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Conceptual Framework of the Biennale
By Charles Merewether
artistic director &
curator
The concept "Zones of Contact" forms the framework and organising
principle of the 2006 Biennale of Sydney, which will include a range of
artists from around the world practising in all forms of the visual
arts.
The focus of the 2006 Biennale will be as much on the subject of "zones"
as that of "contact" - emphasizing the occupation and mapping
of spaces such as territories, settlements, homes, dwellings, and zones
in-between. 'Zones of contact' constitute a threshold to the global
because the encounter always begins from a point of view and experience
that is local. There will be some 80 artists from more than 40 countries
that brought together explore how contemporary art continues to provide
a contemporary embodiment and articulation of the colonial era and histories
of conflict, underdevelopment, as much as reflect the increasing transcultural
flows produced through globalization and growing cosmopolitanism of
metropolitan centers across the world.
The Biennale of Sydney '06 concept of 'zones of contact' is not acting
as a surrogate for visual anthropology or cultural history per se, nor
does it suggest some natural state that precedes the technology of representation
or viewing. Rather, the concept embraces spheres of engagement or entanglement
with the world, and art's materiality becomes both the form of articulation
and medium of perception. Hence, 'zones of contact' encompasses not
only a spatial dimension, i.e. borders, frontiers, intersections, but
equally refers to both a temporal and sensuous mode of experiencing
the world, that is, an elaboration of issues concerning the affect and
sensate body, everyday life and the formation of the subject. It is,
in other words, to open the discussion to a range of contemporary art
whether it be at the immediate and intimate level of the individual
or social body and the world at large, with its thresholds of sameness
and difference, the gaps between, the thresholds, horizons and absences
that constitute both the legacy of history and experience of the present.
From this perspective, 'zones of contact' entails the tactility of
the image that goes beyond the practices of observation or interventions
within the field of the documentary. The encounter with art becomes
a field of sensate knowledge, an imaginary of images that guides us
in our encounter with the world. Within this framework art lives and
gathers meaning by way of memory and reception like a membrane that
acts as a mediating transmitter or tuning fork between its subject and
viewer.
© Charles Merewether, November 2005
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Contact:
Biennale of Sydney
43-51 Cowper Wharf Road
Woolloomooloo NSW 2011
Australia
Phone: (+61) 2 9368 1411
Fax: (+61) 2 9368 1617
Email: art@biennaleofsydney.com.au
Website: www.biennaleofsydney.com.au
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