Timeliness and Relevance of the Project

On the background of crises of global and local capitalism, art museums and art biennials continue to expand their activity. This cultural turn in urban development has not yet met with an adequate amount of sociological, philosophical and historical attention. Moreover, interdisciplinary research projects dedicated to art biennials are extremely rare, if existent at all. As constantly increasing number of cities launch their own art biennials, among the aims that their organizers pursue is the urgently felt demand to address the alternatives to the historical development of modern capitalism. The discourse over the developmental paths of modernization process that have been overlooked represent one of the most significant cultural resources for future development that could confirm to important goals of culturally, ecologically, and socially sustainable development such as those promoted by the UNESCO, United Nations and European Union.

It is exactly cities on geographical fault-lines, such as Berlin or Jerusalem, that are in need of alternative models of cultural development most. The interactions among the local, regional and global dimensions of culture and society are marked by daunting complexity. However, cultural events that already straddle these cross-cutting dimensions are important sources of cultural and social insight that need to be recovered through interdisciplinary research into their contexts, effects and interdependencies that gain in salience when approached via broadly comparable categories such as urban space. It is urban space that connects across the volatility of the present moment to more durable structures of relations that set regions, countries and cities apart. While reconstruction of national particularities has its undeniable merits (Munch 1984, 1986), it is the opening towards the cities that form the environment where the urban spaces of art biennials are set that can find relevance to the multiple other issues that surround cultural events. For this research project, the strategies of urban development that are oriented towards turning cities of modern capitalism into cities of culture are relevant for the reason that they can be initiators of cultural, social and economic change. Cultural revolutions (Lazzarato 2003), rather than violent protests, can open previously unimaginable spaces of opportunities for social, economic and cultural development.

While the role of cities of Renaissance Italy as urban prototypes for modern capitalism (Weber 1922) is widely contested on grounds of historical comparison, Weber's theoretical singling out of cities as cultural laboratories of urban change remains valid. Correspondingly, the growing visibility of Italian contemporary philosophy, German contemporary art and Israeli contemporary cinema serve as indicators of cultural ferment in the respective countries the key urban centers of which can provide entry-points into exploration of alternatives of development of modernity. The theoretical sample of Germany, Italy and Israel, where different cities of culture strategies are represented, will let conceptual and historical comparison of art biennials to map the relations between urban space and global culture along the alternative possibilities of cultural development of modernity. Current state of global capitalism makes this research project both scholarly timely and culturally relevant.