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Thehistory stilltobemadewilltakeinto consi.derationtheplace (the architecture) in which qwork comes to rest (dwelops) as an integral part of the work in
question and aII the conseqwences such a link implies. It is not a quation of or-

namenting (disfiguring or embellishing) the place (the architecture) inwhich the work is installed, but of indicating as precisely as posible the vay thework belongs inthe place qndviceverst, ds slon as thelqtteris shum.
Daniel 8uren,

-Functrtr of Architecture-

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lltW Y0Rl(, 1929. Asparse, singular row of arr'works lined the palest of walls in the Museum of Modern An (MoMA) in New
York, a display strategythatAlfred Barr Jr. imagined after avisit to the Folkwang Museum in Essen two years earlier.' The walls became somewhat lighter upon arriving on

American shores and evenwhiter over the years, movingfrom beige-colored monk's cloth to starkwhite paint bythe time the MoMA moved into its newpermanent home on West 53rd Street.' But the essence of the museum's aesthetic project was there from the start. With it, other details followed: Windows were banished so that the semblance ofan outsideworld-dailylife,the passage oftime, in short, context-disappeared; overheadlightswere recessedandemitted auniform, any-given-moment-

in-the-middle-of-the-dayglow; noise and clutterwere suppressed; ageneral sobriety reigned. Abit like its cinematic black-box pendant, the museum's galleries unequivocally aimed to extract the viewer from "the world." For this and other reasons, the minimal frame of white was thought to be "neutral" and "pure," an ideal support for the presentation ofan art unencumbered by architectural, decorative, or other distractions. The under$ing fiction of this whitewashed space is not only that ideology is held at bay, but also that the autonomous works of art inside convey their meaning in uniquely aesthetic terms.3 The form for this fiction quickiy became a standard, a universal signifier of moderniry and eventuallywas designated the

323

'thite

cube."a

The BiennialR@der

No tabula rasa, the white cube is an indelibly inscribed container' Far more than a

physical, tectonic space (monochromatic walls delimiting a certain geometrical shape), the art world's white cube circumscribes an attitude toward art, a mode of presentation, and an aura that confers a halo ofinevitability, offate, on whatever is displayed inside it. The legibiliryof the artrvorkaswot'kis contingent upon the structuring of that legibility by its surroundings-Marcei Duchamp taught us that. From
the MoMA's whitewashing forward, the white cube became a cipher for institutional officiousness, fortifliing the ultimate tautology: an ar"twork belongs there because is there. (The fact that the artwork is bracketed offfrom the world also undermines the impression that it might be related to, or the same as' the stuffof everyda,v 1ife.) In that space of encounter, the ideal vleu'er (white' mlddle-class) is also con-

it

of the work of aft with an uninterrupted gaze.s Particular to the white cube is that it operates under the pretense that its seeming invisibiliry allows the artwork to speak best; it seems b1ank, innocent, unspecific, insignificant. Ultimately, what makes a

structed-well behaved, solemn, disembodied, and able to focus on the singularlty

white cube a white cube is that, in our experience of it, ideologV and form meet, and all wlthout our noticing it.6
Years after Barr invoked the white cube as the hallmark of the MoMA's exhibition spaces, Hitler approved of its use for the interior of the Haus der Kunst in Munich rn r937,the Nazis' first architectural project after coming to power. That monumental

newbuildingwithits interior ofvastwell-lit galiery spaces, allwhlte andwindowless, opened with the Grosse dewtsche Kunstausstelluttg (Great German Art Exhibition).
The white container and sober display served to make the painted idyllic landscapes and bronze Aryan bodies on view seem natural and innocuous' despite the belligerilulflllM m

ent motives that underiay their selection and presentation. Driving home the point. the demonstration was doubly staged; the Grosse detLtsche Kunstausstellu?! was the ..acceptable," positive pendant to the somber, densely cluttered, and apparentirdisorganized show EntarteteKz,rnsf (Degenerate Art) that opened in a nearby archeo-

32{

logical institute the following day.7 Thanks to such a contrast' the artworks in thformer seemed all the more righteous and those in the latter all the more abhorlent' There is no denying the coincidence: when the aestheticization ofpolitics reachec terrifying proportions, the white cube was called in.
NervYork and Munich, r9z9 and 1937. The larger architectural frames forthese rvhi:. cubes are not comparable, and their respective regimes, it goes without sa1'rng' r'r e:.

The Global White Cube

Elere Filipovic

worlds aparr. Conflating them is not my purpose. Rather, I wish to highlight the usefulness, effrcacy, andversatility of an exhibition format that has become a standard' If the whire cube managed to be both the ideal display format for the MoMA's arzd
the Third Reich's respective visions of modern art, despite their extremely different ldeological and aesthetic positions, it is because the display conceit embodied qualities that were meaningful to both, including neutrality, order, rationalism' progress'

extraction from a larger context, and, not least of all, universality and (Western) modernity.s Their examples are relevant today not only because they laid the foundations for how the white cube came to signi$r over time, but aiso because the subtle and not so subtle political ambitions of their exhibitions remind us of the degree to which pristine architectonics, immaculate backdrops, general sparseness, and the

strict organization of arrworks on the wall s matter. The subjugation of artistic productionto aframe at once "universal," neutral, ordered, rational, andultimatelyproblematic forwhatthat so-called universalityimplies andhides, points to apredicament
with which anists and curators have grappled ever since: exhibitions, by their forms, entangle the viewer in a space at once physical and intellectuai, but also ideological'

tASI't0RWlRll, virtually
the white cube is

everywhere,

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sometime here and now. Like modernity, a tremendously successIts putative neutraiiry export. fulWestern
makes

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it

a ubiquitous architectural sur-

round (an "architectural inevitabiliry," Rem Koolhaas would say) for alt"r/orks
in museums, but also for galleries and an fairs that transform commercial environs into what look more and more like mini museal spaces. Given that galleries and ar-t fairs have a financial interest in making
spaces,

Ptnillllffiilfl|IBlll0lls

325

goods for sale appear as iftheyhave alreadybeenlegitimizedbymuseumJike

not to mention their frequent desire to keep the poetry or violence of everyday life out of the realm ofbecalmed shopping, this is hardly surprising. It makes less sense, however, within the context ofthe recurrent, large-scale international exhibitions that have proliferated around the world.

The

BiennialR!der

Sometimes referred to in shorthand as "mega-exhibitions" or "biennials" (even

those that do not, strictly speaking, occur biannually), the various large-sca1e inter-

national exhibitions about which i speak distinguish themselves from tlpical group shows staged in museums, art centers, or Kunsthallen in large part through their connection to the Venice Biennial, the first perennial international salon ofcontemporary art inaugurated in 1895. This parentage implies a temporality and spectacularity that is their own: these punctual manifestations recurring every two or three

or even every five years, as is the case with Documenta, lack real visibility beyond the duration of their exhibitions; they have an explicit ambition both to represent their region, host citv, or nation and to display a decidedly international panorama
of contemporary production, an ambition that influences the scale and general circumstance attached to the event; and they often are dispersed over multiple public spaces and institutional sites.

If these relatively basic features unite large-sca1e

international exhibitions and biennials, an ocean ofdifferences can separate their ideals and histories. A number ofthem find their origins in contexts ofprofound political and cultural transition, for example, Documenta and German post\,var
reconstruction, the Gwangiu Biennial and the democratization of South Korea, the short-livedJohannesburg Biennial andthe end of apar-theid, orManifesta, European Biennial of ContemporaryArt and the fall of the Berlin Wail. These and others have
used the particularity oftheir historic, cultural, and geographic situation to define

institutional focus, a striking example being the Havana Biennial's ongoing engagement to offer a platform for artists from the "Third World." Whatever their individual histories, however, the ambition to be a counter-model to the museum and its traditionai exhibitions is a signiflcant deflning feature ofsuch events.
an

Mostbiennials andlarge-scale international exhibitions infactwere foundedinreaction to nonexistent or weak local art institutions unwilling or unable to support the
most experimental contemporarycultural production. These perennial exhibitions,

320

therefore, perceive themselves as temporally punctual infrastructures that remain forever contemporary and unburdened by collecting and preserving what the vagaries of time render simpiy modern. The aim to be the paradigmatic alternative to the
museum cuts both ways, however, with positive and negative distinctions. The pro-

liferation ofbiennials in the nineteen-nineties rendered them new privileged sites for cultural tourism and introduced a category ofan, the bombastic proportions ani hollow premises of which earned it the name "biennial art," a situation that knotted the increasingly spectacular events to market interests. That mega-exhibitions

The Global Vvhite Cube Elena Filipdic

can be compromised is a frequent lament,

but in their best moments, they offer

as

counterproposal to the regular programming of the museum traartists to trespass institutional walls and deff the neat perimeter to which the ditional institution often strictly adheres when it organizes exhibitions (although protomuseums, it must be said, are increasingly challenging their own once-staid hetand for challenging Moreover, mega-exhibitions have also been platforms
as

well

occasions for

cols).

most erogeneous artistic forms from around the world, often addressing some of the known been have they impor-tantly, as Just period. politically charged issues of the some of the most intense questioning of artistic practices through the ex-

to elicit

conpanded idea ofwhere such an event's borders lie. Interdisciplinary discussions, as ferences, and lectures that take place on or near the premises ofexhibitions or, increasare world the around locations in several was the case with Documenta 1, inglyintegral tothese events. This striking expansion goes intandemwith curatorial larger discourses that increasingly distinguish the biennial or mega-exhibition as prOthan the mere presentation ofartworks; they are undefstood as vehicles forthe duction ofknowiedge and intellectual debate.
As Carlos Basualdo suggests, "the configuration ofinterests at the core ofinstitutions like biennials clearly differs from that which gave rise to the institutional cir-

In cuit traditionally linked to modernity (museums, art criticism, and galleries)'"r Western many ways, he is correct. If, however, "museums are, first and foremost, institutions,,' then biennials, as Basualdo reasons, avoid being so almost by deflnition because ,.the 91obal expansion of large-scale exhibitions performs an insistent de-centering of both the canon and aitistic modernity," rendering the two qualitatively different.'o while such an optimistic position champions the positive effects of the of the increasing number of biennials worldwide, it tends to overlook some
the ways they peryetuate the museum's most questionable paradigms'" Despite curious the examine numerous reasons to extol mega-exhibitions, it iS necessaryto discrepancy between their accompanying discourses as well as the extraordinary promises they seem to offer and the conventions through which they frame the artworks

onview.

321

The

BiennialR!der

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ll0 one seems to want to speak about it,

but no matter how ferventlybiennials and iarge-scale exhibitions insist on their radical distlnction from the idea ofthe muse-

um, they overwhelmingly show artrworks in specially constmcted settings that replicate the rigid geometries, white parti-

Is

it

conceivqble

that

tne

exercise of hegemony might

leaue space untouched?
Henri Lefebvre, The Production af Space

tions, and windowless spaces of its classica1 exhibitions, that is, when biennials are not simply bringing artrvorks into existing museums without altering their white
cubes. Timeless, hermetic, and al"rrays the

same despite its location or context, this

globally replicated white cube has become almost categorically fi xed, a,private "nonplace" for the world of contemporarv an biennials, one of those uncannily familia: sites, like the department slores, aitpons. and freeways of our period of supermcdernity described by anthropologist X{ar; Aug6." One of the crucial particularitie .
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of biennlals and large-scale exhibition;.

however, is that they are meant to rep:-sent some ytlace. Their speciflcity is precisely their potential to be

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speciflc-site-si:-''''liil

cific, if you will, and time-speciflc as we1l. The fact that the main exhibition forn:.. used in a recent biennial in Dakar looked like that used in Taipei a short time := or like that used in Venice rwenty years ago seems to contradict such an idea. F-:ays beyond the box and into the ciry or its environs are part ofwhat visitors erF: from biennials, but such "special projects" held outside museal spaces often n -' = up
320

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relatively small percentage of the whole event and, in some cases, don't h;--. at a1l. Instead, the requisite mixing of"local" and "global" ar[ists, recurrent th- :, generalizing the contemporary condition (their titles say it all: Everyday, Looks'-. ,':
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distinctions between geographically distant events. The paradox, of course, ts - .the neoliberal model ofglobalization againstwhich manyofthese biennials po.-:- ' themselves thrives on and itself produces just such homogenization.

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TheGlobalWh'rteCube Elem Filipilic

There are exceptions to this rule. Biennials such

as

those in Havana, Istanbul, Johan-

nesburg (while it lasted), and Tirana, all ofwhich happen to represent the so-called

margins of the art world, historically have often reflected the panicular economic, political, and geographic conditions oftheir localities through their inventive and often hesitant exhibition forms. Rare editions of other biennials, like Paulo Herkenhoff's edition of Sio Paulo in 1998 or Francesco Bonami's edition of Venice in zoo3,
stand out for the ways in which they revised typicai biennial norms and forms. Still, the list ofcities that have hosted large-scale exhibitions in the last decade using and reusing white cubes to display large portions ofthe arnvorks selected for inclusion

Pittsburgh, Ltxembourg Ciry New Delhi, Taipei, Frankfurt, New York Ciry Kassel, Sydney, Prague, Seville, etc. Their reliance on traditional museum exhibition formats is questionable for numerous reasons, including, as Catherine David suggests, the fact that many contemporary aesthetic practices no longer correspond to the conditions for which the white cube was built.': Just as troubling is the presumption that the profound diversity of
is seemingly endless: Berlin, Dakar,

Sdo Paulo, Sharjah,

histories and cuitures that these biennials aim to represent shouid be equallylegible in such a space. Determined to present themselves as an alternative to the museum,
these large-scale exhibitions attempt to give voice to cultures, histories, and sive biennials and

politics

underrepresented within that institution. The fact that the most seeminglyprogres-

their curators, vaunting the most heterogeneous of art forms, so often adopt a unique and now ossified exhibition format suggests that some of the
most pernicious tenants of the museum and the history of modernism it embodies
remain fundamental to their functioning. As Brian O'Doherqr, one of the white cube's most perceptive theorists, notes, "the

history of modernism is intimately framed by that space; or rather the history of modern art can be correlated with changes in that space and howwe see it." More than "any single picture," he further states, "that white ideal space . . . may be the archetypal image of twentieth century art; it clarifies itself through a process of historical inevitability usually attached to the art it contains."'4 The white cube often supports the modern museum's other historiographic devices, including a linear, evolutionary history of art (think Alfred Barr's famous "torpedo" of modern art) with its decidedly Western perspective, limited temporal schemas, and unidirectional notions of influence. Given this, one wonders why this most dutiful spatial accomplice has continued to proliferate almost without question when we have become more conscious in recent decades that "modernity" is a construct that has

320

The Biennial Reader

producers. suppressed, obscured, or transformed whole cultural histories and their of opposition If globalization, as is so often maintained, problematizes the binary domithe national and the international, deffing national borders and unhinging nant cultural paradigms to allow the entry of histories, temporalities, and condistructions ofproductionfrombeyondthe west, thenwhydo so manyconventional and tures remain at exactly those sites that seek to undermine the epistemological institutional bases of these structures? The white cube is, to cite O'Dohety again, ,.one of modernism's triumphs," aWestern conceit constructed to uphold some of its most cherished values, including whatlgot zabel called the common presump-

ililtil{rF

tion that ,,Western modern art is

...

modern afi, that modernization [in the visual

While it arts as well as in other areas of cultural and social life] is Westerrrization'"'s paradigms, these dismantle slowto maynotbe surprisingthatthe museumhas been why have biennials not done so? To question Basualdo's notion of decentering: can true decentering of traditional notions of modernirybe fully accomplished so long contefi bywhich to as the western museum's frame is exponed as the unquestioned legitimize an apparently expanding canon?
a

To Lefebwe's queries about whether space can be innocent and whether hegemoAnd so it nies might leave Space untouched, the answer-as he knewwell-is "no."'6
is

for the space ofthe exhibition. There are diverse ways an exhibition can resist, asselect serting its sociai and political relevance in our contemporaneity. To focus on Stil1, the aspects, therefore, is admittedly to hold in suspense a reading ofthe others.
,,ideology of an exhibition," as theorist Misko Suvakovi6 persuasively contends, is not "an aggregate of [the] oriented and entirely rationalized intentions of its organizers," nor is it the "messages that the authors of an exhibition are projecting and

Lt:

---- -

proclaiming in their introductory or accompanying terts."'7 Instead, he concludes, it the lies "between the intended and the unintended." Or, to put it slightly differently, and the ideology of an exhibition lies between the discursive statements ofpurpose aesthetic-spatial result that manage more or less effectively to translate the intentions ofthe aftists and curators involved. An examination of several editions of Manifesta, Documenta, and the Gwangju Biennial thus will focus on the discursive anc

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330

stmctural armatures suppoltingthese exemplaryrecent projects and, inevitabiy, on

the ways in which the white cube has haunted or still continues to haunt them.

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GlobalWhite Cube Elem Filip@ic

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European Biennial of ContemporaryArt was inaugurated in 1996 as a platform for cultural exchange within newly unified, post-Wall Europe. The paucity ofdialogue between artists, institutions, and curators across Europe (despite the dramatic historic changes), the phenomenal multiplication of biennials,

Mllllttsll,

and their increasing concretizalion and inflexibility are all factors that profoundly

influenced the project. As a result, the new biennial was imagined not only as an altemative to the museum, but as an alternative to the typical biennial as we1l. Thus Manifesta's mostunique featurewas conceived-eacheditionwas to be held in adifferent peripheral European ciry Rejecting some ofthe inherent nationalism ofgeographically fixed events and eschewing art-world capitals in favor of locations with less established or visible infrastructures for art, Manifesta seemed to want to use its shifting locations and explicit focus on emerging European artists to rethink the form and specificity oflarge-scale international exhibitions.
For each edition, the selected curatorial team mounted its exhibition across a num-

ber of local institutional sites. The main venue was typically a contemporary art museum or Kunsthalle-the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen for Manifesta r, the Casino Luxembourg for Manifesta 2, the Moderna galerija Ljubijana for Manifesta 3, and the Frankfurter Kunstverein for Manifesta 4. (Manifesta 5 was an exception to this rule, with only a small portion of the show displayed in a local contemporary afi- space, the Koldo Mixtelena.) Exhibiting in such established venues was no doubt a pragmatic gesture: given Manifesta's itinerant existence, it would be diffrcult to start from scratch each time. Moreover, the designation of local museums, contemporary art centers, and other cultural sites as exhibition spaces was a vital element, it was reasoned, in the collaboration between Manifesta and its host cities.
However, in this process, the white cube seemingly had been accepted as a kind

of
331

"international-sry1e" exhibition frame, an internationally recognized container that was deemed appropriate almost no matter where the project moved or the nature
of the arnvork being displayed.'8 Whereas the incredible promise of such a project lay in the possibility of producing fundamental shifts in successive editions as they

traversed Europe, Manifesta's exhibitions have remained relatively true to known biennial formats and standard museal display aesthetics.

The BiennialR@der

Although no edition of Manifesta to date has abandoned the white cube, a remarkable fragiliry informaliry and tentativeness did characterize several editions, distinguishing them in the face ofthe other-wise visual sophistication and high-gloss spectacle of most perennial events. However, the modesry and ad hoc character of the dlsplayin Manifesta's first edition int996 had alreadybegun to fade somewhat with the second edition two years later and seemed to have been lost altogether by the founh edition of zooz. The reasons forthis are hardly simple and the attachment to traditional museum spaces and their formats is perhaps the slmptom of the resistance that bienniais like Manifesta encounter when they consider departing from established expectations for such events. An anecdote about the cityofStockholm's

decision not to host the second edition of Manifesta after having seen the first in Rotterdam is telling: the dozen venues across which were dispersed predominanth' subtle and smail-scale or otherwise unspectacular artworks and performances hardlyseemedto caterto the ambitions of a cirylookingto place itself on the cultural (tourist) map. For city officials shopping for a biennial, there was little that seemed iikely to draw the same crowds or press as more established mega-exhibitions. This story suggests that there was pressure on Manifesta to conform to the idea of what e biennial should look like-which meant not only grand arrvorks displayed in visible concentration, but the appropriately conventional "museum hang" and white pan-tioned spaces to properly enframe them.

Another theoretical problem with abandoning the white cube remained, one pe:haps even more fundamentally troubling to such exhibitions: how to display ri'o:, . ofart by as yet unknown artists, often wlth an aesthetic sensibility that is as vet r:-recognized by most viewers, or artworks that are not easily recognizable LIs di: -: spaces that do not announce themselves as bastions for art? Might not the atlr-, ::, be mistaken for mere "stuff"? And wasn't it desirable that artists newto the inte=-. tional art world avoid this confusion at the moment of their entrde into that n c:- -' (Not to mention that the emerging curators relatively new to the internaiiorra- --:
world might have felt they were expected to demonstrate that they could organ. - . . biennial that looked the part.) To imagine that the an that Manifesta showed c: -- the survival of
a

'::11.. .,iil,ii
ll

332

new institution like Manifesta indeed depended on the white r -- :

I

''I

however, would be to accept the dominance of Western modernity's stl1lctur:: :: the ground against which eveqrthing eise must be read in order to be consr: = ''

legitimate at all, a highly problematic assumption and one contingent on pre the kind of normalization that Manifesta claimed to want to question.

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Tt! Global White Cube Ebna Filipwic

Efforts to highlight the specificity of a Manifesta exhibition in a panicular place as well as its specificity as a biennial could instead be seen in the themes that both the displaced exhibitions and the arnvorks on view addressed, inciuding homelessness, hospitaliry diasporas, borders, and immigration. Perhaps more than any otherbiennial, Manifesta's various editions can be said to have consistently probed topics crucial to inteliectual, cultural, and

political debates ofthe nineties. The third edition in

Ljubljana in zooo underlined these debates in a programmatic way. Its large number ofpolitically engaged works, rejection of siick display strategres, active discussion program initiated by local thinkers, and collaboration with the RTV Slovenia to use locai television broadcasts as a fifth venue were uniquely appropriate given the region's war-torn history. Reiatively little was done, however, to engage in more than a thematic way the show's concerns with what it called Europe's "borderline

sltrdrome." Thus, in the end, the significant distinctions between the exhibition
formats of the editions themselves arguably were hard to discern. Manifesta 5, held in Donostia-San Sebasti5n in the poiitically troubled Basque region of northern Spain, might be seen as an exception since it took urbanism as a theme at the same time as it incorporated actual urban rehabilitation into the exhibition as a constitutive element. In collaboration with the Rotterdam-based Berlage Institute, the curators instigated theoretical reflection on the revitalization of one

two ofthe area's disaffected factories, Casa Ciriza and Ondartxo, restored with the intention that they would serve the community after the run of the show. The largest portion of the ex-

ofthe region's poorest districts, the

Pasaia Bay area, and had

hibition, shown in the Casa Ciriza and thus framed by the defunct fish warehouse's postindustrial ruin and larger impoverished context, avoided the physical accouterments of the white cube, as did the portion held in the sixteenth-century fomer
monasteryMuseo San Telmo;yet,whatwas staged in thesevenues andthose others that did resort to white cubes amounted to a rather conventional show. While the urban renewal project was an important step towards asserting that biennials could be the motors for lasting local change, in the eyes of a number of critics, the exhibition missed an opportunityto renderthe historical, political, and cultural specificity ofthe location more integral to its form or to the artworks seiected. As one reviewer
concluded, it "couldhave been mounted almost anywhere."'e

333

ultimately, Manifesta's past exhibitions as well as its synposia, discussion forums, and parallel events have attempted to encourage curators and institutions to think

rUr-

\s*

about the limits, transformations, and particularities of Europe as an idea as much as a physical place but never productively incited the connection benveen this thinking

andthe reinvention of the project's structural form. After a1l, given Manifesta's concerns, why demand that it take the form or occupy the space of a conventional museum exhibition? Whynot imagine truly experimentai exhibition forms that emerge from both the specific sites in which Manifesta finds itself and the issues that make holding a biennial there and then relevant or even urgent? And why not imagine

MMmffiilmilfft

that even those cities less able to replicate Western European museum standards
and lacking the same level of financial commitment might actually host a Manifesta edition, inventing new idios)'ncratic folms for the event? As experimental platfor-rns

that deflne new models for exhibiting, the peripatetic editions could thus bettel
refl ect Manifesta's stated ambitions.

If questions

such as these have beset the project from the start, the sixth edition seems to have used them as a point of depanure. The curators of Manifesta 6, still
stages, have announced

'.r,

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that this upcoming edition in Nicosia, a geographically isolated, culturally and politically divided site with only minima resources for the production and presentation of art, not to mention a historicalhfraught relationship to Europe, will exchange Manifesta's punctual, traditional e\-

in the planning

ir

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hibition in favor ofthe extended duration and pedagogical process ofan art schoo'. It appears that the biennial's newly envisaged form and temporality emanate ffoi: an attempt to respond to some of Clprus's multiple historic overdeterminatior: including its locus between Europe and the Middle East (a flrst foray outside of E *rope for Manifesta) and its role as paradigm ofthe conditions and consequenc:: of globalization today. For what sense could another mega-exhibition have in su:-a location today? If goods can traverse its international borders with relative ea..
people sti1l cannot, caught as they are in the political instrumentalization of eth:--:
and national identities. In place of abiennial as showcase for contemporary cultr:r: goods, the sixth edition purports to use the increased facility of movement ac:: --

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borders made possible by student visas to constmct a bi-communal, inter-nae: '' forum for process, experimentation, and exchange built from the artists' extell::: presence at the site in order to respond to the realities ofits ethnically divided rcity. What the visiting spectator will be able to experience, how such things a: :: , -

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translation can be rendered visible ln an art exhibition-as-sc:-:' and whether some of the complexity of what has for so long been the "Cypriot .: . ' : s: but this lem" will be adequately addressed in the result remain to be seen,
cess and cultural

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The BiennialR@der

about the limits, transformations, and particularities of Europe as an idea

as

much as

a physical place but never productivelyincitedthe connectionbetween this thinking and the reinvention of the project's structural form. After a1l, given Manifesta's con-

it take the form or occupy the space ofa conventional museum exhibition?Whynot imagine tru1y experimental exhibitionforms that emerge from both the specific sites in which Manifesta finds itself and the issues that make holding a biennial there and then relevant or even urgent? And why not imagine
cerns, why demand that

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that even those cities less able to replicate Western European museum standards
and lacking the same level of financial commitment might actually host a Manifesta edition, inventing new idiosyncratic forms for the event? As experimental platforms

that define new models for exhibiting, the peripatetic editions could thus better
refl ect Manifesta's stated ambitions.
.!-

If questions

such as these have beset the project from the start, the sixth edition

,,iii r: ilt.

"-1

seems to have used them as a point of departure. The curators of Manifesta 6' still in the planning stages, have announced that this upcoming edition in Nicosia' a geographically isolated, culturally and politically divided site with only minima resources for the production and presentation of art, not to mention a historicall''' fraught relationship to Europe, will exchange Manifesta's punctual' traditional exhibition in favor ofthe extended duration and pedagogical process ofan art schoo-. It appears that the biennial's newly envisaged form and temporality emanate fror: an attempt to respond to Some of Cyprus's multiple historic overdetermination.including its locus between Europe and the Middle East (a first foray outside of E ..rope for Manifesta) and its role as paradigm ofthe conditions and consequenc:ofglobalization today. For what sense could another mega-exhibition have in su;-

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location today? Ifgoods can traverse its international borders with relative e:-.people still cannot, caught as they are in the political instrumentalization of eth:'and national identities. In place of a biennial as showcase for contemporary cult-::' goods, the sixth edition purports to use the increased facility of movement acr: : :
a

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borders made possible by student visas to construct a bi-communal, internati: :- ' forum for process, experimentation, and exchange built from the anists'exte:::presence at the site in order to respond to the realities of its ethnically divided : city. What the visiting spectator will be able to experience, how such things as . I . cess and culturai translation canbe renderedvisible in an art exhibition-as-s;: -' . and whether some of the complexity of what has for so long been the "clprior

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The Global Vvhite Cube Elena Filipovic

Manifesta suggests that the specificities of its site have come to serve tionfor imagining a new formal model for this biennial.

as

the founda-

ll0CUMtl{TA began in 1955 in the hope of rehabilitating the image of postwar Germany, transforming the bombed-out town of Kassel and its most iconic extant Structure, the Neoclassical Museum Fridericianum, into the center of the art world

[0clltl|tMl

every flve years. The one-hundred-day quinquennial quickly came to be considered the most serious and among the most prestigious mega-exhibitions of its klnd. One can hardiy say that for the tenth edition of Documenta in 1997 artisic director Catherine David devised radical, new display strategies to recast the physical appearance of the

white cube. While the artworks on display were largely political in con'

tent, their presentation in the Museum Fridericianum bore 1itt1e evidence that the traditional museum format or the Western avant-garde canon was under attack. The highly problematic role of the white cube was, however, an essential tension underlying Documenta ro. A reflection on what David called its "spatial and temporal but also ideological limits" was central to the conceptlon of her project.'o The seeming inability of the museum's "universalist model" to accommodate some of the most erperimental and exemplary contemporary cultural production determined her objective to conceive an exhibition that included the program "1oo Days-roo Guests," a mammoth series of daily public lectures, theater performances, film screenings' poetry readings, discussions, and other events in Kassel.
Conceptualiy, "roo Days-roo Guests" began with the premise that presenting a panorama of recent visual art was not a priori the best means of representing contem-

poraneity. As David suggested in the short guide to the exhibition, "the object for which the white cube was constructed is now in many cases no more than one of the
aspects or moments of the work, or better yet, merely the support and the vector

of

highly diverse artistic activities."" Nor was the exhibitclble object the most representative ofevery culture. She further explained:
For reasons which haw partially to do witlt interrupted or violently destroyed traditilns, as well as the dhtersity of the cultwt"alfonnations that haue sprwng

335

The

BiennialR!der

indirect and wneqwal access frotn colonization and decolonization and the
these forntation haTe been

given to the fonns of western moden'ily, it seems that in many cases the pefiinence, excellence, andradicality of conternporaty non-Westem expressions ffind their) prh,ileged drenues in ntwsic, oral and written langwage (literature, theater), and cinelna forms which haye traditionally contributed to strategies of emancipation'"'

A11

cuitures, she thus contended, are not equally served by the white cube. David's hisresulting project, with predominantly western figures featured in the show's European and American largely torical "retroperspectives," more recent but still artwork on view in the exhibition spaces, and the work of non-Westerners overa Euwhelmingly reiegated to the lecture and events program, admittedly offered rocentric perspective of visual ar-t. But, instead of imagining yet another "Museum presof roo Days," as Documentahadbeen nicknamed at its founding, she aimedto ent more heterogeneous works-and through more heterogeneous means-during ,,roo Days-too Guests." Both conceptually and physically central to the exhibition stood in the middle of the Documenta-Hal1e), the events program could

(its stage

live on the radio and via the Internet, or consulted as recordings in the exhibition, constituting a growing archive both in and, potentially, beyond visual Kassel.,3 David thus effectively transformed Documenta from a spectacular produccultural diverse of ans exhibition into a hybrid site for the representation
also be experienced

tion. The result opened Doctlmentato the kind of politicai engagement and diversity of mediums and cultures that no other such exhibition in the west had seen-what many critics in turn lamented as an overly political, theory-driven, and aesthetically impoverished show. In fact, David's move to counter the mega-exhibition's usual conspectacle was consistent with the audacious assertion that it is impossible to frame tinue to innocently perpetuate the museal exhibition format as the legitimate staged thus program events and for ail works of art from all places. The exhibition way hegethe very limitations of the white cube. And in critically reflecting on the monic forms operate, Documenta rO used the conceptual and discursive Stmcture 33t
of the last edition of the was, as David suggested, no less political than aesthetic'

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millennium to encourage others to do so as wel1, a role that

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.

For the eleventh edition of Documenta

in

zooz, artistic director Okwui Enwezor

and his co-curators aimed to transform the geographic, conceptual, and tempo-

ral constitution of the event, conceiving a series of five "platforms," the first four

TtE GlobelWhite Cube

Elena

Filipqic

of which were themed conferences (in one case including a workshop and film screenings) held in Lagos, Saint Lucia, New Delhi, Vienna, and Berlin over the
course of eighteen months.'z+ The discussions deliberated such issues as the recent impact of giobalization on the world or the violent legacy of colonialism. Although far from a literal rehearsal ofthe exhibition, they also mapped out the concerns at the hean ofthe fifth exhibitionplatform. Reiteratingthe terms ofthe largerproject's

postcolonial critique, the stridently political arnvorks and accompanying curatorial statements rendered expiicit the need to question Western imperialism, including its perpetuation through such notions as moderniry the avant-garde, universaliry
and democracy.'s

The first four platforms were, by most accounts, thought-provoking if academic affairs, at once dislocating the singular site of Documenta and situating critical research and theoretical reflection at its heart. Despite the fact that relativelyfewvisitors and participants actually attended the conferences, these proceedings were integral to the form ofDocumenta u, which expanded the boundaries ofthis art event traditionally held in a provincial European town and transformed it into a transnational, interdisciplinary multilayeredmanifestation.Whilethese events overturned the strictures of Documenta's hallmark one-hundred-day exhibition in Kassel, the fifth platform appeared to be a decided return to order. lmpeccable arrangements
of white cubes and black boxes recurred throughout almost all of the sho#s multiple sites. Even though the exhibition largely occupied the stately Museum Fridericianum, keeping with Documenta's typical practice, here as well as in the massive,

newly inaugurated Binding Brauerei and the Kulturbahnhof one encountered a display even more museal, conservative, and rarefied than in previous editions.'6 Exceptionally, a few of the exhibition projects extended outside the museum, seeming allthe moreto confine thatplatform to neatlydelineated displayspaces.'T Itwas as if, in creatingfour other platforms out there in the world, the curators had decided that the fifth in Kassel would replicate even more ciosely a museum space cut offfrom that world. The exhibition brought, as one critic noted, "issues ofgenocide, poverry,

political incarceration, industrial pollution, earthquake wreckage, strip-mine devI

astation, and news of fresh disastersinto the inviolablewhite cube."'8

33t

This is not to suggest that the means by which display strategies structure perception and art history were entirely overlooked. As one ofthe curators attests in his
catalogue essay:

The Biennial Reader

fi,equently adopt linear models t0 represent historical flux and the relationship between past att and recent productiort. To be sure, there is a cowespondence between the lineat ity of these nawqth)es and their

Art exhibitions

also

. . . The ideological effects of these typu of qre well known: the consolidation of an at"tistic canon, exhibition strategies and therefore the staging of e series of mechanisms of inclwiott and exclusion

tacit-ot" implicit-totalizingwill.

that ctssures

its ytettnanencY.'e

therefore, tried to imagine a "structure that would allow the works to coexist in a heterogeneous and nonlinear temporaliry.'r,. Indeed, as such an effor-t suggests, an exhibition's politics are inevitably a politics of (identity) representation, aniculated in the selection ofworks and in the
He and the other curators of Documenta
11,

ways

their strategic display rethink cenain established ideals. Once the works were

Tt{t

selected, however, Documenta 1, beinglargelycomposed ofrecent an, did not seem

to fully question the ideological legerdemain of traditional museufiI shows, except insofar as it dispersed historical works from the nineteen-seventies throughout the exhibition. If Documenta rt's notable breadth of representation (with significantly more visual artists from non-Western nations than any previous edltion) and the displacement of the four platforms sought to challenge occidental paradigms and champion instead "those clrcuits of knowledge produced outside the predetermined institutional domain of Westernism," then corseting the exhibition ponion in exactly that predetermined institutional paradigm most intimately connected with the development and historicization of occidental modernism effectivehundermined many of the supposed objectives of the project.rl Examining the flfth platform in this wav inevitably simplifies the breadth and theoretical complexity of a much larger project, but it also underlines the silence which allorvs the white cube to function, even in those projects most consciously and ex plicitly positioned against the hegemony of modern Western forms. Why, one might

ffi\|il,ilil{ffI

338

into different pafts of the world through the four discu-.sion platforms only to encase most of the over four hundred works from f,ve continents in Kassel within the West's least questioned framing devices? A hastv re sponse might be that bringing together works of an from vastly different culture. requires using a uniformly prestigious or valid frame through which they can he experienced-the necessary flction sustaining this being that the white cube is :
ask, expand Documenta

neutral, legitimate frame. The issue was rehearsed, one might say, in one of the e.-

TtF Global Vvhite Cube Elena Filipwic

Sential queries of "Democracy Unrealized," the first platform of Documenta 11: can democracy, a fundamentally Western concept and hegemonic political form, serve as alegitimatebenchmarkforthe constitution of societyinthe postwarperiod' even in nations withvastlydistinct histories and cultures? One could also ask the same of the white cube in relation to large-scale exhibitions. Of course, the under$ing stakes

wildly different, but both suggest (Western) models that quietly problematize that there is an imperative need to
of these two questions might seem, on the surface,

perpetuate themselves as unquestioned universals.

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Gwanglu Biennial, East Asia's first large-scale contemporary art event, was founded in 1995 at ahigh pointinthe biennial boom. With memories of nearly two decades of political oppression still present, including the rg8o massacres that ac-

companied a citizerl uprising for democracy, the new biennial was imagined as a
bandage for old wounds and a means by

which to provide the city with a positive, forwardlooking proflle. Critics decried editions
as

well

as

the overly Western focus of the first two their seeming inability to draw attention to the specificity of the

emergingAsian art scene or, for that matter, those of other cultures less well-represented in Asia. As a result, the biennial's third edition in zooo was revamped, initiating a strong Asian focus accompanied by a declaration of commitment to becoming a forum for artistic practices outside the West. Broadcasting that the biennial would
,,pursue globalization rather than westernization, diversiry instead of uniformity,"

officiais marked their seriousness and new focus by building a multistory convention center-like exhibition complex,whichwas inaugr:ratedwiththe zooo edition.:' Ironically, at preciselythe moment that Gwangiu and its biennial hoped to demonstrate their entry into a globalized art world, this new permanent exhibition structure incorporated generic Western display tropes in the form of a series of flexible but neatly arranged white cubes. For biennial offrcials, to be globally relevant meant

339

repiicatingthe "universal" exhibition backdrop.

The

BiennialReder

The fourth edition in zooz opposed this strategy. Entitled P.A. U.S.E. and directed by Wan-k1mngSung,thebiennialwas

composedoffourcuratedexhibitions

or"projects"

that in different ways engagedthe vestiges of Gwangiu's uneasypast and contemporary condition, including a series of site-speciflc installations in a former military prison, a project to reconstruct the area aroundthe city's abandoned railroad tracks,
and an exhibition concentrating on the Korean diaspo Ya. Proiect 1: Pct?rse, curated by Hou Hanru and Charies Esche and held in the biennial hal1, was the largest pan of the biennial, and the curators conceived it aS a "context speciflc event" rather than a panorarna ofrecent art. Asia'S transformed urban reality provided the context for questloning art's "global-local negotiation" and imagining possible alternatives to the ho-

mogenization and acceleration of late capita1ism.33 The conditlons of art production in contemporary Asia and beyond the Western world more generally, where structures to support experimental artiStic practice are rare or nonexistent, determined
the curators' decision to show dlnamic recent cultural production by artists who had self-organized outside the occidental art world's capitals.yAs a result, they conceived

exhibition that included some twenty-flve independent collectives and aitist r-un organizations from aroundthe g1obe, mostlyfromAsia and Europe but also from the Americas and India. These groups were invited essentiallyto self-curate theirparticipation in the biennial, retaining incredible autonomy and shifting the role of the biennial curator. The resultwas less apresentation ofdiscrete artworks than abiennial
an

aworkshop for anistic experimentation, since bringingtogether artist collectives from around the worldwas meant to empower and mobilize, acting as "a first Step to wards a g1oba1 network of independent, self-organizational, and resistant structures for creation."3s By highlighting the possibilities ofcollective self-organization in the
as

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ofinstitutional inertia, the biennlal engaged in a real dialogue with its local con text, offering artists multipie models of self-sustainable cultural production.
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"Hou and Esche seemed to want to subven both Eurocentrism-with its fellou' traveler, a certain patronizing exoticism-and'the museum' as an institution," one critic noted, addingthat "in much ofAsia, these two issues are deeplyintertwined.""
3{0
Project

Pawsetranslated its conceptual ambitions into an equallyremarkable form:

in collaboration with architects, the artist groups were asked to conceive dispia'.' pavilions or reconstmct the actual spaces in which they qpically worked and erhibited. A sprawling frame of steel and pllwood delimited these pavilions, the ensemble redressingthe biennial hall's exhibition spaces with evocations of a frenzie:
global metropolis. The resultingmakeshift structures connectingthe different pan-

The GlobalWhite Cube

Elffi Filipqic

ofthe exhibition rendered tangible the physical qualities ofvarious international

art spaces and conceptualized something about the practices seen within them. The pavilions and reconstructed independent art spaces variedwildly, from a Bedouin tent printed with images of Western cities overlaid with Muslim iconography (AXS Group from Moscow) and a carpet-lined photocopying facility for Xeroxing reduced-priced copies ofthe catalogue during the exhibition (Kurimanzutto from Mexico City) to reconstmctions of an apartment interior (IT Park from Taipei) or
meeting room (Project 3o4 from Bangkok). They aiso implied, as did the urban evocations ofthe larger exhibition frame, that the particularities ofartistic practices were connected to and imbricated in the actual structures that allowed their experimentation. Suggesting that colonialism insinuates itself through the appropriation
a

of the Other's monuments, demonstrating how capitalism's means could be used against itself, or illustratingthat the most apparentiy quotidian gathering spot could
be the site of intense

cultural exchange, these structures within the larger exhibition

refused the white-cube form but also demonstrated that the aesthetics of a display
space are not separable from the ethics ofan arl practice.

iltrilll(s)
0t

I0

have begun to question the use of the

white cube in recent large-scale perennial exhibitions by addressing the foundation

of the modern museum and the historical and political implications of certain exhi-

Illr

bition spaces, extreme as those examples may be, was not merely for rhetorical effect. By so doing, I intended to underscore that the framing of ar-t, no less than the selection of aftworks, is fundamental to the ideological dramaturgythat we call an
exhibition. A curious silence regarding this phenomenon remains in discussions of biennials and related large-scale exhibitions. Yet, one could say that the "crisis of biennials" that so many critics have decried lies not so much in the proliferation of these events as in the proliferation of afonn, which, more often than not, remains the same over time and across space despite the vast differences in the issues such exhibitions are meant ro illustrate, their relationships to their individual iocal contexts, the works they present, the institutions that sponsor them, and the institutional and other histories they interrogate along the way.

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Biennial

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At amomentwhen art remains one ofthe fewmodes ofcriticallyresistinghegemonic globaltransformations andwhenthe engagement andexperimentation ofmanyartists remain a source of promise for the future, exhibition forms need all the more

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urgently to be intelligent, sensitive, and appropriate means for rendering that work public. To insist here on the way in which some of the politics of an exhibition inheres in its form is not, however, to advocate the promotion ofa cult ofthe curator or the conflation ofhis orher role with that ofthe artist. Nor does it meanto suggest that curators, institutions, or their exhibition spaces generate the meanings of contemporary artistic production. Artworks, however much an element in the constrLrction of the meaning ofan exhibition and, dialectically, also subjected to its staging, nevertheless also articulate aesthetic andintellectualpositions anddefine modes ofexperience that resist theirthematic or structural frames.3T Yet, as anynumber of exhibitions can

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ampiytesti$r, anexhibitionis nomere sequence ofarfvvorks, goodorbad,thematically unifiedorformallydisparate. Norisanexhibition'sworthandmeaningthe sum (if one could measure them in this way) of the combined worth and meaning of the various works ofart on display.Instead,the mannerbywhich a selection of artworks' atectonic

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contert, and thematic or other discursive accompaniments coalesce into a particular form is at the heart of how an exhibition exhibits. This, after all, is what distinguishes
an exhibition
space

from, say, an illustrated essay: the articulation ofa particular physical throughwhichrelationsbetweenviewers and objects,between one object and

thrcrgh I md iiialercdrs weflaspqiec

others, andbetlveenobjects,viewers, andtheir specific exhibition context are staged.

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What then is the role ofbiennials and large-scale exhibitions today? How might they be more self-reflective about how meaning is expressed in the very structures they provide visitors with for thinking, acting, and viewing a show? How can the postcoionial project of cultural translation prevent itself frombeingbetrayed bythe frame through which arl is shown in order to allow these large-scale exhibitions to live up
to their potential as sites from which to question the consequences ofglobal moderniry? How too might they register some of the hesitancy and instabiliry that their discourse wouldhave us believe is integral to their projects?
312

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There are perhaps no easy answers, nor is the issue without its own contradictions' But a change lies above all in the recognition that the aesthetic and discursive premises on which an exhibition is based-the issues its curators and artists wish to defend, the intellectual positions they seek to express-need to be more fu1ly arriculated in the forms exhibitions take. Of course, it is not evident what forms might be

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The Global White Cube Elena Filipwic

appropriate to the vast cultural and formal heterogeneity of contemporary aftistic production-supple enough to accommodate diverse practices, respectful enough to reveal the inherent, individual logic ofartworks, and quiet enough to al1ow an intimate relationship between arrwork and viewer. The answer is surely not singular. The nowglobalwhite cube certainly should not be supplantedby another model that will become thebiennial standard. Merely insening works in crumbling industrial buildings or any number ofother "exotic" locales is not the solution either. Instead,
the future ofbiennials is to be found in a sensitivity to how the coincidence ofworks of art and other conditions (temporai, geo$aphic, historic, discursive, and institu-

tional) locate aproject and howthat "location" can be used to articulate an aesthetic project that is respectful of its aftworks and speaks to its viewers. This requires the willingness of curators and institutions to think through more complex relationships to sites, arrworks, and the intellectual propositions of an exhibition-a prospect that may require more time for exhibition research and preparation as well as greater collaboration between artistS, curatorS, and institutions, but aiso the courage to risk a result perhaps more vulnerable and hesitant as it departs from an authoritative for-

mat.Inthe end,none ofthiswillguarantee consistentiymemorable shows,butthinking through an exhibition's form will facilitate the development of more engaged
and dialectical relationships between art'd/orks and their presentation frames as weli as projects andviewers that are more aware of the ideological entanglements of the structures and strategies theyexperience everyday.38 Onlythenwillbiennials and mega-exhibitions emerge that assert themselves fully as the "models of resistance" that they promise to be, which does not necessarily mean the end of the white cube

inallcasesandforallplacessomuchasinitiatingacriticalrelationshiptoitsends.:s

Previously published in:

Vanderlinden

Barbara

Filipovic (eds.), fhe Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemparary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe (Brussels and Cambridge [N4A], 2005), pp.

and Elena

See also lvlary Anne Staniszewski, The Power of Display: A History al Exh i b itia n I n stal I ati o n s at th e M u se u m ol

Artist and critic Brian O'Doherty, the white cube's earliest commentator,

1{0rts

Moden Atl (Cambtidge |VAl, 1 998).

probably first coined the term in the mid-seventies. His series of three articles entitled "lnside the White Cube,"

3
1

63-84.
For adiscussion of Barr's strategic adaptation oi the white cube based European exhibition models, see on

Chrisioph Grunberg, "The Politics of Presentationr The l\,4useum of Modern Art, New York," in lvlarcia Pointln (ed.), Art Apaft: Art lnstitutions and ldeology Across England and North America (Manchester, 1 994), pp '1 92 21 0.

As Grunberg (1994 [see note l, p. 206) argues of Barr's whitewashoi the MoMAi "The white, neutral ing and rdeology-iree gallery space constitutes the physical materialization oi MolvlAs selective amnesia. lvlore than anything else, the'white cube' epitomized the attempt to escape from the realities oJ the external world, belying modernism's origlnal claim jor the integration o{ art and life.,. . The physical confinement and limitations imposed by the installation reveal Mo[.4As selective appropriation of modernism."

originally published in Aftforum in 1976, remain the most thorough and engaging study o{ the phenomenon.

They have been collected and reprinted with later articles on the subject in his lnsidetheWhite Cube: The ldealogy of the Gallery Space (Berkeley, 1 999).

3{3

Over the last decade, various studies have begun to make evident ihe manner in which the museum, from its origins, has been an ideologically laden and disciplining site crucial to the formation of subjectivity. The white

The Biennial Reader

il0rrs

cube is in many ways the cu mination of its Enlightenment project. See, n particular, Douglas Crimp, On the lvluseumb Runs (Cambridge IMA], I 993); Tony Bennett, The Birth of the lv4use um: History, Theory, Politics (Landan, 1 995); and Donald Prezrosi, Ihe Eran of the Eatth's Body: Art, Museums, and the Phantasms of Modernity (Minne apolis,2003).

lndeed, the white cube is no

more a tabula rasa than the whte

surface is in architecture more generally. The semlnal work on th s slbject is l\,4ark Wigley's White Walls, Designer Dressesr lhe Fashioning of Modern Architecture (Cambridge l\4A1, 1 996). Whitewashed spaces, Wqley argues, weTe far from accidental, blank, or siLent, and although his study concentrates on the beq nnings of the use of white in modernlst architecture of the nineteen-twenties and -thirtres, the whiteness o{ museums, ga leries, and

ing than "modern," n ihe way we have come to think of the term. However, for Hitler, the presentat on ot newly made works of art at the Haus der Kunst (the only ones that could legitmately represent their time) contrasted wlth those oJthe avant-garde and eveMhing gathered in the Entartete Kursi show, which were drsmissible as degenerate ard essentially non-Western or at times degenerate because non Western (the discourse that accompanied the show was explicit, wh le the primitive 'African" lettering of the posters for the Entadea-. Kursf show attempied to underscore
the point). Carlos Basuaido, "The Unstable lnstitution," MJ-Manifesta Journal 2 (Winter 2003 Sprlng 2004), p. 57 This essay has also been reprinted in the present volume.

mer 20031, p. 57), and I agree that the meanings of the dsplay conceit are hardy univocal over time. Nevertheless, we should not allow this iact to keep us from recognrzing the form's historical overdeterminaiions nor let its proliferation as an ideai standard in biennlals and other mega-exhibitons go on without questron ng.

15 lbid., p.79t and igor Zabe, "We and the Others," Moscaw Att Magaztne
22 (1998),p.2s.

16 Henri Lefebvre. The Praduction o/ Space, trans Donald NicholsonSmith (Oxford 1991 ), p. 1 ]

biennial exhibitions

in the

decades

since similarly speak volumes.

10 lbid., p. 60. For a discussion of the degree to which museums have historcally been Western insttutions founded on colonial lmperialist principles, see Preziosi 2003 (see note 5), pp. 1 1 6-36.

17 l\/sko Suvakovii. "The deology of Exhibitlonr On the ldeolog es of lManifesta," PlatformasccA, no 3 (January 2002), p.11, avalable on line at htlpr//www.ljudmila.org/scca
platforma3/suvakovicengp.htm.

Numerous studies have thoroughly discussed these bto exhib tions, nc ud ng Stephanle Barron (ed), 'Degenerate Art": The Fate of
the Avant-Garde in

Nei

Germany (Las

Angeles,1991); Neil Levi, "ludge for Yoursevesl' -The Degenerate Art Exhibition as PoLitical Spectacle," Ociober 85 (1998), pp. 41-64; and Berthold H nz, "'Degenerate' and Authentic': Aspects of Art and Power in the Third Reich," in Dawn Ades et al. (eds.),.4rt and Power: Europe Under the Dictatars, I 930-l 94a (London, 1 995), pp.

330-34.

A discussion ofthe Third Reich's

paradoxical conceptrons of modernity and diverse exhibition strategres is not poss ble here. While the above cited studies have br lliantly treated many of these issues, what interests me is the ways in which the white cube was indoctrinated early in the hdentieth century as

11 Across various texts, from his curatorial statement for his exhibition The Structure af Survival at the fiftieth Venice Biennial n 2003 to his essayfor the Documenta 1 1 catalogue, Basualdo has interestingly engaged the discursrve and display strategies n largescale international exhibitions. lf I point here to what has been overlooked in his most explicit treatment of the quest on in "The Unstable lnstitution," I do so in pad because that essay is a rare example of serious consideration of the biennial phenomenon, and it is remarkabLe that it does not acknowl edge howthe endless replication oithe white cube in biennials relates to the Western museum model he discusses. 12 Marc Aug6, Nonleux: lntroduction e une anthrapolagie de la sur m od e r n itd (Par\s, 1 992). 13
That argument s a
central

18 Robert Fieck, one of the shov, : curators, employed this term in ti: catalogue for N4anifesta 2 ('Art aft:Communism?" Manifesta 2, Eurape2' Biennial of Contemporaty Art lLu\ebourg City, 1 9981, p. 1 95). He provocatively argued that afier the Wal Je I e' : equal access to such thinqs as v c3: games and Coca-Co awas establ sh:: essential difierences between art:: : production in the former East and Ui::: disappeared to be replaced by whai -: called an "internat onal style." 19 p
Jorda" Kanlor, "Vaniiesr?
AtUotum 43. no.

I (Sept^mbe.2(:

Americaq2, no. 12 (December 2C,pp. 68-73 fhe showa mostcomp :::' y. perhaps undcrsland"blv. , . . "nd eo dire(lry addressirg The deer lension> n lhe reg ol l' ril,, al mosi strik ng particularity. lnsteac :-:

259. See aso S-san S-ooc -."Manifesta 5r Turning Ouhaard la 'i[

curators opted to construct !::::' ken analogies to the local situa't c- : displaying a number of artwork: r-:' struct;o'. gFopol'lca st fe. a'. -= r ro ia borders elsewhere in rh .. However the lnability oJ the ex. : - : to ro,a aclrvely or i've"Ii\a v - : :
pointed to such things as identl!

a vehice for the projection of Civerse, even contradictory, ideals. There are, as I have pointed out, some shared slqnifications of the display conceit, ncluding legrtimacy, neutrality, and-albelt differently for Barr and Hitler-a modernity

::-

premise of Documenta I 0 and is discussed at length in David's introduction

314

that is resolutely Western. This last po nt

may sound contradictory, srnce what counted as "Western" was also very
ditferentfor both men and iheir respec-

in Documenta X: Short Gulde (Ostfildern, 1 997) as well as rn Robert Storr, "Kassel Rockr lnterview with Curator Catherine David," Artforum 35, no.9 (N.4ay 1 997), p. 77.

tive institrltions. l\,4oreover. one cou d

argue that the art shown in the Grosse deutsche Kunstausstel/ung was ike Al-

'14 O'Doherty 1999 (see note 4), p. I 4. lgor Zabel astutely discusses the
ambvalent posslble meanings of the recent use of ihe white cube in exhibitions ("The Return of the White Cube," MJ l\,4anifesta Journal 1 fSpring-Sum-

with the complex specilrcity ot :s : :: tion, especially given thatthis r:-::' ic" bienn al had chosen a Basc-: : for ostensibly those reasons. er'-:viewers loel ng thal lhe a1a oo too few, too distant, or too abs:-:.-: resonate with the local reality

bert Speels monumental Neocldsical str!cture, hopelessly caught betlveen

past and present, more backward-look-

20 21

David 1997 (see note tbtd.

1:

tr

&

The Global White Cube

Elm Filipoic

22 23

lbid,, pp.

1 1

-1 2.
that

The massive publication

accompanied Documenta 10, Docu menta X: The Book (Ostfildern, 1 997), a collaborative proiect between David and Jean-FranQois Chevrier. conceptually carfled through this premise. but it in no way attempted to reproduce on the page the exh;bition or events or otheMise represent the diverse artworks. lnstead, it serued as a parallel intellectual, political, hisiorical, and

Documenta also Iies in this attitude, lor it renovates themes, artists, and languages, but it does nol readdress the lormat ofthe exhibition or truly question
our role as spectators."

27

cullural anthology

of

Europe across

seveEl key historical moments.

Thomas Hirschhorn's dense Monument created for Documenta I 1 was one such prcject and a perfect example of the way in which subversive content and architectonic/display {orm meet (this, one could say, is central to Hirschhorn's entire oeuvre). lts insistent engagement with its dis-

and sprawling Bataille

what Charles Esche ("Debater Biennials," Frieze, no. 92 [June/July/Augusl 20051, p. 1 05) has argued is the most pressing issue for such events since, as he insists, "the biennial needs above all to ask what kind of global cullure it underurites and how that support is made manifest."

il0rts

35
91-93.

Hanru 2002 (see note 33), pp.

36 37

Yisions." Art in

Jonathan Napack, 'Alternative Amerin 90, no. I 1 (No-

vember 2002), p. 94. I actually believe in the agency ofthe artist as author, and asingularauthor at that. This does not preclude the exhibition jrom providing a coniext Jor readngthework (othemise, I have written in vain) but that context does not, to my mind, f undamentally change the artwork nor does it annihilate the dialectic relationship between both-exhibition and artwork-and the potential sense of each construcled by the encounter.
,

24

The {our conference platforms-Democracy UnrealiTed (held in Vienna and Berlin), "Experiments with Truthl

placed location on the outskirts of Kassel (lhrough its use of vernacular materials, a local Turkish workforce to install and maintain the monument,
and explicit dedication to the local immigrani community) enacted its own margin to cenler and political injustice aclivated by the exhibition.

Transitional Justice and

the Processes
in

of Truth and Reconcilialion" (held

New Delhi), "Cr6olit6 and Creolization" (organized as a workshop that was closed to the public and held in Saint n Lucia), and "Under Sieger Four Afri! Ciliesr Freetown. Johannesburg, Krnshasa, Lagos" (held in Lagos)*found their most public expression in the publication of the proceedings in four eponymousvolumes published by Hatje CanU in 2002 and 2003.

commentary on the relationship of

2A
tar

Kim Levin "The CNN DocumenArt in an lnternational State ol Emer gency,' Village Voice, July 3-9,2OO2, p. 57, emphasis added. Also available online at httpr//w.villagevoice.com/ adl0227,1evin,361 74,1 3,html.

38

Such a turn would be a positive shift forthe museum 6 well. which has

25

See Okwui Enwezor, "The Black Box, in Documenla 11, Plat fom 5: Exhibition (Ostfildern, 2002),
pp. 42-55. For a thorough and cogenl discussion of the various platforms, see Stewart Martin,'A New World Art? Documenling Documenta 1 1," Radbai Philosophy: A Journal of Sacialist and Femnist Philosophy 1 22 (NovemberDecember 2003), pp. 7-1 9.

29

Carlos Basualdo, "The Encyclopedia of Babel," in Documenta I l, Platform 5: Exhibition (Osllildern, 2002), p. 60. See also Derek Conrad MurraY,

arguably also been rethinking its own exhibitions'forms, in many cases in response to and under pressure from its biennial counterpart. The museum haunts this essay even as its particucontribuhons

"Okwui Enwezor in Conversation with Derek Conrad Mutray," NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, no.18 (Spring-Summer 2003), pp. 40-47.

30 31 32

rbid.

26

Critis repeatedly noted that the spaces were exceptionally "elegantly

proportioned" and "restEined," what Peter Schjeldahl ( The Global Salon: European Extravaganzs," The New Yorkerl8, no. 1 7 Uuly 1, 20021, p. 9a) described m a "global salon." Another critic (Jens Hoffmann, "Reentering Art, Reentering Politics," F/ash Att 34, no. 231 Uuly-September 20021, p. 106) praised it as "almost perfect, at least in terms of what a treditional art exhibition can be." ln one of the tew reviews that addressed the contEdictions inherent in the aesthetic ot lhe display stmtegies of Documenta I 1 in relation to the content of the artworks, Massimiliano Gioni ("Finding the Center," Flash Art 34, no. 231 Uuly-September 20021, pp. 1067) proclaimed: "EveMhing is presented in an almost clinacal manner, verging on seamless slickness. Disorder is at the core of the exhibition, butihe show itself speaks in a very clear, at times didactic tone. . . The trouble with this edition ot

Enwezor2002(senote25),p.54.

Cited in Charlotte Bydler, fhe Global Art World, lnc.: On the Global' ization of Contemponry Aft (lppsala, 2004), p. 1 3 1 . ln her exceptional recent study, Bydler situates the Gwangju Biennial's history within the broader context of conlemporary art and globalization. An abridged version of this book appears in the presen't volume.

33

Hou Hanru, "Event City

and

Pandora's Boxr Curatorial Notes on lhe 2002 Gwangju Biennale," Yish u 1, no. 2 (July 2002), p.91,

discussed. l\y'useums unquestionably serve a vilal role and one that will always be distinct from that of megaexhibitions. Still, neither institution is monolithic despite the need to re{er here to the values of each in schematic terms: space limitations have kept me from being able to tteat the issue in a more nuanced way. but one should nol go away wilh the impression thal museumslkunsLhallen (and therr directors and curators) have not historicallv struggled with the ideological s gnification of the white cube, nor that these institutions have not at iimes been the sites tor truly engaged and innovative prcjects. The relationship between the large-scale internaliona! exhibition and the museum-one oJ exchange and articulation of difference that has been importanl for both sides*is a subject awaiting thorough study. The term is Okwui Enwezor's and rs menlioned rn his lMega-Exhibitions and the Antimonies of a Transnational Global Form." MJ-Manifesta Journal 2 (Winter 2oo3-Spring 2004), p.31. This essay h6 also been reprinted in the present volume.

larities-but also iis important social - remain nsufticiently

i

3r5

34

Alternativesr Notes in a Temporary and Raw State," in Philippe Vergne, Vasif Kortun, and Hou Hanru (eds.), How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age (Minneapolis, 2003), pp.36-39, The fourth Gwangju Biennial seemed to respond in advance to

See Hou Hanru, "lnitiatives,

39

-rrrF_