Contemporary art biennials are sites of prestige, innovation and experimentation, where the category of art is meant to be in perpetual motion, rearranged and redefined, opening itself to the world ...and its contradictions. They are sites of a seemingly peaceful cohabitation between the elitist and the popular, where the likes of Jeff Koons encounter the likes of Guy Debord, where Angela Davis and Frantz Fanon share the same ground with neoliberal cultural policy makers and creative entrepreneurs. Building on the legacy of events that conjoin art, critical theory and counterculture, from Nova Convention to documenta X, the new biennial blends the modalities of protest with a neoliberal politics of creativity. This book examines a strained period for these high art institutions, a period when their politics are brought into question and often boycotted in the context of austerity, crisis and the rise of Occupy cultures. Using the 3rd Athens Biennale and the 7th Berlin Biennale as its main case studies, it looks at how the in-built tensions between the domains of art and politics take shape when spectacular displays attempt to operate as immediate activist sites. Drawing on ethnographic research and contemporary cultural theory, this book argues that biennials both denunciate the aesthetic as bourgeois category and simultaneously replicate and diffuse an exclusive sociability across social landscapes.
This paper analyzes the relation between the ideals of universality and globalization developed by the Biennials of Havana and Johannesburg, and the local contexts where those initiatives were put ...into practice. Both events are traditionally considered as the main antecedent of contemporary biennials. Furthermore, both enact a separation with Eurocentric ideas of modernity, generating a decentered and more critical artistic panorama. Without dismissing those elements, in this text I argue that the heritage of both biennials is expressed not just in the models of globalism they produced. The contradictions deriving from the complex articulation of those models and a local medium in transition, still bounded to national issues, constitute a central node to understand their evolution and to frame the coordinates of the present-day global art system.
We examined adhesive seed dispersal, recruitment and site occupancy of 17 plant species characteristic of semi-natural grasslands. The main objectives were to examine different aspects of dispersal: ...the potential distance of seed transport; the likelihood of recruitment at putative "suitable sites" along road verges; the spatial (realised) patterns of occurrence along road verges (occupancy); and associations among these aspects and seed size. Adhesive dispersal capacity was investigated experimentally using cattle. Recruitment was investigated by seed sowing experiments. Occupancy was recorded in two regional surveys. Results suggested that adhesive dispersal may be an effective mode of seed transport, even for species which lack special "adhesive" structures, such as hooks or hairs. Fifteen of the 17 species successfully recruited at the experimental gaps and adjacent grassy areas. Disturbance promoted seedling recruitment. Seedling emergence was negatively associated with adhesive dispersal capacity. Spatial (occupancy) patterns were not related to recruitment features or dispersal capacity. There is some support for a trade-off between adhesive dispersal capacity and recruitment ability, but no support for a trade-off between adhesive dispersal capacity and ability to withstand competition during recruitment. The results are discussed in the context of species distribution and persistence in fragmented landscapes. We suggest that adhesive dispersal has been underestimated as a mechanism of seed transport, but that adhesive dispersal capacity per se is not the main factor determining species occupancies in fragmented grasslands.
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