Arts & International Affairs: 2.3: Autumn/Winter 2017 | Page 85

THE SCALES, POLITICS, AND POLITICAL ECONOMIES OF CONTEMPORARY ART BIENNIALS
more than one way to look at them” (Sheikh 2010 [2009]:158). Working with such rela-
tional understanding of space (e.g. Massey 2005), Sheikh approaches biennials through
the category of the heterotopia. They are “capable of maintaining several contradictory
representations within a single space” (Sheikh 2010 [2009]:163). Heterotopia allows
for the fact that while biennials are part of hegemonies, mechanisms for generation of
monopoly rent or city branding, this does not mean that they need to affirm such he-
gemonies. They can be made to signify differently: “It is improbable that a biennial can
exist without taking part in … processes of capital accumulation (both symbolic and
real, of course), so the question is rather, can they do something else simultaneously?”
(Sheikh 2010 [2009]:163).
Cultural Political Economy of Biennials
An important dimension in the world politics of biennials is their cultural political econ-
omy, i.e. the question of the kind of value that is produced at biennials. There are two
interlinked dimensions to this discussion: The first reviews contributions examining the
biennial phenomenon in the context of post-Fordist processes of capital accumulation
and search for monopoly rent through exclusivity. The second takes up the character of
biennials as badges of distinction and mechanisms of accruing not only economic but
also symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1983).
Some scholars highlight the fact that the oppositional value of contemporary art has
been suppressed namely as exchange value considerations have taken over. The embed-
dedness of contemporary art biennials in the search for monopoly rent has implications
for the capacity of biennials to function as spaces of justice and to realize their stated
goal to bring into being liberating “new worlds” (Basualdo 2010 [2003]; Kompatsiaris
2014). Panos Kompatsiaris discusses the contradictions that emerge when a biennial’s
ideological agenda—e.g. social criticism toward the neoliberal economic model—col-
lides with their practices of funding and hiring labor, for example: “One must neces-
sarily begin by asking what kinds of worlds are these institutions capable of producing
and more importantly for whom” (Kompatsiaris 2014:77, 82–86). Filipovic, van Hal,
and Øvstebø also suggest that the increasing dominance of the place-branding agenda
in biennial operations has lent legitimacy to the claim that the word biennial stands for
little more than “an overblown symptom of spectacular event culture” (Filipovic et al.
2010:13). Biennials are argued to instrumentalize the symbolic value of art which flows
from art’s presumed autonomy from the market logic (Basualdo 2010 [2003]:129–130)
and characterized as commercially driven showcases akin to Disneyland (Filipovic et al.
2010:13). Tang suggests that biennials function as “tastemakers, mobilized to reinforce
certain politics through aesthetic representation” while being smoothly integrated into
“capital’s flows and political status quos” (Tang 2007:258).
Money has, indeed, always played a role at biennials, and a strand of the literature on
biennials focuses on its implications for the politics of biennials. One of the primary
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