Biennial as seismograph: Geopolitical factors, funding strategies and potential international collaboration

Abstract

Besides providing platforms for dialogues on global art and cultural discourse, biennials are highly conducive to the decentralisation of the art world. It goes without saying that each biennial's context, in other words its specific geopolitical framework conditions, organisational forms and promotional structures as well as local actors, plays a decisive part. This study, by way of example, will focus primarily on recently founded biennials in the so-called "Global South" and, in this respect, particularly on the African continent with the objective of identifying both trends and specific needs. Therefore, the funding of biennials worldwide as, for example, undertaken by the European Union or cultural institutes of European countries will be studied and contextualised in order to delineate current trends as well as possible promotion activities within the scope of Germany's foreign cultural and educational policy as well as international cooperation efforts.