporary art world. The Basque Government and Basque institutions in
general - provincial governments and local councils - are fully aware of the
importance of culture in society's development. That is why a tremendous amount
of investment is being poured in to plastic and visual arts in the Basque Country
such as never has been witnessed before. […] The geographical location of
Donostia-San Sebastian, Gipuzkoa and the Basque Country also makes it the nexus
of a major European regional area. A location which directly relates to the long term
strategic objective of the International Manifesta Foundation: that of striking a
balance between the north and south of Europe in all its areas of activity.244
When we read the story of Donostia-San Sebastian's selection as the host city from
Manifesta’s side, we encounter a similar approach. In an article explaining why the biennial
chose Donostia-San Sebastian, Fijen draws attention to the complex structure of the region
rather than the city:
When Donostia-San Sebastian was selected two years ago as the Host City for
Manifesta 5, it was due in large part to its multi-layered intersections and historical
trans-regional context. The structural pluralism of the region, its multiculturalism,
identity issues, languages and political turmoil presented Manifesta with many
previously unexplored challenges. […] When Manifesta 5 took up residence in the
Basque Country, with its passionately cherished cultural autonomy, it came with a
mission. Can this Manifesta represent a visualisation of the current moment in
European history, with the Basque situation representing, pars pro toto, the global
moment?.245
The axis in this mission determined by Manifesta (Basque Country – Europe –
Global) chimes with the rising new regionalism and the Basque regional programme in terms
of bypassing the national level (Spain). The fact that Spain was hardly mentioned throughout
the entire catalogue and that the language options of the website prepared for Manifesta 5
were only Euskara (the Basque language) and English shows that new regionalist policies
aiming to represent the region directly at the European and global level, rather than the old
regionalist policies generated through the Basque vs. Spain opposition and separatism, were
244 Miren Azkarate Villar, “Manifesta 5,” in With All Due Intent – (Manifesta 5 exh. cat), ed. Marta Kuzma and
Massimiliano Gioni (Barcelona: Actar, 2004), 13.
245 Hedwig Fijen, “Decoding Europe?,” in With All Due Intent – (Manifesta 5 exh. cat), ed. Marta Kuzma and
Massimiliano Gioni (Barcelona: Actar, 2004), 15–16.
89
implemented.246 Parallel to PNV’s regional programme, Manifesta was used as a tool to
sideline Spain. It is also important to remember that 2004, the year Manifesta 5 took place,
was also the year when the Ibarretxe Plan, which was an attempt to reorganize the status of
autonomy of the region, was hotly debated before being ratified in the Basque Parliament.247
The intersection of interests of the PNV’s regional programme and Manifesta can
also be traced in the content of the exhibition. As Snodgrass highlights, the idiosyncratic
Basque culture was not an inspiration for the exhibition and the separatist movement that
made its mark on Basque history in the post-Franco era was hardly addressed in works of
art.248 Except for the two pages reserved for a long essay by Marta Kuzma, one of the curators
of the exhibition, and some clippings that we can see under the title Factography (a selection
of cover pages of newspapers published in the last two years without comments), there is no
discussion in the catalogue tackling the political problems of the Basque Country. Kuzma
already clearly states that the purpose of Manifesta is to position itself outside of this peculiar
political matrix:
Certainly, it is not the intent of this project to legitimize these political initiatives.
The incentive of Manifesta remains to abstract from the social experience of the
Basque region, one conscious of autonomy and self-determination, to locate a
parallel discourse that leads to a consideration of the autonomous work of art, one
that is characterized by dissonance and tension in its construction.249
Nevertheless, it can be said that, by including philosopher Andrew Benjamin’s
academic article entitled “Judging Terrorism” in the catalogue, which discusses the notion of
terrorism and the anatomy of terrorist action, the Basque separatist left has been implicitly
criticized.250 Consequently, Manifesta 5 followed the footsteps of the autonomist European
capitalist perspective of the PVN and moderated the voice of “extreme” localism within its
programme.
246 For a brief history of old and new regionalisms in the context of the Basque Country, see Karolina Borońska-
Hryniewiecka, “Regional Competence: Changing Patterns of the Basque Regionalism in the EU,” Revista Vasca
de Administración Pública: Herri-Arduralaritzako Euskal Aldizkaria, no. 89 (2011): 239–63.
247 For the details of the Ibarretxe Plan, see Michael Keating and Zoe Bray, “Renegotiating Sovereignty: Basque
Nationalism and the Rise and Fall of the Ibarretxe Plan,” Ethnopolitics: Formerly Global Review of Ethnopolitics
5, no. 4 (2006): 347–64.
248 Susan Snodgrass, “Manifesta 5: Turning Inward,” Art in America (Dec. 2004): 69.
249 Marta Kuzma, “The Staged Matrix,” in With All Due Intent – (Manifesta 5 exh. cat), ed. Marta Kuzma and
Massimiliano Gioni (Barcelona: Actar, 2004), 46.
250 Andrew Benjamin, “Judging Terrorism,” in Marta Kuzma and Massimiliano Gioni, With All Due Intent –
Manifesta 5 exh. cat. (Barcelona: Actar), 104–17.
90
In its next destination, Nicosia, Manifesta would not establish the same
collaboration with the local authorities and this situation would cause unexpected outcomes.
When Failure Becomes Success: Manifesta 6 in Nicosia
The Nicosia case can be seen as a continuation of the new regionalist approach that
emerged as the main determinant of the second decade of Manifesta—even though it differs
from other host cities and regions in many respects. Cyprus is an island which has had a bicommunal
structure for many years. After gaining its independence from British colonial rule
in 1960, there were attempts to put the island under Greek control through a military coup,
followed by an occupation of the northern part by the Turkish army in 1974 which caused
the physical division of the island by so-called Green Line into north and south—a border
that still remains.251 This long-standing political crisis also made Nicosia an interesting
destination for Manifesta. By announcing Nicosia as host city, Manifesta finally seemed to
have found a field of experiment that was suitable for its initial premises.
However, one of the main motivations undergirding this choice was undoubtedly
the full membership of the Republic of Cyprus (the Greek part) to the EU in 2004. This event,
which was of high symbolic significance for the Republic of Cyprus, suddenly gave the island
the title of “European”. Yet, it caused the structural problems to become more pronounced—
just like it did with the Central and Eastern European countries that joined the Union in the
same enlargement round. In order to solve the main structural problems of the island, the
Republic of Cyprus received substantial amounts of assistance from the EU after the
accession process. Just between 2004 and 2006, 113.44 million euros were transferred from
the EU's Structural and Cohesion Funds to the Republic.252
In this context, it was no coincidence that Manifesta was invited to the island. The
art on Cyprus, which had long been sponsored by the state in order to strengthen the official
Greek national identity, now needed to be rethought in order to reach the “European /
international level”.253 However, as Christina Ioannou and George Kentas have put it,
251 For a detailed political history of Cyprus, see Clement Dodd, The History and Politics of the Cyprus Conflict
(Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); James Ker-Lindsay, The Cyprus Problem: What
Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
252 Angelos Sepos, The Europeanization of Cyprus: Polity, Policies and Politics (Houndmills and New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 108.
253 See Nikita, Eleni “Cypriot art 1950–1980: spatial-temporal context towards a new reading,” in 1960–1980:
Discourse with Contemporary Trends in Art and the Quest for Identity, ed. Andris Michael (Limassol: Evagoras &
Kathleen Lanitis Foundation, 2009), 13–9. For the exhibitions held in Cypriot museums (specifically at the State
Gallery of Contemporary Art) and their role in Greek identity construction, see Alexandra Bounia & Theopisti
91
although the Republic of Cyprus was effective in adopting EU regulations and setting the
legal framework of the Union, public acclaim of these transformations was not as fast as
bureaucratic adjustments. Therefore “it can be argued that, in the case of Cyprus, there was
a cognitive deficit in the process of the country’s Europeanisation […, which] consists in a
gap between normative and actual Europeanisation. In other words, this deficit is defined by
the degree of divergence between the technical-legal harmonization and the adaptation of
social perceptions and habitual behavior to the new milieu”.254 Festivals and biennials are of
critical importance in this regard.
Hosting a biennial like Manifesta, which is “European” by definition, promotes
Europeanism and receives support from European funds, would contribute to raise
consciousness of the European identity among citizens of the island. However, things did not
go as planned. Curators Mai Abu ElDahab, Anton Vidokle and Florian Waldvogel decided
to step beyond the usual exhibition formats and wanted to construct an experimental platform
for discussing current artistic and art educational practices within theoretical, social and
cultural contexts. The idea came into existence of initiating a 100-day active art school
consisting of three departments each led by a curator and comprising lectures, workshops,
performances and seminars. The insistence of the curators to establish and operate a
department of the school in the Turkish northern part of Nicosia, which is officially
unrecognized by the Republic of Cyprus, caused a serious crisis that led to the cancellation
of Manifesta 6. The legal entity Nicosia for Art (NFA), which was founded to organize
Manifesta, terminated its agreement with the biennial three months before inauguration,
arguing that infrastructural investment could not be made in a non-recognized region with
their public funds. The NFA's announcement regarding the cancellation of Manifesta clearly
defines the biennial's expectation of the host city: “NFA considers as unacceptable the effort
of assigning political dimensions to a cultural event, which had as one of its primary aims the
creation of a platform of cooperation between the two communities in Cyprus, within a spirit
of solidarity and common understanding”.255 According to Yiannis Toumazis, the director of
Nicosia for Art,
Stylianou-Lambert, “National museums in Cyprus: A Story of Heritage and Conflict,” in Building National
Museums in Europe 1750-2010 - Conference proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: Identity
Politics, the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, Bologna 28-30 April 2011 – EuNaMus Report No 1, ed.
Peter Aronsson & Gabriella Elgenius, accessed June 2, 2020,
https://www.ep.liu.se/konferensnummer.aspx?series=ecp&issue=64.
254 Christina Ioannou and George Kentas, “Social Effects of Membership,” in An Island in Europe: The EU and the
Transformation of Cyprus, ed. James Ker-Lindsay, Hubert Faustmann and Fiona Mullen (London and New York:
I.B. Tauris, 2011), 90.
255 Announcement by NFA, June 2, 2006, accessed June 6, 2020,
http://www.visionmatters.co.uk/cyprusBB/forum/post-60338.html.
92
A bi-communal project is one thing, but the building of infrastructure in an illegal
state is quite another. We never agreed to this. […] The idea for the school to have
three departments came about only last November, when the three curators
disagreed with each other and decided to split things up. They then wanted to found
a school department in the occupied part of Nicosia. We could never agree. We will
not cancel out our own existence.256
Leaving aside the details of the litigation process in which the two sides accused
each other reciprocally and the NFA reclaimed the project budget of 1.8 million euros,
Manifesta 6 perfectly exemplifies how both the IFM's and the host city's reciprocal
geoaesthetic interests are controlled by real politics.257 The NFA's definition of Manifesta as
outside of political issues and a "purely cultural event" reveals the limits of the biennial's
discourse that aims at investigating a city or a region through both its political history and
art.
At this point, one of the biggest paradoxes of Manifesta suddenly became visible.
Manifesta attempts to include the political, sociological, cultural and artistic dimensions of a
region with a team of curators and organizers who often do not have the chance to grasp the
depths of the problems of the region they visit due to the event's nomadic character. At the
same time, since it collaborates with local politicians and benefits from public funds of the
host region, it has to prepare a show in accordance with the local authorities’ regional
programmes and policies. Therefore, it bypasses many issues that might generate frictions.
Although this paradox was already perceptible, for example when Manifesta did not
sufficiently tackle the communist past in Ljubljana or the separatist movement in the Basque
Country, it became very evident in the Nicosia crisis and made the edition implode.
In this respect, Manifesta 6 was perhaps the biennial's most successful edition and
the closest one to its official promises in that it shifted from representing the problems and
internal dynamics of a city / region to directly experiencing them, even becoming subject of
these tensions. The curators’ insistence on building an art school in an “unrecognized” land
revealed “the limits of the discourse of ‘bi-cultural tolerance’”, which by definition should
have been the primary goal of a critical art biennial.258 After this unexpected experience,
256 Augustine Zenakos, “Manifesta No More,” Artnet Magazine, June 5, 2006, accessed June 6, 2020,
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/news/zenakos/zenakos6-5-06.asp.
257 All archives related to Manifesta 6 are held confidentially by IFM and are not open to researchers. Still, press
releases and some correspondence made by both the NFA and the IFM at that time were archived online by NeMe,
a non-profit Cyprus registered cultural NGO. For NFA's and IFM's public releases after cancellation, see,
“Manifesta 6 - Manifesta Story in Short,” NeMe Forum, accessed June 6, 2020,
http://forum.neme.org/viewtopic.php?id=15. For the trajectory of the litigation process, see, “17.02.07 IFM Press
Release: Manifesta versus Nicosia,” NeMe Forum, accessed June 6, 2020,
http://forum.neme.org/viewtopic.php?id=87.
258 Andrea Liu, “Theorizing Art Interventions: Manifesta 6 and Occupy 38,” in Sarai Reader 9: Projections, ed.
Raqs Media Collective and Shveta Sarda (Delhi: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 2013): 92. Also
93
Manifesta turned towards regions with fewer political problems and greater ambition to
invest in creative economies.
Manifesta 7 or Promoting the Trentino–South Tyrol Region as
“Europe within Europe”
Although the characteristics of Trentino–Alto Adige (South Tyrol), where
Manifesta 7 was organized, are different from the Basque Country, the relationship between
Manifesta and those regions has commonalities in many aspects. Trentino–South Tyrol is
one of the wealthiest regions in Italy259, and has been an autonomous region since 1947.
Italians are the majority in the Province of Trentino and Germans in the Province of South
Tyrol while Ladin people are a minority in both.260 It is a region that adheres to the principle
of power sharing and consensus, and in this respect, it is an example of consociational
democracy in political science.261 Although regionalist political parties affiliated with ethnic
groups have historically determined the politics of the region, the political elites have always
cooperated, and this has curtailed the development of a separatist movement, unlike in the
Basque Country. This cooperation between the ethnic, regionalist, autonomist, Christian
democratic catch-all-party South Tyrolean People's Party (Südtiroler Volkspartei, SVP),
which has been the dominant party in South Tyrol since the autonomy of the region in 1947,
see, Elizabeth Lebovici, “Can Art Be Political? Regarding the Controversy Surrounding Manifesta 6,”
ArtMargins, July 25, 2006, accessed April 14, 2020, https://artmargins.com/can-art-be-political-regarding-thecontroversy-
surrounding-manifesta-6/.
259 According to Eurostat 2019, the GDP per capita in PPS in the Provencia Autonoma Bolzano/ Bozen, capital of
South Tyrol, was equal to €42,900 in 2017, which is approximately 143% of the EU average values, whereas the
GDP per capita in PPS in the Provincia Autonoma Trento, capital of Trentino, was €36,600 in 2017,
corresponding to 122% of the EU average. See “Regional GDP per capita ranged from 31% to 626% of the EU
average in 2017,” Eurostat News Release 34/2019, February 29, 2019, accessed May 4,
2020,.https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/9618249/1-26022019-AP-EN.pdf/f765d183-c3d2-4e2f-
9256-cc6665909c80.
260 In 2011, the percentages by language groups in South Tyrol was as follows: Italian 26.06 %, German 69.41 %,
Ladin 4.53%. In Trentino, there are two Germanic local languages, Mócheno and Cimbrian. In 2011, the
percentages by language groups in Trentino was as follows: Italian 96 %, Ladin 3.5 %, Mócheno 0.3 % and
Cimbrian 0.2 %. ASTAT (Autonomous Province of South Tyrol Provincial Statistics Institute), South Tyrol in
Figures (Bozen/Bolzano, 2018), accessed May 4, 2020, https://astat.provinz.bz.it/downloads/Siz_2018-eng(2).pdf;
ISPAT (Istituto di Statistica della Provincia di Trento) Annuario on Line, 2015, accessed May 4, 2020,
http://www.statweb.provincia.tn.it/annuario/(S(x4hpivyttybfwb45gk1czg55))/tavola.aspx?idt=1.05.
261 See Arend Lijphart, “Consociational Democracy,” World Politics 21, no. 2 (1969): 207_25; Günther Pallaver,
“South Tyrol’s Consociational Democracy: Between Political Claim and Social Reality,” in Tolerance Through
Law: Self Governance and Group Rights in South Tyrol, ed. Jens Woelk, Joseph Marko and Francesco Palermo
(Leiden: Brill | Nijhoff, (2007), 301-27; Jan Markusse, “Power-sharing and ‘Consociational Democracy’ in South
Tyrol,” GeoJournal 43 (1997): 77–89.
94
and the centre-right, catch-all-party Christian Democracy (Democrazia Christiana, DC),
which was the dominant party in Trentino until 1994, has been maintained for a long time
due to Catholicism as the common denominator.262 Despite the fact that this balance was
destabilized due to the disappearance of Christian Democracy after the Mani Pulite
corruption investigations in the early 1990s, both provinces have later invented new policies
based on the respect of minorities and the goal of increasing tourism revenues through culture
and the arts ever since the late 1990s.
Before he became a member of Manifesta 7’s organizational committee, Antonio
Lampis, director of Culture of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano - Italian Culture
Division, highlighted this shift in cultural investments:
The overall panorama must begin by mentioning a pro capita cost that is relatively
high with respect to the average of the nation, and that has been employed for a
widespread and massive conservation of our heritage. This has made our territory
one of the best conserved in the whole of Europe. Such an approach has, however,
delayed investment in contemporary art and professional entertainment with respect
to the traditional financing of activities linked to the conservation of our cultural
heritage, including both buildings and folkloric events.263
This is one of the two contributions of cultural policies as a part of new regionalist
strategies, according to an analysis by Perrin. While regional heritage preservation comes to
the fore in order to strengthen sub-state identity in old regionalism, investments in creativityoriented
cultural policies gain importance in new regionalism. Moreover, culture is seen as a
“soft factor for regional branding”.264 It is important to highlight that heritage still occupies
a considerable place in new regionalist strategies, yet with a new formation. The increasing
role of the NGOs on the cultural heritage policies following the neoliberal governmentality
262 Günther Pallaver, “South Tyrol’s Consociational Democracy,” 303. For the brief history of SVP, see Anton
Holzer and Barbara Schwegler, "The Südtiroler Volkspartei: A Hegemonic Ethnoregionalist Party,” in Regionalist
Parties in Western Europe, ed. Lieven De Winter and Huri Türsan (London and New York: Routledge, 2003),
176–91.
263 Antonio Lampis, “Experiences in Audience Enlargement in the South Tyrol (How to Increase Cultural
Consumers in the South Tyrol): Propaedeutics and New Ways of Presenting Art and Culture. Paper presented at
the Fourth International Conference on Cultural Policy Research – iccpr (12–16 July 2006 Vienna, Austria), 2,
http://www.provinzia.bz.it/cultura/downloads/Lampis_audienceenlargement.pdf.
264 Thomas Perrin, “New Regionalism and Cultural Policies: Distinctive and Distinguishing Strategies, from Local
to Global,” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 20, no. 4 (2012): 459–75.
95
paved the way for considering heritage within broader regional branding policies.265 Thus,
heritage, too, was put at the disposal of strategies to be “creative city”.
Lampis details the investments made in Bolzano within the framework of the
changing cultural policies and the successes in their implementation. Due to infrastructural
deficiencies (e.g., lack of a large-scale performance hall), Bolzano was not a destination of
cultural tourism, but thanks to the new theatre and auditorium that opened in 2000, this
problem was partially resolved.266 The effect of the new cultural policies were drastic:
The Trevi cultural centre, where a large part of the activities described took place,
passed in two years from 9,000 to 40,000 visitors; the two media-points it hosts had,
in four years, an increase of 40% per annum; from 1997 to 1999 the number of
cultural references in the local press almost multiplied by ten; in 2003 the Bolzano
repertory theatre had an increase in spectators of 44.3%, and a 140% increase of
young spectators; the theatre’s new productions almost always show a full house,
though to many people the theatre had seemed too large for a city of some 97,000
inhabitants. The 2003 family survey entitled “Cultura, socialità e tempo libero”
(‘Culture, sociability and free time’) conducted by the Istituto italiano di statistica
(fascicolo n. 12 – 2005) positions the Autonomous Province of Bolzano in first place
for the consumption of theatre productions, exhibitions and museums. Around 34.4
citizens over 6 years of age, double the national average, have attended in the past
year theatre productions of various types, whilst with other forms of entertainment
– museums and exhibitions – the figure is 45.6 (compared with national averages of
17.9 and 28.5 respectively).267
But the milestone in the cultural branding of the region would—again—be set by
museums. The flagship projects of the regional programme of Trentino–South Tyrol were
MART (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto) in Rovereto,
designed by the globally renowned architect Mario Botta and Gulio Andreolli and opened in
2002, and Museion in Bolzano, designed by KVN Architecture and opened just a few months
before the inauguration of Manifesta. After these openings, there were no longer any
obstacles to hosting an internationally known, pan-European and multiculturalist biennial
such as Manifesta.
Also Trentino–South Tyrol saw Manifesta as a way to participate in European
culture and art—an effective example of soft power and an opportunity to forge a link
265 See Chiara de Cesari, “Heritage beyond the Nation-State? Nongovernmental Organizations, Changing Cultural
Policies, and the Discourse of Heritage as Development,” Current Anthropology 61, no. 1 (2020): 30-56.
266 Antonio Lampis, “Experiences in Audience Enlargement in the South Tyrol,” 2.
267 Ibid., 8.
96
between the region and the global by bypassing the national. In the preface of the catalogue,
which was signed by six governors of both provinces including the presidents, this rhetoric
was repeated once more: “Thanks to MART, Museion and Manifesta 7 hosted in four
different sites in our region, Trentino-South Tyrol find their definitive place on the
geographical map of Europe as one of the chosen centers for the production and promotion
of contemporary art”.268
By announcing that it has chosen a region rather than a city for the first time,
Manifesta officially made this relationship clearer. Thanks to four venues selected in four
different cities (Rovereto, Trento, Bolzano and Franzensfeste/Fortezza), foreign viewers had
to travel one hundred and thirty kilometres along the North-South axis to complete the tour
and thus had an opportunity to take a closer look at the natural beauty and historical cities of
the region. This “small-scale-contemporary Grand Tour” was transformed into a complete
programme especially for foreign visitors, with many guided excursion suggestions on
Manifesta 7's website. Manifesta officers, too, defined and promoted the region as "Europe
within Europe" in terms of its multi-lingual and multicultural features.269
Desire to Make Profit over Manifesta Brand: Manifesta 8 and
the Region of Murcia
At the beginning of 2009, it was announced that the Murcia region would host
Manifesta 8, aiming to be "in dialogue with northern Africa". Competing with Riga and
Gdansk, Murcia became the next location to organize Manifesta by securing the minimum
guaranteed amount.270 When we consider Murcia's regional cultural policies in tandem with
the rising investments the regional government officials made in the region at that time, it
can be said that this result was not surprising. In this section, I argue that hosting Manifesta
in the Murcia region was an extension of a series of long-term policies aiming to create a
268 Lorenzo Dellai, Luis Durnwalder, Margherita Cogo, Sabina Kasslatter-Mur, Luigi Cigolla and Florian Mussner,
“Preface,” in Manifesta 7: Index (exh. cat.) (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2008), 9–12.
269 Gilane Tawadros, “Manifesta 7 Preface,” in Manifesta 7: Index (exh. cat.) (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2008),
13–5; Hedwig Fijen, Fabio Cavallucci and Andreas Hapkemeyer, “Manifesta 7: Regenerating Memory,” in
Manifesta 7: Index (exh. cat.) (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2008), 16–21.
270 In that period, it was necessary to provide a minimum of 3.3 million euros to host Manifesta, of which 3 million
euros was guaranteed money plus 300,000 euros to the IFM. At the time, Polish newspapers reported that Gdansk
had problems with providing this money as a guarantee. See Dorota Jarecka, “Czy będą Manifesta w Gdańsku?”
Gazeta Wyborcza, October 30, 2008, accessed January 27, 2021,
https://wyborcza.pl/1,75410,5862697,Czy_beda_Manifesta_w_Gdansku_.html?disableRedirects=true#.
97
paradigm shift in the economic and urban structure of the region, just as in the regions
mentioned above.
The Murcia region, whose GDP per capita is below the Spanish average and is
known for its agriculture and golf tourism, had come to the fore through significant
investments in cultural tourism, especially since the early 2000s. Although La Manga del
Mar Menor, a 22km-long dune that separates Mar Menor lagoon and the Mediterranean Sea,
was zoned for construction since the 1960s to transform into a tourist resort,
the wrong policy of favoring urban second homes versus hotel equipment produced
a strong economic return in the short term, but contributed to overcrowding […,
which] 'mutated' the type of customer of La Manga, deteriorating profitability and
the long-term tourism product.271
Therefore, the intensity experienced in the summer months failed to satisfy the
expected impact on the development of the region. Another reason to make policies for
sustainable tourism was the difficulties faced by the industrial economy of the region.
Cartagena, another host city of Manifesta, and the La Unión district, whose economy had
been based on mining activities for 2000 years, had to undergo a transformation due to low
profitability, decline in public subsidies and rising environmental awareness.272 “Industrial
heritage tourism”, a strategy adopted by cities trying to evolve into a post-industrial
landscape, was part of the plan for Murcia, though not as much as in Limburg, Manifesta's
next host region. Museo Minero, the mining museum in La Unión, Cante de las Minas, one
of the most important flamenco festivals in La Unión and numerous conferences /
colloquiums on mining heritage and culture can be cited as examples of this cultural mobility
in these cities.273
Investments and expectations around tourism in Murcia can be seen as furthering
the revitalization of culture and art life. The Marina de Cope project, initiated in 2004, was
aimed to be Europe's largest tourist complex. According to the initial plan, 21 million square
metres would be revamped in an environmental-friendly way with 20 hotels, 5 golf courses,
9000 residencies, 10 football fields, a marina and a conference centre.274 In order to meet the
estimated cost of the project (4 billion euros) and other mega-projects, the Regional
271 Salvador Garcia-Ayllon “La Manga Case Study: Consequences from Short-term Urban Planning in a Tourism
Mass Destiny of the Spanish Mediterranean Coast,” Cities 43 (2015): 150.
272 Héctor M. Conesa, Rainer Schulin and Bernd Nowack, “Mining Landscape: A Cultural Tourist Opportunity or
an Environmental Problem? The Study Case of the Cartagena – La Unión Mining District (SE Spain),” Ecological
Economics 64 (2008): 690-700.
273 Ibid., 695.
274 New urbanist architect and scholar Jaime Correa was the winner of the competition of Marina de Capo.
98
Administration of the Region of Murcia organized the Arab Spanish Investment Forum in
2011 to attract Arab investors.275
Rather than treating Manifesta as a singular event in the region, it is more correct to
see it as a part of a network of contemporary art events that were organized in the Region of
Murcia. The curator of the first edition of the biennial-like PAC Murcia (Proyecto de Arte
Contemporáneo - Contemporary Art Project), entitled Estratos (Strata), which was initiated
in 2008, was Nicolas Bourriaud, who I mentioned in Part I. Furthermore, the Anish Kapoor:
Islamic Mirror exhibition in 2008 (curated by Rosa Martínez, one of the curators of
Manifesta 1), SOS 4.8 (a live arts festival in 2009 whose contemporary art section was curated
by Christiane Paul, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Paco Barragán), and the Francesca Woodman
Retrospective (curated by Marco Pierini and Isabel Tejeda) were organized under the
auspices of the Regional Administration of the Region of Murcia. We should also mention
La Conservera, an old warehouse of the canning industry that was transformed into a
contemporary art space in 2009. The curator of the second edition of the PAC Murcia, which
was entitled Dominó Caníbal and coincided with Manifesta 8, was Cuauhtémoc Medina, who
would be appointed as the chief curator of the following edition of Manifesta held in Genk –
Limburg. This short list gives a sense of the connectedness of Manifesta with other initiatives,
local policy and the affordances of a scenario that wished to attract financial investment and
tourism.
All this new regionalist infrastructure provided sufficient opportunities for
Manifesta to be held in Murcia. The region had already benefited from the EU's European
Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and these funds were one of the main sources of the
public investment made to host Manifesta.276 In this regard, the observations of curator Max
Andrews, who came to Murcia in 2008 to see Bourriaud's Estratos, are striking:
From a terminal that was brimming with Brummies and other Brits who had arrived
from a rash of low-cost flight destinations, past the several dozen monstrous new
golf resort-towns which draw them here near the Costa Cálida, the impression was
that this Spanish region is just the latest to undergo a rapid leisure property
invasion.277
275 “The Region of Murcia Presents Economic Opportunities to Arab Investors,” Iktissad Events, accessed May 26,
2020, https://www.iktissadevents.com/news/111028/013217. The project, which remained on the agenda for a
long time despite environmentalists' claims that it would disrupt the natural life there, was finally quashed by the
Regional High Court in 2013, three years after Manifesta was hosted.
276 Viviana Checchia, “Beyond the Exhibition: A Vessel for Self-reflexive Curating in the Mediterranean,”
Unpublished PhD dissertation (Loughborough: Loughborough University, 2016).
277 Max Andrews, “Estratos: PAC Murcia (Proyecto Arte Contemporáneo / Contemporary Art Project), various
venues, Murcia, Spain,” Frieze 116 (2008), https://frieze.com/article/estratos.
99
When we look at it from Manifesta’s perspective, it is clear that the choice made
was appropriate since being hosted in a region where infrastructural, economic and cultural
investments are all happening means minimizing the financial risk and attracting more
international visitors because of low-cost flight and tourist attractions. The only challenge
appeared in defining a controversy for the North-South axis like in the other editions of
Manifesta's second decade, since the Region of Murcia had not experienced a political or
socio-economic crisis in this geographical axis. Manifesta tried to address this desideratum
by bringing the historical relations of Murcia with northern Africa onto the agenda.
The mutual benefits for Manifesta and the local government officials can also be
seen from the catalogue of Manifesta 8. Pedro Alberto Cruz, Minister of Culture and
Tourism of the Region of Murcia, summarizes the benefits of hosting Manifesta in the
Region of Murcia under three headings:
-1- its [Manifesta’s] constitution as a European-wide network to facilitate the
movement of knowledge and to generate modes of transnational reflection; -2- the
strengthening of local networks and infrastructure through the creation of a new
context to provide for the diffusion of their work outside the usual framework of
their influence, and; -3- its decisive and outstanding contribution to the
articulation of the Region of Murcia as a first-level hallmark in the international
realm of cultural tourism.278
In fact, it can be said that Cruz's main expectation from Manifesta is summarized
under the third heading, so much so that he clearly states after a few sentences that, in hosting
Manifesta, the touristic development of the region is much more desired than the artistic
development of the local audiences and local artists:
[…] the Region of Murcia instantly becomes part of the privileged system of
promotion and diffusion provided by the prestigious ‘Manifesta branding’”. […]
To date, Manifesta 8 is the most significant international artistic event to be
celebrated in the Region of Murcia, a unique occasion with a strong touristic
impact. Apart from the strictly cultural output of the biennial, the ability of
Manifesta to energize the economy and diversity of a given area is a proven fact
from which, obviously, the Region of Murcia is also delighted to profit.279
According to Cruz, and indeed most of the local/regional government officials of
the former host regions, Manifesta is a “brand” which “energizes the economy” and allows
278 Pedro Alberto Cruz, “Foreword,” in Manifesta 8: Region of Murcia (Spain) in Dialogue with Northern Africa
(exh. cat) (Milano: Silvana Editoriale 2010), 11.
279 Ibid., 11.
100
the cities to “profit” from it. Yet, Manifesta insists on defining its characteristics in
noneconomic terms. Just one page after Cruz’s foreword, Hedwig Fijen redefines Manifesta’s
official position:
So after 15 years, maybe it’s now time to define Manifesta by what [it] actually
is. Manifesta is independent, enthusiastic and anti-institutional. It is open to
challenge, and strives for the untested. It embraces new talent. It aims to be
generous and transparent both in its tone and its function. It begins each new
edition with a clean slate, but with an ever-expanding core-group of experienced
professionals from many different cultural fields. It simultaneously exists within
and beyond the established art frontiers. It is fearless, at the time when fear of the
‘other’, or caution about the unknown, has become a tool for repression.280
Actually what it is to be called the “Manifesta brand” is this very definition.
Manifesta markets an image of being "anti-institutional", "independent", "fearless",
"transparent", "nomadic", “network-based” and "beyond art frontiers" and makes itself
attractive. In this regard, Manifesta sells a promise: visibility, exclusiveness provided by
contemporary art, and both mass and high-end tourism. This entices cities and regions to
compete to host it, just like they do to host the Olympic Games.281 Cities and regions invest
in large-scale artistic events as part of their neoliberal urban policies. As in the examples we
have seen so far and will see hereafter: after the first two editions, which we can perhaps
consider as preparatory, it is not possible to find an edition of Manifesta that does not meet
the needs of a city or region arising as a result of paradigmatic geopolitical and economic
transformations. These include a shift from communism to capitalism, from industrial to postindustrial
city, or a need to make a region more visible at the supranational level. All of them
desire to win sympathy, tourists and political capital by making a clear break with historically
rooted conflictual relations. Moreover, by either marketing their cultural heritage or creating
iconic buildings - or both-, and investing on large-scale cultural events (like Manifesta), they
follow a similar pathway to become creative cities. To put it differently, Florida's advice to
280 Hedwig Fijen, “Manifesta 8 Introduction,” in Manifesta 8: Region of Murcia (Spain) in Dialogue with Northern
Africa (exh. cat) (Milano: Silvana Editoriale 2010), 21.
281 In this regard, the answer given by Manifesta director Hedwig Fijen to a journalist who asked whether investing
more than 3 million euros in hosting Manifesta 8 in Murcia at a time of economic crisis would be profitable, is
striking: “This is an investment rather than an expense. If on the opening days 2,000 people come, with an average
stay of five days, and spend an average of 120 euros a day, the investment has already been recovered. Murcia is a
relatively little-known region abroad and Manifesta is an important form of tourist attraction. […] The cultural
industry continues to grow, that is an important fact, in times of crisis”. Gontzal Díez, “¡Os vamos a sorprender!,”
La Verdad, May 22, 2010, accessed July 27, 2020, https://www.laverdad.es/murcia/v/20100522/cultura/vamossorprender-
20100522.html?ref=https:%2F%2Fwww.laverdad.es%2Fmurcia%2Fv%2F20100522%2Fcultura%2Fvamossorprender-
20100522.html (translated by the author).
101
policy makers to make diverse investments that attract creative individuals,282 paradoxically,
leads cities to follow similar recipes.
To sum up, the intensifying climate of capitalist investment and city/region branding
lets cognitive dissonance enter. On the one hand, local authorities in Murcia wished to
contribute to real, social issues and community connectivity. On the other hand, they opted
for and invested in Manifesta instead of directly addressing these social issues. Being aware
of this fact, in return, Manifesta in Murcia showed itself as an investment instrument in
landscapes that would end up ecologically blighted and financially ruined with half-built
holiday homes that nobody could afford, especially after the 2007-08 global financial crisis.
Moreover, it appeared as something that anticipated the “refugee crisis” and intensifying
North/South issues in the following years.
Cultivating Creative Industries on Mining Landscapes:
Manifesta 9 in Genk – Limburg
The Belgian Limburg province that hosted Manifesta 9 (2012) in its city Genk
shares many similarities with both Trentino–South Tyrol and the Basque Country. The aim
to organize a contemporary art event in an idle colliery of a small, low-population (around
64,000) city like Genk, where about half of the population are migrant workers, can once
again only be evaluated by closely looking at the political, economic and urban history of the
host region. The historical background, which I will briefly touch on below, is crucial in
terms of understanding that the (mostly EU-sourced) investment made to host Manifesta
emerged as a continuation of the regeneration policies the city has followed since the 1990s.
As is known, the Flanders region has been in a long-running controversy with the
Francophone influence in Belgium, ever since the country's establishment in 1830. The
Wallonia region, which was previously economically stronger and whose economy was
based on coal mining and the glass and steel industries, lost its dominance in the late 1950s.
From the 1960s onwards, the economy based on small and medium sized enterprises in the
Flanders region took off thanks to car manufacturing and consumer durables' production
through multinational investments, while the crisis of the Fordist mode of production hit the
economy of the Wallonia region, leading to an increase in economic disparity.283 In the
282 Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class.
283 Stijn Oosterlynck, "The Political Economy of State Restructuring and the Regional Uneven Transition to after-
Fordism in Belgium,” in Contemporary Centrifugal Regionalism: Comparing Flanders and Northern Italy, ed.
Michel Huysseune (Brussels: The Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, 2011), 83–94.
102
political sphere, the regionalist - centrifugal movements showed effectiveness over time, and
decentralist parties reached their highest voting rates in 1971 (Volksunie in Flanders (19%),
Rassemblement Wallon (RW) in Wallonia (21%) and Front Démocratique des Francophones
in Brussels (28%)).284 Belgium officially became a federal state in 1993 and after this point
almost all parties in the political scene automatically became regionalists due to the division
between the Francophone and Dutchophone regions, which caused the dissolution of
traditional regionalist parties such as Volksunie.285 Nevertheless, the ideological dimension
of the political polarization between Flanders and Wallonia should not be overlooked:
Although the history of the Flemish movement is complex, its dominant tendencies
have leaned ideologically rather towards the center-right than the left, and most of
its activists and politicians clearly identified themselves with Catholicism (in a
country where for a long time Catholicism - anticlericalism was a major cleavage,
which corresponded with the regional cleavage since the former stance was
dominant in Flanders, the latter in Wallonia and Brussels).286
Today, it can be said that the crisis has two broad expressions, similar to the Basque
Country, Northern Italy, Scotland and Catalonia: “economic arguments reflecting the
unwillingness within the richer community (Flanders) to continue supporting the poorer one,
and non-economic arguments related to the travailed relations between the country's
communities”.287
The Belgian Limburg region, where Manifesta took place, has partial differences
from the wider Flemish Region to which it belongs. After the discovery of coal in Limburg
by André Dumont in 1901, seven coalmines were established288 and the region was identified
with the coal mining sector for many years. This feature made Limburg closer to the Meuse–
Rhine Euroregion where the mining industry is more concentrated, rather than other regions
of Flanders. Since the 1960s, the decline of the Fordist mode of production hit Limburg as
well as Wallonia. The closure of Zwartberg in Flanders as a balancing effort against the
closure of five pits in Wallonia in 1965 triggered a strike, and two workers were shot dead
284 Kris Deschouwer, “The Rise and Fall of the Belgian Regionalist Parties,” Regional and Federal Studies 19, no.
4 - 5 (2009): 559.
285 Ibid., 574.
286 Michel Huysseune, “Contemporary Centrifugal Regionalism: Comparing Flanders and Northern Italy,” in
Contemporary Centrifugal Regionalism: Comparing Flanders and Northern Italy, ed.
Michel Huysseune (Brussels: The Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, 2011), 7.
287 Ibid., 1.
288 Winterslag (1906), Waterschei (1906), Zwartberg (1906), Beringen (1906), Eisden (1906), Houthalen (1911)
and Zolder (1906). Three of those (Winterslag, Waterschei and Zwartberg) were located in Genk. These pits
started production by the 1920s.
103
by police in the demonstrations. The role of this event in sustaining the coal-dependent
economy of the region for a few more decades was crucial:
To appease an outraged and radicalized labour movement, the state negotiated what
would become known as the ‘Akkoorden van Zwartberg (Agreements of
Zwartberg)’ of 1966, which stipulated that no other pit would be closed unless
alternative employment opportunities were available. Furthermore, the Belgian
Government agreed to cover the financial losses of the remaining mines for the next
30 years (until 1996).289
Although the economy of the region had been sustained by coal mining for a while
thanks to this agreement, by the end of the 1980s, Limburg started to develop post-industrial
reconstructing policies to get rid of its industrial past. In accordance with urban regeneration
planning, mine pits started to be closed one by one and these magnificent complexes were
turned into recreation areas, just like in other archetypal post-industrial cities such as Bilbao
and Glasgow. What is crucial here is that the management of public funds allocated for
reconstructing policies was given to Thyl Gheyselinck, chairman and managing director of
Shell Portugal who offered a more efficient and less costly plan for renewal, via some “newly
created and semi-privately managed 'reconstructing holdings' that bought non-voting shares
in companies in difficulty”.290 As a result, there was no longer any technical obstacle stopping
the Limburg province from being creative. Although Gheyselinck's flagship project the ERC
(an educational, recreational and cultural park that was earmarked to hire 3000 people) failed,
all former mine pits have been transformed into creative and tourist-attractive spaces over
the course of time: Winterslag has been turned into C-Mine (a creative hub and centre for
culture and design), Beringen to be-Mine (a tourist-recreation project including shopping
areas and the Beringen Mine Museum), Eisden to Terhills (a tourist destination with a hotel),
Houthalen to Greenville (Clean-tech including offices and a restaurant), Zwartberg to La
Biomista (biodiversity studio and production park), Waterschei to Thor Park (research and
development park) and Zolder to offices of various companies and a Center for Sustainable
Construction.
Manifesta was hosted in the region precisely in the midst of and as a part of this
transformation. Germany's Ruhr area, which borders Limburg, had pioneered cultural
regeneration, so looking to art was not all that new for Limburg's authorities. In its city
planning documents, Genk is branded as a "meaningful city", "laboratory city" and
289 Guy Baeten, Erik Swyngedouw and Louis Albrechts, “Politics, Institutions and Regional Restructuring
Processes: From Managed Growth to Planned Fragmentation in the Reconversion of Belgium’s Last Coal Mining
Region,” Regional Studies 33, no. 3 (1999): 250.
290 Ibid., 252.
104
"ecological city".291 The articles of local government officials that appear in the Manifesta
catalogue also emphasize the region's regenerating policies and its goals. According to
Gilbert van Baelen, Deputy of Culture of the Province of Limburg,
An art project of the size and allure of Manifesta is not just good for Limburg in
terms of expanding the field of visual arts, but it also serves as an engine for
dynamism and movement. It makes sure that the local economy, tourism and other
socio-cultural events are able to grow rapidly throughout the whole region. Limburg
is a strong brand - this is fortified by an art project with such deep, international
impact, with the main exhibition running for a period of 120 days.292
Yet, in order to achieve its aims and sustain its regeneration, a brand always seeks
new investors and as Wim Dries, Mayor of the City of Genk expressed clearly, hosting
Manifesta includes this expectation, too: “We are convinced that Manifesta 9 will put the city
and the entire Euroregion on the map as an attractive and dynamic pole of development for
visitors, artists and entrepreneurs alike”.293
In fact, behind Manifesta's preference for an underpopulated city with a small local
art scene lies remarkable support from the EU with funding for the city's urban regeneration
strategies. Of the € 498 million total budget allocated under the Operational Programme
2007-2013 for Flanders, € 201 million was covered by the EU's European Regional
Development Fund (ERDF).294 For 2014-2020, the total budget was set as € 435.5 million,
while € 175.5 million of this amount was defrayed by the ERDF.295 Thus 36% (€ 3,178,197)
of the € 8,917,442 spent for the transformation of the Winterslag colliery to C-Mine was
covered by ERDF.296 Waterschei colliery, which was chosen as the venue of Manifesta, was
de-privatized in 2006 and, similar to C-Mine, transformed into Thor Park stage-by-stage. The
291 Franziska Ehnert, Niki Frantzeskaki, Jake Barnes, Sara Borgström, Leen Gorissen, Florian Kern, Logan
Strenchock and Markus Egermann “The Acceleration of Urban Sustainability Transitions: A Comparison of
Brighton, Budapest, Dresden, Genk, and Stockholm,” Sustainability 10, no. 3 (2018): 612.
292 Gilbert van Baelen, “Limburg,” in Manifesta 9: The Deep of the Modern - A Subcyclopaedia (exh. cat.),
ed. Cuauthémoc Medina and Christopher Michael Fraga, (Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2012), 5.
293 Wim Dries (2012). “Genk,” in Manifesta 9: The Deep of the Modern - A Subcyclopaedia (exh. cat.), ed.
Cuauthémoc Medina and Christopher Michael Fraga, (Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2012), 7.
294 See “Belgium – Operational Programme 2007-2013: Flanders,” European Commission, July 23, 2008,
accessed December 18, 2020, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_08_526.
295 See “Programme: Flanders – ERDF,” European Commission, accessed December 18, 2020,
https://cohesiondata.ec.europa.eu/programmes/2014BE16RFOP002.
296 “Regions for Economic Change Conference 2010: Workshop on Re-using Brownfield Sites and Buildings,”
European Commission, accessed December 18, 2020,
https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/archive/conferences/sustainable-growth/doc/rfec_brownfield_en.pdf.
105
renovation of Thor Central, the main building where the Manifesta exhibition was held, was
completed with an investment of €25 million and opened for use in 2017. In 2018, €12.5
million of the €43 million total budget of the T2-campus, a part of Thor Park, was covered
by ERDF.297 To sum up, Manifesta was invited as part of an EU-funded regional plan aimed
at providing broader space for the creative industries. Manifesta became the promotional face
of the EU’s powerful and structural steps taken to enhance the creative industries.
Although we do not know whether those who visited the region due to Manifesta
made a long-term investment or not, it can be said that the economic impact of Manifesta
partially met Genk's expectations. According to the report of a field study on Manifesta 9,
Z33 and pit-project conducted by the researchers from Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Manifesta
attracted 100,860 visitors. The report stated that 27.5% of the visitors stayed overnight and
spent more than 200 euros, and 45% of the visitors went to restaurants, primarily those
promoted by Manifesta. The total budget of Manifesta 9 was 4,255,608 euros and it returned
a small profit of 40,000 euros. Yet, its direct and indirect (via tourism) economic impact was
calculated as 800,000 and 2,450,800 euros, respectively.298
As I have tried to show throughout this chapter, in Manifesta's second decade, a
mutual relationship appeared between the biennial and host cities and regions within the
scope of these hosts' neoliberal governance strategies. On the one hand, cities invested in the
Manifesta brand in line with their neoliberal urban regeneration strategies. On the other hand,
since Manifesta’s existence depended on these investments, it shifted its interest towards the
new “emerging geoaesthetic regions” that are mostly supported by EU funds. In this process,
two special areas of interest appeared in the exhibition-making strategies of Manifesta: the
urban and education. In the next chapter, I focus on the development of these two areas within
its second decade.
297 See “Technology Campus Provides State-of-the-art Learning Facilities in Flanders, Belgium,” European
Commission, accessed December 18, 2020, https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/projects/Belgium/technologycampus-
provides-state-of-the-art-learning-facilities-in-flanders-belgium.
298 An Moons, Pieter Valgaeren, Olga Van Oost & Caroline Pauwels, Ruimte voor Hedendaagse Kunst in
Limburg? Een Onderzoek naar de Betekenis en Impact van de Hedendaagse Kunstinitiatieven Manifesta 9, Z33 en
pit Binnen een Laatmoderne Limburgse Samenleving (Brussel: SMIT / iMinds, 2013).
106
107
Chapter 5: Manifesta’s Interests in its Second Decade: The
Urban and Education
Although the examination of the regions of Europe on the North-South axis was
determined by Manifesta as its mission in its second decade in accordance with the rising
regionalist wave, it should not be overlooked that the regions’ expectations of Manifesta
involved not just representational and cultural but also urban elements. As discussed in
Chapter Four in detail, host cities / regions make astronomical investments in neoliberal
infrastructural projects in order to achieve certain goals such as changing their own image,
opening up to tourism and increasing their visibility in the political field as a region. One of
the most important pillars of this urban regeneration process is design and architecture.
Gigantic museums designed by “starchitects” and gentrified old warehouses and factories
seen through cutting-edge architectural perspectives become sine qua nons of neoliberal
urban policies. This is what geographer Paul L. Knox conceptualizes as the “museumization
of urban landscapes”,299 which is “the capacity of the contemporary museum to combine
spectacle with consumption”.300 The first part of this chapter focuses on the expansion of
Manifesta in the direction of creating architecture to represent and further urban regeneration.
Another focus of editions in this decade was education and pedagogy. This trend
started with designing Manifesta 6 - Nicosia as an art school; it then continued with the
establishment of the Education and Learning Department in Manifesta's headquarters in
Amsterdam. This trend was part of a broader debate on education and learning that took place
in the art world from the mid-2000s and was conceptualized as the educational turn. In the
second part of this chapter, I argue that Manifesta's approach to education shifted from
creating a transgressive art school to consensual art mediation in line with the EU’s
educational policies.
299 Paul L. Knox, Cities and Design (Routledge: London and New York, 2011), 191.
300 Ibid.
108
Architecture, Urban Regeneration and Manifesta
Each story of regeneration begins
with poetry and ends with real
estate.301
All the cities and regions that hosted Manifesta in its second decade were in
processes of socio-economic and urban regeneration; by hosting a biennial like Manifesta,
all of them desired not only to document and represent the transformation they were
experiencing, but also to further their local cultural economy. Manifesta provided its own
legitimacy by producing experimental projects for those regions in transformation, which
could meet on common ground with their regional programmes. One of the most important
components of these transformations was urban regeneration projects, since the
reorganization of the city space paves the way for the reorganization of previous economic,
social and cultural spheres. Neoliberalization of urban landscapes increases private sector
investments and reshapes the image of the cities in a region thanks to the postmodern design
of new buildings developed in parallel with it. Indeed, the relationship between art and
architecture is central to neoliberal urban regeneration.
Contemporary visual artists' use of architecture in the context of institutional and
cultural critique has expanded since the 1960s. The critical work of artists such as Gordon
Matta-Clark, Michael Asher, Hans Haacke, Mel Bochner, Dan Graham, Sol LeWitt, Martha
Rosler and Robert Smithson opened up more comprehensive ways of thinking about the
relationship between art and architecture and, on a broader level, art and space.302 This close
relationship also encouraged architects to get closer to the contemporary art scene and to start
including art installations in their projects. In sum, “whereas architecture has become a
301 Klaus R. Kunzmann, Keynote Speech to Intereg III Mid-term Conference, Lille - 2004, cited in Graeme
Evans, “Measure for Measure: Evaluating the Evidence of Culture’s Contribution to Regeneration,” Urban Studies
42, no. 5/6 (2005): 959–83.
302 There are many books dedicated to investigating the reciprocal relationship between art and architecture. To
mention but a few, Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (California and
London: University of California Press, 1999); Anthony Vidler, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in
Modern Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000); Hal Foster, Design and Crime: And Other Diatribes
(London: Verso, 2003); Hal Foster, The Art – Architecture Complex (London and New York: Verso, 2013);
Isabelle Loring Wallace and Nora Wendl, eds., Contemporary Art About Architecture: A Strange Utility (Farnham,
UK: Ashgate, 2013); Dan Graham, “Art in Relation to Architecture / Architecture in Relation to Art,” in With All
Due Intent – Manifesta 5 exh. cat., eds. Marta Kuzma and Massimiliano Gioni (Barcelona: Actar), 84–103.
109
commonplace instrument for artistic research and production, art has in turn offered a rich
source for theoretical and formal expansion in architecture”.303
When we look at it from the perspective of art, although this proximity had a
capacity to broaden views on art's autonomy when it emerged, it risked losing its criticality
over time due to the homogenizing capacity of neoliberal urban policies. Philosopher Peter
Osborne conceptualizes this as "the architecturalization of art".304 Architectural aspects of
contemporary art:
raise the possibility of ‘post-autonomous’ works, or at the least, a post-autonomous
functioning of autonomous works: works that would partake in the dialectic of
autonomy – that is, is the dialectic of art and anti-art within the work – in such a
way as to mediate it reflectively with the contradictory social functions of art space,
to determinate practical as well as artistic effect. The difficulty, of course, is to
produce such works that are critical rather than merely affirmative of the social
practices with which contemporary art is increasingly associated: urban and regional
development, and tourism and cultural policy more generally.305
According to Osborne, the current relationship between art and architecture paved
the way for reimagining the term “construction”, since architecture is subjected to urbanism,
and “art approaches urbanism via architecture”.306 In this context, new biennales, which “are
the Research and Development branch of the transnationalization of the culture industry”,307
start to employ architecture-based contemporary art projects related to urban regeneration
processes. This situation, seen in every edition in Manifesta's second decade in one way or
another, can be considered as enriching the culture-led regeneration literature308, which, in a
303 Wouter Davidts, Susan Holden and Ashley Paine, “The Terms of Trade of Architecture and Art,” in Trading
Between Architecture and Art: Strategies and Practices of Exchange, ed. Wouter Davidts, Susan Holden, Ashley
Paine (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2019), 11.
304 Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art (London and New York: Verso,
2013).
305 Ibid., 142. Also see Peter Osborne, “Art as Displaced Urbanism: Notes on a New Constructivism of the
Exhibition Form” in With All Due Intent – Manifesta 5 exh. cat., eds. Marta Kuzma and Massimiliano Gioni
(Barcelona: Actar), 64–77.
306 Ibid., 152.
307 Ibid., 164.
308 For a brief summary of the concept culture-led regeneration, see Jonathan Vickery, The Emergence of Cultureled
Regeneration: A Policy Concept and Its Discontents (Warwick: University of Warwick CCPS, 2007). Also see
Malcolm Miles, “Interruptions: Testing the Rhetoric of Culturally Led Urban Development,” Urban Studies 42,
no. 5/6 (2005): 889–911; Donna Carmichae, “Voices of Dissent: Culture-led Regeneration in Postindustrial
European Cities,” in Post-Industrial Precarity: New Ethnographies of Urban Lives in Uncertain Times,
ed. Gillian Evans (Delaware and Malaga: Vernon Press, 2020), 75–96; and cluster of articles in Michael E. Leary
110
broad sense, is based on "the idea that culture can be employed as a driver for urban economic
growth"309 within new neoliberal urbanism wherein gentrification is its main urban
strategy.310
As art historian Elena Filipovic notes, Manifesta’s main venues for its first four
editions were either a contemporary art museum or Kunsthalle which contradicted with
Manifesta’s initial promises about going beyond white cube display aesthetics.311 Starting
from Manifesta 5, Manifesta turned its attention to non-art spaces as part of the urban
development projects of the host city, and even took the lead in renovating or gentrifying
some spaces to use them as biennial venues.
In this context, Manifesta’s collaboration with Rotterdam-based The Berlage
Institute at Manifesta 5 - Donostia-San Sebastian carries important clues. The project called
The Office Of Alternative Urban Planning (TOOAUP), headed by Alejandro Zaera-Polo, the
Dean of The Berlage Institute and the co-founder (with Farshid Moussavi) of Foreign Office
Architects (FOA), specifically aimed to develop some projects that would revive the postindustrial
town of Pasaia. But since the urban planning problems in Pasaia could not be
resolved by a classic formula for gentrification, it required more research on the region. As
Zaera-Polo points out, the fundamental problem stemmed from the authority over the Pasaia
Port, which is shared by the city of Donostia-San Sebastian, the regional government, and
the national government.312 Therefore, this project was an effort of a Netherlands-based
institute, subcontracted by Manifesta, to create alternatives in the Basque Country in order to
solve an urban problem between regional and national political actors. Sebastian Khourian,
one of the tutors providing training as part of the project, makes this point clear in a text he
wrote in Manifesta 5's catalogue:
TOOAUP inserts its research and practice in collaboration with Manifesta 5 as a
territorial operation into the current urban inertias and dynamics, and by doing so
and John McCarthy, eds., The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration (London and New York: Routledge,
2013), Part 6.
309 Steven Miles and Ronan Paddison, “Introduction: The Rise and Rise of Culture-led Urban Regeneration,”
Urban Studies 42, no 5/6 (2005): 833.
310 See Neil Smith, “New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy,” Antipode 34, no. 3
(2002): 427–50; Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (London:
Routledge, 1996).
311 Elena Filipovic, “The Global White Cube,” in The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art
Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe, ed. Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2005), 63–84.
312 Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “The Berlage Institute – Manifesta 5 Collaboration,” in With All Due Intent – (Manifesta
5 exh. cat), ed. Marta Kuzma and Massimiliano Gioni (Barcelona: Actar, 2004), 454.
111
aims at establishing urban mediation as a mode of operation between the
stakeholders’ opposing concerns, which tend to paralyze the necessary urban
regeneration process and initiatives.313
This project consisted of six participating architects, lasted about two years and
included four field trips including theoretical training in Rotterdam. It was an attempt to
develop ideas on Pasaia's urban regeneration in general. Within this framework, it
transformed an industrial ruin, an abandoned fish warehouse, into one of the main exhibition
venues of Manifesta called Casa Ciriza. The only palpable relation of this project with
contemporary art was labelling this industrial ruin, which was part of a bigger urban
regeneration process, as a cultural institution and developing an artistic space identity for
itself—because with a few exceptions, no work produced specific to the space of Casa Ciriza
or more broadly to Pasaia was exhibited in this regenerated space.
In fact, it was a clever idea for regional government officials to collaborate with the
famous architect Alejandro Zaera-Polo through a cultural institution like Manifesta to revive
Pasaia and resolve the dissensus between divergent public authorities. According to
architectural theorist Douglas Spencer, Zaera-Polo designs his architectural projects based
on a neoliberal understanding of freedom, just like Zaha Hadid, Lars Spuybroek, Farshid
Moussavi, Reiser + Umemoto and more recently Rem Koolhaas. According to Spencer, who
discusses Zaera-Polo's writings on architecture in detail and comparatively,314 the approaches
of these architects create "the game of truth" in a Foucauldian sense by claiming that they
free architecture from the guidance of any thought, ideology or criticism. In this way, matter
substitutes ideology in the contemporary neoliberal architecture: “There is no ideology, there
is only matter. Architecture can exorcize its theoretical demons and dispense with the cult of
ideas”.315 The efforts of Donostia-San Sebastian's local authorities to solve an urban problem
through an art biennial and this biennial’s intermediacy through subcontracting the project to
an architectural office set a good example of the collaboration of art with the neoliberal
governance approach.
Manifesta's strategy of intervening in local urban regeneration processes through
architecture, which has irreversibly become part of its agenda, showed itself in another way
313 Sebastian Khourian, “Creative Mediation,” in With All Due Intent – (Manifesta 5 exh. cat), ed. Marta Kuzma
and Massimiliano Gioni (Barcelona: Actar, 2004), 462. Allocating 113 pages for the research results of this project
in the exhibition catalogue indicates how seriously Manifesta took urban regeneration and architecture issues.
314 Since Zaera-Polo’s writings are not directly related to my discussion, I will not go into further detail. For some
examples, see Alejandro Zaera-Polo “The Hokusai Wave,” Perspecta 37 (2005): 78–85; Alejandro Zaera-Polo
“The Politics of Envelope,” Volume 17 (2008): 76–105; Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “Cheapness: No Frills and Bare
Life,” Log 18 (2010): 15–27.
315 Douglas Spencer, The Architecture of Neoliberalism: How Contemporary Architecture Became an Instrument
of Control and Compliance (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), 66.
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in Manifesta 7 in Trentino–South Tyrol. Three venues out of four underwent restoration and
opened their doors to the public for Manifesta’s audiences. Manifattura Tabacchi in Rovereto
was operated by the American tobacco giant Philip Morris for many years and was later sold
to the Italian national tobacco company ETI and then to the Italian branch of British American
Tobacco (BAT). It became one of Manifesta's venues in July 2008, just a few months after
the closure of the factory in March, and in 2009 it was transformed into a clean technology
hub. Another venue of Manifesta, Ex Alumix in Bolzano, underwent a similar urban
regeneration process. This building, which was established as part of the industrialization
plans of the fascist regime for electricity generation and distribution, was left abandoned for
a long time and was even being considered for demolition. It was decided to restore it within
the scope of Manifesta 7 and to determine its future later. Renovated with a 3.6 million euro
budget,316 the building was transformed into a new technology centre after Manifesta.317 In
both cases, Manifesta publicized these spaces in the process of transforming industrial ruins
into creative industry hubs. The third space, Franzensfeste, appears as another one of those
spaces considered within the scope of urban regeneration processes. As a fortress built by the
Habsburg Empire in Bolzano, Franzensfeste was used as ammunition storage by the Italian
army after World War II till 2003, and visits to the fortress started to be organized in 2005.
After its renovation for multipurpose use, it opened its doors to a wider public for Manifesta
7. In 2017, Franzensfeste became a public museum. In these cases, we can see how
contemporary art is used to give new life to memory spaces by turning them into cultural
hubs.
Also in Manifesta 8 and Manifesta 9, old buildings were quickly restored and
opened to the public for the biennial. The story of the Old Post and Telegraph Office in
Murcia, which was abandoned since the late 1980s, is gripping. One of Murcia's most iconic
buildings and lieux de mémoire reopened its doors after a rapid renovation to become a
Manifesta venue. But the building had already been auctioned in 1998 and bought by Orenes
Grupo, a global gaming operator which is quite active in different sub-sectors such as online
gambling, bingos, casinos, hotel terminals and sports betting. Already in 2008, before
Manifesta kicked off, the company had declared its aim to transform the building into a large
casino and to unite a part of it to Hotel Rincón de Pepe. Yet, due to the economic crisis, the
316 “Sanierung Ex-Alumix-Gebäude – ‘Manifesta 7/2008’,” Südtiroler Landesverwaltung, accessed June 25, 2020,
http://www.provinz.bz.it/bauen-wohnen/oeffentliche-bauten/abgeschlossene-projekte/bozen-sanierung-ex-alumixgebaeude-
manifesta-2008.asp#accept-cookies.
317 Susanne Waiz, “Valentino Andriolo: Manifesta 7 in the ex-Alumix, Bolzano,” Domus, November 2, 2009,
accessed June 25, 2020, https://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/2009/11/02/valentino-andriolo-manifesta-7-inthe-
ex-alumix-bolzano.html.
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initial plan went pear-shaped.318 After another decade of delay, the building was eventually
transformed into a gastronomy and leisure space called Mercado de Correos.
Another venue of Manifesta 8, the first and second pavilion of the Artillery
Barracks, also underwent a quick restoration in collaboration with Manifesta and started to
host people after a long period of abandonment. In fact, the other pavilions of the Barracks
had respectively been serving as a municipal library, museum, contemporary art centre and
music conservatory for a while, and the restoration of the first and second pavilion was
already on the municipality's urban regeneration agenda. The aim of the municipality was to
turn the Artillery Barracks Complex and the whole Carmen neighbourhood into a cultural
district with creative spaces.319 As in the case of the Old Post Office, the transformation of
those buildings into cultural hubs had been delayed due to financial problems. The Prison of
San Anton, another venue of Manifesta 8 which had been used to incarcerate political
prisoners in Cartagena for many years, was forced to close its doors after the end of the
biennial and this memory space was sold to a private hospital in 2017.
The Waterschei colliery's main building in Genk, too, underwent a transformation
after hosting Manifesta 9; it was part of the urban regeneration plan called Thor Park that I
discussed in Chapter Four. The renovation was completed in mid-2017 and the industrial
building was reborn as a new flagship building for the creative industry. The decision to make
the region's mining heritage the theme of Manifesta 9 can be read as a nostalgic touch or “a
last dance with” the historical building before the neoliberal urban regeneration project was
fully realized. Contemporary art collected, processed, documented, catalogued and stored all
kinds of stains, rust, objects and memories belonging to the industrial period. After the
removal of the spirit of the past from the building and the region, there was no obstacle left
for the realisation of the new post-industrial, creative Genk dream.
Manifesta always justified its efforts to bring in new spaces to the city through the
restoration of abandoned spaces in its second decade with the argument that it wanted to
leave a permanent mark on the cities that hosted it. Firstly, Manifesta asserted that its
nomadic and experimental character carried the danger of volatility; Thomas Boutoux’s
research conducted in the host cities of Manifesta 1 and Manifesta 3, respectively Rotterdam
and Ljubljana, showed that the biennial was almost never remembered a few years after its
end.320 Secondly, Manifesta argued that, by restoring iconic buildings, it refreshed the city’s
318 Maria José Montesinos, “El Antiguo Edificio de Correos Abrirá Como Mercado Gastronómico y de Ocio en
2018,” La Verdad, February 10, 2017, accessed June 26, 2020, https://www.laverdad.es/murcia/ciudadmurcia/
201702/10/antiguo-edificio-correos-abrira-20170210205520.html.
319 “Misión, Visión y Valores,” Cuartel de Artillería, accessed June 29, 2020,
https://web.archive.org/web/20150101060930/http://cuarteldeartilleria.org/acerca-de/.
320 Boutoux, “The Tale of Two Cities: Manifesta in Rotterdam and Ljubljana”.
114
collective memory and made these iconic buildings into reference points for future
regeneration processes. This effort is clearly expressed in an article in Manifesta 7's
catalogue:
Together with the restored buildings, Manifesta wishes to leave behind a
constructive and cooperative artistic spirit, so as to create, in the words of historian
Pierre Nora, lieux de mémoire, collective realms of memory that can become starting
points for future artistic developments throughout the region.321
The question of collective memory is important to consider when one reviews the effects of
neoliberal urban regeneration processes and their reciprocal relationship with contemporary
art / architecture / design. According to Pierre Nora, the concept of lieux de mémoire can be
defined as: “any significant entity, whether material or nonmaterial in nature, which by dint
of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage
of any community”.322 How to handle the memory of these spaces is a political issue—in
terms of what will be included / excluded and how it will be transferred to the next
generations. Sites of memory have been particularly used to support the official historical
narratives invented during the construction of national identities. As Pim de Boer
summarizes, “Nora’s lieux de mémoire are also mnemotechnical devices, but extremely
ideological, full of nationalism, and far from being neutral or free of value judgments. Most
lieux de mémoire were created, invented, or reworked to serve the nation-state”.323 The efforts
to create a common European culture, which have been seen since the 1980s, are not out of
these exclusion-inclusion practices, too. As Chiara de Cesari shows in her work that discusses
Europeanization processes over two newly established museums (Museum of the
Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean - Marseille and Museum of European Cultures
- Berlin), these museums and their shows that aim to visualize the "unity in diversity" formula
cannot escape a racialized European cultural imaginary.324 Moreover, particularly in the case
of the museum in Marseille, “cultural decentralization met urban regeneration and European
cultural policy to offer a second life to an outmoded folklore museum”.325 To sum, although
321 Fijen et al., “Manifesta 7: Regenerating Memory,” 17–18.
322 Pierre Nora, "Preface to English Language Edition: From Lieux de Memoire to Realms of Memory,” in Realms
of Memory: Rethinking the French Past (New York: Colombia University Press, 1996), xvii.
323 Pim den Boer, “Loci Memoriae – Lieux de Mémoire,” in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and
Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. Astrid Erll ve Ansgar Nünning (Berlin and New York, Walter de Gruyter, 2008),
21. Here, it is worth emphasizing that in Pierre Nora's work, France’s colonial memory is noticeably
overestimated. For an important criticism on Nora on this issue, see Hue-Tam Ho Tai, “Remembered Realms:
Pierre Nora and French National Memory,” The American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (2001): 906–22.
324 Chiara de Cesari, “Museums of Europe: Tangles of Memory, Borders, and Race,” Museum Anthropology 40,
no. 1 (2017): 18-35.
325 Ibid., 22.
115
the political functionality of memory spaces from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has
altered over the course of time, their basic characteristic has not changed: that they are used
as a mnemotechnical device to maintain the political and economic power relations of a given
time and space.
As we have seen so far, many of Manifesta's venues, be it arsenals, barracks, old
factories, collieries or post offices, were containers of traces of ordinary people whose
memories were quickly and partially wrapped up by a foreign biennial before neoliberal
urban regeneration processes discarded all of them. In this regard, Manifesta functions in two
ways. On the one hand, it pays attention to dysfunctional yet quite important spaces of host
cities where artists can find fruitful terrain to cultivate new artworks related to the cultures
of cities. On the other hand, all decisions about venues are made together with local
authorities which are also controlling urban strategic plans. Therefore, those lieux de mémoire
are already on the agenda of local authorities as part of their urban regeneration processes. In
many cases, Manifesta found itself in the contested space where, to allude to the prologue of
this section, poetry and financial interests collide, and acted as a buffer between industrial
ruins and newly established creative spaces. This clearly illustrates its function within
neoliberal urban regeneration processes. In parallel to this, in the next section, I show how
Manifesta's growing interest in the critical potential of education has shifted over time to
organizing value-added activities in this domain.
The Educational Turn of Manifesta
The failed attempt to organize the biennial as an art school in 2006 did not make
Manifesta give up on education: on the contrary, it stirred a more intense interest in this
endeavour. From the mid-2000s onwards, the issue of education occupied an important place
in every edition of Manifesta regardless of its host city. Manifesta also went through a
structural change and established the Education and Learning Department at its headquarters
in Amsterdam, to coordinate both public programmes organized to bring local people closer
to contemporary art and activities organized specifically for children. Throughout the
twentieth century, many artists and experimental schools thought about the relationship
between contemporary art and education, learning and research on a common ground.326 Yet,
326 “We only have to look at specific moments in art-school history to see that there have been pivotal academies
in the renewal of our artistic heritage in Europe and North America. Consider Kazimir Malevich’s art group
UNOVIS in Vitebsk and the Institute of Artistic Culture, called INKhUK, in Moscow; the Bauhaus in Weimar; the
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and CalArts in Los Angeles in the 1970s; the Free International
Universities of the 1970s and 1980s under the initiative of Joseph Beuys and Caroline Tisdall, among others; and
more recently Goldsmiths in London and Jaroslaw Kozlowski’s class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw”.
Charles Esche, “Start with A Table,” in Curating and the Educational Turn, ed. Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson
(London and Amsterdam: Open Editions and De Appel, 2010), 312. For the approaches of some acknowledged
contemporary artists such as Joseph Beuys, Allen Kaprow, George Brecht and John Cage to art education, see
116
it is more comprehensive to discuss Manifesta's close interest in education and pedagogy
issues in reference to the developments that have accelerated in the art world since the mid-
2000s and are often labelled "the educational turn".
“The educational turn” is an umbrella term that refers to the tendency of some art
institutions, curators and artists to engage in pedagogical and educational issues in relation
to art and to deliberate over knowledge and learning processes in art education. The term
started to circulate after 2006 and drew attention straight away, since the number of art
projects that questioned the traditional relation of art and education had been accelerating
since the turn of the century.327 Although there is no commonality in the content of these
projects, in what is meant by the concepts such as education, pedagogy, learning and
knowledge, or among the authors who write on the educational turn, all in all, the aim is to
question the possibilities of non-standardized, non-working-life-oriented and noncommercialized
learning processes through these concepts.
Attempts to reshape higher education according to neoliberal market rules began in
the 1980s, and from the mid-1990s they were conceptualized as academic capitalism in the
works of scholars such as Sheila Slaughter, Larry L. Leslie and Gary Rhoades.328 One of the
most important reasons underlying the rapid rise of exhibitions and artists questioning the
educational models in the art world in the 2000s was the Bologna Process (BP), which was
shaped in flesh and bones with the Bologna Declaration in 1999 in order to create a standard
in higher education in Europe. Some studies have claimed that the Bologna Process increases
the interaction, communication and competition between universities and creates an effective
model.329 However, counter arguments asserting that the BP is a neoliberal project that
Robert Filliou, Teaching and Learning as Performative Arts (Cologne and New York: Verlag Gebr. Koenig,
1970). Also see Christa-Maria Lerm-Hayes, “Beuys’s Legacy in Artist-led University Projects,” Tate Papers 31,
(2019). Accessed July 9, 2020. https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/31/beuys-legacy-artistled-
university-projects.
327 Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson offers an abbreviated list of those projects: “[Projects which manifest this
engagement with educational and pedagogical formats and motifs] include Daniel Buren and Pontus Hultén’s
Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques, 1996; the ‘Platforms’ of Documenta 11 in 2002; the educational
leitmotif of Documenta 12 in 2007; the unrealised Manifesta 6 experimental art school as exhibition and the
associated volume, Notes for an Artschool; the subsequent unitednationsplaza and Night School projects;
protoacademy; Cork Caucus; Be( com )ing Dutch: Eindhoven Caucus; Future Academy; The Paraeducation
Department; ‘Copenhagen Free University’; A.C.A.D.E.M.Y.; Hidden Curriculum; Tania Bruguera’s Arte de
Conducta in Havana; ArtSchool Palestine; Brown Mountain College; Manoa Free University; and School of
Missing Studies, Belgrade”. Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, “Introduction,” in Curating and the Educational Turn,
ed. Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson (London and Amsterdam: Open Editions and De Appel, 2010), 13.
328 Sheila Slaughter and Larry L. Leslie, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial
University (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997); Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades,
Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education (Baltimore, MD: The John
Hopkins University Press, 2004).
329 For a recent study advocating this position, see Hila Zahavi & Yoav Friedman, “The Bologna Process: An
International Higher Education Regime,” European Journal of Higher Education 9, no. 1 (2019): 23–39.
117
transforms universities into company-like institutions by eliminating radical views and
orienting students to train in line with the needs of the market have also gained momentum
over time.330 This divergence of opinion has been partially experienced in the art world, too.
For example, there is no consensus even between Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson, two editors
of Curating and the Educational Turn, a book that brings together important texts on the
educational turn in the 2000s.331
There are also a number of projects discussing what can be done against giving the
education system in to the neoliberal network. For example, Irit Rogoff's frequently cited text
Turning, which is also included in the abovementioned book, states that the A.C.A.D.E.M.Y
project, of which she was a part, was initiated directly against the destruction caused by the
Bologna Process: “Academy aimed to develop a counterpoint to the professionalization,
technocratization, and privatization of academies that result from the Bologna reforms and
to the monitoring and outcome-based culture that characterize higher education in Europe
today”.332 Nevertheless, the debates and activities held in many projects were either
considered as a temporary artistic contribution within the scope of the socially engaged art
of an individual artist, or were treated as the subject of an exhibition, again temporary, by a
museum, gallery or biennial—just like the other issues that contemporary artworks question.
Of course, at this point, it should be emphasized that artists and independent curators have
done very valuable work against today’s global precarity conditions. Nourished by the
pedagogical approaches of Paulo Freire and Jacques Rancière, they have realized important
experiments that touch people's lives.333 But from an institutional perspective, it became more
330 See Andreas Fejer, “European Citizens under Construction: The Bologna Process Analysed from a
Governmentality Perspective,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 40, no. 4 (2008): 515–30; Simten Coşar and
Hakan Ergül, “Free-Marketization of Academia through Authoritarianism: The Bologna Process in Turkey,”
Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research 26 (2015): 101–24; Stanislav Štech, “The Bologna
Process as a New Public Management Tool in Higher Education,” Journal of Pedagogy 2, no. 2 (2011): 263–82;
Pascal Gielen and Paul de Bruyne, eds., Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm: Realism versus Cynicism (Valiz:
Amsterdam, 2012).
331 “It is perhaps worth noting that the critique of the Bologna Process is a point of divergence between the two
editors.” Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, eds., Curating and the Educational Turn (London and Amsterdam: Open
Editions and De Appel, 2010), 18, footnote 12. Wilson claims that the structural changes in education cannot be
simply explained by only referring to Bologna Process. For example, “the regulation of economies of time” and its
effect on education is a larger change than Bologna. Mick Wilson, “Blame it on Bologna!” Metropolis M 2 (2013),
accessed July 8, 2020, http://www.metropolism.com/en/features/23191_blame_it_on_bologna.
332 Irit Rogoff, “Turning,” e-flux journal 0 (November 2008), accessed July 8, 2020, https://www.eflux.
com/journal/00/68470/turning/. Reviewed version is published in O’Neill and Wilson, eds., Curating and the
Educational Turn, 32–46.
333 Paula Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Jacques Rancière’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster, two important
sources of critical pedagogy, underpin the art practices that tackle education and learning issues in art. Paulo
Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 2007); Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant
Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).
Freire’s and Rancière’s ideas are adopted by some scholars in order to transform the art museums’ exclusive and
unidirectional educational perspectives into inclusive pedagogical sites. See Yuha Jung, “The Ignorant Museum:
Transforming the Elitist Museum into an Inclusive Learning Place,” in The New Museum Community: Audiences,
Challenges, Benefits, ed. Nicola Abery (Edinburgh: MuseumEtc, 2010), 272-91; Emilie Sitzia, “The Ignorant Art
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important for the educational departments of art institutions to develop more actively
engaging programmes for participants from the general public—especially children—rather
than revolutionize the structures or missions of art institutions in the long run. To put it
another way: the dissident vein of the educational turn has been absorbed by the knowledge
economy.
It is precisely for this reason, i.e. missing the opportunity to discuss the
marketization experienced in higher education from a wider perspective, that the educational
turn became less likely to produce liberating art education models than expected. As Janna
Graham, Valeria Graziano and Suzan Kelly stress,
The Educational Turn brought no intervention into marketization processes, or the
daily capitulations of art schools and galleries to intensifying regimes of
managerialism, or into the processes of indebting generations of students and artists
to come. The art school and questions of pedagogy were instead engaged with and
performed as a discrete thematic, another piece of content for the art world to play
with and move on. From this perspective, the Education Turn was a missed
opportunity to pose questions and re-shape art curricula and institutions – to develop
a pan-European movement to oppose the Bologna Accord and the brutal changes
imposed on art education in the early phases of austerity politics.334
Manifesta's efforts towards education also mutilated from this point. The biennial’s
institutionalization process and its rising dependency on regional politics coincided with
showing a professional interest in education. For example, in Manifesta 6, a radical and
unconventional biennial project, which questioned the possibilities of non-institutionalized
and socially engaged art, was put forward by taking the potential of concepts such as
education, learning and research to the extreme. At the same time, it appeared as a structure
that had now completed its institutionalization, only allowing transgressions that would not
damage its brand value and the intended European image of the host city or region. Mai Abu
ElDahab, one of the curators of Manifesta 6, expresses this dilemma succinctly in a catalogue
article prepared before the crisis:
Unfortunately, one cannot point to a conspiracy; we, the curators, are just
compliantly savvy to the requirements of the industry. However, we are guilty of
complacently marketing ourselves according to strategic geographical quotas to
Museum: Beyond Meaning-making,” International Journal of Lifelong Education 37, no. 1 (2018): 73-87. For a
review of the pedagogical art practices of Tania Bruguera, Paul Chan, Paweł Althamer and Thomas Hirschhorn,
see Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012),
Chapter 9.
334 Janna Graham, Valeria Graziano and Susan Kelly, “The Educational Turn in Art,” Performance Research 21,
no.6 (2016): 30
119
cater to the expectations of institutions that ironically thrive on (and appropriate
funds by) claiming a philosophy of openness. In fact, such openness runs essentially
counter to the demands of the standardization machine and cannot be tolerated. The
incongruity of the world’s neo-liberal face is exemplified by these seemingly
progressive cultural institutions that espouse an ‘openness to all’ without ideological
predilections. Yet position yourself in relation to this openness and—lo and
behold!—you are swiftly absorbed into it and reinforcing its inbuilt consumerist
values. Same old, same old. This dynamic is bred by the economic system’s aversion
to any change that may disrupt its assembly-line production, in this instance
production of ideas. On this assembly line, production has to self-perpetuate,
legitimise and replicate itself, or the structure inexorably breaks down. Everything
that is interesting happens on the margins, and no one is to know exactly where that
is. Of course, one question comes up again and again: Can you claim you are antiinstitutional,
and yet work for one of the pillars of the system? (…) I acknowledge
that we are complicit, but the real issue is how we proceed from this point.335
Therefore, the crisis experienced in Manifesta 6 should be read not only as a crisis
caused by Cyprus’ political tensions, but also as a crisis produced by the tensions and
contradictions between the institutionalization of Manifesta and its experimental
characteristics.
The transformation of Manifesta's relationship with education from art school to art
mediation can also be seen in light of this crisis. Although their scope and target audiences
has changed in each edition since Manifesta 7, art mediation programmes have appeared as
a relationship that Manifesta has tried to establish with local audiences based on the principle
of participation accompanied by events, workshops, guided tours and school visits.336
Depending on the local context, these mediation programmes aim to develop an experience
from a participatory rather than prescriptive and hierarchical perspective. However, these
programmes could not be implemented as desired at times, due to curators’ or local officials’
reluctance, or local people’s hesitation to participate. Nevertheless, engaging adults and
children who are far from the contemporary art world with art can be marked as the most
concrete and successful relationship that Manifesta has been able to establish with local
people.
335 Mai Abu AlDahab, “On How to Fall With Grace – or Fall Flat on Your Face,” in Notes for an Art School, ed.
Mai Abu El Dahab, Anton Vidokle and Florian Waldvogel (Amsterdam: International Foundation Manifesta,
2006), 9.
336 For a detailed analysis of art mediation programs of Manifesta, see Simone Sarah de Boer, “Educative Practices
in Contemporary Art: Manifesta and the Educational Turn,” Unpublished Master Thesis (Amsterdam: University
of Amsterdam, 2016).
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Yet, art mediation programmes do not contribute to the production of art that takes
the education and learning processes into account, or to the development of a critical attitude
against the current standardization, marketization and managerialization tendencies seen in
the fields of art and education. On the contrary, by entrusting the issue of education to the
Education and Learning Department, the artistic and curatorial strategies of the biennial
provide fewer artistic works related to education. In that way, both the institutionalization
process of the biennial and the outputs that might problematize the educational policies of
the host city / region / country are kept under control. The failure of Manifesta 6's
experimental initiative triggered Manifesta's change of course from experimental art biennial
to art festival, causing urban transformation, city promotion and entertainment goals to be
prioritised ahead of artistic experiments. In this context, Manifesta can be read as a concrete
example of how the educational turn missed an opportunity to develop artistic and
pedagogical approaches that are critical of the Bologna Process and the neoliberal practices
brought in its wake.
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Chapter 6 – Curatorial and Artistic Strategies of Manifesta in its
Second Decade
Biennial organizers, curators and artists jointly produce the artistic content of a
biennial. However, the division of responsibility among these three groups is not equal.
Considering that many of the curators and artists who appeared in the editions of Manifesta
live off their artistic production under global precarity conditions, it is hard for an artist or a
curator to reject the offer made by a well-known biennial, or to engage in transgressional art
practices in the scope of the biennial that would counter the expectations of local politicians
whom the biennial collaborates with. On the other hand, it should be one of the most
important tasks of artists and curators to highlight the opposing and experimental features of
art in this age of creativity where everyone's creative potential is foregrounded by
neoliberalism. Of course, the extent to which this task has been fulfilled by artists and
curators can be discussed by comparatively looking at the reviews published by many art
critics following different Manifesta editions. Although I occasionally used these art
criticisms in appropriate chapters, I decided that attempting to systematically analyse the
artistic contributions of nearly 40 curators and more than 1000 artists who participated in 12
editions was beyond the limits of this dissertation.
Therefore, in this chapter, as in Chapter Three, I firstly focus on how Manifesta's
institutional as well as discursive transformation was reflected in the selection of artists and
curators by using statistical data. I then discuss some art practices that established dissensual
relationships with Manifesta’s artistic strategies, local politics of host cities / regions and the
global art market.
A Statistical Analysis of Curators and Participant Artists of the
Second Decade
In the second decade of Manifesta, although the tendency to create a biennial
suitable for the regions’ political, economic, urban and cultural needs caused some changes
in Manifesta's curatorial and artistic preferences, there was an attempt to maintain some of
its initial premises. For example, with the exception of Manifesta 9 in Limburg, the will to
appoint a curatorial team of young people from different countries and with curatorial
approaches was maintained. The curators of the second decade and their nationalities were
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as follows: Manifesta 4 - Iara Boubnova (Bulgaria), Nuria Enguita Mayo (Spain) and
Stephanie Moisdon-Trembley (France); Manifesta 5 - Massimiliano Gioni (Italy / US) and
Marta Kuzma (Ukraine / US); the cancelled Manifesta 6 - Mai Abu ElDahab (Egypt /
Belgium); Anton Vidokle (Russia / US) and Florian Waldvogel (Germany); Manifesta 7 -
Anselm Franke - Hila Peleg (Germany - Israel / Germany), Adam Budak (Poland) and Raqs
Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta) (India);
Manifesta 8 - Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum - ACAF (Bassam el Baroni) (Egypt),
Chamber of Public Secrets - CPS (Khaled Ramadan and Alfredo Cramerotti) (international)
and tranzit.org (Vít Havránek, Zbynek Baladrán, Dóra Hegyi, Boris Ondreicka, Georg
Schöllhammer); and Manifesta 9 - Cuauhtémoc Medina (Mexico).
From the point of view of the curatorial policy, until its ninth edition Manifesta
maintained its belief that working together with different curators would bring positive
results. It can also be observed that, while establishing these teams, attention was paid to the
fact that the curators are not too old. The average ages of the curatorial teams from Manifesta
4 to Manifesta 8 were 37, 35.5, 39337, 37.6 and 41.5, respectively. Moreover, Manifesta
responded to the often-heard criticism that it mostly appointed white Western European
curators despite the history of Europe being the common history of people coming or being
brought by force from all continents.338 In its second decade, it hired curators and curatorial
teams from Egypt, India and Central and Eastern Europe.
In fact, it is difficult to talk about common policies that determined Manifesta's
curatorial choices due to its nomadic and curator-centred exhibition format. For example,
Manifesta 4 - Frankfurt, which was not built around a specific theme, was followed by
Manifesta 5 - San Sebastian that drew on a very large set of concepts, and Manifesta 6 -
Nicosia, an art school project. In each edition, the curators were torn between the obligation
of local government officials to produce an exhibition that conforms to their regional policies
and political and economic power configurations, and the creation of a curatorial
conceptualization that would encompass artistically interesting and transgressive works. In
this regard, Manifesta 6 is noteworthy as this contradiction turned into an explosion. This
edition, which was as an example of controlling the artistic transgressions by political power
relations, can be regarded as the most successful, though unrealized, edition of Manifesta in
terms of making these power networks visible and triggering discussions widely.
Overall, Manifesta did strike a balance in its choice of established and emerging
curators. Although some of the curators and curatorial teams were already established and
well-known when they were hired by Manifesta (e.g., Iara Boubnova, Anton Vidokle, Adam
Budak, Raqs Media Collective, transit.org etc.), for some of them (e.g., Massimiliano Gioni,
337 Since the birth date of Mai Abu ElDahab, one of the curators of Manifesta 6, could not be ascertained, the
average age of the other two curators was calculated.
338 Okwui Envezor “Tebbit’s Ghost,” 184; Viktor Misiano, “Interview with Viktor Misiano,” interview by Urša
Jurman and Sabina Salamon. PlatformaSCCA 2, (Dec. 2000): 12.
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Marta Kuzma, Bassam el Baroni, Hila Peleg etc.), curating Manifesta made a significant
contribution to their future careers.339
The statistics I examined in Part I aimed to analyze how much Manifesta's official
discourse on youth, locality and allocating space to Central and Eastern European artists was
applied in practice. Although the first two of these goals were still maintained in the second
decade, statistics show that the third one shifted towards investigating a region along its
North-South axis. For this reason, the statistics I examine in this part focus on the average
age of participant artists and the representation of local artists (based on both regional and
national belongings) in Manifesta editions.
As can be seen from Figures 5 and 6, in M4 - Frankfurt, 71 of the 93 participating
artists were 35 years old or younger (76.3%) and the age average was 32.05,340 whereas 37
of the 66 artists who attended M5 - San Sebastian were 35 years old or younger (56%) and
the overall average age was 35.8.341 The percentage of young artists decreased in M7 in
Trentino–South Tyrol to 36.9% since 69 of the 187 artists were under 35 years old and the
age average was 40.1,342 while in M8 in Murcia, the age average slightly decreased to 37.39
339 For example, after curating Manifesta, Massimiliano Gioni curated Berlin and Gwangju Biennales, whereas
Marta Kuzma became the director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway for eight years and was part of
Documenta 13's curatorial team. Bassam el Baroni and Hila Peleg, too, curated numerous shows in prestigious
museums and contemporary art centres after Manifesta.
340 Only artists included in the main programme were covered. The number of members of participant art
collectives at that time was as follows: 0100101110101101.org/ (2), Apsolutno (4), BLESS (2), Finger (4), OHIO
Photomagazine (2), Radek Group (7), ROR – Revolutions on Request (4), rraum-rraum02-ideoblast (3) and The
Construction & Deconstruction Institute (4). Each member’s age is considered individually except Martin Brandt
(from Finger) and Dan Panaitescu (from The Construction & Deconstruction Institute), whose birth years could
not be ascertained. Moreover, since the number and birth years of participating artists at Institut für
Kulturanthropologie und Europäische Ethnologie and wemgehoertdiestadt were not clear, I left them out of these
calculations. Therefore, the real number of participant artists / art collectives was 73, whereas the real number of
participant artists was 95.
341 The number of members of participant art collectives at that time was as follows: D.A.E. Donostiako Arte
Ekinbideak (2) and Office of Alternative Urban Planning (8). Each member’s age is considered individually.
342 Since there were so many institutions, artist collectives and digital projects that participated in Manifesta 7, it is
difficult to make the same calculation. The number of members of participant art collectives at that time was as
follows: Alterazioni Video (5) Brave New Alps (2), Claire Fontaine (2), Matter of Fact (7), Little Warsaw (2), The
Museum of European Normality (3), Uqbar Foundation (2), Zimmerfrei (3) and _Fabrics Interseason (2). Each
member’s age is considered individually. Although I have found the nationalities of three founders of Candida TV,
I could not find their birth years. Therefore, I excluded them from age average calculations but included them in
the statistics about local / national representation. I also could not find the birth years of Hannah Hurtzig, Brigid
Doherty (the initiator of The Museum of Learning) and Sina Nafaji (co-initiator of The Museum of Projective
Personality Test) so I excluded them from the age average calculation too.
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and 45.6% of the participant artists (52 of the 114) were 35 years old and below.343 M9 -
Limburg had a very different structure than the others. Since Cuauhtémoc Medina, the curator
of the exhibition, was tasked with tackling the history of the colliery in Limburg in the context
of the coal industry's relationship with modernism in a broader frame, he included the works
of many deceased artists in the exhibition. Therefore, Manifesta's claims about representing
young artists were suspended in this edition. The average age reached the abnormal figure of
78.32 in the calculation based on the birth dates of 112 participating artists. Even the average
age of the 70 living artists was as high as 49.16. In this exhibition, the number of participant
artists under 35 years of age was only 11 (9.8%).344
These figures show that Manifesta's claim to organize a biennial focused on young
artists, one of the most important aims at its origins, weakened as it became an established
brand in the world of art. Even when we consider Manifesta 9 as an exception, we can observe
that since the fourth edition of Manifesta, the space occupied by artists aged 35 and under
has narrowed and the average age has increased. Thus, Manifesta's claim to be young, which
343 The number of members of participant art collectives at that time was as follows: Common Culture (3), Jeleton
(2), Red76 (2), Take to the Sea (3), The Action Mill (6) and Wooloo (2). Each member’s age is considered
individually.
344 The number of members of participant art collectives at that time was as follows: Claire Fontaine (2). I could
not find Goldin + Senneby’s and Keith Pattison’s birth years and therefore their ages were left out of the
calculation.
32,1
35,8 40,1 37,4
78,3
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
M4 M5 M7 M8 M9
%
Figure 5: The Average Age of Manifesta Artists (M4 - M9)
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it maintained in its official discourse during the second decade, started to be less reflected
by the reality.
When we look at the biennial in terms of local and national participant artists, we
encounter interesting results, too (Figures 7 and 8). The number of artists / artist groups
participating in M4 - Frankfurt from Frankfurt was 3 (3.2%), and the number from Germany
was 11 (11.8%). These proportions slightly changed in M5 - San Sebastian: 4 artists and artist
groups of the Basque Country (6%) participated in this edition of Manifesta, and the total
number of Spanish participants decreased to 5 (7.5%). While the number of artists from
Trentino and South Tyrol in M7 was 8 (4.2%), there were a total of 33 Italian participants
(17.3%).345 The number of Spanish participants included in M8 - Murcia was 12 (10.4%), 7
of whom (6% of the total) were born in the Murcia Region.346 The claim to have a dialogue
with northern Africa, which was announced in the subtitle of this edition, was little reflected
in the proportions of participating artists. Only 5 out of M8's 115 participating artists (4.3%)
were from North Africa, of whom 4 were Egyptian.
345 Three Italian members of Candida TV, who were not included in the average age calculation since their birth
dates could not be determined, are included in this calculation. Therefore, the number of participants, which was
counted as 187 in the previous calculation, is considered as 190 in this calculation.
346 Madrid-based Brumaria artists' group, which was not included in the previous calculation due to the fact that
the birth years of its founders could not be determined, is included in this calculation. Therefore, the number of
participants is calculated over 115.
76,3
56
36,9
45,6
9,8
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
M4 M5 M7 M8 M9
%
Figure 6: Percentage of Manifesta Artists at the Age of 35 or Below
(M4 - M9)
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3,2 6
4,2
6
0 1,7
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
M4 M5 M7 M8 M9
%
Figure 7: Percentage of Local Manifesta Artists (City/Region) (M4
- M9)
11,8
7,5
17,3
10,4 16,9
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
M4 M5 M7 M8 M9
%
Figure 8: Percentages of Local Manifesta Artists (National) (M4 -
M9)
127
M9 was another edition with interesting data on this subject. Only 2 (1.7%) of the
participating 112 artists were from the Limburg region and one of them was painter Jan
Habex, who lived between 1887 and 1954. Although 19 Belgian artists (16.9%) were
included in this edition, which focused on the relationship of the mining industry with
modernity, the number of Belgian participant artists who were still alive was 10 (11.2%).
When considered together with the statistics in Part I, it is seen that the local participant artist
rate in the first nine editions of Manifesta was at most 6%.
This clearly shows that Manifesta avoids collaboration with the local art scene in its
host cities. As Paul O’Neill stresses, Manifesta’s short-termist approach is not enough to
implement large projects that aim to collaborate with local networks and agencies.347 Local
art producers either work as art mediators, translators, guides or organizers, or they endeavour
to exhibit their artworks in what are called collateral events, which are events that are not
included in the main exhibition programme but are recommended by Manifesta. In this
context, the working principle of Manifesta is built on the study of a region by artists coming
from outside for a temporary period of time and presenting the outcome back to the locals of
that region. This is more profitable than increasing the local artist proportion, and therefore
in accordance with one of the main goals of the event, which is to stimulate tourism and
increase the brand value of the region.
Conceptualizing Manifesta’s Artistic Politics
How can we conceptualize the artistic and curatorial preferences of Manifesta by
considering this data? In this section, I argue that most of the works exhibited in the editions
of the second decade shared a "non-existence": the absence of a dissensual relationship with
the host city, and from a wider perspective, with the policies of the EU. This absence is a
constituent characteristic of Manifesta. What art curator and critic Kate Bush anticipated in
her review of Manifesta 4 can be extended to the entire second decade of Manifesta: “Despite
its wide geographic sweep - with artists hailing from Bilbao to Brussels to Bosnia - it felt as
homogeneous as the dream of Euroland itself: a federal exhibition based on agreement rather
than polemic”.348 Even if an artistic investigation of a host city, or the EU in general, takes
its point of origin from a problem regarding these spaces (be it the question of European
integration, collective memory or the local / European art world itself), its way of dealing
with and visualizing the issue is not to destroy but revise the pre-existing political, economic
or cultural power relations. With a few exceptions, the works included in the exhibitions in
347 Paul O'Neill, The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT
Press, 2016).
348 Kate Bush, “Manifesta 4,” Artforum International 41, no. 1 (Sep 2002): 199.
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this new phase of Manifesta either did not stem from political issues presented by life in the
host city, or, in a very clever way, depicted problems in another part of the world. Thus, both
the different cities’ bids to host the upcoming editions are secured and the tourism and
entertainment aspect of the exhibition is continued without detriment. In addition, the claim
of being critical and innovative at the discursive level is still maintained.
Reading this manoeuvre of Manifesta through the ideas of French philosopher
Jacques Rancière who discusses art and politics from a common ground helps to better
illustrate this subject. In the wake of the democratic transition of many communist countries,
the concepts of consensus and integration have played crucial roles in underpinning the
transforming policies to neoliberalism. According to Rancière, both consensual art and
consensual politics (what he calls police or police order) use the same method: distribution
of the sensible.349 Both distribute the power relations in a given time and space based on a
principle of exclusion and inclusion. Therefore, only dissensual political actions and
dissensual works of art may transgress the given order and its intermingled relationships.
The regionalist trend that emerged in the second decade of Manifesta, the
contribution it made to the urban regeneration processes of these regions and the
festivalesque / all-encompassing / multiculturalist features following the increasing
importance of the touristic impact meant that the biennial could not take the risk of exhibiting
works that might create cracks in the given police order of the host city. For this reason,
instead of representing works of art that challenged EU policies, Manifesta preferred different
portfolios that may have attempted to point out current problems but did not progress from
representation to an analysis of the causes. Prioritizing short-term engagement with locals,
focusing on mediation rather than developing critical approaches to education, and
collaborating with architectural firms/planners instead of art, humanities or social science
researchers that could analyse the crux of the problems, supported this artistic and curatorial
preference.
Institutional Strategies vs. Artistic Interruptions
Nevertheless, there were certain artworks that moved against this trend. For
example, in Manifesta 4, some works dealing with precarity, commodification and
monopolization in the art world displayed the capacity to indirectly criticize Manifesta itself.
Christoph Büchel, one of the participating artists of Manifesta 4, put the invitation to exhibit
that was issued to him for sale on the eBay platform, entitling his action as “Invite Yourself”.
Sal Randolph, an artist from New York, purchased the right to participate in Manifesta for $
349 Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible (London: Continuum, 2004).
129
15,099. Then, she initiated a project called “Free Manifesta” and left the stage to people who
wanted to share their art projects without preselection. Following her terms, she transformed
Büchel's "Invite Yourself" into "Everyone is invited".350 Over the duration of Manifesta 4,
225 artists and art groups performed and exhibited within Randolph’s project. While Büchel's
conceptual work enabled a questioning of the exclusion/inclusion relationship that was
argued by Rancière, Randolph’s act of making the rights public took this question to the
extreme and paved the way for a temporary democratization of an institution that already
coded itself as democratic at a discursive level.
The posters prepared by Andreja Kulunčić with photographs of ten participating
artists of Manifesta 4 focused on the material conditions of the artists. In the posters, Kulunčić
compared the average annual income of the artists in their country with the money they
earned from art in 2001. Without exception, the annual income of every artist was lower than
the average income in their own countries, from Scandinavia to Eastern Europe. Another
participant artist, Lise Harlev, gave a questionnaire to the participating artists that inquired
about the relations between artists’ country of origin and international exhibitions. She
exhibited some of the answers in the form of a poster. Some of the questions depicted in the
posters were as follows:
 Would you prefer that your nationality was not mentioned when you
exhibited abroad?
 Do you feel that you represent your native country when you exhibit
abroad?
 Do you think that your contribution to an international art biennial affects
the audience’s view of your native country?
Both of these works draw attention to the intricate economic and social relations
that artists are dependent on and try to raise awareness of art world problems that Manifesta
is also party to.
Nevertheless, the dominant trend in Manifesta's second-decade editions was not to
delve into the complex problems of the host city and the political parties, individuals and/or
institutions responsible for these problems. One interesting example of this situation occurred
in Manifesta 5 - Donostia–San Sebastian in the Basque Country, which has a historically
problematic relationship with the central Spanish government. Although there were
interesting works in their own right, none of the selected works tackled the current questions
facing the host region. Politically powerful works chosen for the exhibition were those
dealing with conflicts in other geographies, such as Eyal Sivan & Michel Khleifi's
documentary Route 181 (2003) discussing the wall between Palestine and Israel, and Hito
350 “Some Notes on the Origins of Free Manifesta,” Free Manifesta, accessed January 27, 2020,
http://www.freemanifesta.org/essay.html.
130
Steyerl's video November (2004) talking about one of her close friends’ assassination in the
context of the Turkish—Kurdish conflict. Artworks focusing on the Basque Country
oscillated between a consensual parade organized by Jeremy Deller that tried to bring
together different social groups in the city and the architectural works of Jan de Cock or
Michael Sailstorfer.
Although the crisis that occurred in the cancelled Manifesta 6 was caused by an
organizational problem rather than a confrontation stirred up by subversive artistic practices,
this crisis evolved to an extreme point that breached the political sovereignty discourse of the
Greek authority of Nicosia. Thus, Manifesta 6 can be marked as a significant exception in
the consensus-based history of the biennial. As a matter of fact, it is possible to see the aftereffects
of this shocking experience in later editions: Manifesta pursued a more tourismoriented
perspective, decreased the number of works targeting the art world and did not
include artworks that radically criticized the host city or region.
In this context, it is not surprising to see that Manifesta 7, which spanned 130 km
and four cities and included the works of nearly 200 artists, did not undertake any
interrogation of the region beyond revealing old places (an old fortress, a former tobacco and
aluminium factory and a former post office) and showing some anthropological artworks
(e.g. Althea Thauberger's Amon l’dea Umena de Poethices Impienida (2008) on Ladins of
the Dolomites) as well as some ironic ones (e.g., Javier Tellez's video Perfetta Letizia
(2008)). On the other hand, although negligible considering the high number of participants,
works focusing on political crises in various parts of the world appeared in this edition as
well, including Eyal Sivan's “Happy birthdays”: Toward a Common Archive, Fragment 2
(2008), which gathered the testimonies of Israeli soldiers who actively participated in
expelling Palestinians in 1948; Rabih Mroué's I, the Undersigned (2007), which tackled the
question of political responsibility in the Lebanese Civil War; Heidrun Holzfeind's Mexico
68 (2007), which screened recent interviews with 8 participants of the 1968 movements in
Mexico City; and Ranu Ghosh's The Dialogue Remains (2008), which talked about largescale
gentrification around an old factory in South Kolkata. Some of the texts in Companion,
a publication accompanying the main catalogue of the exhibition, were devoted to discussing
the concept of regionalism,351 and especially Kenneth Frampton’s architectural concept
critical regionalism. Yet, this theoretical focus did not include or translate into a
confrontation with the current political, economic and cultural power relations in the
Trentino–South Tyrol region or the role of Manifesta within these relations.
Some of the artworks in Manifesta 8 - Murcia attempted to reverse this trend.
Especially in the section curated by the Chamber for Public Secrets, one of the three curatorial
351 See the articles of Bernd Huppauf, Suzana Milevska and Alan Colquhoun in the third part of Companion edited
by Adam Budak and Nina Möntmann. Rana Dasgupta, Nina Möntmann and Avi Pitchon, eds., Manifesta 7:
Companion (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2008).
131
teams, many works targeting the region, the EU (in regard to migration policies) and
Manifesta itself came to the forefront. While dealing with the political and cultural problems
of our times, some of these works also brought the views of local people to the exhibition:
Abed Anouti’s The Shadow of San Anton (2010), a video work that talked about a former
political prison San Anton in Murcia and pointed out similar traumas between the Franco
dictatorship and the Lebanese Civil War; Expanded Violence (2010) by the Brumaria art
collective that also collaged police violence and projected it in one of the cells of San Anton
Prison; Nada Prjla's Foreign Language for Beginners video (2010) that exposed the everyday
life of the inmates of Murcian detention facility; Marcelo Expósito and Verónica Iglesia's
photography workshop and texts Country Europa (2010) that tackled the same question on
surveillance in the Murcia Penitentiary Center, but extended it to the biennialization and
globalization of the art world; Stefanos Tsivopoulos's Amnesialand (2010) that investigated
the history of the mining industry in the Murcia region by exhibiting contaminated landscapes
and archival photos; and n.e.w.s. art collective’s Migrating Democrazy (2010) that
questioned the paradoxical relationship of the concepts of migration and democracy are worth
emphasizing in this context. In addition, Biennialist (2010) by Thierry Geoffroy, aka Colonel,
which I discuss in more detail in the case study below, problematized the pledge of Manifesta
8—dialogue with northern Africa—and gave one of the important contemporary examples
of institutional critique. All of these works opened a crack in the official discourse of
Manifesta by creating a dissensual relationship.
In Manifesta 9 - Limburg, on the other hand, while the aim was to scrutinize the
relationship between the capitalist accumulation in the mining industry and modernity, this
very promising theme of the show (“The Deep of the Modern”) was not extended to cover
the forms of capitalist self-reproduction in the post-industrial era. A few examples that acted
against this stream were, again, focusing on different corners of the world rather than the
transformation of the Limburg region. This situation is particularly striking, because
Manifesta had been invited to the region by the host city itself, in order to exhibit the process
of replacement of the mining industry—which had been at the heart of all political, economic
and cultural activities of the host region for many decades—by the creative industries. To put
it differently, in Manifesta 9, today's post-industrial capitalist production attempted to renew
itself through a large-scale exhibition dealing with the history of the previous heavyindustrial
capitalist mode of production, but while doing so, it minimized artistic
interventions that would expose this network of relationships.
Manifesta 9 which was consistent in itself and brought many interesting and
memorable works about the mining industry together, with an accompanying encyclopaedic
catalogue called Subcyclopedia, looked more like a contemporary mining museum format
that is supported by temporary contemporary art exhibitions. Nevertheless, in regard to not
making enough room for disturbing, transgressive and dissensual art works, it took a more
consensual and nostalgic position at the curatorial level. Despite the fact that the historical
development of concepts such as the crisis of capitalism, wealth / resource accumulation,
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pollution and the industrial revolution were given wide coverage in Subcyclopedia, the
concept of post-industrialism was only skirted over with the phrase "Eurocentric conception
of capitalism today", and there was no place for concepts such as gentrification, precarity,
post-Fordism or creative industries. From an exhibition framed in this way, it is unlikely to
expect to see many artworks that problematize the industrial transformation of the region, the
transformation of abandoned spaces into creative spaces, tourism-based recreation or the
investment of over 4 million euros in a temporary art event as a component of this regional
programme.
The project of Lara Almarcegui in M9 appears as an exception within this network
of relations. Beginning in Genk in 2004, long before Manifesta 9, the project explicitly—and
exceptionally—disclosed the network of capitalist relations reshaped through the urban
regeneration process. Almarcegui found a plot of land in public space that escaped architects'
and urban planners' notice and negotiated with the municipality to guarantee that no
interventions would be made in the plot for the next ten years. By eliminating the possibility
of gentrification by a legal agreement, she made room for regeneration of the land through
its natural elements and adumbrated that public spaces should not serve capitalist urban
regeneration.
Throughout this chapter, I have tried to show the artistic and curatorial strategies of
Manifesta in its second decade and the artistic and curatorial interventions that questioned
these strategies. Biennials are places of encounter of diverse actors whose points of view
sometimes clash with the goals of biennial administrators. In this decade, Manifesta showed
a lack of interest in local artists, made less and less room for young artists, and focused on
the touristic promotion of host cities and regions. However, Manifesta’s institutional
approach to align with the political agendas of the host cities and regions, which I have
discussed in detail in Chapters Four and Five, was sometimes challenged. This happened
either through the programme proposed by the curators (most strikingly in Manifesta 6 -
Nicosia), or by artists who were invited by some curators (e.g. many artists in the section
curated by the Chamber for Public Secrets in Manifesta 8 - Murcia). These interventions of
curators and artists brought Manifesta’s artistic and curatorial strategies and their
exclusionary/inclusionary practices up for discussion. In the next case study, I scrutinize one
of these artistic interruptions realized by French-Danish artist Thierry Geoffroy in Manifesta
8 - Murcia.
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Case Study II: Artist Colonialist – Thierry Geoffroy
I am one of the colonialist artist [sic] invited here for Manifesta.
We are about one hundred. […] Our mission is to change people,
is to make them believe in contemporary religion. We are a bit
like missionaries. […] [Participant artists] will change your ritual.
They will educate your kids. They will change your taste. […] I
am one of them. I don’t know if I feel like an army guy, if I feel
like a colonialist, if I feel like a paratroop persons of the sky to
clean a region before the tanks and the economy comes. 352
One of the participant artists in Manifesta 8, Thierry Geoffroy, aka Colonel, is a
veteran artist who has devoted his practices to questioning contemporary art and its market
mechanism via various art formats. The project he prepared for the biennial was based on the
adoption of the Biennialist and Penetration formats he created.
A month before the biennial, Geoffrey staged an intervention at an old military
fortress on the shore of Region of Murcia. Wearing khaki clothes, a bow tie and a pith helmet
just like European colonizers, he held a microphone with the words ARTIST COLONIALIST
written on it as well as a Manifesta 8 sticker. He made the announcement quoted above in
front of the camera in English, with a French accent. His intervention questioned Manifesta's
relations with the art world, the Murcia region and audiences from within, and provides rich
material for my discussions. In this case study, I discuss Geoffroy's artistic interventions in
Manifesta 8 and the problems that these interventions make clear, in the light of the
discussions we have held throughout Part II. In order to achieve this aim, I will start by
discussing Geoffroy’s art formats, or what he names format art, and continue with his
interruptions in Manifesta 8. Later, I discuss whether the problems highlighted by these
interruptions are also applicable to the other editions of Manifesta.
Colonel's art practice is based on the principle of applying various art formats that
he has developed over the years in different cities and events with different participants.
Although these formats have their own structures that do not change and form a frame, they
352 Thierry Geoffroy, “ARTIST send to be COLONiZE at Manifesta Biennale / South Spain,” September 3, 2010,
YouTube video, 2:52,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M730oO0gPqc&list=PL9B021B92AC07F573&index=13.
134
continuously renew themselves and develop new meanings and inquiries in each case. All art
formats turn into performances that in some way scrutinize and reveal the intermingled
relationships of the contemporary art world and, by activating audiences, oppose the
construction of self-claimed art events from top to bottom. According to Geoffroy, “the art
format is the artistic answer to the globalization”.353 “The Biennialist”, “The Emergency
Room”, “The Delay Museum”, “Critical Run” and “Penetration” can be marked as his best
known and most performed art formats. The Emergency Room, for example, is a format that
stems from the idea of pointing out an ontological problem of contemporary art: its inability
to respond to contemporary events quickly enough. Therefore, in this format, the works of
professional artists produced in relation to the important events of the day are immediately
exhibited in a specially designed space for 24 hours. A day later, these ultracontemporary
works exhibited in The Emergency Room start to be exhibited as contemporary art works in
The Delay Museum, another art format that Geoffroy initiated.
It is beneficial to take a closer look at The Biennialist and Penetration formats since
they tackle the biennial system as a subject and were adopted for Manifesta. The Biennialist
tackles art biennials as palpable case studies and searches every nook and cranny, particularly
their themes, official discourses, sponsorship relations and tourism impacts. The Biennialist
has been activated in many well-known biennials in the last two decades including Venice
(in almost all of its editions since 1999), Documenta, Istanbul, Berlin, Athens, Liverpool and
Manifesta. Depending on the promise of the upcoming biennial, Colonel develops new ways
to reveal the structural and discursive problems of it, which are not visible at first glance.
One of the modes of artistic intervention that Colonel developed as The Biennialist
is to pitch a tent whose sides carry texts that provoke the audience at a venue that is important
for the biennial. For example, wearing a UN blue helmet, he pitched a tent in front of The
Fridericianum, the main venue of Documenta, that carried the following statements on each
side in capital letters: “THE EMERGENCY WILL REPLACE THE CONTEMPORARY”,
“FÜHRUNG, GUIDANCE AND NAVIGATION IS A THREAT” and “THE
CONTEMPORARY IS ALWAYS TOO LATE”. The tent was removed and confiscated on
the same day by Documenta organizers, but it triggered an occupy movement called
d’OCCUPY and after a while the whole area turned into a campsite. Following this event,
his tents started to directly target the sponsorship relations of Documenta with the arms
industry with statements like “THE NEXT DOCUMENTA SHOULD BE CURATED BY
TANKS”. Following the inauguration of Documenta 14 in Athens in 2017, Colonel pitched
some tents in various corners of Athens revealing statements such as: “TO EXPRESS
AESTHETICALLY ABOUT THE CRISIS IS NOT GOING TO SOLVE IT”, “WELCOME
CHEAP WORKERS” and “MEMORY HAS TO BE TRAINED IN THE NOW”.
353 “Art Formats,” Emergency Room, accessed August 7, 2020, http://www.emergencyrooms.org/formats.html.
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Penetration is another format that Colonel uses frequently in order to challenge the
art event that he targets. This format is based on the idea that the participant artist gives their
place to another artist, thereby making room for an ideology / representation / gender /
ethnicity that is left out. In this way, the programme prepared by the organizers and curators
is not only criticized from the outside, but also the problematic sides of their choices are
exposed by penetrating into the exhibition. Thus, the will of those who are responsible for
organizing the exhibition is eroded and their authority is shaken. In this format, sometimes
Geoffroy takes the place of another artist and opens that art activity to discussion; sometimes
he gives his place to another artist; and sometimes he causes an artist to leave their place to
someone else.
In fact, these formats are methodologically inspired by TV formats, but of course
they have different aims than consensual / commercial TV formats. In order to reach a wider
audience, he records and publishes all the details of his performances via TV broadcasts and
a variety of digital platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. Therefore,
documentation and active participation emerge as sine qua nons of Colonel’s art practices.
Geoffroy's artistic practices focus on the arithmetic of who is included and excluded
and his chosen artistic pseudonym, Colonel, is closely related to his own private life:
‘Colonel’ is Thierry Geoffroy’s elected nom-de-guerre. Colonel’s father held the
rank of captain and was posted in Algeria. Now, by means of his own annexation
strategies Colonel, for his part, invades the worlds of media. First, as Professional
Tourist in countries such as India, Africa, China and Denmark (the last-named
hailed by Colonel as “my most exotic destination”); then as Active Immigrant –
often with camera as a vade mecum – unmasking attitudes, his own and ours, and
occasionally peeling away the ‘mask’ of clothes too.354
Artist Colonialist at Manifesta 8
Geoffroy's interventions for Manifesta 8 consisted of the adaptation of these two
formats to target the discursive and structural background of the temporary relationship
established between Manifesta and the Murcia region. Focusing broadly on the criticism of
354 Line Rosenvinge, “Introduction,” in Colonel: Avoir L’air, ed. Line Rosenvinge and Marita Muukkonen
(NIFCA Publications: Helsinki, 2002).
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art biennials, The Biennialist format transformed into the Artist Colonialist for Manifesta. By
handing the microphone to artists, VIPs who attended the opening days, ordinary Spaniards
and North Africans living in Murcia as well as the local authorities responsible for the
organization, Colonel compared how the biennial's motto “in dialogue with northern Africa”
was perceived.
These interventions, which consist of many video clips, were edited as a 10-minute
video that was screened on a local TV channel, 7RM. The video clips were also uploaded to
YouTube. In some of these clips, Colonel asks ordinary people he encounters in Murcia and
Cartagena if there is a personal dialogue between Spaniards and North Africans. In one of
them, he even asks people who are swimming in the sea about their relations with North
Africans by reminding them about the refugees who come ashore. Many of the interviewees
clearly—and some even in a racist way—state that there is no such dialogue. When
interviewing North Africans who have come to work in Spain, they express that they have a
more economy-based communication with the Spaniards. Colonel requests one of the
Spaniards to ask questions to and engage in dialogue with a North African they come across.
This gesture indicates that the dialogue facility claimed by Manifesta does not exist easily
even on ordinary topics. On the other hand, the response of one of the interviewees reveals
regional divisions among the North Africans. He says that Algerians are mostly located in
Alicante whereas Moroccans are in Murcia and Cartagena. His answer to Colonel's question
"And Tunisia?" is striking: “The Tunisians doesn't exist. They are clandestine,
immigrants!”355
In another video clip, Colonel gets on a bus packed with the art professionals who
came for the opening event as VIPs. After reminding everyone of the biennial's motto—in
dialogue with northern Africa—he asks how many of the passengers are from North Africa.
Only one out of 40–50 people raises their hand. Colonel then ironically invites all other art
professionals to talk abundantly with the only North African art professional on the bus. In
the interviews done by another VIP group, none of the professionals express a clear opinion
about why Manifesta aims for dialogue with North Africa and what kind of a role it plays in
the Murcia region.
Colonel’s criticism was shared by some academics. For example, art historian
Carlos Garrido Castellano described Manifesta 8 as “an alliance between spectacularization
and thematized difference”. According to him, Manifesta’s claim to investigate the
relationship between Murcia and northern Africa was far-fetched and the local artists’ works
355 Thierry Geoffroy, “’Is There a Dialogue with Northern Africa’ / TV work for Manifesta by Thierry Geoffroy /
Colonel,” YouTube video, 10:16,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zne6MTjqgYo&list=PL9B021B92AC07F573&index=1.
137
that stemmed from a real “collaboration with and research on North Africa” were featured
mostly in the parallel events rather than the main programme.356
In another video clip, Colonel shifts from the role of Artist Colonialist to the role of
Artist Gentrificateur, and questions the gentrification done through art. By replacing the pith
helmet on his head with a hard hat, Colonel announces that after the restorations made
through the biennial, these spaces will become a bar or restaurant that will increase the rents
in the neighbourhood. The video conspicuously begins by zooming out from the text "Quartel
de Jaime I el Conquistador Murcia" (Barracks of Jaime I, the Conqueror of Murcia) on the
wall of the Artillery Barracks, which had been renovated for Manifesta. As the audience, we
suddenly find ourselves in a complex set of symbols open to retroactive association: Colonel,
who still carries colonialist symbols on his body except the hard hat on his head, makes an
announcement on the relationship between Manifesta and gentrification in front of the former
Artillery Barracks that carries the name of the conqueror Jaime I, who defeated the Muslimheld
Taifa of Murcia and established Christian rule, and that was renovated for a Manifesta
that seeks dialogue with northern Africa. Thus, Colonel points out through an artistic
intervention that the capitalist urban regeneration processes and the cultural politics
developed accordingly are re-conquering the city and implies that “the other” is no longer
just the North Africans as before, but the whole native working class who are forced to move
towards the periphery of the city. Continuing a similar criticism in a different video clip by
framing a worker who paints the walls inside the building, Colonel announces that they are
ameliorating history by cleaning the walls and art is pioneering this process. He makes a
similar video in San Anton Prison, which was also renovated for Manifesta.
The second intervention of Colonel in Manifesta 8 was to convert the exhibition
space reserved for him in San Anton Prison into the Penetration format. In order to draw
attention to the fact that only 5 of the 115 artists who participated in the biennial were North
African, he opened the space reserved for him to North African artists without conditions.
Under the large text "PENETRATION SPACE" painted on the wall, he hung a banner with
the text: "Why Did They Choose the Title In Dialogue With Northern Africa? Is It a Dream?
Is It a Diversion? Is It Propoganda? Is It a Question (Abstract)? Is It a Strategy (EU)?”
This overt attack of Colonel differs greatly from other artistic interventions in the
history of Manifesta and contains important clues about Manifesta's stages of development.
The NEsTWORK initiated by Jeanne van Heeswijk for Manifesta 1 - Rotterdam and
supported by Manifesta itself (see Chapter Three) appears as an application of the idea of
participatory democracy and does not have the potential for criticism that would confront the
contemporary art world. Christoph Büchel’s act of selling his participation rights on eBay
and the subsequent events in Manifesta 4 - Frankfurt (see Chapter Six) prompt thoughts about
356 Carlos Garrido Castellano, “Curating and Cultural Difference in the Iberian Context: From Difference to Self-
Reflexivity (and Back Again),” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 24, no. 2 (2018): 110–11.
138
the exclusion / inclusion relations in the contemporary art field, but do not specifically
question Manifesta’s role within this field. In the practices of Colonel, however, Manifesta
is now considered as a responsible actor that needs to be targeted institutionally. This path
reveals the point where Manifesta, a biennial that claimed to be experimental and young in
the art world, had reached.
In fact, what Geoffroy basically does is not only to develop an institutional critique,
but also to bring the critique to the extreme by opening up space for the intervention of the
artists and the audience and to ensure that their voices are heard. In this respect, we can say
that Geoffroy democratizes the place in which he intervenes in the Ranciéreian sense.
According to Ranciére:
The people that comprises the subject of democracy, and thus the atomic subject of
politics, is neither the collection of members of the community, nor the labouring
classes of the population. It is the supplementary part in relation to every count of
the parts of the population, making it possible to identify 'the count of the uncounted'
with the whole of the community.357
Therefore, democracy is not a ruling principle based on the representation of a
certain group in a consensual way; on the contrary, it is based on dissensual and egalitarian
interventions of those who are excluded from this distribution relationship. Art is an
important tool to make the unequal distribution of power relations apparent. However, as
Chantal Mouffe suggests, “[…] to apprehend [artistic and cultural practices’] political
potential, we should visualize forms of artistic resistance as agonistic interventions within
the context of counter-hegemonic struggles”.358
Geoffroy's artistic practices, too, focus on the power relations within the structure
and self-proclaimed discourses of art activities as well as on those who are left outside of
these relationships. But while doing this, he does not fall into the trap of speaking on behalf
of those who are excluded. On the contrary, he either positions himself as a catalyst that
enables the intervention of artists and audiences who somehow cannot find a place for
themselves—who receive no share from the distribution of the sensible, or who have received
less than they deserve359—or he questions the structural mechanism of the event in which he
is participating through an artistic character (be it Colonel, the Biennialist, the Artist
Colonialist etc.). Both of these interrogation techniques can be found in his intervention in
357 Rancière, Dissensus, 33.
358 Chantal Mouffe, Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically (London and New York: Verso, 2013), 88.
359 See Line Rosenvinge, “Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel – ‘Catalyst’,” Written and produced in conjunction with
the Top Up salon featuring Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel, held at Rahbeks Allé 32, Frederiksberg, Denmark, trans.
David Dunchin (Nov. 18, 2010).
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Manifesta 8. In the announcements he made as Artist Colonialist or Artist Gentrificateur,
Colonel discusses not only Manifesta as an institution, but also the positions of all the artists,
including himself. He functions more as a catalyst while enabling people to dialogue with
each other or rearranging his space for North African artists to penetrate. In any case,
Geoffroy’s effort is very valuable in terms of pointing out the network of relationships behind
self-proclaimed art events directly, intervening in the situation immediately and considering
it as a problem of now, not history.
Many examples that I have elaborated on throughout Part II reveal how Manifesta's
institutional approach has developed throughout the 2000s when Manifesta began to chime
with the neoliberal urban policies of its host cities and regions. Due to this dependency, its
capacity to establish a critical relationship with its host cities and regions weakened. As I
have shown in this chapter, only a few curatorial and artistic interruptions transgressed the
consensus between Manifesta and the host city/region. In Part III, I attempt to show how this
new logic continued in subsequent edition of Manifesta, despite each edition’s idiosyncratic
features that I discuss in separate chapters.
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PART III: THE THIRD DECADE OF MANIFESTA
It is difficult to say that Manifesta—which became institutionalized, increased its
modifiability capacity according to the needs of cities / regions and became recognized as an
important brand in the art market over time—developed a common discourse or policy that
binds together all four of its editions (M10 - St. Petersburg (2014), M11 - Zurich (2016), M12
- Palermo (2018) and M13 - Marseille (2020)) in its third decade. Although it can be observed
that the principle of the absence of a dissensual relationship with the host city that I
highlighted in Chapter Five continued, and indeed became a characteristic feature of
Manifesta, neither a common mission (i.e. representing young post-communist artists or
branding a region as a cultural hub) nor a geographic axis of investigation (east–west or
north–south) that links these editions to each other can be determined. In fact, precisely this
kind of an absence provided Manifesta with room for manoeuvre. In this way, Manifesta
pragmatically chose and highlighted one of the discourses it had produced within the last two
decades that might fit well with the new destination in order to legitimize its host city choice.
Thanks to this pragmatism, for example, it converged the mission of its first period to St.
Petersburg, and the regionalist rhetoric of its second period while it settled in Palermo. A
similar situation is valid for its curatorial strategy, too. Although the strategy of appointing a
single curator that started in M9 - Genk continued in M10 - St. Petersburg and M11 - Zurich,
Manifesta reverted to the curatorial team model in M12 - Palermo and M13 - Marseille.
It is precisely because of this lack of commonality that I will discuss the St.
Petersburg, Zurich and Palermo cases separately in each of this part's chapters, though in
relation to each other. Chapter Seven aims at examining one of the most interesting editions
in the history of Manifesta, St. Petersburg - 2014, in all of its dimensions. When Manifesta
crossed over to the east of the Iron Curtain once again at the end of its second decade, neither
Manifesta nor the expectations of it were the same as before. It was also getting harder and
harder to balance Manifesta's own historical discourses with its attitudes as an established
biennial brand. A number of things made this edition quite special: the prohibition of
"propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships among minors” in Russia—known as the
anti-gay law—after the announcement of St. Petersburg as the new location of Manifesta; the
calls for boycott in the context of the heavy political climate after the annexation of Crimea;
the statement of Manifesta against the boycott calls that declared its commitment to holding
the biennial; the selection of the State Hermitage Museum as the main venue and the
appointment of veteran curator Kasper König as the single curator of the edition; and the
sponsorship agreement with Novatek, Russia's second-largest natural gas producer. In this
chapter, I first discuss the causes of the crises that erupted at Manifesta's "second eastern
expedition" within the framework of Russia's political conjuncture and the oligarchs'
philanthropist approach to art. Secondly, I evaluate the dynamics of the boycott calls,
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Manifesta's insistence on realizing the edition against the calls for boycott, and the edition’s
curatorial–artistic strategies.
The main topics of discussion for Chapter Eight are the city of Zurich's urban
policies towards creative industries and the analysis of how Manifesta handled the theme of
the biennial, “What people do for money", by considering its position on precarious working
conditions. In addition, I discuss the relationship of the biennial with Art Basel by looking at
the percentages of artists who participated in both.
The last chapter of the thesis is devoted to the Palermo case. First of all, I touch upon
the urban problems created by the city's turbulent years under Mafia control. Then, I discuss
the results of my fieldwork in Palermo. The case study of this part continues the evaluation
of the questionnaire I did with Manifesta 12's audiences, and analyses the audiences’
perception of the Manifesta project as a whole.
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Chapter 7 – Manifesta’s “Second Eastern Expedition” to St.
Petersburg
Manifesta moved to the east side of the former Iron Curtain once more after fourteen
years during which it had wandered on the west side and contributed to the promotion and
increased visibility of these regions in accordance with their regional plans. In the meantime,
post-communist Russia had fully embraced capitalism and become the eleventh-largest
economy in the world, known for its fast-growing economy fuelled by oligarchs, sweeping
privatizations and populist authoritarianism. As we saw in the previous part, Manifesta, too,
had changed from its first decade. The announcement of St. Petersburg as the next host city
and its aftermath is very important for us to have an idea of Manifesta's operating
mechanisms.
In this chapter, I argue that Manifesta's selection of this new location outside the EU
aimed to ensure its continuity in a context marked by deep budget cuts in the field of art and
culture partly triggered by the global systemic crisis of 2008. In this regard, the rising
investments of oligarchs in the Russian contemporary art scene, and the invitation and
support of a well-established institution, the State Hermitage, suspended Manifesta's need to
cooperate with local governors and their urban planning strategies. In this edition, issues of
regional and European identity were not included. However, as I show throughout this
chapter, these developments did not eliminate the link between Manifesta and local politics;
on the contrary, they triggered a much more complex political debate.
Before going into the details of this edition of Manifesta, it is necessary to address
the transformations in the field of art after Russia's adoption of the rules of the capitalist
market economy, the state and the oligarchs' approach to art, and the development of art
philanthropy in Russia. Only then is it possible to understand Manifesta's venue, curator and
artists’ preferences and its decision to hold the biennial despite calls for a boycott, due to the
government passing a homophobic law and the annexation of Crimea just as Manifesta was
being prepared.
Contemporary Art and Philanthropy in Russia
It was necessary to wait for the initiation of the Moscow Biennale in order to make
Russia's infrastructural deficiencies in the field of contemporary art a current issue. Moscow
Biennale was initiated by the state in 2005 and intended to be the symbol of, in art theorist
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Keti Chukhrov's words, "New Russians' progressive cultural politics".360 As she stresses, up
until 2005, “pleasure and enthusiasm from intellectual and artistic breakthroughs were still
completely separate from profit-making motives”.361 One of the reasons for this situation was
that when the state's economic apparatuses started to be privatized in the post-Soviet era, the
investors turned to the sectors that were more profitable than art as an investment tool. Even
though the cultural policy of the state shifted towards liberalism in this period, the economic
support it gave to the production of new works decreased.362 The beginning of the emergence
of a new rich coterie (oligarchs) with the help of profitable privatizations made in many
sectors including natural resources, and the increasing continuity of the unequal distribution
relationship throughout the 2000s363, formed the basis of the art philanthropy of the
billionaire oligarchs. For the oligarchs, what needed to be done was quite clear: economic
capital should be boosted by cultural capital.364 Concurrently, in Russia, the cultural policy
of the state evolved towards a more conservative direction than the laissez faire stance of the
1990s.365 This situation led to the establishment of complicated economic and political
relations between the private sector and the state in the field of culture and arts in a way
peculiar to Russia.366 By donating to the state-sponsored projects like the Moscow Biennale
360 Keti Chukhrov, “Art after Primitive Accumulation: Or, on the Putin-Medvedev Cultural Politics,” Afterall: A
Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry 26 (Spring 2011): 127.
361 Ibid., 127.
362 Lev I. Jakobson, Boris Rudnik and Stefan Toepler, “From Liberal to Conservative: Shifting Cultural Policy
Regimes in post-Soviet Russia,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 24, no. 3 (2018): 304.
363 For the rise of the power of oligarchs and their effect on inequality in Russia, see Jarko Fidrmuc and Lidwina
Gundacker, “Income Inequality and Oligarchs in Russian Regions: A Note,” European Journal of Political
Economy 50 (2017): 196–207; Filip Novokmet, Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, ”From Soviets to Oligarchs:
Inequality and Property in Russia 1905-2016,” The Journal of Economic Inequality 16, no. 2 (2018): 189–223;
Sergei Guriev and Andrei Rachinsky, “The Role of Oligarchs in Russian Capitalism,” Journal of Economic
Perspectives 19, no. 1 (2005): 131–50.
364 It should be stressed that oligarchs invested in contemporary art because of not only its cultural capital but also
its economic profitability. The global systemic crisis didn’t particularly influence the contemporary art market.
This was in part due to new mechanisms of art investment established after 2010: freeports. These extraterritorial
tax-free zones led oligarchs enjoy the best of two worlds: the economic and cultural capital. See John Zarobell, Art
and Global Economy (California: University of California Press, 2017), Chapter 7; Hito Steyerl, Duty Free Art:
Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War (London and New York: Verso, 2017); Noah Horowitz, Art of a Deal:
Contemporary Art in a Global Financial Market (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
365 See Lena Johnson, “Russia: Culture, Cultural Policy, and the Swinging Pendulum of Politics,” in Cultural and
Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia, ed. Niklas Bernsand and Barbara Tornquist-Plewa (Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2019), 13–36; Lev I. Jakobson, Boris Rudnik and Stefan Toepler, “From Liberal to Conservative”.
366 For a detailed timeline that highlights the developments in Russian contemporary art scene in parallel with the
political events from 2007 to 2013, when St. Petersburg was announced as the next host city of Manifesta, see Ilya
Budraitskis, Ekaterina Degot and Ekaterina Lazareva, “Socio-Political Context and Artworld,” in Post-Post-
Soviet? Art, Politics and Society in Russia at the Turn of the Decade, ed. Marta Dziewańska, Ekaterina Degot and
Ilya Budraitskis (Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2013), 11–85.
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and initiating their art foundations, Russia’s hyper-rich reinforced their partnerships with the
state in other areas.
According to Keti Chukhrov, the new financial elite, upper-middle class and the
state bureaucracy tried to derive this cultural capital through contemporary art rather than
through other branches of art in order to both appropriate and profit from the global cultural
event format and to get rid of the historical burdens of theatre, literature and ballet that were
preferred by traditional Russia and Soviet culture.367 But there are also more class-based
reasons behind the oligarchs' philanthropy. Reading the rising philanthropy in Russia through
the concept of philanthrocapitalism, Elisabeth Schimpfössl gathers these reasons under three
headings:
First, these mega-rich individuals are striving to justify their fortunes in a society
where, not so long ago, wealth was considered a crime and where today the gap
between rich and poor has grown to become one of the widest in the world. Second,
philanthrocapitalism is, by design, the antithesis to Russia’s history of philanthropy,
which has always existed within the control of a highly centralized state. Third, the
new wealthy elite in Russia lacks the birthright of a capitalist class that was brought
up with bourgeois values and had a sense of duty and entitlement instilled into
them.368
The foundation of billionaire Vladimir Potanin, who established the conglomerate
Interros in 1999, was followed by similar initiatives of many oligarchs, and today there are
nearly 40 such foundations.369 Among these foundations, the main ones in terms of art
philanthropy are: the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation (Mikhail Prokhorov), Stella Art
Foundation (Stella Kesaeva), RuArts Foundation (Marianna Sardarova), Art4.ru (Igor
Markin), Ekaterina Cultural Foundation (Vladimir and Ekaterina Semenikhin), Winzavod
Center for Contemporary Art (Roman Trotsenko), the Garage Center for Contemporary
367 Keti Chukhrov, “Art after Primitive Accumulation,” 128. This is also in line with the claims of sociologists
Annick Prieur and Mike Savage on cosmopolitan cultural capital: “Class inequalities in cultural consumption
remain profound - but they have changed their form. For the upper classes today to exhibit the highbrow culture of
yesteryear would mark them as ‘out of touch’ and staid. Instead they are more wide ranging and discerning in their
cultural practices and this capacity is the contemporary marker of cultural capital”. Annick Prieur and Mike
Savage, “Emerging Forms of Cultural Capital,” European Societies 15, no. 2 (2013): 262.
368 Elisabeth Schimpfössl, “Russian Philanthrocapitalism,” Cultural Politics 15, no. 1 (2019): 105. Indeed, what
(if any) kind of duties and entitlements "bourgeois values” includes is another matter of discussion, which is
beyond the scope of this research. Yet, I believe that the oligarchs' convergence to art in Russia took into account
the potentiality of art in terms of providing added value to other commercial relations.
369 Timothy Monteath and Elisabeth Schimpfössl, “The Culture of Elite Philanthropy: Russia and the United
Kingdom Compared,” in Socialism, Capitalism and Alternatives: Area Studies and Global Theories, ed. Peter J. S.
Duncan and Elisabeth Schimpfössl (London: UCL Press, 2019), 49–65.
146
Culture (Dasha Zhukova and Roman Abramovich), Baibakov Art Project (Maria Baibakova)
and V-A-C Foundation (Leonid Mikhelson and Teresa Iarocci Mavica).
Another interesting aspect of these foundations financed by hyper-rich men is the
gendered characteristics of their administration: many are led by the wives, sisters or
daughters of those men. According to Jennifer Milam, “appended to enormously wealthy
men, these women have the leisure time and resources to become involved in the arts, but
they are also partaking in a longer historical trajectory of Russian involvement in art
patronage, philanthropy, and sponsorship”.370
Considering this background, the Moscow Biennale can be read as a paradigm
version of Russia's new cultural policies as well as art philanthropy. Organized under Joseph
Backstein's commissionership, the aims of the first edition of the biennial were very similar
to those of other biennials:
One of the most obvious consequences of political and economical stabilisation
in Russia is the growing interest of the Russian society in contemporary culture, and
more precisely in contemporary art. As a result a totally new Russian art
infrastructure has emerged through art fairs, commercial galleries, non-profit
exhibition spaces, festivals and conferences. […] Visual art is the only art form
which does not have a major international forum in our national capital. The
Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art would build on the success of other events
like the famous Tchaikovsky Musical Festival, Moscow International Film Festival
and «The Golden Mask» Theater Festival. […] With the Moscow Biennale
of Contemporary Art, Moscow itself would become a center in the art world with
its pivotal location in the region stretching across Eastern Europe and former USSR,
to Central Asia and the Far East. At the same time, Moscow could find its place
in the network of other major international art forums, such as the legendary art
biennales in Venice and Sao Paulo, Documenta in Kassel and Manifesta (European
Biennale for Contemporary Art).371
In order to realize these goals, the Moscow Biennale ensured that many curators
who played an active role in Manifesta, one of role models of the biennial, took office in the
first and second editions: Daniel Birnbaum (Manifesta Board Member, 2002–2009), Iara
Boubnova (Manifesta 4, co-curator and Manifesta Board Member, 2002–2009), Rosa
Martinez (Manifesta 1, co-curator) and Hans Ulrich Obrist (Manifesta 1, co-curator)
occupied positions in the curatorial teams of both the first and second editions. Moreover,
370 Jennifer Milan, “‘Art Girls’: Philanthropy, Corporate Sponsorship, and Private Museums in Post-Communist
Russia,” Curator: The Museum Journal 56, no. 4 (2013): 392.
371 “About the Project,” Moscow Biennale, accessed September 29, 2020,
https://web.archive.org/web/20050220171651/http://moscowbiennale.ru/en/about_project/.
147
Viktor Misiano (Manifesta 1, co-curator and the Chair of the Manifesta Foundation, 2010–
2014), who is deemed to be "one of the chief lobbyist" of the biennial, was dismissed from
the curatorial team due to "a bureaucratic intrigue".372 Misiano would return as the chair of
Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg (2014), for which Kasper König (Manifesta Board Member,
1994–2002), who was on the Advisory Board in the second edition of the Moscow Biennale,
served as the sole curator.
The first two editions of the Moscow biennial were supported by hyper-rich
sponsors such as the "Russian Century" Charity Foundation (Andrey Goncharenko), Mercury
Group (Leonid Fridlyand), Mirax Group (Sergei Polonsky) and ArtMedia Group (Valery
Nosov). As of its third edition (2009), the Board of Trustees list started to appear on the
biennial’s website. For example, the list announced in the fourth edition (2011) reveals the
financing mechanism of contemporary artworks in Russia. The list consisted of 26 names
including Petr Aven (Alfa-Bank), Leonid Mikhelson (Novatek), Sofia Trotsenko (Winzavod
Contemporary Art Center – wife of Roman Trotsenko) and Daria (Dasha) Zhukova (The
Garage Center for Contemporary Culture – ex-wife of Roman Abramovich). Among those,
the then-richest-oligarch Leonid Mikhelson's Novatek was the main sponsor of Manifesta 10,
the V-A-C Foundation which is co-founded and sponsored by Mikhelson provided
institutional support for the tenth, eleventh and twelfth editions of Manifesta, and the V-A-C
Foundation’s co-founder Teresa Iarocci Mavica served as Manifesta Board Member as of
2016. It is also worth mentioning that the Board of Trustees of the State Hermitage Museum
in 2013, too, included some of those rich men such as Vladimir Potanin, Leonid Blavatnik
and Leonid Fridland. This point is crucial, because as I will show in the next section, for the
first time in its history, Manifesta was invited and hosted not by a city or region, but by a
museum. Therefore, Manifesta’s relations with the Hermitage’s administrators (and
indirectly with art philanthropists) were more important than those with local authorities.
What is the Red Line for a Biennial? Manifesta, Russian Politics
and Boycott Calls
The development of the contemporary art market in Russia and the network of
intricate relations that lie behind it had grown to the extent that it could easily meet the
372 David Riff, “The Dialectics of Hopelessness - Visions and Visibility Around the 2005 Moscow Biennale,”
ArtLeaks, August 9, 2011, accessed September 29, 2020, https://art-leaks.org/2011/08/09/the-dialectics-ofhopelessness-
visions-and-visibility-around-the-2005-moscow-biennale/.
148
infrastructure and financial burden of Manifesta.373 In turn, over the years Manifesta had
become quite attractive as an important European / global brand that could satisfy the needs
of Russian art philanthropists and cultural institutes. In this context, hosting Manifesta in St.
Petersburg for the 250th anniversary of the State Hermitage Museum was seen as a tempting
plan for both parties. Yet, the oppressive political atmosphere in Russia and particularly in
St. Petersburg and the activism of some Russian artists who resisted against it would interrupt
the state-driven philanthrocapitalist construction of the contemporary art scene, as well as the
expectations of Manifesta who leant on it in this particular case.
Two events occasioned major crises between 28 February 2013, when St. Petersburg
was announced as the host city of Manifesta 10, and 28 June 2014, when the event began.
The first was the enactment that banned the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations
to minors” (also known as the anti-gay law) signed by Putin in mid-2013, and the second was
the annexation of Crimea by Russia in early 2014. The anti-gay law that led to public
indignation and made Manifesta the target of criticism should be seen as part of the trend to
limit freedom that began after the 2011-2012 anti-government protests in Russia374 and the
"morality turn" or "spiritual turn" that accompanied it at the discursive level.375 There were
other limitations beside the anti-gay law. The restriction of freedom of assembly just before
the rally organized against Putin's 12-year tenure,376 and the text prepared by the Russian
Ministry of Culture entitled “Fundamentals of the State Cultural Policy” that rejected
'multiculturalism', 'tolerance' and 'civilizational principle' as liberal-Western ideology and
claimed that “Russia is not Europe”377, were two examples of these limitations. Moreover,
the ban on using four swear words in the arts to cleanse the Russian language378 and the new
373 In fact, at first Manifesta officers considered either Lviv or Kiev as the host city of Manifesta 10. Following this
idea, Hedwig Fijen and Viktor Misiano visited Ukraine twice in 2010 to investigate the interest of local politicians,
artists and stakeholders. However, this attempt came to nothing due to an unknown reason. Instead of this, St.
Petersburg was later announced as the host of Manifesta 10. See Hedwig Fijen, Yoeri Meessen and Sofia Patat,
Manifesta in 2010 (Amsterdam: Manifesta Foundation, 2010), 47.
374 Anastasia Denisova, “Democracy, Protest and Public Sphere in Russia after the 2011–2012 Anti-Government
Protests: Digital Media at Stake,” Media, Culture & Society 39, no. 7 (2017): 976–94.
375 See Kathy Rousselet, “Dukhovnost’ in Russia’s Politics,” Religion, State & Society 48, no. 1 (2020): 38–55;
Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, “The Pussy Riot Affair and Putin's Demarche from Sovereign Democracy to Sovereign
Morality,” Nationalities Papers 42, no. 4 (2014): 615–21; Elena Stepanova, “‘The Spiritual and Moral Foundation
of Civilization in Every Nation for Thousands of Years’: The Traditional Values Discourse in Russia,” Politics,
Religion & Ideology 16, no. 2–3 (2015): 119–36.
376 Gleb Bryanski, “Russia's Putin Signs Anti-protest Law Before Rally,” Reuters, June 8, 2012, accessed
September 29, 2012, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-protests-idUSBRE8570ZH20120608.
377 For the full text in Russian, see, “Минкультуры изложило ‘Основы государственной культурной
политики’,” Izvestia, April 10, 2014, accessed September 30, 2020, https://iz.ru/news/569016.
378 Maryam Omidi, “WTF? Russia Bans Swearing in the Arts,” The Guardian, July 1, 2014, accessed September
30, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/01/russia-bans-swearing-arts.
149
law that categorised NGOs involved in political activity and receiving foreign donations as
foreign agents379 shrank the use of democratic rights. According to the European Council on
Foreign Relations' report that is based on a public opinion poll, the anti-Westernism of the
Russian people, which was around 20% in 2013, increased up to 70% in early 2015.380 This
rise of anti-Westernism must be seen in light of this shift in Russian politics, together with
the escalating tensions with Ukraine that ended up with the annexation of Crimea.
Calls for the cancellation or relocation of Manifesta coincided with calls for the
cancellation of the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014. Irish art curator and critic Noel Kelly's
petition requesting the International Foundation Manifesta to reconsider Manifesta 10’s
location after the imposition of the anti-gay law was signed by more than 2000 people. This
forced the International Foundation Manifesta to release a statement, in which it rejected the
request to withdrawal, with the justification that leading LGBT organizations preferred
Manifesta to stay in St. Petersburg and make their voice heard. According to the statement,
“on principle Manifesta cannot and should not only perform in the ‘safe haven’ of the West
or former West. This inevitably involves dialogue with those with whom we may
disagree”.381
At this point, one of the things that should be emphasized is that the fact that antigay
laws already imposed in St. Petersburg were not included in the discussions. Georgy
Poltavchenko, the city's conservative and religious governor, passed a law banning
"homosexual propaganda" in March 2012.382 Therefore, by selecting St. Petersburg as the
next location of Manifesta, the biennial's administration had already indirectly made a
decision on this issue.
Another interesting point is that, for the first time in its history, Manifesta was
invited not by the governors of a city or region but by a museum and its administrators. As
part of its organizational form, Manifesta organizes the biennial by establishing a temporary
legal entity that includes both Manifesta administrators and representatives from local
administrations at every location it visits. In the legal entity established for Manifesta 10,
entitled Foundation Manifesta 10 St. Petersburg, nobody from St. Petersburg's authorities
379 “Russia: Controversial NGO Bill Becomes Law,” BBC, July 21, 2012, accessed September 30, 2020,
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18938165.
380 Maria Lipman, “What Russia Thinks of Europe,” European Council on Foreign Relations, 2016, accessed
October 1, 2020, https://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_what_russia_thinks_of_europe5084.
381 “To Withdraw Manifesta 10 Would Mean to Ignore Contemporary Voices and Emerging Generations of
Russia: A Statement by the International Foundation Manifesta,” Manifesta, August 30, 2013, accessed October 1,
2020, https://manifesta.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/IFM-statement-300813-.pdf. Ironically
enough, the next edition of Manifesta would be held in Zurich, in the ‘safest haven’ of Europe.
382 Miriam Elder, “St Petersburg Bans 'Homosexual Propaganda',” The Guardian, March 12, 2012, accessed
October 1, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/st-petersburg-bans-homosexual-propaganda.
150
appeared. This exceptional situation was also reflected in the articles of the catalogue. A
governor's letter of thanks that traditionally appears in the catalogue and expresses the delight
at hosting Manifesta was penned this time by Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State
Hermitage Museum and Dimitri Ozerkov, Director of the Contemporary Art Department at
the museum. Governor Georgy Poltavchenko had no business with Manifesta except paying
an unofficial visit to the Hermitage and seeing a part of Manifesta 10. Moreover, the payment
that had to be transferred by the city of St. Petersburg to Manifesta was made just twelve
days before the inauguration.383
Thus Manifesta 10 was organized not as part of the incumbent local governor's
cultural policies, but as part of the State Hermitage’s own future plans, as I will discuss below.
The Hermitage Museum aimed to create the museum's contemporary art collection within
the framework of "The Hermitage 20/21" project inaugurated in 2007, and before hosting
Manifesta within this project, many exhibitions had been organized including solo
exhibitions by artists such as Timur Novikov, Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Ilya and
Emilia Kabakov and Annie Leibovitz. With this project, the Hermitage attempted to catch up
with the times and modernize its traditional/classical museum image. Dimitri Ozerkov, the
director of both the project and the Hermitage's Contemporary Art Department, was also
appointed as the commissioner of Manifesta 10.
The annexation of Crimea sparked a call for a full boycott. The text penned by
Ukrainian artist Yuri Liederman, a participant in Manifesta 1, gathered around 1800
signatures. But IFM once again decided to continue the biennial as planned. In the official
statement, curator Kasper König declared the position of Manifesta as such:
All artists were invited to participate with the following statement: ‘Of course the
political circumstances are currently delicate and unpleasant, and we have to make
sure not to censor ourselves. It is important to me that my contract guarantees
artistic freedom, however within Russian law. Still, we hope to exhibit substantial
artworks that do not resort to cheap provocations. The environment and the
possibilities for this exhibition are very rich and it would be a mistake to reduce our
possibilities down to the level of just making a particular political statement’.384
Not all artists agreed with the abovementioned statement. The art collective Chto
Delat? (What is to be Done?) and Pawel Althamer and his collaborator decided to withdraw
from Manifesta 10. Nevertheless, Kasper König's attempt to keep Manifesta away from
383 For a timeline of events before the inauguration of Manifesta 10, see Joanna Warsza, ed., I Can't Work Like
This: A Reader on Recent Boycotts and Contemporary Art (Berlin and Salzburg: Sternberg Press, 2017).
384 “Manifesta 10 Will Stay in St. Petersburg,” Manifesta, March 11, 2013, accessed October 1, 2020,
https://manifesta.org/2014/03/manifesta-10-will-stay-in-st-petersburg/. (Italics by the author).
151
taking a political position, summed up in the motto "Manifesta without a manifesto",385
showed partial success. As I will explain in more detail in the next section, although the
public programme curated by Joanna Warsza included some works that dealt with current
political issues, Manifesta 10's great potentiality to be a political and dissident biennial was
not capitalised on.
Manifesta 10 unfolded in the shadow of the above-mentioned discussions.
According to Ozerkov, who asserts that the authoritarian position of the Hermitage has
prevented the degeneration of St. Petersburg, Manifesta "will undoubtedly allow St.
Petersburg to experience a new turn in art’s development and once again feel like a part of
Europe”.386 On the other hand, the Hermitage's director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, states that the
history of the museum is full of memories of protecting the autonomy of art against political
crises, alluding that Manifesta is also under the auspices of the Hermitage:
The memory of these walls carries the tradition of defending the territory of art from
wars and revolutions, from the whims of rulers and the destructive forces of the
mob, from forced evacuations, auctions and private sales. Today this territory is
impinged on one side by the proponents of censorship and political control, and on
the other by adherents of political activism and provocation.387
Manifesta director Hedwig Fijen leans on the same autonomy of art discourse and
skips over the fact that holding Manifesta is as much a political choice as cancelling it:
We are neither a political party nor an NGO and do not operate under the aegis of
any governmental authority. We work autonomously and critically embedded in the
complexities of each host city, and we are aware that our intentions can be
manipulated to legitimize both the ruling powers and the work of reactionary
forces.388
These statements try to have the upper hand at the discursive level by marking the
approaches that criticize Manifesta's autonomy and criticality as manipulative. However,
when we take the curatorial and artistic preferences of Manifesta into account, which I
evaluate in the next section, we can see how not only the decision to relocate to St. Petersburg
but also the content of the M10 itself generated endless criticism.
385 Kasper König, “Manifesta without a Manifesto,” in Manifesta 10 (exh. cat.) (London: Koenig Books, 2014),
24–31.
386 Dimitri Ozerkov, “An Open Window,” in Manifesta 10 (exh. cat.) (London: Koenig Books, 2014), 14–15.
387 Mikhail Piotrovsky, “Crosses over Manifesta,” in Manifesta 10 (exh. cat.) (London: Koenig Books, 2014), 10.
388 Hedwig Fijen (2014). “‘What Has to be Done?’ Manifesta 10, Two Decades of a European Biennial,” in
Manifesta 10 (exh. cat.) (London: Koenig Books, 2014), 21.
152
Curatorial and Artistic Strategies of Manifesta 10
The approach first applied in Manifesta 9 - Genk, based on inviting curators to create
a concept centring on a single venue, was continued in Manifesta 10. What is interesting is
that this strategy and the following developments are the antipode—or the "U-turn" in the
words of Victor Misiano389—of the founding aims of Manifesta in all respects. This U-turn
was crystallized in the appointment of an elderly, white, Western, male, veteran, single
curator Kasper König (born 1945) and the selection of the Hermitage (one of the most
important museums in the world) as the main venue, rather than young curators in a curatorial
team (in which female—and occasionally non-Western—representation is of high
importance) with non-art spaces as venues, as especially happened in Manifesta's second
decade. Moreover, König had very limited knowledge and contact with Russia at the time of
his appointment.390 All in all, his curatorial preferences and artist choices also appeared to
accelerate the trend of moving away from Manifesta's original ideals.
Works of 54 artists were included in Manifesta 10.391 Most of the artists
participating in the exhibition were well-known, middle-aged artists occupying a good place
in the art market. There were also artists from previous centuries such as Henri Matisse and
Giovanni Battista Piranesi as well as mega-names of twentieth century art such as Gerhard
Richter, Bruce Nauman, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Beuys, Maria Lassnig and Marlene
Dumas. This made the exhibition resemble a blockbuster in a traditional museum format. The
average age of living artists represented was 51.3, and only 4 artists aged 35 and under (7.4
%) were included in the exhibition.392 While 8 of these artists were Russian (14.8 %), only 4
of them (7.4 %) were from St. Petersburg. Two artists from Ukraine, where the crisis broke
out, were included in the list (Alevtina Kakhidze and Boris Mikhailov), while a total of 14
artists (25.4%), including Russian / former USSR artists, participated from former
389 Viktor Misiano, “Manifesta 10, or 20 Years Later,” in Manifesta 10 (exh. cat.) (London: Koenig Books, 2014),
12–13.
390 “Before the Manifesta, I'd had little contact with Russia. When I was asked, I immediately said, "Yes, I'm very
interested in making a proposal." I never expected to be commissioned to do this and I believe I owe it to Mikhail
Piotrovski, the director of the State Hermitage Museum”. Kasper König, “Manifesta curator: 'There's no civil
society in Russia',” interview with Anastassia Boutsko, Deutsche Welle, June 3, 2014, accessed October 3, 2020,
https://www.dw.com/en/manifesta-curator-theres-no-civil-society-in-russia/a-17668662.
391 7 of these artists were not alive as of 2014: Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe,
Henri Matisse, Juan Muñoz, Timur Novikov and Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
392 Since the birth year of Kasia Korczak, one of the two members of the Slavs and Tatars art collective could not
be determined, Korczak's age was also excluded from the calculation, as were those of the seven artists who were
not alive.
153
communist countries.393 Polish curator Joanna Warsza, who had been invited by König to
curate the public programme, chose many of these artists from post-communist countries.
Their representation did not compare positively to the representation rate of post-communist
artists (35.4%) in Ljubljana, Manifesta’s first expedition in 2000. Moreover, they exhibited
their works at different locations in the city, and not within the main exhibition in the
Hermitage, which was reserved for established if not renowned Western artists. According
to a field study funded by the Manifesta Foundation, 70% of the audience consisted of people
aged 35 and under, with an income bracket that can be marked as low-middle class. While
about a quarter of the audience was based in other regions of Russia, only 0.5% intentionally
came from other parts of Russia to see Manifesta.394 Another quarter of the audience was
from other countries, mostly in Europe.
This situation has been strongly criticized by Elena Kovylina, one of the
participating artists, as the dominance of “NATO artists” in this Manifesta edition.395 Instead
of examining the development of contemporary art in Russia or, in a broader perspective, in
the post-communist countries, the subject is slurred over by representing a few examples
from Muscovite conceptualism and present-day Russian artists. “Introducing” contemporary
art to the people from St. Petersburg via Western established artists negated Manifesta's
claims of dialogue with the locals. As art critic Noemi Smolik points out,
Even in Western Europe, there are now various viewpoints being acknowledged,
changing the canon of art history. Did Poland not have Tadeusz Kantor who, like
Joseph Beuys, influenced whole generations of artists inside Poland and beyond?
And when people talk about figures like Louise Bourgeois, why is there usually no
mention of the outstanding Polish artist Alina Szapocznikow? When they speak of
Bruce Nauman, why not of Andrei Monastyrski and Moscow conceptualism? And
why is the Russian painter Erik Bulatov not as well known as Richter? These artists
belonged to the same generations; the influence they exerted in their respective
countries was comparable.396
393 Although Gerhard Richter was born and educated in Dresden in East Germany, he was not included in this
number because he emigrated to West Germany two months before the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 and
continued producing in the West part of the Iron Curtain.
394 Margarita Kuleva, “Transgressing the Borders: Manifesta European Biennial and Its New Public in Russia,”
Centre for German and European Studies Series, Working Papers of Centre for German and European Studies,
No. 7, (2014). The biggest drawback of this research is that it does not make a sharp distinction between the
general audience visiting the Hermitage Museum and those who come to the museum specifically to see the
Manifesta. Indeed, Manifesta also gives the total number of visitors to the Hermitage (1,510,309) as Manifesta
visitors, without any such distinction.
395 Noemi Smolik, “Manifesta 10,” Frieze 165 (2014). https://www.frieze.com/article/manifesta-10.
396 Ibid.
154
This criticism sharply reveals the fact that Manifesta 10 was organized with the least
risk by including the works of artists who were already recognized by the art world and highly
quoted in the contemporary art market, and without any involvement in the East-West
dichotomy that dominated its first decade. Similarly, it is one of the criticisms brought to the
exhibition that it was not clear enough what König's curatorial position was, other than
providing a dialogue between post-war contemporary artworks and classical modernist
works.397
But undoubtedly, the primary focus of curiosity for many people was to see how
Manifesta 10 would respond artistically to the ongoing political crises and turbulences
"within Russian law". Works that reacted to the anti-gay law were those of Marlene Dumas,
Nicole Eisenman and Wolfgang Tillmans. The strongest statement was by Dumas. In her
work commissioned for Manifesta 10, she painted a series of portraits of gay men known for
their groundbreaking work in their fields. The portrait series included Pjotr Tsjaikofski,
Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Kuzmin, Sergei Eisenstein, Sergei Diaghilev, who still have very
respected places in Russian history and canon; as well as Timur Novikov, a contemporary
artist who passed away in 2002 and whose works were included in Manifesta 10; and
contemporary Russian LGBT+ activists like Anton Krasovsky and Dmitry Chizhevskiy.
However, the title of the series, which originally referred to their sexuality, was changed to
Great Men due to the new Russian law against the propaganda of homosexuality.398 There
were also more serious problems with the Russian translation of the text:
The Russian version of the text of Marlene Dumas sounded like it was written by
homophobes. In the English version Dumas’s work was described as, “a series of
famous gay men”, right? In Russian it said, “Серия известных
гомосексуалистов”: adding this suffix relates to an illness!399
Other works make indirect references to homosexual partnerships. For example, a
Nicole Eisenman painting depicted two figures making love who could be seen as lesbian,
whereas Wolfgang Tillmans' few photographs taken during his visit to St. Petersburg
aesthetically evoked the anti-gay law in Russia, without making this reference explicit.
397 Gleb Yershov “Review: What does Manifesta Manifest?,” Arterritory, July 7, 2014, accessed October 4, 2020,
https://arterritory.com/en/visual_arts/reviews/10960-review_what_does_manifesta_manifest.
398 Joanna Warsza, “The Situation that Never Leaves Our Waking Thoughts for Long: An Introduction,” in I Can't
Work Like This: A Reader on Recent Boycotts and Contemporary Art, ed. Joanna Warsza (Berlin and Salzburg:
Sternberg Press, 2017), 179–86.
399 Alevtina Kakhidze, “Where the Wind Things Are,” interview with Joanna Warsza, in I Can't Work Like This:
A Reader on Recent Boycotts and Contemporary Art, ed. Joanna Warsza (Berlin and Salzburg: Sternberg Press,
2017), 228. In the Russian version of Kakhidze's biography, the expression "Alevtina Kakhidze was raised within
Russian culture" is translated as "Alevtina is culturally and ethnically Russian". According to her, “This is a good
example of what is currently happening in Russia”. Ibid., 228–29.
155
The few artworks reflecting on the Crimea crisis were part of the public programme
curated by Joanna Warsza. Warsza defined the programme as "a manifestation of
contemporary critical art in the public space" and unlike König, she mentioned the names of
artists like Voina, Pussy Riot and Pyotr Pavlensky, whose work "opposed the growing use of
art as oligarchical facadism as well as Putin's imperialism and enforced stabilization” in her
catalogue article.400 Although each carried various political references in themselves, only a
few of the time-based performative works of the invited artists centred the then-current
political crisis. In this context, Kristina Norman’s Christmas-tree-like sculptural installation
called Souvenir (2014) was an exception. Erected in the middle of the summer in the Palace
Square in St. Petersburg—a square which has witnessed many revolutions and uprisings in
history including the October Revolution—Souvenir explicitly referred to the Christmas tree
placed on Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) before the revolution and
alluded to the possibility of a similar destiny for Russia.401 Collaborating with Ukrainian
participatory artist and Maidan supporter Alevtina Kakhidze, Norman's video work Iron Arch
(2014), too, evoked the revolutionary memories of St. Petersburg via Kakhidze’s wording on
Maidan protests in Kiev.402
Alevtina Kakhidze's decision to participate in Manifesta 10 caused a reaction
especially among Ukrainian artists. In Manifesta 10, Kahhidze represented the conflict
between Ukraine and Russia and the boycott calls following Russia’s annexation of Crimea
through a press-conference-performance based on her own life. In addition to those works,
“Maidan on Palace Square” and “Art & Politics” panels were organized with the participation
of artists within the framework of the public programme. The only work tackling Maidan in
the Hermitage section was some photos shot by Ukrainian artist Boris Mikhailov during the
protests in Kiev. These photos seem to reflect the silence of the protesters before the storm
rather than the violent atmosphere of the events. Yet, according to art critic Natasha
Kurchanova, this sole reference to Maidan in the Hermitage was “subdued, under the
biennial’s umbrella”.403
In sum, Manifesta's “second eastern expedition” coincided with a period when
oligarchs' investments in contemporary art increased and the state’s influence on culture and
400 Joanna Warsza, “Turning Unpublic into Public,” in Manifesta 10 (exh. cat.) (London: Koenig Books, 2014),
222–25.
401 Agnieszka Gratza, “Approaching the Brink: Manifesta 10 and the Standoff over Crimea,” PAJ: A Journal of
Performance and Art 30, no. 1 (2016): 75.
402 For a detailed analysis on Norman’s work including Iron Arch, see Eneken Laanes, “Entangled Memories of
Human Rights in Kristina Norman’s Video Art: Space, Visual Frames, Politics of Art,” Journal of Baltic Studies
51, no. 3 (2020): 451–64.
403 Natasha Kurchanova, “Art and Politics / Art or Politics: The Political Quandary of Manifesta 10,” Studio
International, August 1, 2014, accessed Oct. 6, 2020, https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/manifesta-
10-european-biennial-contemporary-art-life-remarkable-monroe-russia.
156
art moved to a new phase by way of new conservative cultural policies. Invited for the first
time not by a city or a region but by a museum, Manifesta adopted a more traditional largescale
exhibition format in all respects, from the selection of the venue and the curator to the
content of the exhibition. Nevertheless, first the debates in the wake of the anti-gay law, and
then the calls for boycott triggered by the annexation of Crimea, showed that a biennial like
Manifesta, which was kicked off by the political conjuncture of the 1990s, did not have the
luxury of taking a position like "not illustrat[ing] political conditions", as König said.404
Manifesta, which often promoted its return to a former Warsaw Pact member country after
years of absence and highlighted its strong interest in conflict zones, found itself in the
paradoxical position of defending the alleged “autonomy of art” behind the shield of one of
the largest and oldest museums in the world. Manifesta and the Hermitage management
confined criticism to a limited area and did not want to risk the future of their institutional
structures. But precisely this consensual and acritical attitude limited the capacity of art to
produce social change and did little more than preparing artists for "career globalism", to put
it in Ekaterina Degot's words.405 Corroborating these outcomes, as we will examine in the
next chapter, the location of the next edition would be the Europe’s safest heaven Zurich, in
honour of the centenary of Dadaism—an art movement which aimed to integrate art and life
by razing the bourgeois art world to the ground.
404 Kasper König, “It’s Like a Time Bomb. It Will Take a While: Kasper König in Conversation with Lianne Mol,”
Interview by Lianne Mol, in I Can't Work Like This: A Reader on Recent Boycotts and Contemporary Art, ed.
Joanna Warsza (Berlin and Salzburg: Sternberg Press, 2017), 213.
405 Ekaterina Degot, “A Text that Should Never Have Been Written?,” in I Can't Work Like This: A Reader on
Recent Boycotts and Contemporary Art, ed. Joanna Warsza (Berlin and Salzburg: Sternberg Press, 2017), 249–57.
157
Chapter 8: What People, Contemporary Art Biennials and
Municipalities Do for Money. The Case of Manifesta 11 - Zurich
When my interest in Manifesta was gradually taking the shape of a PhD research
proposal, I decided to visit Zurich to see Manifesta’s eleventh edition from England, where I
was studying for my master's, to test the resilience of my interest. After arrival, I immediately
realized that on my student budget I could barely afford two nights in a hostel room shared
with three other people in the second district of Zurich—an hour's walk from the Pavilion of
Reflections built on Lake Zurich especially for Manifesta 11. This fact focused my attention
on the theme of the biennial: “What People do for Money”. Walking for over two hours a
day to shuttle between hostel and the exhibition venues at the centre gave me enough time to
ponder how this promising theme was handled in the context of a city like Zurich where the
cost of living is incredibly high. Did Manifesta make a clear distinction between occupation
and labour? Did they thematize the working conditions of “the others” such as migrants,
women, people of colour, subalterns etc.? Did the biennial respond to the increasing precarity
and mobbing at work in contemporary art as in all other sectors? At that time, my knowledge
of the history and previous editions of Manifesta was limited, so I could not fall back on
either the analyses set out in the previous pages or Manifesta's network of political, economic
and artistic relations for a broader perspective while searching for answers to my questions.
Combining the observations I made during the exhibition and the experience of staying in
Zurich even for a few days with the research I have done in the intervening years, I can make
the argument that Manifesta 11 showed many similarities with previous editions, but also
that it had some original aspects that may be useful for the discussions I have been developing
until now.
In this chapter, I show that Manifesta’s visit to Zurich was not only related to its
willingness to find an economically safe haven, but also to Zurich’s inclination to invest more
in creative economies to diversify its economic sectors. I argue that Manifesta 11's basic
paradox was to attempt to investigate today's precarious working conditions with the
theoretical perspectives of Durkheim and Weber, and at the same time, to impose precarious
work conditions on its temporary staff. The criticism raised by some local audience members
and Manifesta 11 staff perfectly illustrated this paradox by revising the theme of this edition:
what people do for no money. Moreover, I claim that Manifesta 11's artist selection was
highly market-oriented and chimed with the preferences of galleries participating in Art
Basel—what I call the Basel effect.
158
I begin my discussion in this chapter by looking at the background of Zurich's
selection as host city. Many art critics saw the choice of Zurich as a swerve in the trajectory
of Manifesta due to the inconsistency between the city’s image and Manifesta’s aims. Zurich
was neither a city suffering from a lack of cultural infrastructure on the eve of joining the EU
nor a place pining to get rid of its industrial heritage and green itself. However, as I try to
show in the first part of this chapter, Zurich had enough economic and urban reasons to bid
for Manifesta. Subsequently, I focus on the theme of the biennial, "What People Do for
Money". The debates triggered by the curatorial concept of this edition evolved to transcend
the artistic treatment of the subject. On the one hand, the way Manifesta handled this very
promising yet politically heavy subject underestimated the issue of working conditions in the
neoliberal era. On the other hand, it brought the precarity relations in the field of
contemporary art to light, as demonstrated by the crisis that erupted due to unpaid labour in
Manifesta 11. In this section, building on debates surrounding the transformation of the
capitalist nature of work, I show how the field of contemporary art rests on the same relations
it criticizes. In the third section of this chapter, I evaluate this edition's artistic choices and
highlight some transgressive works. Moreover, I discuss how Dada's radical novelty was
represented by a consensual biennial like Manifesta as part of the celebrations of Dada's
centenary—one of the reasons to hold Manifesta in Zurich in 2016.
Why Appoint Zurich as a Host City?
For many people, Manifesta’s return to safe havens after its eventful “second eastern
expedition” was surprising, given the biennial's constant claims that it situates itself in
political, economic or cultural conflict zones. So much so that Manifesta director Hedwig
Fijen felt the need to mention this point in almost every statement she made. However, just
as it had settled in Frankfurt, where Manifesta coincided with Documenta and Art Frankfurt,
after Ljubljana, the choice of Zurich, a city within spitting distance of Art Basel, after a
tumultuous St. Petersburg edition can be explained as a kind of Manifesta self-protection
mechanism. Manifesta's willingness to locate in Zurich is understandable from an
institutional perspective, but Zurich's willingness to host the biennial is more of a mystery at
first glance. With its high quality of life, its strong currency and its advanced art industry
infrastructure comprising numerous galleries, art foundations, collectors and the world's top
art fair Art Basel close by, it is difficult to immediately grasp why Zurich needed Manifesta.
Considering the above-mentioned previous ten editions of Manifesta, there seems no
ostensible need that explains Zurich's desire to host it. Zurich's local authorities were also
aware of this situation. As Peter Haerle, Director of Cultural Affairs of City of Zurich, said:
“'What are we supposed to be doing in a city like Zurich?' was their [Manifesta
159
administrators'] unspoken question”.406 Nevertheless, they thought that Manifesta would
significantly contribute to the city. According to Haerle,
It was clear that while we would continue to write Manifesta’s evolving story, we
also wanted to put our slant on it. Zurich wouldn’t be the place to tackle the socioeconomic
problems of post-industrialisation and breathe new life into derelict
buildings (as in Manifesta 9 in a coal mine in the Belgian city of Genk), nor to
modernise a highly traditional institution with contemporary interventions (as in
Manifesta 10 in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg). Instead, we were driven by the
question of what role art exhibitions play in our society, beyond revitalizing market
mechanisms and being part of social life.407
So the city's expectations for Manifesta were centred around promoting itself as an
artistic / creative hub, with a particular focus on Dada Zurich's 100th anniversary events.
Zurich started planning the events to be held in 2016, the year of Dadaism's centenary, in
2010. The idea of inviting Manifesta in this context was put forward by art historian Juri
Steiner, who was the head of dada 100 zurich 2016 foundation that had been established to
organize related events. According to Steiner, by hosting Manifesta 11 in Zurich, “we opened
ourselves to the world of today and brought in an outside view, a Dadaist tactic in the broadest
possible sense”. 408
I will discuss the extent to which Manifesta’s stay in Zurich was a Dadaist tactic
and how much Manifesta captured the Dada spirit in its exhibition on the following pages,
but first I will draw attention to the material basis of this surprising combination by taking a
look at the change in Zurich’s cultural policies since the mid-2000s, which paved the way for
the city's invitation to Manifesta.
The creative industries approach we discussed in Part II and the investments made
by post-industrial cities in cultural sectors related to the trend created by this approach also
acquired currency in Zurich. The reports on cultural industries in Zurich, published in 2005,
2008 and 2010, are crucial documents that point out the future importance of creative
industries and highlight the structural factors necessary for the city's investments in these
areas.409 According to Sabine Dörry, Marit Rosol and Fee Thissen, who conducted a
406 Peter Haerle and Juri Steiner, “Zurich Outdid Itself with the Manifesta 11,” interview by Karen Horn, in
Manifesta 11 in Zürich: A Collective Art Experiment, ed. Barbara Basting (Zurich: Lars Müller Publisher, 2016),
27.
407 Peter Haerle, “A Collective Experiment in an Open City,” in Manifesta 11 - What People Do for Money: Some
Joint Ventures, ed. Christian Jankowski (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2016), 17.
408 Peter Haerle and Juri Steiner, “Zurich Outdid Itself with the Manifesta 11,” 27.
409 Thom Held, Christian Kruse, Michael Söndermann and Cristoph Weckerle, Kreativwirtschaft Zürich
Synthesebericht (Zürich: Wirtschaftsförderung von Kanton und Stadt Zürich, 2005); Michael Söndermann,
Cristoph Weckerle, Philipp Klaus, Dominic Bentz and Claudia Hofstetter, Zweiter Zürcher
160
comprehensive study of these documents and the transformation in the city's industrial
Zurich-West district, the answer to the question of why a prosperous city like Zurich needs
creative industries should be sought in the excessive reliance of the city's economy on the
banking sector. Like a curse, the wealth created by the financial sector also brings economic
depression with it when it falls into an economic crisis, which reveals the necessity of the
city to find economic diversification. Especially the two financial market bubbles of the
2000s reminded Zurich's administrators that action should be taken urgently against this
problem.410 Based on these reports, Zurich-West, also known as Escher Wyss, was rapidly
gentrified “to legitimize new urban policies”. 411 The Zurich-West district began its
transformation into a unique cultural hub with alternative venues and artists in the 1980s. It
later lost its spirit through this new urbanization and became the venue of Löwenbräukunst-
Areal—a complex that opened in 2012 which hosts Kunsthalle Zurich, Migros Museum für
Gegenwartskunst and many established commercial galleries—and mushrooming creative
industries.412 Rising rents as a result of this transformation allowed only strong actors to
remain in the district. While bidding to host Manifesta, Zurich was about to complete the
urban transformation of Zurich-West:
The legislative period 2010–2014 saw the city departing from supporting small
creative businesses and instead joining a new growth-coalition with real estate
developers that eventually evaporated the culturepreneurs' spaces. By now Zurich-
West is better described as having successfully gentrified, creating an ‘urban
patchwork of predominantly service and office use’, with its numerous temporary
creative projects from the area's awakening being largely history.413
By making Löwenbräukunst one of its two main venues, Manifesta enhanced the
reputation and visibility of this new creative neighborhood. According to historian Brigitta
Kreativwirtschaftsbericht (Zurich: Wirtschaftsförderung der Stadt Zürich, Standortförderung des Kantons Zürich,
2008); Cristoph Weckerle and Hubert Theter, Dritter Kreativwirtschaftsbericht Zürich (Zurich: Stadt Zürich,
Stadttentwicklung/Wirtschaftsförderung, Standortförderung des Kantons Zürich, 2010).
410 Sabine Dörry, Marit Rosol and Fee Thissen, “The Significance of Creative Industry Policy Narratives for
Zurich's Transformation Toward a Post-Industrial City,” Cities 58, (2016): 138.
411 Ibid., 139.
412 For the history of this transformation, see Marine Badan, “The Löwenbräu-Areal and its History: From the
Periphery to the Center of the International Art Scene,” unpublished Executive MA Thesis (Zurich: University of
Zurich, 2013). https://www.emams.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:ffffffff-adae-ea3a-ffffffffa0b1a6bd/
Marine_Badan_Loewenbraeu.pdf.
413 Sabine Dörry, Marit Rosol and Fee Thissen, “The Significance of Creative Industry Policy Narratives,” 141.
161
Bernet, Manifesta 11 was a milestone towards transforming Zurich into a creative city.414
However, it should be emphasized that this urban regeneration process and the regional
programme of the Zurich canton did not need the Manifesta brand as much as the host cities
in the second decade of Manifesta had done. The settlement of Manifesta in Zurich should
be read as a joint result of Zurich's increasing desire to promote creative industries, the aim
to enhance Zurich-West's creative artistic allure and the celebration of the Dada Jubilee.
What People Do for Money under Precarity
Zurich's local administrators asked Manifesta to organize a performative, discursive
and socially intertwined exhibition, but they did not impose any other criteria. 415 Artist
Christian Jankowski, the curator of Manifesta 11, conceptualized the theme of the exhibition
as “What People Do for Money”, and commissioned 30 artists to produce new works in
partnership with local professionals that they chose from a list of over 1000 occupations
actively performed in Zurich. In fact, the question the curator raised centred on people's
economic and political organizations and their transformation, since it involved the
conditions of both the production and distribution of goods and services. When such a
question is raised in the context of a contemporary art biennial, it is automatically updated to
What People Do for Money Today, and reawakens the debate about the work-labour-money
relationship in contemporary art. However, local authorities, the curator Jankowski and
Manifesta's administrators did not want to take the issue into the political and theoretical
realms. At the opening press conference, Jankowski framed the theme of the biennial within
the question of identity without mentioning its political nature.416 In the catalogue article, he
states: “Ideologies have no part to play in my preparations; I trust in the artists and the art”.417
Peter Haerle stood by Jankowski’s choice not to tackle the theme in a more critical, political
way:
Of course we could have done it all with more critical/theoretical reflection and
inquiry. Especially in leftist circles some people felt Jankowski had not sufficiently
414 Brigitta Bernet, “Der Kreative Imperativ. Arbeiten – Immer Schöner und Immer Prekärer,” Geschichte der
Gegenwart, July 10, 2016, accessed Oct. 20, 2020, https://geschichtedergegenwart.ch/der-kreative-imperativarbeiten-
immer-schoener-und-immer-prekaerer/.
415 Peter Haerle and Juri Steiner, “Zurich Outdid Itself with the Manifesta 11,” 29.
416 Jonas Ekeberg, “Politically Evasive Manifesta,” Kunskritikk, June 10, 2016, accessed Oct. 20, 2016,
https://kunstkritikk.com/politically-evasive-manifesta/.
417 Christian Jankowski, “Opinions of a Clown,” in Manifesta 11 - What People Do for Money: Some Joint
Ventures, ed. Christian Jankowski (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2016), 32.
162
explored the power relations in the world of work. But he is simply not a Marxist
artist, that’s not his approach, and we trusted him completely.418
In this section, I argue that the effort to keep the theme of Manifesta 11 away from
its political connotations was itself a political and ideological choice of Manifesta as an
institution. To support this claim, it is necessary to examine the theoretical premises of
Manifesta’s approach to the theme and what these premises say and do for today's working
conditions. For a curator, knowing the cutting-edge discussions in the field in which they
work (independent of their personal ideological choices, even if based on "Marxist"
literature), and making their choices accordingly is an important part of organizing a
“contemporary” art activity. Therefore, carrying the burden of such a vast theme without
taking the transformation of the working conditions experienced in the last forty and fifty
years into account, as has been comprehensively discussed in the Marxist literature, seems
beyond a simple oversight and gives us an insight into Manifesta's institutional approach.419
The Implicit Theoretical Framework of Manifesta 11
I claim that, although not explicitly stated, Jankowski's approach to this exhibition—
seeking a collaboration between artists and professionals—follows the theories developed in
the 19th century by classical sociologists Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. According to
Durkheim, the division of labour in modern industrial societies is based on organic solidarity,
in contrast to pre-modern societies that are underpinned by mechanical solidarity. He thinks
that autonomous individuals in modern societies need each other's productions due to the
specialization of work in industrial societies, and thus they complement each other. This
organic division of labour produces what he calls organic solidarity.420 In these societies,
neither central regulatory power nor repressive law and morality is needed, because these
integral solidarist societies become more harmonized thanks to interdependent business
relationships.421
418 Peter Haerle and Juri Steiner, “Zurich Outdid Itself with the Manifesta 11,” 31.
419 The only exception to this situation was that a short article by an Italian autonomist Marxist Franco Berardi was
included in the catalogue of the exhibition. Although this article talks about the transformation of work conditions
in a broader framework, it does not mention how it works in the field of art and what the position of Manifesta is
in this transformation. See Franco Berardi, “The Superstition,” in Manifesta 11 - What People Do for Money:
Some Joint Ventures, ed. Christian Jankowski (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2016), 189–95.
420 Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, trans. George Simpson (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press,
1960).
421 Shaun Wilson, The Struggle Over Work: The ‘End of Work’ and Employment Alternatives for Post-Industrial
Societies (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 30. Steven Lukes summarizes mechanical vs. organic
163
The Protestant—particularly Calvinist—work ethic as defined by Weber also
appears as the theory grounding the general framework of the exhibition. According to
Weber, Calvinist doctrines of predestination and asceticism unexpectedly paved the way for
capitalism and this “spirit” was generated thanks to a work ethic based on working and
earning but refusing to live in luxury.422 This work ethic gradually got rid of its religious
references and turned into a worldly virtue:
[…] the full economic effect of those great religious movements, whose significance
for economic development lay above all in their ascetic educative influence,
generally came only after the peak of the purely religious enthusiasm was past. Then
the intensity of the search for the Kingdom of God commenced gradually to pass
over into sober economic virtue; the religious roots died out slowly, giving way to
utilitarian worldliness.423
Jankowski's idea of Joint Ventures, which is based on bringing artists and
professionals together and doing joint work in harmony, focuses on the work of individuals
with a Weberian work ethic within a Durkheimian organic solidarity understanding. It
includes artists as partners in these relationships to participate in the mechanism of social
production. Jankowski completes his mission as a curator in the interdependent organic
division of society by presenting this consensus-based mechanism back to the society through
an exhibition. However, the transformation in work relations due to the development of
capitalism in the last hundred years has been so enormous and shocking that by ignoring this
reality and offering a craftsperson-oriented approach instead, it is not easy to understand what
people really do for money and what they risk. Even in a city like Zurich, which has remained
politically neutral at many turning points in history and has strong Calvinist roots, it should
be kept in mind that around 30% of the population consists of migrant workers. Therefore, it
is striking how Manifesta ignored debates around numerous concepts such as precarity,
migrant workers, mobbing at work, neoliberal work conditions, project-based / contractbased
work, and the ways in which they shape relations in the art world. I will discuss these
two issues in the next section.
solidarity in a comprehensive scheme. See Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work - A Historical and
Critical Study (London: Penguin, 1973), 158.
422 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism (London and New York: Routledge, 2001).
423 Ibid., 119. Weber's theses have been the subject of numerous debates. For comprehensive reviews of these
theses, see Peter Ghosh, Max Weber and the Protestant Ethic: Twin Histories (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2014); Gianfranco Poggi, Calvinism and the Capitalist Spirit: Max Weber's Protestant Ethic (London and
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1983); Jack Barbalet, Weber, Passion and Profits: ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism’ in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
164
Changing Working Conditions, Immaterial Labour and
Precarity
From the 1990s onwards, scholars have variously theorized changes in the structure
of work conditions since the 1960s. For some, the triggers of this transformation are
technological and material developments and the expansion of global networks that
accelerate the mobility of money, commodity and human power, as well as the new relevance
of the cognitive and affective capabilities of workers in the process of transformation of
labour into commodities due to the development of the tertiary sector. Luc Boltanski and Eve
Chiapello, who evaluated management texts mostly written by consultants to understand the
moral education of business managers in the 1960s in comparison with those of the 1990s,
theorized the "new spirit" of capitalism in a sociological way. According to them, since the
1970s, workplaces with Fordist hierarchical work relations have been transformed into more
network-based and less-hierarchical organizations in which employees' decision-making
mechanisms and autonomy have risen. 424
The Operaismo (workerist) movement, which was active in Italy in the 1960s and
70s and included thinkers such as Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Paolo Virno, Maurizio
Lazzarato and Franco Berardi, also tackled changes in the nature of work under capitalism.
It questioned the term work itself and rejected “the reduction of life to work”; unlike
traditional Marxism, "they do not want to re-appropriate work (“take over the means of
production”) but reduce it”. 425 Autonomist writers, also referred to as post-operaists since
the 1990s, used the concept of general intellect as defined by Marx in Grundrisse to analyze
current working conditions. They highlighted the increasing importance of informational,
cultural and linguistic content of the commodities whose production include great cognitive
and affective labour activities.426 Maurizio Lazzarato coined the term immaterial labor to
explain the articulation of the cognitive and affective preferences of the workers (their
424 Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Gregory Elliott (London and New York:
Verso, 2005). For a summary of the claims of the book, see Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, ‘The New Spirit of
Capitalism’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 18, no. 3-4 (2005): 161–88.
425 Sylvere Lotringer, foreword to A Grammar of the Multitude, by Paolo Virno (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e),
2004), 7.
426 For a brief history of the transition from operaism to post-operaism in Italy, see Sandro Mezzadra, “Italy,
Operaism and Post-Operaism”, in The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, ed. Immanuel Ness
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2009), 1841–45. For the differences among operaist writers, see Steve Wright,
“Mapping Pathways within Italian Autonomist Marxism: A Preliminary Survey”, Historical Materialism 16
(2008): 111–40.
165
subjectivity, consumption relations and decision-making mechanisms) to the mode of
production. According to Lazzarato,
What has happened is that a new ‘mass intellectuality’ has come into being, created
out of a combination of the demands of capitalist production and the forms of ‘selfvalorization’
that the struggle against work has produced. The old dichotomy
between ‘mental and manual labor,’ or between ‘material labor and immaterial
labor,’ risks failing to grasp the new nature of productive activity, which takes this
separation on board and transforms it. The split between conception and execution,
between labor and creativity, between author and audience, is simultaneously
transcended within the ‘labor process’ and reimposed as political command within
the ‘process of valorization’.427
In this context, apparent exploitation processes of the so-called Fordist phase (and
more contrastive class divisions that it brings about) become more indirect. Rather than
controlling workers in fixed spaces during fixed working hours, the new system promotes
self-discipline as the principal skill by laying a burden on workers. To date, different concepts
such as post-Fordist, post-industrial, post-modern, fifth Kondratiev and post-collective have
been developed to theorize this change and provide a nomenclature to the new phase of
capitalism.428
In fact, reasons for increasing flexibility429 in work conditions should not only be
searched for in the incompatibility of Keynesian policies and laissez-faire ideas. The
demands of youth movements in 1968 such as freedom, less work and self-determination
over working hours coincided with the direction of the new phase of capitalism. At the end
of the 1970s, the intellectual and practical infrastructure generated by the movements and the
idea of working less and more flexibly was appropriated by capital: the modes of production
became more flexible and fluid. A project-based way of thinking substituted a production-
427 Maurizio Lazzarato, "Immaterial labor". In Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, ed. Paolo Virno and
Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 143. With the leverage of Hardt and Negri’s
Empire, published in 2000, the literature on post-operaism has boomed. For some key examples, see Michael
Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Books, 2004); Paolo Virno, A
Grammar of the Multitude, (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2004); Franco Berardi, The Soul at Work: From
Alienation to Autonomy (Cambridge, Mass: Semiotext(e), 2009).
428 Ash Amin, “Post-Fordism: Models, Fantasies and Phantoms of Transition”, in Post-Fordism: A Reader, ed.
Ash Amin (Oxford & Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1994), 1.
429 Bourdieu and Wacquant find the rise of the term flexibility even more sneaky than systematic theories such as
globalization and the end of history, and philosophical worldviews like postmodernism, due to the fact that the
base on which all these discussions exist is related to making the whole particular historical conditions more
flexible and paving the way for a global ‘theorizing’. Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, “On the Cunning of
Imperial Reason,” Theory, Culture, and Society 16, no. 1, (1999): 41–58.
166
based one. This hampered old-style forms of struggle and self-organization among workers.
According to Isabell Lorey,
Keywords here are: deciding for oneself what one does for work and with whom;
consciously choosing precarious forms of work and life, because more freedom and
autonomy seem possible precisely because of the ability to organize one’s own time,
and what is most important: self-determination. (…) However, it is precisely these
alternative living and working conditions that have become increasingly more
economically utilizable in recent years because they favor the flexibility that the
labor market demands. Thus, practices and discourses of social movements in the
past thirty, forty years were not only dissident and directed against normalization,
but also at the same time, a part of the transformation toward a neo-liberal form of
governmentality.430
The concept of precarity has gained wide currency in the academic literature to
describe the uncertainty and instability in life produced by decades of neo-liberal policies
that have withered away job security, predictable futures and regular income.431 According
to the economist Guy Standing, it can even be argued that precarious working conditions
have created a new social class called precariat: a compound word derived from precarious
and proletariat.432 The counterpart of this position in the art world is that artists who do not
have a regular income or a secured future have been forced to accept even more insecure
working conditions by art institutions, thereby making them more dependent on market
relations. As I discuss in the next section, Manifesta, too, is not extraneous to these
conditions; on the contrary, it is one of the nodes of this network of relationships.
430 Isabell Lorey, “Governmentality and Self-Precarization: On the Normalization of Cultural Producers", in Art
and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique, eds. Gerald Raunig and Gene Ray
(London: MayFly Books, 2009), 196.
431 See Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of Our Time, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1998); Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London and New
York: Verso, 2004); Nancy Ettlinger, “Precarity Unbound”, Alternatives 32, (2007): 319-40; Brett Neilson and
Ned Rossiter, “Precarity as a Political Concept, or, Fordism as Exception”, Theory, Culture & Society 25, no. 7–8
(2008): 51–72. It should not be forgotten that besides defining instable and contingent forms of living, precarity
also has a positive political meaning for some researchers who use the term to define the new social struggle that
emerges to resist these instable conditions. See Rosalind Gill and Andy Pratt, “Precarity and Cultural Work in the
Social Factory? Immaterial Labour, Precariousness and Cultural Work”, Theory, Culture & Society 25, no. 7–8
(2008): 1–30.
432 Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011).
167
Manifesta and Precarity
While considering reasons for major changes that occurred in the field of art in the
1990s, one should always take into account the increasing litheness in the ways of thinking
and producing. The flexible and unsecured working models went hand in hand with a
discourse against all secured working conditions as outdated, bureaucratic, non-creative and
traditional. Former communist countries were the best examples to fit with these adjectives
of the discourse. This discourse was very fertile for the capitalist countries who wanted to
keep socialism at bay during the Cold War era. Within this trend, ideas of work as art and
creativity as the top skill of a worker superseded those of art as work or artist as worker.433
According to Pascal Gielen, who discusses the elastic and eclectic uses of the
concept of “scene” in the post-Fordist economy, the art scene is now set in semi-public spaces
such as biennials, “Kunsthallen” and museums, and is the theatre of precarious work
conditions as discussed above.434 More importantly, this situation paradoxically enables
cultural workers, who are trying to challenge the conditions they live in, to internalize the
precarious work conditions:
The consequence is that someone works within a temporary contract or, in the art
world itself, often without a contract - in what is always a vitalist, project-based
setting and of course with flexible hours, invariably involving night work, and
irrepressible creative enthusiasm. In short, it involves a work ethic in which work is
always enjoyable - or should be; in which dynamism is boosted unconditionally by
young talent; and in which commitment outstrips money. This is what determines
the spirit of the artistic scene.435
Beside the elaboration of the theme of Manifesta 11, reading the crisis that broke
out at the opening of the biennial regarding the unpaid and low-paid labour of some Manifesta
11 contributors together with this political and theoretical background—that the biennial
avoided dealing with—may allow us to deepen our analysis. Let us start with the elaboration
of the theme. The majority of the professionals included in the exhibition were in senior
positions (e.g. the head of communications for Kantonspolizei Zurich, the head of a funeral
and cemetery office, the head of communication at Protection and Rescue Zurich), highly-
433 A book compiled by Gerald Raunig, Gene Ray and Ulf Wuggenig contains many important articles on the
subject. See Gerald Raunig, Gene Ray and Ulf Wuggenig, eds., Critique of Creativity: Precarity, Subjectivity and
Resistance in the ‘Creative Industries’ (London: MayFly, 2011). Moreover, for the special issues dedicated to
discuss the work conditions in art sector, see Jorinde Seijdel, ed., Opem: Cahier on Art and the Public Domain,
no. 17 (2009) and Zoran Erić and Stevan Vuković, eds., OnCurating no.16 (2013).
434 Pascal Gielen, The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude: Global Art, Memory and Post-Fordism (Valiz:
Amsterdam, 2009), 52.
435 Ibid., 53.
168
skilled jobs (e.g., engineer, banker, opera singer, journalist, psychiatrist, dentist,
psychoanalyst, clinical sexologist, medical director, meteorologist), rara avis artisans (e.g.,
painting conservator, master watchmaker, boatmaker) and world champion sportspeople
(e.g., Thai-boxer and Paralympic racer). Only one artist, Teresa Margolles, collaborated with
a day labourer / precarious worker, a transgender escort. At first glance, it could be argued
that these choices were in line with the realities of Zurich. As Emily C. Murphy and Daniel
Oesch have described, although low-skilled migrant flow into Zurich in the 1980s caused a
lopsided rise in the poorest quintile, after the strict migration policies in favour of highly
skilled migrants in the 2000s, the top quintile has boomed.436 Yet, bearing the
abovementioned discussion in mind, this does not change the fact that many people, including
highly-skilled workers, today live with the risk of becoming unemployed at any time
according to the course of the market in Zurich—where living costs are extremely high.
Many issues such as the expansion of the global labour market, the shift of lowskilled
jobs to developing countries in parallel with the deindustrialization trend of developed
countries, new forms of exploitation of low-skilled migrant workers and female workers in
the labour market and the rise in self-exploitation due to the increase in the influence of
immaterial labour on the production processes are crucial to discuss when answering the
question of what people do for money today.437 Shortcutting these issues provided
opportunity for most of the joint ventures in the exhibition to focus on the mere definition
and application of the work instead of the transformed working conditions. However, the
ghost of precariat that Manifesta slurred over in the exhibition turned up like a bad penny
when the Manifesta Institution was accused by the Manifesta 11 contributors of using unpaid
labour.
The discussions that started in the Swiss media before the inauguration of Manifesta
11 focused on the position of Manifesta in regard to precarious work conditions. The article
published by Brand-New-Life web-magazine under the pseudonym Regina Pfister ignited
the wick of discussions. This article entitled "What People Do for Money / What We Do for
Money / What We Do for No Money / What We Do / How We Work" stated that Manifesta
offered the local people it hired only 3700 Swiss francs gross wage for a full-time and fixedterm
position, which is quite low considering living costs in Zurich. In addition, the staff of
Kunsthalle Zurich—most of whom are artists who cannot survive on their income from their
art alone—were forced to take unpaid leave during Manifesta to be replaced by
436 Emily C Murphy and Daniel Oesch, “Is Employment Polarisation Inevitable? Occupational Change in Ireland
and Switzerland, 1970–2010”, Work, Employment and Society 32, no.6 (2018): 1099–117.
437 Zurich-based On-Curating magazine dedicated its 30th issue (June 2016) to Manifesta. The edition was
published as a Manifesta 11 collateral event with articles examining these issues that Manifesta 11 avoided.
169
“volunteers”.438 Moreover, a number of allegations appeared in the press, such as that the
promised free accommodation for some of the employees did not materialise, local artists
were not included enough in the biennial, a proper budget was not allocated to parallel events
and participating artists who were commissioned to produce new works received only 1000
Swiss francs as artist fees.439 All these allegations became even more visible when a group
of artists and students rained fake 50-franc banknotes that include Jankowski's portrait and
the inscription Moneyfesta on the guests at the opening event and distributed Pfister's text as
leaflets.
The harsh reactions of the audience in the panel organized for the assessment of the
75 days of Manifesta 11 made this paradox bluntly visible. One of the audience members
demanded to be promised "here and now" that Manifesta employees’ unpaid wages would
be paid within a week and said to the Manifesta managers' faces that the theme of the biennial
should have been "what people do for no money". Other participants complained that the
local art scene was not included and that an insufficient budget was allocated to parallel
events.440
The responses of the Manifesta administrators and local authorities to these
allegations reveal how precarious work conditions are inured in the art scene. Hedwig Fijen
emphasized at different times that Manifesta did not violate any Swiss employment laws and
that it is standard practice to use volunteers in such festivals. She added that "the volunteers
are not working, they are doing services".441 As reported by Jonas Ekeberg, curator
Jankowski also mentioned that “they could have opted out of using volunteers and assistants,
paying everyone involved a full salary. - But then it wouldn’t have looked like a biennial.
Then it would have been a regular exhibition”.442 With this statement, Jankowski explicitly
438 Regina Pfister, “What People Do for Money / What We Do for Money/ What We Do for No Money / What We
Do / How We Work”, Brand-New-Life, May 23, 2016, accessed Oct. 28, 2020, https://brand-new-life.org/b-nl/
what-people-do-for-money-en-us/.
439 Sarah Alberti, “Arbeit am Mythos", der Freitag, June 21, 2016, accessed Oct. 28, 2020,
https://www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/arbeit-am-mythos-1; Simon Jacoby, “Kunst statt Lohn: Geht der
Manifesta das Geld aus?“, Tsüri, June 8, 2016, accessed Oct. 28, 2020, https://tsri.ch/zh/kunst-statt-lohn-geht-dermanifesta-
das-geld-aus/.
440 Florian Niedermann, “Kritik-Hagel für Manifesta-Leitung – Zürcher Künstler sind sauer”, Limmattaler
Zeitung, Aug. 25, 2016, accessed Oct. 28, 2020, https://www.limmattalerzeitung.ch/limmattal/zuerich/kritikhagel-
fuer-manifesta-leitung-zuercher-kuenstler-sind-sauer-130514984.
441 Anne Katrin Feßler, “ "What People Do For Money": Stink und Stunk bei der Manifesta”, Der Standard, July
13, 2016, accessed Oct. 28, 2020, https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000038788392/what-people-do-for-moneystink-
und-stunk-bei-der; Hili Perlson, “Manifesta 11 Comes Under Fire for Alleged Unpaid Labor”, artnet news,
Aug. 25, 2016, accessed Oct. 28, 2020, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/manifesta-11-comes-fire-unpaid-labor-
620975; Jonas Ekeberg, “Politically Evasive Manifesta”.
442 Ibid.
170
reveals that biennials are based on unpaid or low-paid labour, namely the exploitation of
biennial workers. Manifesta's deputy director, Peter Paul Kainrath, reduced the issue to a
small technical detail and stated that the disruption in the payments was due to the fact that
some employees did not hand over important documents on time. He also mentioned that
volunteers received 5 francs per hour as a symbolic payment.443 Moreover, both city and
Manifesta press offices stressed that the issue of low wages should be considered broadly by
counting the advantage of being a part of this mega project.444
Of these statements, the ones by Fijen—about Manifesta acting lawfully and the use
of high number of volunteers at every festival—highlight a key aspect of today's precarious
working conditions. Indeed, the ongoing transformation in working conditions has proceeded
on a legal basis. However, this very point needs to be problematized, because the gap between
legal and fair has gradually increased due to the fact that legal regulations follow the need
for the realization of neoliberal policies.445 Under conditions where the problem of legality
disappears, working unpaid or for a low wage/stipend as a “volunteer”, “assistant” or “intern”
for big companies, festivals, biennials and museums becomes normal. It even becomes
desirable for many people, since they see it as an investment in their future career plans.446
Herein lies the basic paradox of Manifesta 11: the fact that it is an actor per se in producing
precarious working conditions that it also wants to critically engage with them critically as if
from outside.
The Basel Effect on the Artistic and Curatorial Strategies of
Manifesta 11
Although the curatorial concept of Manifesta 11 focused on 30 commissioned works
jointly produced by artists and non-artists, another exhibition entitled The Historical
Exhibition: Sites Under Construction (co-curated by Francesca Gavin) was also part of the
443 Hili Perlson, “Manifesta 11 Comes Under Fire for Alleged Unpaid Labor”.
444 Brigitta Bernet, “Der Kreative Imperativ”.
445 A recent study examining the relationship between law and neoliberal theory and practice sheds light on
important points on this issue. See Ben Golder and Daniel McLoughlin, eds., The Politics of Legality in a
Neoliberal Age (New York: Routledge, 2018).
446 See Precarious Workers Brigade and Carrot Workers Collective, “Free Labour Syndrome. Volunteer Work and
Unpaid Overtime in the Creative and Cultural Sector”, in Joy Forever: The Political Economy of Social Creativity,
ed. Michał Kozłowski, Agnieszka Kurant, Jan Sowa, Krystian Szadkowski and Jakub Szreder (London: MayFly,
2014), 211–25; Ross Perlin, Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy
(London: Verso, 2011); Thomas A. Discenna, “The Discourses of Free Labor: Career Management,
Employability, and the Unpaid Intern”, Western Journal of Communication 80, no.4 (2016): 435–52.
171
main programme of Manifesta 11. This exhibition included artworks of over 100 artists
revolving around the theme of “work”. Moreover, Cabaret Voltaire transformed into an oldfashioned
guild in honour of Dada's centenary and hosted numerous performances. In
addition, the floating structure The Pavilion of Reflections built on Lake Zurich for Manifesta
11 functioned as both a meeting / event site and a space where the production process of new
commissions and interviews were screened.
The data on the participant artists of Manifesta 11 is in line with the trends seen
since the second decade of Manifesta. The rates of local and national artists participating in
the exhibition were very low, as in other editions. While 9 out of 132 participating artists
were from Zurich or based in Zurich (6.8%), the total number of Swiss artists was 11 (8.3%).
Moreover, the average age of participating artists was quite high: 51.55.447 The number of
artists who were 35 years old or below was 20, equalling 15.1% of the total number of artists.
One of the interesting pieces of data in this edition appears in the representation
rates of American, British and German artists. Of all the participating artists, 37 were
American (28%), 19 were German (14.3%) and 12 were British (9%). The total
representation of these three countries constituted 51.5% of the entire exhibition. This uneven
distribution can be related to the domination of the world's art market by the USA and a few
Western countries, and the overlap of the dates of Manifesta and Art Basel, the world's largest
art fair. According to Alain Quemin, contrary to globalization effects, international
contemporary art fairs, and more broadly the art market, are still controlled by the USGermanic
duopoly with peripheral contributions from France, Italy, the UK and
Switzerland.448
Data on the national profiles of galleries that participated in Art Basel in 2008
corroborates this claim: 23% were from the US, 17% from Germany, 10% from the UK and
7% were from France.449 In line with this framework, 67 (50.7%) of the 132 participating
artists at Manifesta were represented one or more times at Art Basel, Art Basel Miami or Art
Basel Hong Kong between 2015 and 2019.450 These include 14 (46.6%) of the 30 artists
commissioned by Manifesta 11 to jointly produce new works with various professionals. The
447 Since the birth years of Aaron Moulton, James Roberts, Jan Vágner and Angela Vanini and the identities of
Artist Placement Group’s high number of participants could not be determined, they were not included in the
calculation. The average age is calculated from 127 artists.
448 Alain Quemin, “International Contemporary Art Fairs in a ‘Globalized’ Art Market”, European Societies 15,
no.2 (2013): 162–77.
449 Quemin reminds us that these proportions go in the USA’s favour more and more in the fairs that are held in the
US, since the US galleries are not so keen on travelling to Europe. For example, the US galleries’ representation at
Art Basel Miami was 40 %. Ibid., 166.
450 These calculations are made by the author based on the participant artist lists of Art Basel, Art Basel Miami and
Art Basel Hong Kong, accessed online on Art Basel’s website.
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number of artists who participated in both Art Basel and Manifesta in 2016 was 32 (24.2%).
Considering that Manifesta identifies itself as a European biennial initiated to scrutinize
Europe, the allocation of a quarter of the biennial to US artists and the preference for
representing high amounts of established artists who had appeared in Art Basel fairs in recent
years can be explained by the fact that art market relations have become a priority area of
interest for Manifesta 11. I name this phenomenon the Basel effect.451
Another example of this market-oriented way of thinking can be seen in the way the
Dadaism jubilee was handled by Manifesta. In 2012, the city of Zurich established an
association named dada 100 zürich 2016 to programme events for Dada's centenary, and
initiated an intensive promotion of Dada Zurich both inside and outside of the city. One of
the events organized in this context by Manifesta was the transformation of Dada's birthplace,
Cabaret Voltaire, into a guildhall for artists. This included a selection of performance
proposals based on the collaboration of artists and non-artists.452It allowed only performers
to watch other performances and prohibited viewers from recording the performances. It was
assumed that in this way the Dada spirit would be captured.
However, this very limitation of scheduling tamed the legacy of Dadaism. The main
driving force behind Dada was its dissensual relationship with the sociopolitical realities of
its time. This motivation pushed Hugo Ball and his friends to distance themselves from the
classical semantics and syntax of the art forms, as well as contemporary political positions.
Hugo Ball summarizes this situation in his diaries as such:
Our cabaret is a gesture. Every word that is spoken and sung here says at least this
one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect. What
could be respectable and impressive about it? Its cannons? Our big drum drowns
them. Its idealism? That has long been a laughingstock, in its popular and its
academic edition. The grandiose slaughters and cannibalistic exploits? Our
spontaneous foolishness and our enthusiasm for illusion will destroy them.453
451 A public survey conducted by the Institute of Sociology at the University of Zurich, which was commissioned
by Manifesta, focuses on the sociological profile and cultural and economic impact of Manifesta 11, but does not
include the Basel effect or a comparison with previous editions’ public surveys. According to this report, 45% of
Manifesta 11 visitors were viewers who have a professional interest in the art world. 60% of those participating in
the research thought very positively about the biennial. According to the report, the economic multiplier of the
overall direct return is calculated as 4.06, which proves that Manifesta 11 was a very successful investment for
Zurich. See Sebastian Weingartner, Jörg Rössel Manifesta 11 Public Survey – Final Report (Zürich: Foundation
Manifesta 11, 2017).
452 Performance proposals were first evaluated according to the guidelines of a joint-venture performance and then
scheduled. Spontaneous performances were welcomed only for two hours from Wednesday to Saturday.
453 Hugo Ball, Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, ed. John Elderfield, trans. Ann Raimes (Berkeley, Los Angeles
and London: University of California Press, 1996), 61.
173
Considered in this context, Manifesta's Dada concept, based on the proposal
application open only to performers and mandating restrictions on recording, far from
captured the spirit of Dada; instead it destroyed the possibilities of divulging the dynamics
of the art market that Manifesta is also a part of and of radicalizing “the contemporary
humiliating age we live in”.454 This approach aligned with Zurich's marketing strategies for
Dada, because the domestication of Dada as an art movement in the art history canon would
feed Zurich's “creative” dreams as birthplace of this art movement. When we consider this
point in conjunction with Oleg Kulik's' “domesticated” dog performance in Manifesta 1
(Chapter Three), Manifesta's indifference to Brenner and Schurz's action at the press
conference of Manifesta 3 (Chapter Three), and Manifesta’s attitude towards calls for a
boycott in Manifesta 10 (Chapter Seven), its consensual and market-driven stance against
subversive art can be seen more clearly.
However, as in every edition, there were artists who challenged Manifesta 11's
curatorial framework. For example, Greek artist Georgia Sagri’s collaboration with a female
banker went beyond Manifesta’s curatorial approach. Questioning the curatorial approach
that interprets artists as a unified category regardless of their differences and against “real
workers”, assuming that they all earn their money only from art, Sagri defined this
understanding as "populist, modernist and western".455 Contrary to this approach, she stated
that she acted as an actress during the filming of her collaboration with the host, which was
a part of the curatorial concept, and officially requested the fee for her labour from curator
Jankowski. Later, in the video Georgia Sagri as Georgia Sagri: still without being paid as
an actress (2016), which she prepared as part of her installation Documentary of Behavioral
Currencies (2016), she negotiates her request with real Manifesta staff, but their faces are
invisible and their voices have been changed. The original unedited version of the video was
censored, but the artist was later persuaded to make the requested corrections. In an interview,
she explained her motivation to abide by the requests of the institution as such: “The only
reason to proceed was that I realized that the people who work for Manifesta don't have the
possibility to be parrhesiastic, as I was trying to be”.456 The artist also ensured that a critical
text in which she explicitly criticized the position of Manifesta 11, as well as the contracts
she offered them, were published in the Manifesta catalogue: “[My piece] is also a set of
behavioral tactics that try to break out of the specific hierarchies of Manifesta 11. It rejects
454 Ibid., 61.
455 Georgia Sagri, “Parrhesiastic Act”, interviewed by Sofia Bempeza. Brand-New-Life, Oct. 24, 2016, accessed
Nov. 1, 2020, https://brand-new-life.org/b-n-l/parrhesiastic-acts/pdf.
456 Ibid. As I will discuss in more detail in the next chapter, this restricted radius of action of the mid-level
Manifesta staff is an issue that I also observed during my fieldwork in Palermo.
174
its authoritarian and hyper-commercial character and demands that the artist not be treated as
a productive entity, who does something for Manifesta 11”.457
Teresa Margolles' work Poker de Damas (2016) also embarks on the question of
what people do for money to survive, going beyond the classical map of professionals that
dominated Manifesta 11. Margolles preferred to collaborate with a transgender sex worker.
Her initial concept was to transform the allocated venue in the Löwenbräukunst into a place
of encounter for sex workers from Zurich and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. However, due to the
brutal murder of one of the trans women, Karla, in Mexico and the disappearance of another
who was found in prison in the US after a few weeks, Margolles devoted her work to
investigate these issues at a poker table with other sex workers and participants and exhibited
the conversation in video format within an installation. Scholars Natalie Alvarez and Keren
Zaiontz discuss this work as an example of what they call feminist performance forensics and
describe it as: “the use of performance installations to produce bodies of evidence in the face
of systemic government denial of its fiduciary duties, making visible those rendered invisible
by state violence and neglect”.458 Margolles' endeavour can be read as an invitation for the
biennial, which has limited itself to embodying the principles of organic division of society
and Calvinist ethics, to face the facts.
Another piece of work that breached the discourse of Manifesta 11 was produced
by New York-based Mexican cartoonist Pablo Helguera. The distinct position of Helguera in
Manifesta 11, who collaborated with a local journalist and created a character named Bolito
Husserl that was published weekly in the host journalist’s newspaper, came from adorning
the walls of Löwenbräukunst with his Artoons: cartoons that he had been producing since
2008 to satirize the art world. On the one hand, curators, art dealers, art critics and artists,
who were the targets of these powerful and funny cartoons, enjoyed watching this crooked
network of relationships of the art world from the wall, with which they are not unfamiliar;
on the other hand, they continued to play the same criticized roles within the scope of
Manifesta 11. As Helguera's host, journalist Daniel Binswanger, points out in his catalogue
article, "if need be, Manifesta offers enough material to inspire a cartoon".459
To sum up, Zurich’s desire to host Manifesta was not about improving the city's
living standards, but about the city's will to invest more in creative economies to reduce its
dependence on the banking sector. In this regard, similar to the editions of the second decade,
Manifesta 11 was organized within the regional programme of the host city's local
457 Christian Jankowski, ed., Manifesta 11 - What People Do for Money: Some Joint Ventures (Zurich: Lars Müller
Publishers, 2016), 69.
458 Natalie Alvarez & Keren Zaiontz, “Feminist Performance Forensics”, Contemporary Theatre Review 28, no.3
(2018): 285–98.
459 Christian Jankowski, ed., Manifesta 11 - What People Do for Money, 130.
175
administrators. The theme chosen for Manifesta 11 and the way it was handled were shaped
by Zurich's Calvinist roots and the Durkheimian idea of an organic division of society.
However, Manifesta's failure to address today's precarious working conditions within the
scope of the biennial, as well as its imposition of precarious working conditions on the
temporary workers of this edition, is crucial for understanding the working mechanisms of
both Manifesta and the contemporary art scene. The fact that half of the artists selected for
Manifesta were chosen among established ones represented in Art Basel between 2015 and
2018—which I have called the Basel effect—also made these mechanisms apparent. In the
next chapter, I focus on the Palermo case, and this time I also include the voice of the
audience in my discussion.
176
177
Chapter 9: Revitalizing Palermo Through Art: Manifesta 12
This chapter differs from the previous ones in terms of giving more space to
Manifesta viewers' preferences. One year after my short visit to Zurich, Manifesta became
my official PhD topic, and I called Amsterdam home. The next edition of Manifesta would
take place in Palermo, and I decided to stay there for a longer period of time to carry out
fieldwork on the relations that the biennial established on site. I wanted to experience the life
of the city, study the local art scene, note the motivations of the participating artists and record
the impressions of the biennial audience. During the two and a half months I spent in Palermo,
I had the opportunity to talk to dozens of artists and local art scene figures. I also had the
chance to conduct a total of 373 surveys with the Manifesta audience to grasp their views on
both Manifesta 12 - Palermo and the Manifesta project in general. Therefore, the main
difference of this chapter from the preceding chapters is that it conveys a series of events that
I have personally witnessed and experienced at the biennial's destination, and thus I give
more space to the data derived from the fieldwork.
In this chapter, I show that in its Palermo edition, Manifesta returned to the strategies
of its second decade, paying particular attention to the urban and education. In addition, it
increased the political tone of the biennial both by allocating more space to works with
political content and by designating symbolically important places such as ZEN and Pizzo
Sella as venues. However, I argue that this approach of Manifesta was once again realized in
line with the political perspective of the local administrators. Incumbent mayor Leoluca
Orlando’s immigrant-friendly, multiculturalist and tourism-oriented approach paved the way
for Manifesta to appear more radical and more concerned with urban problems. Nevertheless,
as the survey results show, Manifesta once again failed to establish a sufficient relationship
with local artists and Palermitans. Although the majority of the audience members seemed
satisfied with most of the curatorial and artistic approaches of Manifesta, they described
Manifesta as an event that revitalized the city by attracting international tourists instead of
developing long-term relations with local people.
Before we delve into the aesthetics and politics of the biennial, we need to consider
the transformation of Palermo in the last decades, namely, the city’s battle with the Mafia, its
policies on the revitalization of the city centre, its exceptional approach to the issue of
migration, and most importantly the political trajectory of its incumbent mayor Leoluca
Orlando, who has been Palermo's key political figure in the last three decades. In addition,
Manifesta’s return to the politics and logic of its second decade needs to be taken into account
for a more correct interpretation of the collected data. After discussing these issues in detail
178
at the beginning of this chapter, I then focus on how the Palermo edition was implemented
on site and how the biennial was viewed by Palermitan as well as international audiences.
Mafia Activity and Its Cost to the Urban Life of Palermo
I came to Palermo ten days before the inauguration of Manifesta 12 to get to know
the city a bit better before the opening rush. After I settled into my accommodation in Via
Vittorio Emanuele, one of the main streets of the old part of the city, my regular walks among
the magnificent but partially abandoned buildings of the historical centre allowed me to
observe the history and the transformation of the city in the last decades, thanks to the anti-
Mafia movement. In Palermo and Sicily as a whole, the Mafia's bloody activities and the
connivance of corrupt governors have done significant damage to every part of the island,
without exception, for many decades. Therefore, it is not possible to evaluate Palermo’s
development in any fields—be it cultural, artistic, urban, economic or political—without
considering the Mafia’s impact. Especially, it is impossible to read the mutual relationship
of Manifesta with the city's governors by ignoring this historical context.
The Mafia’s presence in Sicily dates back to the Neapolitan Bourbons rule in the
period 1815–60460, and since then it has played a key socio-economic and political role on
the island, although its composition and activity has changed over time. Following the decline
of feudalism after 1812, barons and nobles left their lands to tenants called gaballotti to
cultivate. Meanwhile, the Mafioso started to emerge so as to secure these lands and ensure
communication between peasants and gaballotti.461 The fact that 93% of the vast lands that
were auctioned to cover the debts of the new nation-state after the Risorgimento were
purchased by a clique of elites who were already rich462 indicates how historical and chronic
the unequal distribution of wealth and the associated mafia activity in Sicily is.
The destruction of many palaces and residences in the historical part of the city after
World War II and the abandonment of these places to their fate by their noble owners led to
dramatic change in the historical centre of the city. The descriptions by Jane Schneider and
460 Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider, “The Sack of Two Cities: Organized Crime and Political Corruption in
Youngstown and Palermo”, in Corruption: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Dieter Haller and Chris Shore
(London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2005), 31.
461 Baris Cayli, “Renewing Criminalized and Hegemonic Cultural Landscapes”, Critical Criminology 22 (2014):
581.
462 Jane Schneider & Peter Schneider, Reversible Destiny: Mafia, Antimafia, and the Struggle for Palermo
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 26.
179
Peter Schneider of the post-war era are similar to those I observed while walking on the
streets of the old city half a century later:
Bombing raids also affected popular neighborhoods of the historic centre where
precarious buildings, at risk of collapse, were either demolished or stabilized by a
dense crisscrossing of long wooden beams. Meanwhile, vibrant informal uses of
space proliferated. Immigrants from Africa and Asia moved into the condemned
buildings; cloisters and courtyards were turned into parking lots, depots for
construction materials and stolen goods, or artisans’ noisy workshops; and empty
quarters of all kinds lent themselves to prostitution and the retail sale of drugs.463
The exodus from the historic centre paved the way for an uncontrolled urban
expansion in the city’s rich agricultural hinterland which was led by an alliance of city
administrators and the Mafia between the mid-1950s and 1970s. This became known as the
Sack of Palermo, as it turned the city into “a national symbol of the ravages of uncontrolled
speculative development”.464 According to criminologist Vincenzo Scalia, the Mafia’s
production of new urban space was based on two aspects. The first one involved emptying
the historical centre and relocating the population in newly built apartments on former
agricultural lands, which Scalia calls the displacement. The second one was based on the
destruction of the former cultural, professional and domestic networks constituting local
identity, which he terms anonymization.465 These two processes caused the city to lose its
vitality in an abandoned city centre, and Palermitans to lose their sense of belonging to the
city, which paved the way for the hegemony of the Mafia.
The hot money acquired from drug trafficking also had an important share in both
urban transformation and the increase in the economic power of the Mafia.466 But the
hegemonic power of the Mafia was not just due to brute force and economic power. One of
the most important pillars of this domination was preventing the improvement of educational
conditions and cultural life, which established the Mafia’s cultural hegemony and reinforced
463 Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider, “The Sack of Two Cities”, 35.
464 Judith Chubb, “The Social Bases of an Urban Political Machine: The Case of Palermo”, Political Science
Quarterly 96, no. 1 (1981): 117. For a detailed study on the emergence of the Mafia as an entrepreneur in this
period, see Judith Chubb, Patronage, Power, and Poverty in Southern Italy: A Tale of Two Cities (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982), especially Part II.
465 Vincenzo Scalia, “The Production of the Mafioso Space: A Spatial Analysis of the Sack of Palermo”, Trends in
Organized Crime (2020).
466 See John Dickie, Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 277–
84; Letizia Paoli, Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style (New York: Oxford University Press,
2003), 144–46 and 215–17. A recent study reveals how high the economic cost of the Mafia is in Southern Italy,
where Mafia activity is common. Mafia activity in Apulia and Basilicata, for example, lowered GDP per capita by
16%. Paolo Pinotti, “The Economic Costs of Organized Crime: Evidence from Southern Italy”, The Economic
Journal 125, no. 586 (2015): 203–32.
180
the society's dependency on it. Data provided by Enzo Lo Dato, the then Executive Director
of the Sicilian Renaissance Institute, illustrates this doom and gloom situation conspicuously:
“In 1992-93, […] 58% percent of the schools were located in rented private apartments (as
opposed to 42 percent housed in buildings belonging to the City or other public
institutions)”.467 In parallel, the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission's report in 1994
revealed that the cost of a school pupil per annum in southern Italy was US $ 3,000, more
than double the cost in the north (US $ 1,380).468 As we will see on the following pages,
education would be one of the most important issues in Palermo's restoration efforts, and
would form the basis of Manifesta's active and comprehensive educational programme.
The contemporary anti-Mafia movement began to make a splash from the early
1980s, and in 1992 it peaked after the assassination of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo
Borsellino, two of the magistrates of the criminal trial, known as the Maxi Trial, which had
resulted in the punishment of hundreds of Mafiosi. An organized grassroots anti-Mafia fight
was also ignited at that time.469 Meanwhile, Leoluca Orlando, a key figure in Palermo's anti-
Mafia struggle, had become the city's mayor. Taking office for his first term in 1985, he
implemented anti-Mafia policies particularly during his second tenure that started in 1993,
which would later be called the "Palermo Renaissance". During his latest tenure in the 2010s,
he put in a bid to host Manifesta. By prioritizing culture, art and education, he tried to break
the dominance of the Mafia over the Sicilian identity and to instil self-reliance and motivation
in people.470
467 Enzo Lo Dato, “Palermo’s Cultural Revolution and the Renewal Project of the City Administration.”
Symposium on the Role of Civil Society in Countering Organized Crime: Global Implications of the Palermo,
Sicily Renaissance, Palermo, Sicily, December 2000. Trends in Organized Crime: Sicilian Perspectives 5, no. 3
(1999): 21.
468 Alison Jamieson, The Antimafia: Italy’s Fight Against Organized Crime, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999),
148.
469 For an early study written prior to Falcone and Borsellino's assassination that assessed the anti-Mafia
movement and possibilities of the 1980s, see Filippo Sabetti, “The Mafia and the Antimafia: Moments in the
Struggle for Justice and Self-governance in Sicily”, Italian Politics 4 (1990): 174–95. For more extensive work on
the contemporary anti-Mafia movement, see, Jane Schneider and Peter Schneider, “From Peasant Wars to Urban
‘Wars’: The Anti-Mafia Movement in Palermo”, in Between History and Histories: The Making of Silences and
Commemorations, ed. Gerald Sider and Gavin Smith (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press,
1997), 230–62; Jane Schneider & Peter Schneider, Reversible Destiny, Ch 7 & 8; Alison Jamieson, The Antimafia.
470 For Laura Bacon and Rushda Majeed’s series of studies that evaluate Orlando’s policies executed between
1993 and 2000 in the light of interviews made with Orlando’s officers, see Laura Bacon and Rushda Majeed,
“Palermo Renaissance Part 1: Rebuilding Civic Identity and Reclaiming a City from The Mafia in Italy, 1993 –
2000”, paper in the series Innovations for Successful Societies (Princeton: Princeton University, 2012); Laura
Bacon and Rushda Majeed, “Palermo Renaissance Part 2: Reforming City Hall, 1993 – 2000”, paper in the series
Innovations for Successful Societies (Princeton: Princeton University, 2012); Laura Bacon and Rushda Majeed,
“Palermo Renaissance Part 3: Strenghtening Municipal Services, 1993 – 2000”, paper in the series Innovations for
Successful Societies (Princeton: Princeton University, 2012). Leoluca Orlando’s biographical book also provides
important data on this issue: Leoluca Orlando, Fighting the Mafia and Renewing Sicilian Culture (San Francisco:
Encounter Books, 2001). Moreover, for the cultural war between the state authorities and the Mafia, see Carina
181
Manifesta and the Urban Revitalization Policies
Without doubt, the efforts to revitalize Palermo were not only due to the intention
of the mayor or the transformative power of culture and art. The transformation of the city
started with the arrival of national and international investments, hypermarkets and renowned
shopping brands after the positive atmosphere created by the new city plan and diverse
revitalization programmes accompanying the anti-Mafia movement that started in the 1990s.
For example, from 2009 to 2015, eight shopping mall projects were initiated in the
metropolitan area of Palermo—four of which have since been completed.471 In this process,
the efforts of the Mafia to enter the new city economy as an "investor" and the infiltration in
the legal economy should not be ignored.472
The structural transformation in conjunction with Orlando's belief in cultural
tourism constituted the background of the city's bid for Manifesta. It is important to note that,
in 2018, Palermo was the Italian Capital of Culture and hosted Manifesta, marking the point
where Orlando's dreams of revitalizing the city through culture and arts had been reached.
Looking at the issue from Manifesta’s perspective, it can be seen that selecting
Palermo as the host city was felicitous in many ways. First, Palermo’s lights and shadows,
its rich, eclectic culture shaped through centuries of cross-cultural encounters on the one
hand, and the destruction caused by the Mafia on the other, made the city an attractive site
for Manifesta’s rhetoric. Moreover, especially after Zurich, the selection of a place more in
line with its rhetoric would preserve the validity of the Manifesta brand. In this context,
Mayor Orlando's desire to introduce Palermo to the world through international cultural
events facilitated the alliance between Manifesta and the local government. Another
facilitating factor for Manifesta was the fact that the city had already started organizing many
art events within the framework of the Italian Capital of Culture.
Gunnarson, Cultural Warfare and Trust: Fighting the Mafia in Palermo (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2008).
471 Simone Tulumello, “Questioning the Universality of Institutional Transformation Theories in Spatial Planning:
Shopping Mall Developments in Palermo”, International Planning Studies 20, no. 4 (2015): 378.
472 See Michele Riccardi, Cristina Soriani and Valentina Giampietri, “Mafia Infiltration in Legitimate Companies
in Italy: From Traditional Sectors to Emerging Businesses”, in Organized Crime in European Businesses, ed.
Ernesto U. Savona, Michele Riccardi and Giulia Berlusconi (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2016), 119–40;
Stefano Caneppele, Michele Riccardi and Priscilla Standridge, “Green Energy and Black Economy: Mafia
Investments in the Wind Power Sector in Italy”, Crime, Law and Social Change 59, (2013): 319–39.
182
Manifesta director Hedwig Fijen also underlined the city's expectations from
Manifesta in her catalogue text:
It was rather challenging to accept the offer of Mayor Leoluca Orlando and City
Councillor for Culture Andrea Cusumano to host Manifesta 12 in Palermo. They
specifically asked me if Manifesta could help create instruments for Palermo’s
citizens to claim back their own city, which had been dominated by non-democratic
forces for many decades, intoxicating the urban commons of Palermo. […] Having
always been site-specific and experimental in its selection of host cities and
curatorial models, the complexity of working in an urban environment like Palermo
prompted Manifesta to again invent a new research methodology: the urban study.473
The urban study, which Fijen put forward as a new research methodology, was no
stranger to Manifesta, as I have shown in Part II. During its second decade, Manifesta
prepared editions focusing on the urban, architecture and education and supported cities that
had been in transition to become creative cities. As I have discussed in Chapter Five in detail,
Manifesta engaged with the urban problems of the cities it set up throughout the first decade
of the 2000s, in accordance with the regional programmes of local administrators. This
engagement was strongly evident in the Palermo case; Manifest opened the doors of spaces
such as Palazzo Butera, Teatro Garibaldi, Palazzo Ajutamichristo, Palazzo Constantino and
Palazzo Forte de Seta, which had remained idle in the historic centre and had been closed to
the public for a long time, by establishing a garden in the most dangerous zone of Palermo,
the social housing district ZEN (Zona Espansione Nord), and by making Pizzo Sella—also
known as the "hill of shame" because of its incomplete buildings and illegal housing
explosion due to great speculation since the late 1970s—one of its venues.
The research that Fijen tries to conceptualize as an urban study refers to the
commission Manifesta gave to Rem Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)
for urban investigation of Palermo. The book, entitled Palermo Atlas, was prepared under
the leadership of Palermo-born OMA architect Ippolito Pestellini Laparetti, who was also a
part of Manifesta 12's curatorial team. It brought together research on different layers of the
city. The idea was that this work would remain to serve the city and its administration after
Manifesta 12. In addition, by including architect Andrés Jacque, the founder of the Office of
Political Innovation, as curator, and Brussels-based Rotor and Paris-based Coloco
architecture offices and Palermitan architect-scholar Roberto Collovà as participant artists,
Manifesta strengthened its focus on investigating Palermo's urban spaces.
After three editions with single curators, Manifesta returned to the initial curatorial
team model (also called “creative mediators”); Manifesta 12’s curatorial team consisted of
473 Hedwig Fijen, “The Biennial Beyond the Exhibition: Embracing Multiple Time Zones and Impacts of
Manifesta 12”, in Palermo Atlas, ed. Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli (Milano: Humboldt Books, 2018), 8.
183
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli (IT), Bregtje van der Haak (NL), Mirjam Varadinis (CH) and
Andrés Jaque (SP). They selected the theme of the biennial, The Planetary Garden:
Cultivating Coexistence, by taking inspiration from Palermo's centuries-old botanic garden
Orto Botanico where many plants from different parts of the world coexist, and from
landscape architect and participating artist Gilles Clément's environmental manifesto “The
Planetary Garden”.474 The three main categories of the biennial are described as such:
Garden of Flows explores toxicity, plant life and the culture of gardening in relation
to the transnational commons in Orto Botanico. Out of Control Room investigates
power in today’s regime of global flows. City on Stage builds on existing
opportunities in the centre and the outskirts of Palermo to further develop the
existing plans that are stuck somehow and have not been fully realised. Productive
collaborations can act as a catalyst and possibly extend into future and long-term
initiatives in Palermo.475
The subject of education, which had been another important deficiency of the city,
was an area where Manifesta had gained experience since its seventh edition (Trentino -
South Tyrol). In addition to the other projects of the Education Department, going to the
slums of the city with a modified bus and organizing various artistic activities with children
also came about because of Manifesta's ability to use this experience effectively. The results
of the survey, which I discuss later, matches with this observation that Manifesta's curatorial
preferences, venue selection and education programme was appreciated by both Palermitan
and international audiences.
From this perspective, Manifesta as a multiculturalist, consensual and European
project was tailor-made to make visible and augment Orlando's policies. As Nathalie
Zonnenberg notes, although Mayor Orlando and the city administrators did not select the
curatorial team, the curators' choices and conceptual framework were in line with local
policies.476 Orlando ignored a decree issued by the then Minister of the Interior Matteo
Salvini that banned an approaching rescue ship carrying hundreds of refugees from docking
in Italy by allowing it to come into Palermo port—just before Manifesta's inauguration. This
event gave more prominence to the theme and practices of Manifesta. From the other side,
although the working conditions were challenging at times, the strong support it received
from the local authorities and their long experience with urban regeneration and art mediation
474 Gilles Clément, "The Planetary Garden" and Other Writings, trans. Sandra Morris (Pennsylvania: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2015).
475 “Planetary Garden: Cultivating Coexistence,” Manifesta 12 website, accessed Dec. 19, 2020,
http://m12.manifesta.org/planetary-garden/.
476 Nathalie Zonnenberg, “A Planetary Garden in Palermo: Manifesta 12 as Ambassador for the New Politics of
Aesthetics?”, On-Curating 46 (2020): 368–77. https://on-curating.org/issue-46-reader/a-planetary-garden-inpalermo-
manifesta-12-as-ambassador-for-the-new-politics-of-aesthetics.html#.X65oPMj0mUk .
184
made things easier for the biennial. In addition, Manifesta had the opportunity to shut down
criticism of not having been political and critical enough in its last editions. Journalist Janelle
Zara summarizes this mutual relationship between Manifesta and the city administrators very
well:
There’s an obvious resonance between the biennial and Palermo’s political agenda.
In his campaign to declare mobility as an inalienable human right, mayor Orlando
has been at odds with growing European sentiments towards stemming the tide of
migration and sealing off borders. While “Manifesta is a biennial, not the U.N.,”
Laparelli concedes, he calls Palermo Atlas a master plan, and the resulting exhibits
its “prototypes”—scalable, repeatable, and applicable.477
Before concluding this section, it is necessary to underline one more point. The main
sponsor of the biennial was the Sisal Group, Italy's largest gambling company. More
interestingly, Sisal had no connection with contemporary art before sponsoring Manifesta. In
fact, apart from the support it had given to the Piccolo Teatro in Milan since 2009, Sisal had
never sponsored a project in the fields of art and culture. This new sponsorship was the result
of a scenario analysis that Sisal had commissioned the market research firm Ipsos to carry
out; this predicted that the art market would expand 70% on a sectoral basis by 2026. Yet,
Italy remained a minor market in the world "due to bad management and to the lack of a
'National system' that can support the sector".478 According to this analysis, “Italian artists
are not quite active in the world market”, since:
 Artists get no subsidies, finance or sponsorship
 Training & education appear inadequate in the world market
 They are not very proactive. They have to be helped to develop their image and
relational networks
 Italian art seems to be driven more by the legacy of its past, with little awareness
of avant-garde ideas.479
It also added that “92% of the artists agree with the intervention of companies in
Italian contemporary art”.480 Ipsos’ analysis further showed that, in Italy, public support for
art is weak, artists are very willing to be promoted by private companies and there is an
477 Janelle Zara, “Manifesta 12 Uses Art and Architecture to Make Powerful Social Commentary”, Metropolis
Magazine, July 11, 2018, https://www.metropolismag.com/design/arts-culture/manifesta-12-review/ .
478 See “The State of Contemporary Art”, Report of a Research Conducted by Ipsos, accessed Dec. 21, 2020.
https://www.sisal.com/documents/94028/337527/Sisal_Ricerca_Ipsos.pdf/ab884873-6a14-4829-84f8-
41576b85d3b6.
479 Ibid.
480 Ibid.
185
expectation of rapid sectoral growth within a decade. In these conditions, Sisal decided to
invest in Manifesta 12. Therefore, Sisal's interest in Manifesta derived from the biennial's
brand capacity and the assumption that investing in it could be a good starting point for its
future investments in the art market and for improving its image—rather than an appreciation
of the content of the Manifesta project. With this impetus, Sisal invested 500,000 euros in
Manifesta.481 In addition, Sisal sponsored two exhibitions including the works of Italian
artists at Palazzo Drago as part of Manifesta 12's collateral events.
Audience Responses to Manifesta 12
Feverish preparations at the venues and the Teatro Garibaldi to impress the
approximately 4000 accredited guests of the preview lasted until the last minute before the
inauguration. The first week of the biennial, including the preview days, is a time when the
initial evaluations are made, art critics collect materials for their reviews, and networks are
expanded; with visitors roaming around the city looking for the venues with maps in their
hands. Although this first week is crucial for how a biennial will be reviewed by critics, it is
not possible to evaluate the relationship that the biennial establishes with local people based
on this short time period. Therefore, I decided to conduct my survey at a quieter time and
concentrated instead on attending as many events as possible (e.g. performances, talks, and
openings of collateral events) during this opening week.
There are more than 200 biennials being run in the world nowadays, yet there are
almost no independent studies evaluating how they are perceived by audiences and what kind
of criticisms their audiences have. Although Manifesta has commissioned various surveys
(some of which are publicly shared) in order to measure its added value and advertise impact
analysis to cities that will bid for later editions, these have focused more on audiences’ social
profiles and their economic contribution to the city, and not on their evaluation of
exhibitions.482 A similar commission was given to Fondazione Fitzcarraldo for an impact
assessment of Manifesta 12, but the results of this survey have not (yet) been shared with the
public. The survey I administered to the audience focused instead on eliciting what they
thought of Manifesta as a biennial, and how Manifesta 12 was perceived. In other words, my
goal was to listen to the voices of the local audience members, the least-heard stakeholder of
481 Anonymous Interview with a Manifesta officer. June 29, 2018. Palermo.
482 See Harald Pechlaner, Giulia Dal Bò, and Sabine Pichler, "Differences in Perceived Destination Image and
Event Satisfaction among Cultural Visitors: The Case of the European Biennial of Contemporary Art ‘Manifesta
7’," Event Management 17, no. 2 (2013): 123–33; Kuleva, “Transgressing the Borders”; Weingartner, “Manifesta
11 Final Report”.
186
the biennials.483 A total of 373 visitors filled in my questionnaire between 3 and 29 July in
the Orto Botanico, Palazzo Butera, Palazzo Ajutamichristo, Palazzo Constantino and Palazzo
Forte de Seta.
Questions concerned the demographic, sociological and economic profiles of the
participant visitors and their proximity to the arts, a number of statements I had prepared for
Manifesta 12, and a series of anonymized statements—partly converted into their negative
versions—made by Manifesta's managers or curators in previous editions to describe the
biennial (see appendix E and F).
It is useful to first look at respondents’ profiles. In the general audience category,
56% of the participants defined themselves as female, 42.9% as male, 0.9% as non-binary
and 0.2% as transsexual, and the average age was 36.52. Looking at the educational status,
20.3% of the participants were non-university graduates whereas 79.7% of them held either
a university or higher degree. When we look at the economic profiles of the participants,
69.5% had a monthly income of 2000 euros or less. While the proportion who defined
themselves as art professionals (artists, curators, art dealers, art critics, art instructors etc.)
was 38.3%, the proportion of those who stated that they had a creative practice was 61.4%.
64.6% of the participants stated that they had attended at least one biennial before, but only
12% had been to at least one of the previous editions of Manifesta. 43.8% of people had
already visited Galleria d'Arte Moderna Sant'Anna and Museo Riso, Palermo's modern and
contemporary art museums, before their visit to Manifesta (Figure 9).
When looking at the profile of the Palermitan audience, one can see important
differences in some parameters. In this category, the proportion of female participants rose
to 64% and the average age to 37.8, while the proportion of those with a university or higher
degree decreased to 71.2%. The average income of the Palermitan audience participating in
the survey was also lower than that of the general audience profile. 82.7% of the Palermitan
audiences had a monthly income equal to or lower than 2000 euros. The proportion of those
who defined themselves as art professionals decreased to 22.7%, and the proportion of those
who stated that they have a creative practice dropped to 53.2%. The percentage of
Palermitans who declared that they had participated in at least one biennial also fell (to 45%),
and the percentage of Palermitans who had followed at least one of the previous editions of
Manifesta was just 3.6%. Palermitan visitors to Manifesta 12 mostly consisted of those who
483 These questionnaires were prepared in English and Italian and were applied entirely on a voluntary basis. They
were provided by the Manifesta volunteers who checked the tickets at the entrance of the venues to audience
members who wanted to participate. While the total number of participants was 373, the number of Italian
participants was 222, the number of Sicilian participants was 134, and the number of Palermitan participants was
113. Since some of the respondents did not complete the questionnaire and left different questions blank, the
evaluation of each question was based on the percentage of respondents. The rate of those who did not answer the
question is mentioned when meaningful.
187
56
42,9
0,9 0,2
Gender
Female Male
Non-binary Transsexual
20,3
79,7
Education
Non-university Graduates
University or Higher Degree
18
15,7
18,3
17,5
7,7
6,2
2,7
4,7
2,4 6,8
Monthly Income (in Euro)
0 - 500 500 - 1000 1000 - 1500 1500 - 2000
2000 - 2500 2500 - 3000 3000 - 4000 4000 - 5000
38,
3
61,
7
Are you an art
professional
(artist, curator,
art dealer, art
critic, art
instructor etc.)?
Yes No
61,
4
38,
6
Do you have a
creative practice
(i.e. playing an
instrument,
painting etc.)?
Yes No
64,
6
35,
4
Have you ever
been in an art
biennial before?
(Documenta,
Venice etc.)
Yes No
12
88
Have you been in
another edition
of Manifesta
before?
Yes No
Figure 9: General Audience
188
64
36
Gender
Female Male
28,8
71,2
Education
Non-university Graduates
University or Higher Degree
27,9
17,3
18,3
19,2
5,8
3,8
1,9 1,9 1 2,9
Monthly Income (in Euro)
0 - 500 500 - 1000 1000 - 1500 1500 - 2000
2000 - 2500 2500 - 3000 3000 - 4000 4000 - 5000
22,
7
61,
7
Are you an art
professional
(artist, curator, art
dealer, art critic,
art instructor
etc.)?
Yes No
59
46,
8
Do you have a
creative practice
(i.e. playing an
instrument,
painting etc.)?
Yes No
45
35,
4
Have you ever
been in an art
biennial before?
(Documenta,
Venice etc.)
Yes No
3,6
88
Have you been
in another
edition of
Manifesta
before?
Yes No
Figure 10: Palermitan Audience
189
go to local museums. 83.9% of the Palermitan audiences had visited Galleria d'Arte Moderna
Sant'Anna and Museo Riso before (Figure 10).
The survey showed that Manifesta 12's curatorial choices were widely appreciated.
80.3% of the participants agreed with the statement that the curatorial theme choice fits well
with Palermo. This appreciation can also be seen in the Palermitan (78.2%) and Sicilian
(78.5%) subsets. Similarly, the proportion of those agreeing with the statement that M12 is
curated well in terms of theme, artist and venue selection and display stood out at 66.6%
(Palermitan 58.5% and Sicilian 57.85%) (Table 1). These reactions can be explained by the
significant support enjoyed by Mayor Orlando's policies on issues such as irregular
migration, multiculturalism and climate change, which Manifesta also supported. In other
words, Manifesta's curatorial and artistic preferences can be seen as visualizations of the
policies of Orlando, whose approval ratings had been consistently high and who was in his
fifth tenure as of 2018. Therefore, it is not surprising that Manifesta 12 was the edition with
the strongest political discourse of the whole third decade.484
484 On the other hand, Evan Moffitt, for example, claims that although the political tone of the biennial was high,
this did not lead to good art in every case. Evan Moffitt, “Manifesta 12: The Dark Heart of the Biennial Shows
Human Suffering Out of Control”, Frieze, June 19, 2018, accessed Nov. 11, 2020,
https://www.frieze.com/article/manifesta-12-dark-heart-biennial-shows-human-suffering-out-control.
Table 1 - Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire (Curatorial Strategies)
M12’s curatorial theme choice
(Planetary Garden: Cultivating
Coexistence) fits well with Palermo
M12 is curated well in terms of
theme, artist and venue selection
and display
General
(%)
Palermitan
(%)
Sicilian
(%)
General
(%)
Palermitan
(%)
Sicilian
(%)
Strongly
Disagree
2.2 1 0 2.4 3.7 6.7
Disagree 3 3.6 0 10.2 12.3 6.7
Neutral 14.4 17.3 20 20.7 25.5 33.3
Agree 49.3 52.7 55 49.2 44.3 46.7
Strongly
Agree
31 25.4 25 17.4 14.2 6.7
190
Selecting venues such as the ZEN district, Pizzo Sella and a number of abandoned
palaces of the historical centre matched the logic and goals of revitalizing Palermo and were
highly appreciated by audiences searching for alternatives to the white cube. Did Manifesta's
selection of these deprived and run-down spaces accelerate the gentrification of the historical
centre of the city? The local artists I interviewed on the subject underlined that gentrification
in Palermo started well before Manifesta. They all reported that many houses, especially
those located in the historical centre and formerly rented out to poor people and migrants at
a cheap price, started to be renovated and opened up for tourism through Airbnb long ago.
A recent study confirms this observation. According to this study comparing 13
important cities across Italy, Palermo appears to be the place where Airbnb penetration is the
highest, despite the fact that it has the lowest per-capita income of these cities, alongside
Naples.485
The positive opinions among the general audience about whether Manifesta 12 dealt
enough with local, regional and European problems outweighed the negatives. While the
proportion of supporters of the statement that Manifesta 12 deals with crucial problems of
Europe was 65.1%, it dropped to 46.4% when the statement was limited to Palermo
(Manifesta 12 deals with crucial problems of Palermo). Palermitans’ positive responses to
these two statements were less, at 56% and 41.3%, respectively. Comparing these results
with the proportions of those who responded negatively to these statements (10.3% and
22.6% among general participants, and 14.7% and 31.2% among Palermitans, respectively),
it can be seen that especially the Palermitans were not completely convinced that Manifesta
12 touched upon Palermo's crucial problems. The statement that Manifesta 12 helps to rethink
the North-South divide of Europe via art garnered 53.9% positive responses among the
general audience. Palermitans also viewed this statement positively, in similar proportions
(52.4% positive versus 19% negative) (Table 2). When we think of these results
comparatively, we can see a partial contradiction between the belief that Manifesta is a
European biennial and reflects the main troubles of Europe and that Manifesta does not
consider Palermo's issues. This contradiction makes sense when we recall the popular selfidentification
of Palermitans: Palermo is the poor man of Europe.
A similar trend can be seen in statements related to Manifesta's target audience and
tourism impact. The statement that The target audience of Manifesta 12 seems more
international than local was agreed with by 62.5% of the general participants, while the
proportion of those who found this statement incorrect was 8.1%. These proportions do not
change much in the subset of Palermitan audience (57.7% and 9%, respectively). 52.6% of
the general audience and 70.6% of the Palermitan audience agreed with the statement that
The most important impact of M12 upon Palermo will be the increase in tourism (Table 3).
485 Paolo Roma, Umberto Panniello and Giovanna Lo Nigro, “Sharing Economy and Incumbents’ Pricing Strategy:
The Impact of Airbnb on the Hospitality Industry”, International Journal of Production Economics 214, (2019):
17–29.
191
Table 2 - Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire (Europe)
M12 deals with crucial
problems of Europe
M12 deals with crucial
problems of Palermo
M12 helps to rethink the
North-South divide of
Europe via art
General
(%)
Palermitan
(%)
General
(%)
Palermitan
(%)
General
(%)
Palermitan
(%)
Strongly
Disagree
3.6 6.4 9.2 13.8 6.3 9.7
Disagree 6.7 8.3 13.4 17.4 10.2 9.7
Neutral 24.6 29.4 31 27.5 29.6 29.1
Agree 43.8 37.6 36.6 34 38.6 40.8
Strongly
Agree
21.2 18.3 9.8 7.3 15.3 12.6
Table 3 - Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire (Tourism)
The target audience of M12
seems more international than
local
The most important impact of M12
upon Palermo will be the increase in
tourism
General (%) Palermitan
(%)
General (%) Palermitan (%)
Strongly
Disagree
0.6 0,9 3 0
Disagree 7.6 8.1 13.6 5.5
Neutral 29.4 33.3 30.4 23.9
Agree 40.3 25.1 37.3 49.5
Strongly
Agree
22.1 22.5 15.6 21.1
192
Furthermore, the statement Manifesta 12 will leave an indelible mark in the art and cultural
lives of Palermo was supported by 50.9% of the general audience and 52.3% of the
Palermitan audience. The statement that Manifesta 12's collateral events and the 5x5x5
program enrich encounters between local and global statement was approved by 45.5% of
the respondents in the general audience, but it is worth mentioning that 48.1% ticked the
neutral choice and 58 people did not respond to this question (15.6% of the total number of
participants). Although support for this statement among Palermitans was 56.3%, this
percentage decreases to 51.3% if those who left this question blank (9.7%) are included in
the calculation. This means that almost half of the Palermitans did not support this
statement. (Table 4). Therefore, in the eyes of both the Palermitan and the general
audiences, Manifesta is seen as an activity that primarily serves to attract an international
audience / tourists to Palermo and with the aid of this effort, revitalizes Palermo's art and
cultural lives. Its side programmes, on the other hand, were not appreciated much by the
audience.
A special place in the survey was devoted to responses to Manifesta spotlighting the
infamous Palermo ZEN district because of its peculiar position in Palermo’s history. The is
a social housing complex that has been abandoned to poverty for many years, and deprived
of basic services and ultimately human rights. It is a symbolic place where the history of
urban sprawl, criminality, and new urban regeneration policies intersect. Construction started
at the end of the 1950s and was completed in the 1980s with the most well-known ZEN 2
district. Populated by the poor and abandoned by politics, the vast majority of housing units
Table 4 - Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire (Impact on the Local)
M12 will leave an indelible mark
in the art and cultural lives of
Palermo
M12’s collateral events and the 5x5x5
programme enrich encounters between
local and global
General (%) Palermitan (%) General (%) Palermitan (%)
Strongly
Disagree
6.5 8.4 3.5 1.9
Disagree 9.8 8.4 2.9 1.9
Neutral 32.8 30.4 48 39.8
Agree 37 32.7 36 42.7
Strongly
Agree
13.9 19.6 9.6 13.6
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were allocated in an unregulated manner, and social facilities were neglected.486 Zen’s
utopian architecture was turned into a dystopian landscape. The project of establishing a
collective garden with the residents of ZEN, which Manifesta initiated jointly with landscape
designer Gilles Clément and Paris-based multidisciplinary design studio Coloco, was carried
out with the Zen Insieme Association, a local initiative which had been developing
participatory projects in ZEN for a long time. According to a Manifesta officer I met in
Palermo, almost all of the Manifesta crew initially opposed the idea of going to ZEN.
Although the garden was destroyed after the project started, the interviewee described the
idea of going to ZEN as "a wise choice".487 According to scholar Elke Krasny, who reads this
ZEN experience through the concept of “precarious commons”, these kinds of caretaking
activities should be viewed as vulnerable yet positive efforts because they instil hope in future
change.488 This approach is in line with seeing co-production as forming the basis for further
developments rather than seeking a consensus from the beginning and setting goals.489 As
Pool and Pahl stresses, “consensus is not co-production” and not enough for producing a
meaningful relation among participants.490
According to the survey, the "cultivating coexistence" approach, which Manifesta
adopted in both the ZEN garden and the Orto Botanico, was another issue viewed positively
by the audience. The statement that Manifesta 12 suggests new perspectives on the ecological
crisis was supported by 51.6% of the general audience and 53.3% of the Palermitan audience,
while endorsement of the statement that Manifesta 12's education and meditation programme
functions well in terms of raising the awareness of people about ecology and contemporary
art was measured at 47.7% and 49.5%, respectively (Table 5).
486 “[…] the provision of services was largely ignored in practice; in fact, according to an overall estimate, there is
a deficit in facilities (including schools, gardens and leisure facilities, social and cultural facilities) of 11.13 square
metres per inhabitant. Only 6.87 square metres per inhabitant is provided, compared with the national guidelines
of 18 square metres. […] only about 2% of ZEN housing units have been allocated according to the rules”. Giulia
Bonafede and Francesco Lo Piccolo, “Participative Planning Processes in the Absence of the (Public) Space of
Democracy”, Planning Practice & Research 25, no. 3 (2010): 357–59.
487 Anonymous Interview with a Manifesta officer. June 29, 2018. Palermo.
488 Elke Krasny, “Precarious Commons: An Urban Garden for Uncertain Times”, in Commoning the City:
Empirical Perspectives on Urban Ecology, Economics and Ethics, eds. Derya Özkan, Güldem Baykal
Büyüksaraç (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2020), 177–92.
489 Steve Pool and Kate Pahl, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Co-production”, in After Urban
Regeneration: Communities, Policy and Place, eds., Dave O’Brien and Peter Matthews (Bristol: Policy Press,
2015), 79–94.
490 Ibid., 91.
194
Yet, the deprivation of ZEN residents of basic services and rights, and the obstacles
hindering their participation in actively and positively reshaping their living environment
need more than this kind of symbolic intervention. Bonafede and Lo Piccolo, who question
the possibility of consensus-based planning processes in ZEN where Arendtian political
space is absent, summarize the situation as of 2010 as such:
Who are the inhabitants and why do they not appear in the public arena? The
answers are complex: some inhabitants play the role assigned by the media, others
are not interested in the public sphere because of their unsatisfied primary needs,
and others are simply subjugated by the Mafia. As a consequence, they are seldom
given the opportunity to voice their experiences, stories, needs and desires, due to
multiple factors of mainstream disengagement, which are social, economic,
linguistic, cultural and spatial. […] This also highlights the city administration’s
predominant interest in keeping the ZEN residents in a permanent state of exclusion,
to stop them entering the political arena and to use them as a subjugated underclass
in order to be exploited only during electoral campaigns.491
When we consider the fact that, from the time these determinations were made to
2018, the major change in the ZEN district was the erection of a shopping mall, bringing art
491 Giulia Bonafede and Francesco Lo Piccolo, “Participative Planning Processes in the Absence of the (Public)
Space of Democracy”, 367.
Table 5 - Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire (Ecology)
M12 suggests new
perspectives on the
ecological crises
M12’s education and mediation programme
functions well in terms of raising the
awareness of people about ecology and
contemporary art
General
(%)
Palermitan
(%)
General (%) Palermitan (%)
Strongly
Disagree
4.2 5.8 5.5 8.6
Disagree 14 8.6 8.9 9.5
Neutral 30.1 30.8 37.8 32.4
Agree 39.7 37.5 37.2 40
Strongly
Agree
11.9 17.3 10.5 9.5
195
to the district was symbolically important yet far from enough, since more structural solutions
were required. Palermo-based artist Stefania Galegati Shines draws attention to this situation:
"I wonder if it [Manifesta’s garden at ZEN] is really useful to the neighborhood, or whether
it would be better to work on it a bit longer and maybe more in depth".492 It is worth
highlighting in this context that the Manifesta office in Teatro Garibaldi was burgled twice,
including in the opening week, and according to one Manifesta officer, these burglaries were
likely related to the Mafia.
Unlike the Zurich edition, there is a wide distribution of participant nationalities.
The 51 artists493 included in the main programme hailed from 23 countries. The average age
of participating artists was 44.1, and the number of artists under 35 was 12 (24.5%).494 The
number of Italian artists participating in Manifesta 12 was 13 (25%), while the number of
Palermitan artists was only 2 (3.8%). Especially the low number of Palermitan artists and the
establishment of an indirect relationship with the local art scene within the framework of
collateral events were widely criticized by local artists and gallery owners I talked to. A local
curator I interviewed, who was also a co-curator of one of the Manifesta collateral events,
stated that 10 to 15 local artists and curators who felt excluded from Manifesta held meetings
to organize an exhibition called Occulta: In Absentia Manifesta (Occult: In the Absence of
Manifesta) with a reference to Salon des Refusés, but this project could not be realized
because some of them were later hired by Manifesta and some lost their will to do it later
on.495
According to one Palermitan artist, the reason why Manifesta was not widely
criticized was that it had incorporated all critical local art scene actors into its structure. This
artist also stressed that those hired by Manifesta began to view themselves as more important
than other locals, resembling the mechanism of “colonial authority”.496 A participant artist
reported a similar observation but from another angle. She stated that she had observed how
492 Barbara Casavecchia, “Manifesta 12: Palermo From a Local’s Perspective”, Frieze (June 14, 2018).
https://www.frieze.com/article/manifesta-12-palermo-locals-perspective .
493 The numbers of members in the artist groups were as follows: Fallen Fruit (2), Cooking Sections (2), Forensic
Oceanography (2), Masbedo (2), Coloco (3) and Invernomuto (2). Peng! Collective and Rotor have many and
variable members, therefore both counted as one. Therefore, even though 44 artists and art collectives were
included in the main programme, the total number of participating artists was counted as 51 in the calculations.
494 Peng! Collective and Rotor were not included in these calculations. Therefore, the results were calculated for 49
artists.
495 Anonymous Interview. July 18, 2018. Palermo.
496 Anonymous Interview, June 28, 2018. Palermo.
196
some of the Manifesta officers dictated to their local partners how things should work in an
arrogant way, exemplifying a colonial logic.497
This dissatisfaction can also be traced through the survey. Although the statement
The proportion of Italian artists in Manifesta 12 is convincing was supported by 26% of the
general audience, the rate of those who did not agree was 18.3%. The biggest share of this
question (55.7%) was taken by those who remained neutral. Additionally, it is important to
mention that 39 people (10.5%) did not answer the question. These rates were similar in the
Palermitan, Sicilian and Italian audience subcategories as well. For Palermitans, the rate of
agreeing, disagreeing and being neutral with the statement were 25.7%, 16.2% and 58%,
respectively, with 8 people (7%) not responding. These proportions for Sicilians were as
follow: 24.2%, 15% and 60.8% with 14 non-responses. Among Italians, 23.2% agreed with
the statement whereas 17.9% disagreed and 48.7% were neutral. The number of nonresponses
increased to 23 (10.3%) (Table 6).
To sum up, Manifesta 12 was organized as part of the social, cultural and urban
policies of Palermo's incumbent political administrators and developed a curatorial and
artistic strategy in accordance with their perspective. As I have argued throughout the
chapter, compared to the previous two editions, Manifesta 12’s critical standpoint did not
stem from a dissensual but a consensual relationship established with the host city. In fact,
Mayor Orlando’s abovementioned political position led Manifesta to make room for more
political works, to designate abandoned palaces as venues, and to organize an effective art
mediation programme. I have also argued in this chapter that although Palermitans showed
their satisfaction with Manifesta’s potential for attracting tourists and organizing activities in
diverse parts of the city, they also observed that Manifesta targeted international visitors more
than local audiences.
497 Anonymous Interview, June 18, 2018. Palermo.
Table 6 - Evaluation of Manifesta Questionnaire (Representation of Italian Artists)
The proportion of Italian artists in M12 is convincing
General (%) Palermitan
(%)
Sicilian (%) Italian (%)
Strongly Disagree 4.2 2.9 2.5 4.5
Disagree 14.1 11.3 12.5 15.6
Neutral 55.7 58.1 60.8 54.8
Agree 21.8 23.8 22.5 21.6
Strongly Agree 4.2 1.9 1.7 3.5
197
In the next section, I analyze the third part of the questionnaire and show how the
Manifesta project was perceived as a biennial / institution, and compare the results with the
comments of participating artists.
198
199
Case Study III: The Perception of the Manifesta Biennial among
Manifesta 12 Audience and Participant Artists
The third part of the questionnaire focuses on the repercussions of Manifesta’s
rhetoric among the Manifesta 12 audience members. Questions were written by paraphrasing,
anonymizing and partly negating a series of statements that Manifesta officers and curators
had made over the years while defining the biennial. The first five of these statements
conveyed some of the principles of Manifesta, while the last three relate to Manifesta's
political stance.
One of the main arguments that can be deduced from this data is that the selfproclaimed
discourse of Manifesta has been embraced by the audience to a great extent. In
this context, viewers perceive Manifesta as an egalitarian, non-competitive, inclusive and
international biennial that gives priority to young people and supports regions and localities.
However, audiences still consider Manifesta as a post-Cold War institution and find it very
close to the EU's cultural policies. This shows that Manifesta’s initial rhetoric that I have
summarized in the introduction is imprinted on audiences’ minds.
The biggest drawback of this section is the danger of misevaluation of the Manifesta
project as a whole by the audiences with the impressions they get from Manifesta 12, since
the vast majority of the respondents have not seen other editions of the biennial. In light of
this, I added a new category for audiences who visited former edition(s) of Manifesta besides
the general audience and Palermitan audience categories. Yet, this effort cannot be said to be
sufficient, because only 4 (8.3%) of the 48 people who stated that they had seen the previous
editions of Manifesta followed more than one Manifesta edition. Nevertheless, there are
important conclusions that can be drawn from this preliminary survey.
As can be followed in Tables 7, 8 and 9, all of the first five statements extracted
from the Manifesta rhetoric were supported by the Manifesta 12 audience. The statement that
Manifesta gives wider currency to fringe areas of European culture498 found general support,
especially among viewers who had had Manifesta experience before (66.6%) (Table 9). It is
remarkable that 43.4% of Palermitan audiences remained neutral on this statement. The
statement that The emphasis of Manifesta to be placed on inclusivity, rather than exclusivity,
and on collaboration between artists and theoreticians, rather than on factional
498 Original version: “[Manifesta] will give wider currency to fringe areas of European culture and place the artist
at the heart of a continuing dialogue with curators, critics and a wider public”. Statement of the Advisory Board
of Manifesta, published for Manifesta 1 – Rotterdam (1996). Available at http://m1.manifesta.org/statemnt.htm
200
representation, competition, commercialization and prizes499 was also approved by over 65%
in all three categories. Statements on the content of Manifesta were also highly accepted. For
example, the statement that Manifesta initiates an international dialogue among young
artists and their respective audiences500 attracted 74.6% of those who had experienced
Manifesta before. The statement that Manifesta creates opportunities for artists to present
their work in a non-competitive environment and to facilitate the emergence of new ideas
and forms of artistic expression501, too, was remarkable with its high support among general
and Palermitan audiences: 68.8% and 62.4%, respectively.
As I have shown throughout this research, Manifesta has always kept the
representation of local artists at a low level, and because of this it has been frequently
criticized, especially by local art scene figures. The more important goal for Manifesta has
always been to increase the visibility of the peripheral city or region it settles in in accordance
with local political programmes. Yet, the wide support for the statement The artists have not
been judged according to the geographical, national or regional criteria but treated and
considered as equals taking part in a high-quality exhibition502, a quotation taken from the
first decade of Manifesta, demonstrates that this discourse has been assimilated by the
audience. Among general, Palermitan and Manifesta-experienced audiences, the rate of
agreement with the statement was 58.3%, 57.5% and 57.9%, respectively.
Looking at the survey's political statements, we can observe that some of the
imputations that Manifesta had rejected over a long period of time were not enough to change
the audience's opinions. The most important of these imputations is Manifesta's proximity
with EU cultural policies. As discussed in the previous chapters, the nomadic feature of
Manifesta, its self-proclamation as a European biennial, its bidding system that resembles the
499 Original version: “The emphasis was to be placed on inclusivity, rather than exclusivity, and on collaboration
between artists and theoreticians, rather than on factional representation, competition, commercialization and
prizes”. Henry Meyric Hughes, “A Short History of Manifesta”, published for Manifesta 3 – Ljubljana (2000).
Available at http://m3.manifesta.org/history.htm
500 Original version: “The European biennial of contemporary art, Manifesta, was founded in the early nineties in
the course of the political changes in Europe with the aim of initiating an international dialogue among young
artists and their respective audiences in Europe and of creating a forum for new and unusual forms of
contemporary art”. Published on the website of Manifesta 4 – Frankfurt (2002), under the headline Background.
Available at http://m4.manifesta.org/en/info/background.html
501 Original version: “The IFM aims to create opportunities for artists to present their work in a non-competitive
environment and to facilitate the emergence of new ideas and forms of artistic expression”. “What is Manifesta?
The Role of International Foundation Manifesta”, published on the website of Manifesta 5 – San Sebastian (2004).
Available at http://m5.manifesta.org/eng/manifesta/quees.htm
502 Original version: “Manifesta should not be considered as an exclusively "Eastern European" art event. The
artists should not be judged according to geographical, national or regional criteria but should be treated and
considered as equals taking part in a high-quality exhibition. Manifesta 2 should by no means be a diplomatic
exhibition”. Robert Fleck, Maria Lind, Barbara Vanderlinden, “Manifesta”, a text published in the website of
Manifesta 2 – Luxembourg (1998). Available at http://m2.manifesta.org/e/manifest.html
201
202
203
204
European Capital of Culture project, the EU funds allocated to Manifesta, and the naming of
Manifesta as an EU Cultural Ambassador have caused Manifesta to be seen by some art
critics and audience members as an EU project. To see the reflection of this situation among
the audience, I addressed them with a negative version of a statement that Manifesta director
Hedwig Fijen once made against these allegations. This statement, that Manifesta resembles
the European Cultural Capital project and other EU cultural policies,503 found 42.7%
support in the general audience category, compared to 48.5% and 38.5% among Palermitan
viewers and Manifesta followers, respectively. Yet, the proportion of neutrals in all these
three categories was above 40%. Those who rejected this statement did not exceed 20% in
any category.
Although another statement that can be discussed in a similar context, namely that
Manifesta is like a political party, NGO or part of the European cultural administration,504
received more counter-reactions from the audience, it fell short of reaching a significant
proportion that would just mistake this statement. In the categories of general audience,
Manifesta followers and Palermitan audience, the percentages against this statement were
37.8%, 36.5% and 37.6%, respectively, while the percentages of those remaining neutral
were 39.7%, 36.6% and 39.4%, respectively. Although the proportion of those who agrees
with this statement was slightly less than the others (22.4%, 26.8% and 22.9%), it appears as
a rate that should not be underestimated.
Finally, when we look at the statement derived from the argument of scholar Camiel
van Winkel when discussing the rhetoric of the first five editions of Manifesta—Manifesta
could be seen as the manifestation of this new democratic ideal of openness or glasnost in
the field of the arts505—this argument was shared by more than half of the participants in each
category: 52.1% among general audiences, 51.8% among Palermitans and 53.8% among
Manifesta-experienced audiences.
How can we interpret this data as a whole? The first outcome is that Manifesta’s
rhetoric garnered public acceptance from Manifesta 12's audiences. These audiences agreed
with Manifesta’s self-proclamation as an inclusive, egalitarian, young-artist-centred, non-
503 Original version: “It has sometimes been argued that Manifesta resembles the European Cultural Capital
project, but this has never been a true comparison. Manifesta was not initiated by the EU, but is instead a concept
that emerged from a close collaboration between national arts organizations throughout Europe”. Hedwig Fijen, in
René Block et. al., “How a European Biennial of Contemporary Art Began”, 194.
504 Original version: “Set up as a dynamic, transparent and elastic initiative, Manifesta closely watches social and
political developments throughout Europe. This is why some people think that Manifesta is a political party, NGO
or part of the European cultural administration—but it is not”. Hedwig Fijen, “European Passport – Manifesta’s
Origins”, text published in a brochure prepared for Manifesta 9 – Genk (2012).
505 Original version: “After the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracy in Eastern Europe had to be completely rebuilt.
Manifesta could indeed be seen as the manifestation of this new democratic ideal of openness or glasnost in the
field of the arts”. Camiel van Winkel, “The Rhetorics of Manifesta”, 220.
205
competitive event representative of democratic ideals. However, as I have argued throughout
the thesis, some of these initial goals of Manifesta disappeared after a while. The biennial’s
longstanding approach of aligning with the needs of host cities so as to ensure its institutional
continuity made it diverge from these ideals. Even in its first decade, artists from postcommunist
countries occupied a maximum of 35% of the biennial. The proportion of artists
below the age of 35 fell into decline after its fourth edition. Moreover, in all of its editions,
without exception, local art scene figures complained about Manifesta excluding or ignoring
local artists, curators and galleries.
The second striking fact is that Manifesta is still considered by audiences as a
concrete example of "openness" in the field of art. Its discourse of accompanying the
transition to democracy of "the East", which was dominant in its first decade, still appears to
resonate among audience members twenty years later. However, as I have shown in Part II,
after the Ljubljana edition in 2000, Manifesta abandoned this perspective, and the concept of
"openness" was no longer in use. This indicates that the audiences’ opinions about Manifesta
were significantly influenced by the informative texts that mention the politico-historical
conditions that led to Manifesta's establishment. Another important point revealed by this
survey is that Manifesta's proximity to the EU's cultural policies was also detected by the
audience. Manifesta is perceived by a significant portion of the audience as a nomadic
European festival/biennial that enlivens the cities it travels to, just like the ECoC project,
despite the fact that Manifesta officers have constantly rejected the analogy between
Manifesta and the ECoC.
Considering the high proportion of those who remained neutral to statements in all
three categories and the small number of people who have seen more than one edition of
Manifesta before, it can be claimed that the general opinion on the Manifesta project is
stemmed from a combination of the impressions gained at Manifesta 12 and Manifesta's own
rhetoric. Since there is a lack of independent and accessible public opinion research on
previous editions, it is hard to comparatively evaluate the outcomes and distil reliable
arguments. This reveals the importance of critical research that attempts to deconstruct the
rhetoric and practices of cultural institutions and biennials.
206
207
Conclusion
It is necessary to contest the assumptions that biennales
in and of themselves necessarily represent community,
ethics, difference and democracy, and their justification
as an exceptional state that facilitates these values.
Because networks, infrastructure, populations, education,
commissions and exchange, and a commitment to ethics,
difference and democracy, should exist in the state’s
everyday support of art and social life, rather than the
sponsorship of temporary events as an excuse for shortterm
instantiations of these.506
In this quote, art historian Jeannine Tang brilliantly summarizes the main problem
caused by the shift from public funding of the artistic and social spheres to the neoliberal
management practices used to control them over time. These days, it is as rare as hens’ teeth
to find a cultural or artistic event funded fully by public funds; blockbuster exhibitions,
biennials and festivals linked to the entertainment and tourism sectors and funded and shaped
by public-private partnerships dominate the culture and art fields.
In fact, the mushrooming of biennials since the 1990s has gone hand in hand with
the global neoliberalization of cultural management since the late 1970s. In line with the new
principle of governing that favours interoperation of different power groups (so-called
“governance”), the regular allocation of public funds to the local art scene and local social
events has been replaced by short-term mega-events such as art fairs, expos, biennials,
festivals and blockbuster exhibitions, and by mega-projects like gigantic museums and the
regeneration-cum-gentrification of historic and industrial ruins into cultural and touristic
hubs. In the meantime, anti-authoritarian ideas of the 1968 movements have been internalized
by capitalism and they fuelled capitalism’s “new spirit”.507 The displacement of critique
506 Jeannine Tang, “Biennialization and Its Discontents,” 87.
507 Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, “The Role of Criticism in the Dynamics of Capitalism: Social Criticism
versus Artistic Criticism,” in Worlds of Capitalism: Institutions, Economic Performance and Governance in the
Era of Globalization, ed. Max Miller (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 229-58; Luc Boltanski and Eve
Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism. Also see Lars Thorup Larsen, “Turning Critique Inside Out: Foucault,
Boltanski and Chiapello on the Tactical Displacement of Critique and Power,” Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal
of Social Theory 12, no. 1 (2011): 37-55.
208
produced an important effect on the transformation of the cultural sector. This transformation
itself requires a detailed discussion of the changing nature of cultural policies based on
public-private partnerships and the emerging cultural institutions that shape our cultural and
artistic lives as a result of these partnerships.
Manifesta is in many ways a good example of how this new network of
neoliberalized relations shapes cultural production according to a specific logic. As a
European biennial that reshapes itself at each stop with different local governments, sponsors,
curators, artists, officers and board members, Manifesta appears as a very rich yet
underestimated field of work. The biennial initiated by the Netherlands Office for Fine Arts
in the early 1990s aiming to create bridges across the Iron Curtain has been continuing its
journey in diverse cities with complex forms and contexts. As I have tried to show throughout
this thesis—the first study done in this context and scope—the diverse and in many ways
unique editions of Manifesta, when viewed comparatively, display important common
features.
Viewed in its entirety, I argue that Manifesta is a biennial that underpins the
neoliberal cultural and urban strategies of its host cities and regions. I have identified two
main interconnected characteristics. First, Manifesta has selected cities and regions in the
midst of processes of urban, economic and/or political transformation, within an approach
deeply shaped by neoliberal urbanism and cultural policy making. Related to this, Manifesta
has consistently aligned and allied itself with local authorities and politicians to guarantee its
sponsorship and survival. This means it has never been able to be unambiguously critical of
those actors it has depended upon the most, i.e. local power brokers and European actors.
There are exceptions, of course, but overall both of these features are crucial to understanding
the working logic of Manifesta. Now I will try to flesh out these points in more detail.
Emphasizing discontinuities in Manifesta's discourse and practices, I divided my
research into three analytical parts. In these three parts, each covering roughly a decade, I
showed how Manifesta’s aims, approaches to the host cities or regions and curatorial and
artistic strategies have changed over time. Bearing the nomadic and context-oriented nature
of Manifesta in mind, I employed a series of theoretical discussions to show how Manifesta
has been inspired by theoretical and geopolitical paradigm shifts as well as changing policy
discourses that have deeply shaped its practices. Thus, instead of using a meta-narrative, I
analyzed the discourses and practices of Manifesta in each of its decades, and discussed the
common points within the framework of suitable theoretical discussions.
In the 1990s, the founding phase of Manifesta, there were multiple efforts to
articulate post-communist countries as Western capitalist market economies. The field of art
was not exempt from these marketization moves. As I showed in Chapter One, a rising
globalism and increasing interest in non-Western "others" caused the art world to shift
209
towards what Joaquin Barriendos called “emerging geoaesthetic regions”.508 In this context,
post-communist Central and Eastern European countries were in the spotlight. As I discussed
in this chapter, while Manifesta was initiated as a nomadic, experimental and network-based
biennial in this sense, it failed to develop a language and practice free from the orientalist
gaze. Various statements made by Manifesta officers and the fact that the proportion of artists
from post-communist countries participating in the first three editions reached a maximum
of 35% shows the hierarchical relationship that Manifesta, as a Western European institution,
established with these regions. Although it achieved its goal of relocating to Eastern Europe
with the third edition (Ljubljana), it then reformulated both its main axis and discourse and
moved away from its founding goals due to a changing political conjuncture since the early
2000s.
Manifesta was not alone in its interest in post-communist countries. As I have shown
in detail in Chapter Two, the perspective of the InIVA, the infrastructural support of the Soros
Centers, and the financial and moral support of the EU's cultural policies in terms of putting
flesh on the bones of this biennial were crucial. Another important advantage of Manifesta
was that the European Capital of Culture project, which has similar characteristics in many
respects, is not carried out outside the European Union member states. This paved the way
for Manifesta to be welcomed in (then non-EU) Eastern Europe as an even more attractive
project. Yet, the economic model of the first edition, which was based on receiving equal
amounts from European art councils and partner institutions, quickly failed. It was replaced
by a new model characterized by the partnership of public funds and private companies,
which caused Manifesta’s aim of being economically independent to disappear.
During the 1990s, many cultural institutions, notably Manifesta and the SCCAs,
tried to rearticulate the relationship between art and politics by promoting concepts such as
democracy, pluralism and heterogeneity. This was in line with the increasing tendency
towards reaching a consensus and neutralizing disagreements in political and social spheres
in the post-Cold War era, which is called the post-political condition or post-politics.509 With
the exception of Nicosia in 2006, Manifesta has always remained loyal to developing
consensual relations with the political conditions of its host cities. As I tried to show in
Chapter Three and in the case study where I evaluated the Manifesta in Our Backyard project,
although the consensual approach of Manifesta was interrupted by the interventions of some
artists and actors of the local art scenes of host cities, they were not an obstacle to Manifesta
filling its sails with the wind of the post-political condition.
As of 2000, along with a changing political climate, Manifesta veered away from a
focus on creating a network among artists from post-communist countries and their Western
counterparts towards promoting the urban and cultural regeneration of mostly Southern
508 Joaquín Barriendos, “Geopolitics of Global Art”
509 See Japhy Wilson and Eric Swyngedouw eds., The Post-Political and Its Discontents; Jacques Rancière,
Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics; Chantal Mouffe, On the Political.
210
European regions. The joining of many post-communist countries to the European Union in
2004 and the significant increase in the visibility of many European regions weakened the
popular trend of describing post-communist countries as “emerging geoaesthetic regions”.
The SCCAs' cessation of their activities in 1999 also revealed the need for Manifesta to
restructure its discourse, structure and organization. Since the 2000s, Manifesta has
abandoned its network-based and experimental features and refashioned itself into an
institution and brand with which cities and regions want to collaborate to visualize and
promote their urban regeneration plans.
As I tried to show throughout Part II, Manifesta has been reshaped by the rising
power of regionalism in Europe and the hegemony of culture-led models of urban
development within a neoliberal urbanism framework; or rather, it has adapted itself to these
new dominant models to achieve continuity as an institution. In partnership with private
sponsors, regional governments have allocated massive resources to mega-events and megaprojects
including Manifesta, which has directed its attention to these regions in development.
Building on discussions of new regionalism and creative cities, I have shown the reciprocal
network of relations established by Manifesta with host cities and regions. This was
particularly the case with the editions from Manifesta 5 – San Sebastian up to Manifesta 9 –
Genk, as discussed in Chapter Four. There I demonstrated how Manifesta was invited by
local authorities as part of their urban regeneration plans, and how, in return, Manifesta
employed consensual strategies to fulfil the mission assigned to it.
In this second decade, two special areas of interests came to the fore: the urban and
education (Chapter Five). Manifesta's interest in the urban reflected itself through
architecture: it focused on the transformation of abandoned urban spaces into cultural hubs.
This reveals the neoliberal partnership between art institutions and urban planning. In
addition, Manifesta did not want to be far from trendy alternative art schools and exhibitions
that have questioned the relationships between education, learning processes and art in
experimental ways since the mid-2000s. With this purpose in mind, it has kept the issue of
education as a permanent fixture on its agenda since its sixth edition in Nicosia. In fact,
education was the terrain of one of the most interesting of Manifesta’s experiments in its
preparations for the aborted sixth edition. On the one hand, the cancellation of the art school
project that Manifesta had tried to establish on both sides of Nicosia made this edition the
most dissensual and successful in its history. On the other hand, it brought about a change in
Manifesta’s way of dealing with the issue of education for the upcoming editions. It shifted
from potentially dissensual experiments to a consensual, less risky art mediation approach,
based on activities aimed at popularizing contemporary art among local audiences, and
especially children. These education programmes, which became a fully-fledged and stable
Manifesta department, can be seen as the most successful part of Manifesta in terms of
establishing relationships with local audiences. Yet, the efforts conducted in this field have
remained quite weak in terms of generating radical ideas about the relationship between art
and education.
211
Analyzing the curatorial and artistic strategies of Manifesta's second decade, I
showed in Chapter Six how Manifesta reshaped some of its initial premises according to its
new perspective. Once it abandoned the notion of setting up a network among the artists from
"the East" and "the West" of Europe, representation of the artists from post-communist
countries became a non-issue. Although it kept paying attention to forming curatorial teams
consisting of young curators until Manifesta 9 (2012), the average age of the participant
artists steadily rose, and in parallel, the percentage of young artists decreased. Similar to its
first decade, the number of local artists included in the main programme of the biennial
remained low, which clearly indicates that Manifesta consciously decided not to make room
for local artists.
Another important point that this chapter revealed is that Manifesta avoided
developing a dissensual relationship with host cities and regions in its second decade.
Excluding the Manifesta 6 - Nicosia example, Manifesta allocated very limited space to
artworks that critically examined the current political problems of host cities and regions.
Instead, it chose to feature works that dealt with political problems elsewhere in the world.
I devoted Part II’s case study to one of the exceptions to this approach: a series of
interventions produced by Thierry Geoffroy for Manifesta 8 - Murcia. Geoffroy's there-andthen
questioning of Manifesta 8's theme, goals and local relations it established disrupted the
discourse and practices of the biennial. Referring to the post-political critique, I showed how
such an intervention disclosed Manifesta's consensus-based approach, and how the biennial's
continuity became more dependent on host cities and regions’ economic and political power.
In 2014, when Manifesta set out for a post-communist country for the second time,
it was completely alienated from the vision and mission of its first decade. The three editions
that I examined in Part III—St. Petersburg (2014), Zurich (2016) and Palermo (2018)—were
based on the application of some set of discourses and practices acquired in the first and
second decades of the biennial that were suitable for local contexts. Thus the pragmatist and
consensual character of Manifesta stands out in all three editions.
St. Petersburg was an edition of high symbolic significance for Manifesta in many
respects. For the first time, the biennial was invited not by a city or region, but by a museum.
In this special case, Russian oligarchs' investments in the field of contemporary art, their
support for the State Hermitage Museum and their sponsorship of Manifesta made it possible
to realize the biennial while bypassing the city's administrators. This collaboration was
crucial in terms of surviving amidst the economic shrinking after the global systemic crisis
without being part of the urban regeneration process and regional programme of the city.
However, as I discussed in Chapter Seven, Manifesta's negative responses to boycott calls
that were triggered by the increase in political tension in Russia (due to enactment of an antigay
law and annexation of Crimea by Russian forces) fuelled much political debate. This
once again revealed the consensual character of Manifesta and its firm stance not to clash
with local power brokers.
212
When we look at the Zurich case, we see that Manifesta operated as a part of the
city's neoliberal urban regeneration plans. Also, the way Manifesta dealt with the theme of
the exhibition is testament to its post-political characteristics. As I discussed extensively in
Chapter Eight, after selecting a very promising theme, What People Do for Money, it tackled
this theme by way of Durkheimian and Weberian approaches and obscured topical issues
related to changes in the nature of labour and work conditions such as mobbing at work,
precarity, immaterial labour, migrant workers and project-based / contract-based works.
Moreover, there was a paradox. Manifesta adopted a solidarist understanding of work
relations while imposing precarious conditions on local Manifesta 11 workers. It also
functioned according to a capitalist economic logic, especially by including many artists who
had gained visibility in top art fairs like Art Basel—which I have called the Basel effect. It
thus made its relation with the art market visible in the exhibition.
The last edition I discussed in Part III, Palermo, was realized as part of local policies
targeting the problem of the Mafia’s encroachment on the city with the goal of revitalizing
the city and fuelling urban regeneration (Chapter Nine). Unsurprisingly, the edition organized
by Manifesta within this context also focused on the urban and education. For Palermo, I was
able to carry out a full season of fieldwork on the impact of Manifesta. I carried out a survey
to gauge the opinions of Manifesta 12 audiences and some participating artists. Although the
curatorial and artistic choices of Manifesta 12 were generally appreciated, respondents
pointed out that Manifesta was organized for international rather than local audiences, and
that Manifesta’s most important effect was to boost tourism. Due to the biennial's nomadic
structure, it was not possible to elicit audiences’ view of this edition in relation to others, as
most had only seen this one. Therefore I could not produce a comparative evaluation of the
Manifesta project as a whole by audiences. The fact that they had no term of comparison can
be seen as the reason for most visitors believing in Manifesta’s self-presentation. This clearly
indicates the importance of research that deconstructs cultural institutions’ claims and
practices, especially when they are so site-specific.
Another subject that I tried to trace throughout my research is the profiles of the
artists and the art practices that challenged the discourse and practices of Manifesta. As can
be seen from the combined graphics in the appendices, Manifesta has never intended to
represent local artists. In addition, the average age of the artists has increased gradually with
the effect of institutionalization. The fact that most artists work in precarious conditions and
that clashing with a highly visible biennial like Manifesta is not beneficial to their careers
likely explains why few dissensual works have been produced for the biennial. However, as
I have shown in various chapters, very strong and critical art practices that created cracks in
different editions of Manifesta contain important clues about the possibility of constituting
an alternative art scene.
Mai Abu ElDahab, one of the curators of the cancelled Manifesta 6, raises a very
important question in her catalogue article: “Can you claim you are anti-institutional, and yet
213
work for one of the pillars of the system?”.510 This paradox is at the heart of Manifesta, which
has consistently claimed to be anti-institutional, while essentially furthering neoliberal
relations and transformation processes and acting in alignment with local and EU institutions
and power brokers. It has done so by “selling” this very idea of being anti-institutional. What
should also be questioned here is people’s acceptance of these self-proclamations and the
ways in which the scarcity of critical research and artistic reactions paves the way for these
self-proclamations to become hegemonic and be taken as true. By critically analyzing
Manifesta's three-decade-long history, I have tried to show throughout my research how this
biennial is based on a complex network of relationships and ultimately on the neoliberal
cultural and urban policies of its host cities and regions.
510 Mai Abu ElDahab, “On How to Fall With Grace”, 9.
214
215
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APPENDICES
Appendix A: The Average Age of Manifesta Artists (M1 – M12)
34,8 33 34,3 32,1
35,8
40,1 37,4
78,3
51,3 51,5
44,1
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M7 M8 M9 M10 M11 M12
%
The Average Age of Manifesta Artists M1 - M12)
258
Appendix B: Percentage of Manifesta Artists at the Age of 35 or Below
(M1 - M12)
65,3 64,4
69,7
76,3
56
36,9
45,6
9,8 7,4
15,1
24,5
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M7 M8 M9 M10 M11 M12
%
Percentage of Manifesta Artists at the Age of 35 or Below M1 -
M12)
259
Appendix C: Percentages of Local Manifesta Artists (City/Region) (M1
– M12)
1,3 4 5 3,2 6 4,2 6
1,7
7,4 6,8
3,8
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M7 M8 M9 M10 M11 M12
%
Percentages of Local Manifesta Artists (City/Region) (M1 – M12)
260
Appendix D: Percentages of Local Manifesta Artists (National) (M1 –
M12)
6 4 5
11,8
7,5
17,3
10,4
16,9 14,8
8,3
25
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M7 M8 M9 M10 M11 M12
%
Percentages of Local Manifesta Artists (National) (M1 – M12)
261
Appendix E: Manifesta Questionnaire (English)
Manifesta Questionnaire
Part I
Age:
Gender:
This questionnaire has been developed as a part of my PhD research entitled
“Creating New Europe via Contemporary Art in Post-Wall Era: Examining
Manifesta - European Biennial of Contemporary Art in the Context of
Intermingled Relationships between Art, Society and Politics” at Amsterdam
School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) - University of Amsterdam, supervised
by Prof. Christa-Maria Lerm-Hayes and Dr. Johan Hartle. It aims to gather
feedback regarding Manifesta at large and more specifically your experience in
Manifesta 12. It is vital for this research to hear audiences’ voices. The
questionnaire will take 5 to 10 minutes of your time. Your responses will be
anonymous and confidential. For any questions and concerns, please contact
Erdem Çolak at +31 643013317 or E.Colak@uva.nl .
Thank you for your answers in advance,
Erdem Çolak
PhD Researcher, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis
University of Amsterdam
E.Colak@uva.nl
262
Place of permanent residence: Country: City:
Profession:
Highest Education Level so far: Primary School
Secondary School/High School
Technical/ Vocational Diploma
Undergraduate Bachelor's degree
Master's degree
Doctoral degree
Other (please state):
Are you an art professional (artist, curator, art dealer, art critic, art instructor etc.)?
Yes No
Do you have a creative practice (i.e. playing an instrument, painting etc.)?
Yes No
Please indicate your monthly net income (euro): less than 500
500 – 1000
1000 – 1500
1500 – 2000
2000 – 2500
2500 – 3000
3000 - 4000
4000 – 5000
5000 – 6000
more than 6000
263
Part II
How have you learned about Manifesta 12? (friends, ads, internet etc.).
Have you ever been in an art biennial before? (Documenta, Venice etc.) Yes
No
Have you ever been in Galleria d'Arte Moderna Sant'Anna or Museo Riso? Yes
No
If yes, please specify how many times have you been in total within last year:
Have you been in another edition of Manifesta before? Yes
No
If yes, please specify:
Please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following
statements:
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly
Agree
M12’s curatorial theme choice
(Planetary Garden: Cultivating
1 2 3 4 5
264
Coexistence) fit well with
Palermo.
The most important impact of
M12 upon Palermo will be the
increase in tourism.
1 2 3 4 5
M12 deals with crucial
problems of Palermo.
1 2 3 4 5
M12 deals with crucial
problems of Europe.
1 2 3 4 5
The target audience of M12
seems more international than
local.
1 2 3 4 5
The proportion of Italian artists
in M12 is convincing.
1 2 3 4 5
M12’s collateral events and the
5x5x5 programme enrich
encounters between local and
global.
1 2 3 4 5
M12 suggests new perspectives
on the ecological crises.
1 2 3 4 5
265
M12 will leave an indelible
mark in the art and cultural lives
of Palermo.
1 2 3 4 5
M12 is curated well in terms of
theme, artist and venue selection
and display.
1 2 3 4 5
M12’s education and mediation
programme functions well in
terms of raising the awareness
of people about ecology and
contemporary art.
1 2 3 4 5
M12 helps to rethink the North-
South divide of Europe via art.
1 2 3 4 5
Part III
Please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following
statements:
Strongly
Disagree
Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly
Agree
Manifesta gives wider currency
to fringe areas of European
culture.
1 2 3 4 5
The artists have not been judged
according to geographical,
1 2 3 4 5
266
national or regional criteria but
treated and considered as equals
taking part in a high-quality
exhibition.
The emphasis of Manifesta to be
placed on inclusivity, rather
than exclusivity, and on
collaboration between artists
and theoreticians, rather than on
factional representation,
competition, commercialisation
and prizes.
1 2 3 4 5
Manifesta initiates an
international dialogue among
young artists and their
respective audiences.
1 2 3 4 5
Manifesta create opportunities
for artists to present their work
in a non-competitive
environment and to facilitate the
emergence of new ideas and
forms of artistic expression.
1 2 3 4 5
Manifesta is like a political
party, NGO or part of the
European cultural
administration.
1 2 3 4 5
Manifesta could be seen as the
manifestation of this new
1 2 3 4 5
267
democratic ideal of openness or
glasnost in the field of the arts.
Manifesta resembles the
European Cultural Capital
project and other EU cultural
policies.
1 2 3 4 5
Part IV
Please answer following questions:
What do you think about Manifesta’s connection with questions concerning Europe
today? Do you think Manifesta deals with the current problems of Europe from
many aspects?
Do you think Manifesta has a role in European cultural diplomacy?
Thank You!
268
Appendix F: Manifesta Questionnaire (Italian)
Manifesta QUESTIONARIO
Parte I
Età:
Genere:
Luogo di residenza permanente: Paese:
Città:
Questo questionario è stato sviluppato come parte della mia ricerca di dottorato
dal titolo "Creare nuova Europa attraverso l'arte contemporanea nell'era postwall:
l'esame Manifesta - European Biennale d'arte contemporanea nel contesto
delle relazioni intrecciate tra arte, società e politica" presso la Scuola di
Amsterdam per Analisi Culturali (ASCA) - Università di Amsterdam, sotto la
supervisione della Prof. Christa-Maria Lerm-Hayes e del Dr. Johan Hartle. Mira
a raccogliere feedback su Manifesta in generale e più specificamente sulla tua
esperienza in Manifesta 12. È vitale per questa ricerca ascoltare le voci del
pubblico. Il questionario impiegherà dai 5 ai 10 minuti del tuo tempo. Le tue
risposte saranno anonime e confidenziali. Per eventuali domande e dubbi,
contattare Erdem Çolak al numero +31 643013317 o E.Colak@uva.nl.
Grazie in anticipo per le vostre risposte,
Erdem Çolak
PhD Researcher, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis
Università di Amsterdam
E.Colak@uva.nl
269
Professione:
Livello di istruzione più alto finora: Scuola Primaria Scuola
Secondaria / Liceo
Diploma tecnico / professionale
Diploma universitario
Master
Dottorato
Altro (si prega di indicare):
Sei un professionista dell'arte (artista, curatore, mercante d'arte, critico d'arte,
istruttore d'arte ecc.)?
Si
No
Hai una pratica creativa (cioè suonare uno strumento, dipingere ecc.)? Si
No
Si prega di indicare il reddito netto mensile (euro): meno di 500
500 – 1000
1000 – 1500
1500 – 2000
2000 – 2500
2500 – 3000
3000 - 4000
4000 – 5000
270
5000 – 6000
più di 6000
Parte II
Come hai saputo di Manifesta 12? (amici, pubblicità, internet ecc.)
Sei mai stato in una biennale d'arte prima? (Documenta, Venezia ecc.) Si
No
Sei mai stato alla Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Sant'Anna o al Museo Riso? Si
No
Se sì, si prega di specificare quante volte siete stati in totale entro l'anno scorso:
Sei già stato in un'altra edizione di Manifesta? Si
No
Se sì, si prega di specificare:
Si prega di indicare la misura in cui siete d'accordo o in disaccordo con le seguenti
dichiarazioni:
Fortement
e in
disaccordo
Disaccord
o
Neutr
o
D'accord
o
Fortement
e d'accordo
La scelta del tema
curatoriale di M12
(Il Giardino
1 2 3 4 5
271
Planetario: Coltıvare
la Coesistenza) si
adatta bene a
Palermo.
l'impatto più
importante di M12
su Palermo sarà
l'aumento del
turismo.
1 2 3 4 5
M12 si occupa di
problemi cruciali di
Palermo.
1 2 3 4 5
M12 si occupa di
problemi cruciali
d'Europa.
1 2 3 4 5
Il pubblico di
riferimento di M12
sembra più
internazionale che
locale.
1 2 3 4 5
La proporzione di
artisti italiani in M12
è convincente.
1 2 3 4 5
Gli eventi collaterali
di M12 e il
1 2 3 4 5
272
programma 5x5x5
arricchiscono gli
incontri tra locale e
globale.
M12 suggerisce
nuove prospettive
sulle crisi
ecologiche.
1 2 3 4 5
M12 lascerà un
segno indelebile
nella vita artistica e
culturale di Palermo.
1 2 3 4 5
M12 è ben curato in
termini di selezione
di temi, artisti e
luoghi.
1 2 3 4 5
Il programma di
educazione e
mediazione di M12
funziona bene in
termini di
sensibilizzazione dei
popolo sull'ecologia
e l'arte
contemporanea.
1 2 3 4 5
M12 aiuta a
ripensare la
divisione nord-sud
1 2 3 4 5
273
dell'Europa
attraverso l'arte.
Parte III
Si prega di indicare la misura in cui siete d'accordo o in disaccordo con le seguenti
dichiarazioni:
Fortement
e in
disaccordo
Disaccord
o
Neutr
o
D'accord
o
Fortement
e d'accordo
Manifesta offre
benefici più ampia
alle aree marginali
della cultura
Europea.
1 2 3 4 5
Gli artisti non sono
stati giudicati in base
a criteri geografici,
nazionali o regionali,
ma sono stati trattati
e considerati uguali
partecipando a
un'esposizione di
alta qualità.
1 2 3 4 5
L'enfasi di Manifesta
va posta
sull'inclusività,
piuttosto che
sull'esclusività, e
1 2 3 4 5
274
sulla collaborazione
tra artisti e teorici,
piuttosto che sulla
rappresentazione di
fazioni,
competizione,
commercializzazion
e e premi.
Manifesta avvia un
dialogo
internazionale tra i
giovani artisti e il
loro rispettivo
pubblico.
1 2 3 4 5
Manifesta crea
opportunità per gli
artisti di presentare il
proprio lavoro in un
ambiente non
competitivo e
facilitare l'emergere
di nuove idee e
forme di espressione
artistica.
1 2 3 4 5
Manifesta è come un
partito politico, una
ONG o parte
dell'amministrazione
culturale Europea.
1 2 3 4 5
275
Manifesta potrebbe
essere vista come la
manifestazione di
questo nuovo ideale
democratico di
apertura o glasnost
nel campo delle arti.
1 2 3 4 5
Manifesta
assomiglia al
progetto della
Capitale culturale
europea e ad altre
politiche culturali
dell'UE.
1 2 3 4 5
Parte IV
Si prega di rispondere alle seguenti domande:
Cosa ne pensi del legame di Manifesta con le questioni che riguardano l'Europa
oggi? Pensi che Manifesta si occupi degli attuali problemi dell'Europa da molti
aspetti?
276
Pensi che Manifesta abbia un ruolo nella diplomazia culturale europea?
Grazie!
277
Creating A New Europe Through Contemporary Art: Manifesta and Its
Relation to Art, Society and Politics
Summary
Manifesta - European Biennial of Contemporary Art is a nomadic biennial that takes
place every two years in a different city in Europe. It emerged as an idea in the early 1990s
and made its first edition in Rotterdam in 1996. Held in 11 countries and 13 cities with the
participation of nearly 40 curators and curatorial collectives and over 1000 artists so far, it
has become one of the most important art organizations of the post-Cold War Europe. This
dissertation focuses on Manifesta's political, economic, urban and artistic relationships with
its host cities and regions as well as the changes that occur in its own goals, discourse and
organization over time. What were the conditions that led to the inauguration of Manifesta
and what goals did Manifesta set out in the beginning? Where did these goals evolve over
time? How can we theoretically handle the complex set of relationships that Manifesta has
established with different actors in each edition? Answering these questions, it argues that
Manifesta is one of the new institutions of neoliberal governance in the field of art in the
post-Cold War era. By investigating each editions’ complex set of relations in detail, it
contributes to a better understanding of both Manifesta and the phenomenon of contemporary
art biennials.
The theoretical and methodological approach of this thesis is shaped partly by how
I grasp the biennial phenomenon, and partly by the nomadic and multilayered structure of
Manifesta. I approach biennials as places for encountering different actors such as curators,
participant and local artists, the organizing institution and its staff, city administrators,
gallerists, art dealers, critics, sponsors, collaborative institutions and international and local
audiences. Therefore, when tackling with a biennial, it is necessary to consider the
preferences, expectations and benefits of these different actors. When it comes to a biennial
like Manifesta where each edition takes place in a different location, one should evaluate the
biennial’s own structural and artistic perspective together with the historical, economic,
urban, cultural and artistic conditions of the city or region that it locates. In this context, this
dissertation evaluates each edition of the biennial within its own context, adopts theoretical
approaches suitable for this context and compares editions to find common points.
The comparative analysis of the editions are crystallized under three sets that each
corresponds roughly to a decade of Manifesta. Accordingly, I have divided the thesis into
three analytical parts, each containing three chapters and a case study. Part I focuses on the
period from 1991, when Manifesta emerged as an idea, to its third edition held in Ljubljana
278
in 2000. Part II begins with the fourth edition organized in Frankfurt in 2002 and closes with
the ninth edition held in Genk in 2012. Part III separately evaluates the tenth (St. Petersburg
- 2014), eleventh (Zurich - 2016) and twelfth (Palermo - 2018) editions of Manifesta.
Part I delves into the motivations, goals, perspectives and achievements as well as
failures of Manifesta in its first decade. Manifesta was initiated to establish a network among
artists of post-communist countries and their counterparts in the West, to make room for
young artists and to discuss a new Europe in the wake of post-Cold War period. These goals
politically contextualize Manifesta as to form and substance from the very beginning. Part I
argues how Manifesta described "the East", which institutions it was supported by, and what
were its artistic and curatorial strategies.
Chapter One discusses the notion of biennialization after examining the impact of
globalization on art institutions and contemporary art historiography. It analyzes the
characteristics of Manifesta (e.g. being nomadic, opening up space for young artists and
being pan-European), and the position Manifesta occupies within the contemporary art
biennials. It also questions how Manifesta defined the east of Europe and shows how it
contributed to the construction of the Western art scene and art market in post-communist
countries and to the re-Westernization of the artistic productions of them.
Chapter Two investigates the institutions and organizations that provided
institutional, infrastructural, economic and discursive assistance for Manifesta to achieve its
prime goals. It first highlights the similarities between Manifesta and the EU cultural policies
and particularly the ECoC project. Also, the relationship of Manifesta with the EU funds is
presented in this chapter. Chapter Two continues by analyzing the organic relationship
between Manifesta and the Institute of New International Artists (InIVA) and Soros Centers
for Contemporary Art (SCCAs). The last part of this chapter unveils the background of art
sponsorships of the leading tobacco company Philip Morris, the main sponsor of Manifesta
1 and Manifesta 2.
Chapter Three focuses on the artistic and curatorial strategies of Manifesta's first
decade. It comparatively analyzes the percentages of the local artists, artists from postcommunist
countries and the young artists as well as the average age of the participant artists.
Moreover, this chapter focuses on some artistic interventions that subverted the discourse of
Manifesta.
The Case Study of Part I focuses on the Manifesta in Our Backyard project initiated
by SCCA - Ljubljana, which aimed to evaluate the Ljubljana edition of Manifesta from a
local perspective. It explores how local art scene of Ljubljana reacted to Manifesta’s
preference to not to cooperate with local art galleries and artists. By analyzing the articles
appeared in the three editions of PlatformaSCCA, media organ of the project, it gives an
opportunity to see how Manifesta’s first decade discourse and goals were challenged by the
local art scene figures.
279
Part II expands on the political and artistic approaches of Manifesta in its second
decade. In this decade, Manifesta shifted its attention from the East-West axis to the North-
South axis and concentrated more on the regions than cities. Moreover, it became alienated
from its experimental / flexible / anti-institutional features and took a step towards
institutionalization. Part II starts with Manifesta 4 (2002) in Frankfurt and comes to an end
with the ninth edition held in Genk - Limburg (2012).
Chapter Four investigates the sources of Manifesta’s trending interest in the regions
rather than cities in its second decade. Critically examining the concepts of new regionalism
and creative cities, it shows how Manifesta was hosted within the new regionalist policies of
the regions and cities. This chapter illustrates the importance of Manifesta for regions and
cities which try to make more space for creative industries through neoliberal urban
regeneration policies.
Chapter Five concentrates on two concerns of Manifesta that came into prominence
in its second decade: the urban and education. It exemplifies how Manifesta collaborated
with architectural firms to renovate abandoned buildings and turned them into venues with
the aim of leaving a permanent mark where it located. It further highlights the coherence of
this tendency with host regions’ and cities’ neoliberal urban regeneration policies. The
second part of Chapter Five discusses Manifesta's inclusion of the subject of education on
the agenda. It shows how the potential of critically engaging with the learning processes and
education practices appeared in the cancelled Manifesta 6 was missed and later transformed
into art mediation programs.
Chapter Six argues the second decade of Manifesta from its artistic and curatorial
strategies. It asserts that Manifesta’s dependence on its host cities and regions paved the way
for excluding the artworks and curatorial approaches that critically engage with its hosts.
Moreover, similar to Chapter Three, it generates data on the profiles of participating artists
and Manifesta’s engagement with local art scenes. Reading the consensual relation between
Manifesta and the host cities and regions over post-political critique and critically evaluating
the data, it exposes how Manifesta’s initial goals and structure has changed over time. The
chapter comes to an end with illustrating exceptional artistic and curatorial interruptions that
challenge with Manifesta’s consensual perspective.
The Case Study of Part II focuses and expands on one of these interruptions: Artist
Colonialist performance of Thierry Geoffroy, aka Colonel, realized in Manifesta 8 - Murcia.
It investigates Geoffroy’s questioning of Manifesta 8 within the framework of Geoffroy’s
artistic practices. It argues that Geoffroy’s simultaneously performed subversive practices
cracked the Manifesta’s consensual practices and discourses.
Part III tackles with the tenth, eleventh and twelve editions of Manifesta. It argues
that, in its third decade, Manifesta acted pragmatically in terms of its discourse. It shows how
Manifesta picked up one of the discourses that it had produced within the last two decades
280
and adopted it to its new destination. Due to the lack of a common discursive and strategical
practices that interconnect these three editions, it covers each edition in a separate chapter.
Chapter Seven investigates the dynamics behind the choice of organizing Manifesta
in a former communist and a non-EU member country, Russia (Manifesta 10 – St.
Petersburg), after fourteen years. After discussing the oligarchs’ involvement in the Russian
contemporary art scene, it discusses the call for boycott sparkled due to the restrictive law
against “homosexual propaganda” and the annexation of Crimea, and analyzes Manifesta’s
reactions against this call. It argues that Manifesta’s attempt to absent itself from these
discussions was itself a political stance. It illustrates this stance by looking closer to the
artistic and curatorial strategies of Manifesta 10.
Chapter Eight elaborates on the relationship between Manifesta 11 and Zurich’s
urban policies towards creative industries. It further analyzes the theme of the biennial,
“What people do for money?", in the light of current discussions on precarious work
conditions. In addition, it generates data on the profile of the participant artists and unveils
the effect of Art Basel on the curatorial and artistic strategies of Manifesta 11.
The last chapter of the dissertation, Chapter Nine, scrutinizes the Palermo case
(Manifesta 12). It first mentions to the harmful effect of the Mafia activity on the urban and
cultural life and to the city administrators’ expectations from Manifesta. It then analyzes the
data compiled from the fieldwork to better understand the opinions of the audiences about
Manifesta 12.
The Case Study of Part III keeps analyzing the Manifesta 12 audiences’ perception
on Manifesta project as a whole. It shows that Manifesta’s initial goals and discourses gained
a place in society, despite the fact that it has abandoned some of these goals in the beginning
of the 2000s.
281
Een nieuw Europa creëren middels hedendaagse kunst: Manifesta en de
relatie tot kunst, samenleving en politiek
Samenvatting
Manifesta – de Europese Biënnale van Hedendaagse Kunst is een nomadische
biënnale die elke twee jaar plaatsvindt in een andere Europese stad. Manifesta ontstond begin
jaren ‘90 van de vorige eeuw als idee en werd in 1996 voor het eerst georganiseerd in
Rotterdam. Sinds het georganiseerd is in 11 landen en 13 steden, met de deelname van bijna
40 curatoren en curatorcollectieven en meer dan 1000 kunstenaars, is het tot één van de
belangrijke kunstorganisaties van Europa na de Koude Oorlog geworden. Dit proefschrift
richt zich op Manifesta’s politieke, economische, stedelijke en artistieke relaties tot de
gaststeden en -regio's, evenals op de veranderingen die zich in de loop van de tijd voordeden
in de eigen doelstellingen, discours en organisatie. Welke omstandigheden leidden tot de
totstandkoming van Manifesta en welke doelen stelde Manifesta zichzelf aan het begin? Hoe
evalueerden ze deze doelen in de loop der tijd? Hoe kunnen we de complexe relaties die
Manifesta met de verschillende actoren van elke editie heeft opgebouwd theoretisch
benaderen? Ter beantwoording van deze vragen stelt dit proefschrift dat Manifesta, op het
gebied van kunst, één van de nieuwe instituties van neoliberaal bestuur is in het tijdperk na
de Koude Oorlog. Door de complexe set van relaties van elke editie te onderzoeken, draagt
het proefschrift bij aan een beter begrip van zowel Manifesta als van het fenomeen van
hedendaagse kunstbiënnales.
De theoretische en methodologische benaderingen in dit proefschrift zijn deels
ingegeven door mijn begrip van het biënnale fenomeen en deels door de nomadische en
gelaagde structuur van Manifesta. Ik benader biënnales als ontmoetingsplaatsen voor
verschillende actoren zoals curatoren, deelnemers, lokale kunstenaars, de organiserende
instelling en haar personeel, stadsbestuurders, galeriehouders, kunsthandelaren, kunstcritici,
sponsors, samenwerkingsinstellingen en internationaal en lokaal publiek. Daarom is het bij
het benaderen van een biënnale noodzakelijk om rekening te houden met de voorkeuren,
verwachtingen en voordelen van deze verschillende actoren. Als het gaat om een biënnale als
Manifesta, waar elke editie op een andere locatie plaatsvindt, moet men het structurele en
artistieke perspectief van de biënnale zelf evalueren, samen met de historische, economische,
stedelijke, culturele en artistieke omstandigheden van de stad of regio die ze lokaliseert. In
deze context evalueert dit proefschrift elke editie van de biënnale binnen haar eigen context,
draagt het theoretische benaderingen aan die relevant zijn voor deze context en vergelijkt het
de verschillende edities om gemeenschappelijke punten te vinden.
De vergelijkende analyse van de edities wordt gekristalliseerd in drie secties die
grofweg overeenkomen met een decennium van Manifesta. Het proefschrift is
282
overeenkomstig opgedeeld in drie analytische delen, elk met drie hoofdstukken en een casus.
Deel I concentreert zich op de periode vanaf 1991, toen Manifesta als idee ontstond, tot aan
de derde editie die in 2000 in Ljubljana werd gehouden. Deel II begint met de vierde editie
die in 2002 in Frankfurt werd georganiseerd en eindigt bij de negende editie die in 2012 in
Genk werd gehouden. Deel III evalueert afzonderlijk de tiende (St. Petersburg - 2014), elfde
(Zürich - 2016) en twaalfde (Palermo - 2018) editie van Manifesta.
Deel I duikt in Manifesta’s motivaties, doelen, perspectieven, en prestaties en
mislukkingen in het eerste decennium. Manifesta werd opgericht om een netwerk tussen
kunstenaars uit postcommunistische landen en hun tegenhangers in het Westen op te bouwen,
om ruimte te maken voor jonge kunstenaars en om een nieuw Europa in de nasleep van de
periode na de Koude Oorlog te bediscussiëren. Wat betreft vorm en inhoud plaatsen deze
doelen Manifesta vanaf het allereerste begin in een politieke context. In deel I wordt
uiteengezet hoe Manifesta "het Oosten" beschreef, door welke instellingen het gesteund werd
en wat haar artistieke en curatoriele strategieën waren.
Hoofdstuk één bespreekt de notie van biënnalisatie, nadat de impact van
globalisering op kunstinstellingen en hedendaagse kunsthistoriografie is onderzocht. Het
analyseert de kenmerken van Manifesta (bijv. nomadisch, ruimte scheppend voor jonge
kunstenaars, pan-Europees) en de positie die Manifesta inneemt binnen de verschillende
biënnales voor hedendaagse kunst. Het bevraagt hoe Manifesta het oosten van Europa
definieerde en laat zien hoe Manifesta in postcommunistische landen bijgedragen heeft aan
de opbouw van de westerse kunstscène als kunstmarkt en aan de verwestering van deze
artistieke producties.
Hoofdstuk twee onderzoekt instellingen en organisaties die Manifesta institutionele,
infrastructurele, economische en discursieve hulp verleend hebben om haar doelstellingen te
bereiken. Eerst belicht het de overeenkomsten tussen Manifesta en het cultuurbeleid van de
EU en het ECoC-project in het bijzonder. Ook wordt in dit hoofdstuk de relatie van Manifesta
tot de EU-fondsen besproken. Het hoofdstuk vervolgt dan met het analyseren van de
organische relatie tussen Manifesta en het Institute of New International Artists (InIVA) en
de Soros Centers for Contemporary Art (SCCA's). Het laatste deel van dit hoofdstuk onthult
de achtergrond van de kunstsponsoring van het toonaangevende tabaksbedrijf Philip Morris,
de hoofdsponsor van Manifesta 1 en Manifesta 2.
Hoofdstuk drie richt zich op de artistieke en curatoriële strategieën van Manifesta's
eerste decennium. Het maakt een vergelijkende analyse van het percentage lokale
kunstenaars, kunstenaars uit postcommunistische landen en de jonge kunstenaars, evenals de
gemiddelde leeftijd van de deelnemende kunstenaars. Bovendien concentreert dit hoofdstuk
zich op enkele artistieke interventies die het discours van Manifesta hebben ondermijnd.
De casus van Deel I concentreert zich op het project Manifesta in Our Backyard dat
werd geïnitieerd door SCCA – Ljubljana en zich tot doel gesteld had om de Ljubljana-editie
283
van Manifesta vanuit lokaal perspectief te evalueren. Het onderzoekt hoe de lokale
kunstscène van Ljubljana reageerde op Manifesta’s voorkeur om niet met lokale
kunstgalerijen en kunstenaars samen te werken. Door het analyseren van artikelen die
verschenen in drie edities van PlatformaSCCA, het mediaorgaan van het project, maakt het
mogelijk om te zien hoe Manifesta’s discours en doelen in het eerste decennium uitgedaagd
werden door lokale figuren uit de kunstscène.
Deel II gaat in op de politieke en artistieke benaderingen van Manifesta’s tweede
decennium. In dit decennium verlegde Manifesta haar aandacht van Europa’s Oost-westas
naar de Noord-Zuidas en concentreerde zich meer op de regio's dan op steden. Bovendien
raakte ze vervreemd van haar experimentele, flexibele, anti-institutionele kenmerken en zette
een stap richting institutionalisering. Deel II begint met Manifesta 4 (2002) in Frankfurt en
eindigt met de negende editie die werd gehouden in Genk - Limburg (2012).
Hoofdstuk vier onderzoekt de oorsprong van Manifesta’s interesse in de regio's, in
plaats van steden, in het tweede decennium. Door de concepten van nieuw-regionalisme en
creatieve steden kritisch te onderzoeken, laat het zien hoe Manifesta in het nieuwe
regionalistische beleid van de regio's en steden georganiseerd werd. Dit hoofdstuk illustreert
het belang van Manifesta voor de regio's en steden die probeerden meer ruimte voor creatieve
industrieën te maken middels neoliberaal stadsvernieuwingsbeleid.
Hoofdstuk vijf concentreert zich op twee zorgen van Manifesta die in het tweede
decennium naar de voorgrond kwamen: het stedelijke en het onderwijs. Het illustreert hoe
Manifesta met architectenbureaus samenwerkte om verlaten gebouwen te renoveren en tot
locaties te maken met het doel een blijvende indruk op deze plekken achter te laten. Verder
benadrukt het de samenhang van deze tendens met het neoliberale stadsvernieuwingsbeleid
van de gastregio's en -steden. Het tweede deel van hoofdstuk vijf behandelt onderwijs als
agendaonderwerp voor Manifesta. Het laat zien hoe het potentieel van kritisch omgaan met
de leerprocessen en onderwijspraktijken naar voren kwam in de geannuleerde zesde editie
van Manifesta, werd gemist en later werd omgewerkt tot kunstbemiddelingsprogramma's.
Hoofdstuk zes benadert het tweede decennium van Manifesta vanuit het perspectief
van haar artistieke en curatoriele strategieën. Het stelt dat Manifesta's afhankelijkheid van de
gaststeden en -regio’s bijdroeg aan het uitsluiten van kunstwerken en curatoriële
benaderingen die kritisch omgaan met de organisatie. Bovendien draagt het, net zoals
hoofdstuk drie, bij aan het creëren van profielen van deelnemende kunstenaars en de
betrokkenheid van Manifesta bij lokale kunstscènes. Het lezen van de consensuele relatie
tussen Manifesta en de gaststeden en
-regio's over postpolitieke kritiek en het kritisch evalueren van de gegevens, laat zien hoe de
oorspronkelijke doelen en structuur van Manifesta in de loop van de tijd zijn veranderd. Het
hoofdstuk eindigt met een illustratie van uitzonderlijke artistieke en curatoriele interrupties
die het consensusperspectief van Manifesta uitdagen.
284
De casus van Deel II concentreert zich en wijdt uit over een van deze
onderbrekingen: Artist Colonialist performance van Thierry Geoffroy, alias Colonel,
gerealiseerd in Manifesta 8 - Murcia. Het onderzoekt Geoffroy's ondervraging van Manifesta
8 in het kader van Geoffroy's artistieke praktijken. Het beargumenteert dat Geoffroy's
gelijktijdig uitgevoerde subversieve praktijken de consensuele praktijken en discoursen van
Manifesta doorbraken.
Deel III gaat in op de tiende, elfde en twaalf editie van Manifesta. Het stelt dat
Manifesta in haar derde decennium pragmatisch heeft opgesteld wat betreft het discours. Het
laat zien hoe Manifesta een discours dat in de afgelopen twee decennia geproduceerd was
weer oppikte en aanpaste aan de nieuwe doelstellingen. Bij een gebrek aan gedeelde
discursieve en strategische praktijken die deze drie edities met elkaar verbinden, wordt elke
editie in een apart hoofdstuk behandeld.
Hoofdstuk zeven onderzoekt de dynamiek achter de keuze om Manifesta na veertien
jaar te organiseren in een voormalig communistisch land en niet-EU-lidstaat, Rusland
(Manifesta 10 - St. Petersburg). Na een bespreking van de betrokkenheid van de oligarchen
bij de Russische hedendaagse kunstscène, bespreekt het de oproep tot een boycot die ontstond
in reactie op de restrictieve wet tegen 'homoseksuele propaganda' en de annexatie van de
Krim, en het analyseert Manifesta's reacties op deze oproep. Het stelt dat Manifesta's
pogingen om zich van deze discussies te distantiëren ook een politiek standpunt was. Het
illustreert dit standpunt door de artistieke en curatoriële strategieën van Manifesta 10 nader
te onderzoeken.
Hoofdstuk acht gaat in op de relatie tussen Manifesta 11 en het stedelijk beleid van
Zürich ten opzichte van de creatieve industrieën. Het analyseert het thema van de biënnale,
“Wat doen mensen voor geld?”, in het licht van huidige discussies over precaire
arbeidsomstandigheden. Daarnaast genereert het wederom gegevens over het profiel van de
deelnemende kunstenaars en onthult het het effect van Art Basel op de curatoriële en
artistieke strategieën van Manifesta 11.
Hoofdstuk negen, het laatste hoofdstuk van dit proefschrift, neemt de zaak Palermo
(Manifesta 12) onder de loep. Het benoemt de schadelijke effecten van maffiapraktijken op
het stedelijke en culturele leven en de stadsbestuurders’ verwachtingen van Manifesta.
Vervolgens analyseert het data die middels veldwerk verzameld zijn om de
publieksopvattingen over Manifesta 12 beter te begrijpen.
De casus van Deel III gaat verder met het analyseren van deze opvattingen van het
Manifesta 12-publiek over het Manifesta-project als geheel. Het laat zien dat Manifesta's
oorspronkelijke doelstellingen en discoursen een plek binnen de samenleving hebben
gekregen, ondanks het feit dat een aantal van deze doelstellingen al in het begin van de jaren
2000 zijn opgegeven.