From Ephemeral and Virtual Status of Art Biennials to A Global and Local Institutionalization

It appears that this off-European positioning does help to be more aware of the importance that European culture has for the potential to bring the hidden meanings of urban space to be articulated with a powerful effect. Urban development takes many guises. Some of them are destructuve when examined with standards in mind that are not always made publicly aware of. Many losing battles are fought to prevent that from happening. However, it is a sensitization to the potential collective benefit that respect for historical, social and cultural entitlements that inhere in urban space can bring that highly mediatized events hold a promise for. Distanced and close to manifold discourses, art biennials are an increasingly globalized form in which global culture becomes ephemerally welded with urban space. But to take art biennials to a stage where they would become global institutions as well is an ambitious but hopefully achievable aim that research on them may want to achieve. In bringing artworks, curators and artists for a short-term enagagement with a particular city from the state of the art of contemporary artistic discourse and practice, the support thrown behind art biennial can go a step further in helping the impact of these particular art biennials be endowed with a staying power that possibly only follow-up studies can lend.