There is one thing that is surely impressive and that is that the 1st Brussels Biennial actually took place. The story began three years ago, when the Flemish Ministry of Culture decided to support Barbara Vanderlinden’s proposal to establish the 1st Brussels Biennial, which would create a new platform and would offer Brussels a better position in the international contemporary art map. After a three-year-marathon of putting together and constantly changing dates, concepts, structures, partners, artists and teams (the Biennial was initially going to open in summer 2007 with Barbara Vanderlinden as artistic director, Anselm Franke and Katerina Gregos, who subsequently resigned amid the ensuing chaos, as co-curators), the 1st Brussels Biennial opened on 18 October 2008, presenting a common project of eight different international institutions and nine curators which resulted in a seven exhibitions / seven projects / 70 artists Biennial. Its title? Re-Used Modernity.

Brussels is a very particular, paradoxical place that could eventually become an interesting context for a new biennial despite the growing plethora of biennials around the world: it could provide a motivating platform for contemporary art exchanges on a national and international level. In the very centre of Europe, Brussels is at the same time very international and cosmopolitan but also stifled by political instability and provincial nationalistic antagonisms. With a remarkable concentration of prominent and interesting international and Belgian artists and potential important collectors, it is lacking a significant role in the international art market — something that could be considered a positive fact in many aspects, by the way. Although there is vivid and interesting activity by smaller initiatives such as artist’s run spaces, it lacks larger scale contemporary art institutions (with the exception of the recently opened Wiels). All these reasons that could welcome a new biennial are, I presume, the reasons that made many artists and institutions decide to participate in despite the odds created almost from the beginning by its multilevel instability.

Aspiring to propose a ‘new model’, the Biennial as ‘infrastructure and not as spectacle’ [i] as well as to justify the presence of another biennial in the Belgian context, Vanderlinden developed her idea around Brussels’ geographical and political position — after all it ‘is’ the capital of Europe — its multinational/multicultural identity, as well as the absence of internationally strong institutions in the city. Structure-wise, using as point of reference Rem Koolhaas’ Hollocore hypothesis regarding the region extending between Belgium, The Netherlands and the Ruhr Valley, she organised the project around an interregional network of partners that mysteriously expands as far as Morocco and Bangladesh. So much importance is given to the (infra)structure, the networks and the diversity that it could be said that the ‘context’ finally becomes the ‘concept’. And this is the main problem.

Modernity, its myths and realities and the possible intellectual way outs that these can offer to our post-modern condition have been vividly re-explored through recent artistic and curatorial propositions; and we have some very good examples. So it’s not about the initial concept: the weakness of the Brussels Biennial lies in its unconvincing development, the loose relations between the different projects — and the choice of some of these projects in the first place. With the exception of Horizon & Underground exhibition, the projects do not have much relation with the theme. ‘Modernity’ has more to do with the context: all locations are situated on the North-South axis of Brussels, the emblem of the city’s own modernist utopia that goes back to the 1950s and peaks in 1958, with the World Exhibition and the inauguration of Atomium.

Among the partners figure some of the important European institutions, none of them is Brussels-based though (which gives an idea of the Biennial’s relation to the city): from the Belgian side we have MuHKA and ExtraCity in Antwerp and B.P.S. 22 in Charleroi; from The Netherlands, Witte de With in Rotterdam, Vanabbemuseum in Eidhoven, and BAK in Utrecht; finally, Drik, Picture Library in Bangladesh and L’Appartement 22 in Rabat. Each institution developed its project independently in the Biennial’s context.

The overall impression of this Biennial, that of a non-coherent project — also due to the fact that it was hastily put together — is fortunately balanced by the presence of certain very good projects that are worth seeing. MuHKA’s Horizon & Underground exhibition held at the cultural centre of the Anneessens underground pre-metro station is the most eloquent and interesting amongst them. Bart De Baere takes as central point Luc Deleu’s complex, innovative urban planning propositions and develops the exhibition around different forgotten modernistic urban projects found in various Belgian archives. The utopian nature of Le Corbusier / Otlet and Schillemans / Frenssen plans for Antwerp’s development meet with Gordon Matta-Clark’s abstract and poetic urban interventions, through the inspired Office Baroque project — comprising photos, the artist’s correspondence with Florent Bex, MuHKA’s director at the time and a film — offering an interesting and constructive reading of modernism.

In the old Post Sorting Office’s huge building, unused for several years, where the most important part of the Biennial is presented (eleven different projects: six institutions’ exhibitions, five artist’s projects), one is captivated more by the impressive, massive — almost haunted — spaces, the freezing cold, the magnificent view over the railway station and the modernist architecture around it — characteristic of this part of the city — than by the exhibition itself.

Nevertheless, there are a few projects that are worth mentioning for different reasons: Extra City’s proposition curated by Anselm Franke, Letter to Leopold refers both to Leopold II, a dark figure of Belgian history and the space’s former use. Historically charged, the show explores through the work of artists such as Stefan Pente, Ines Schaber and Karen Peters, Florian Schneider, Jochen Becker and Valerie Jouve the post-colonialism realities through the European colonial fantasies in an unpretentious and articulate way.

Artists’ collaborative Potential Estate proposed a place for ‘meeting and exchange’: Cabinet Anciaux (the title referring to Bert Anciaux the Flemish Minister of Culture) is the place where the audience was invited for a drink; it is also the place where two new projects, The Gift and the film The Crying of Potential Estate, were presented. The Gift is a Collective Property Sales project that invites visitors to become shareholders in the new film. Working around the ideas of nation, utopia, globalisation, ownership and market, the multifaceted project is accompanied by a newsletter, which gives more details and at the same time makes an open critique on the Biennial [ii].

On the other hand, the collaboration between the Van Abbemuseum and BAK resulted in a surprising non-exhibition. Once is Nothing, is the ‘conceptual’ and ‘narrative’ reproduction of the Individual Systems exhibition that was curated by Igor Zabel and was presented at the 2003 Venice Biennial. Everything is there but the works of art: a small catalogue including the absent participating works and Patrick Corillon’s project consisting of A4 size pressboards with a fictitious story regarding the artworks written on them, complete the project. What is, according to curators Charles Esche and Maria Hlavajova, the answer to a series of theoretical questions on Biennials and exhibition making — and could therefore be interesting in a Biennial context — can’t help but make us doubt whether the institutional critique has gone any further than the ’70s conceptual art practices …

Hermetic structures do not create a conducive platform for the promotion of contemporary art and its relationship with the public. Policies, networks, infrastructures and personal ambitions, important as they may be, should not be developed to the detriment of contents, concepts, artists and audiences. The Brussels Biennial’s potential to offer a serious alternative in the Belgian context seems to have been wasted for the moment. Belgium’s potential will have to find another way out. Let’s see …


[i] Barbara Vanderlinden, Re-Used Modernity, in the catalogue Brussels Biennial 1, 2008
[ii] See also: www.potentialestate.org.