Contemporary Art Biennials in Europe

Book excerpt: "Contemporary Art Biennials in Europe examines five urban situations in diverse parts of Europe. Roughly tracing a central horizontal strip from the western to the eastern edges of the continent, the events and cities covered are the Folkestone Triennial, UK, Münster Sculpture Projects, Germany, the Venice Biennale, Italy, Belgrade's Mikser Festival, Serbia and the Istanbul Biennial, Turkey. Whybrow establishes how public artworks operate in these contexts as part of a complex prescribed by the format of the biennial event. This means drawing out the extent to which biennial events seek to engage with the complexity of the city in question, in a manner that takes into account local socio-cultural ecologies, while also positioning the event itself within a globalist art world perspective. The book also considers how sited installations - which are very varied in form, as a reflection of a new, eclectic urban aesthetic - tell a particular story of a city, while the regional diversity of these selected cities and events in turn tells a composite story of European difference at a moment of high tension, centring on matters of migration, political populism and uncertainty around the future form of the European Union"--