The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds After 1989
Globalization is the most important phenomenon in the history of recent art. Biennials and landmark exhibitions such as Magiciens de la Terre or The Other Story in 1989 initiated the global turn in the art scene when the so-called New World Order removed Cold War restrictions and not only introduced international free trade with all its implications, but also shifted the attention from a bi-polar political conflict to new ideas of cosmopolitanism or multiculturalism after 1989.
In many countries, contemporary art has since become an economic project including huge cultural districts with museums and art fairs. But it has also become a sociopolitical endeavor powered by – often diverging – ideologies of identity, self-determination and overall social change. The 2011 exhibition The Global Contemporary – The Art World After 1989 is a result of the research project GAM-Global Art and the Museum which was initiated by Peter Weibel and Hans Belting in 2006 at the ZKM | Karlsruhe. The project represents a first attempt at documenting the contested boundaries of today’s art world; its aim is to spark a debate on how the globalization process changes the art scene and to undertake a critical review of the development 20 years after its onset.
The concept of the exhibition calls for individual modules that introduce the subject from historical and geopolitical aspects. These aspects will be represented by documentations and current projects by artists working both within the “global” art world itself, as well as dealing with their own economic, political and social contexts. The featured artists will emphasize the mechanisms of the global art market. They will also respond to specific phenomena like censorship and cultural politics, as determined by regional, ethnical or regional agendas. As a paradigm for the changes within the institutional landscapes and the expanded museum geography, particular attention will be given to the role of the new MoCA, a type of museum that stands for the debate regarding modernity and the contemporary as its counterpart in an art world no longer shaped by the hegemony of western avant-garde ideas. Conversely, the exhibition will also document the importance of auction houses for a new class of collectors, whose influence on the art scene even reaches the production of art works themselves. Initiatives like the Global Art Forum in Dubai show the new emphasis on developmental projects in the United Arab Emirates, which assign a considerable importance to an emerging local art scene.
By taking a geopolitical approach, the exhibition wishes to counter the impression that globalization is a process of standardization; popular and neo-ethnic art productions will complement the issues under review and thus offer new insights into the complex configuration of the art world, which is hardly restricted to mainstream art, but also spreads across networks accommodating the vernacular, the radical and the popular. The documentary part and the artists’ exhibition – including several commissions – will be accompanied by an on-site “laboratory” with artists and workshops, which aims to constantly re-view the processes involved in the production of the exhibition itself.
