KOCHI: What is the role and position of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) was something that the past and present curators of India’s only biennale deliberated on as part of an international symposium on ‘Curating under Pressure’, co-hosted by the Kochi-Biennale Foundation and the Goethe-Institut/Max Muller Bhavan on Wednesday.
“Could the biennale exist as an ongoing process evolving on its own instead of a structure, or are the two the same thing? How can the biennale reconcile institutions and traditions while remaining an access point for art in itself?” asked KMB-2016 curator Sudarshan Shetty.
Over a roundtable discussion with Jitish Kallat, who curated the 2014 edition of KMB and Gabriele Horn, director of the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Mr. Shetty proposed that the biennale was one point of mediation between India’s understanding of art and its colonial-era institutions, but rejected the concept of a binary structure with the two at opposing ends.
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“Looking beyond such East-West dichotomies, we can see that there is a case for the opposite: that there are different ways to view the system by looking for contemporary meanings to older resonances. But does the system privilege the written and visual over the performative and oral? Can we separate the idea of institution and power?” Mr. Shetty asked.
Defining biennials as “deliberative, foldaway infrastructure that gathered periodically to cross-pollinate and incubate endangered ideas,” Mr. Kallat observed that the biennale was a “process and device to reorganise art space but bound by the pressure of win-lose or good-bad evaluations.”
Building institutions, for Mr. Kallat, brings “organisation, pattern, and rhythm to this flux.” Viewed in this light, he said the biennials were then a “space to reconcile artistic and logistical uncertainty”. The discussion touched upon such topics as the kind of infrastructure needed to protect art and culture, the foundation of a stable and healthy cultural system, and the economy needed to ensure its resilience to layers of pressure and attempts to undermine its purpose.
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Riyas Komu, who co-curated the first edition of KMB, noted that the KMB had been successfully positioned as an inclusive, alternative space for art.
“Over its lifetime, the biennale has never been a standalone structure. It is complemented by the year-long engagement activities between the KBF and the wider community and through active efforts to take art out into public spaces, nourish the next generation of curators and artists and associate and collaborate with the country’s existing art infrastructure,” Mr. Komu said.
Bose Krishnamachari, who co-curated the first edition, echoed this statement at a later session titled ‘Biennale in Context’ that explored whether biennials could be considered instigators of socio-political change and platforms for exchange of ideas. He contended that setting up the KMB involved “addressing the hurdle about how to bring people into and engage with them in contemporary art spaces”.