Bergen Biennial Conference
The idea for a biennial for contemporary art in Bergen was announced for the first time in the City of Bergen's Action Plan for Arts and Artists 1995-2005 (the Arts Plan). The idea was carried on with the start up of the BergArt in 1999, a collaborating and interdisciplinary annual festival including several art institutions in Bergen.
BergArt proved to create interesting collaborations between institutions in Bergen, but some of the participating festivals, as for instance Oktoberdans and Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF), proved to have a much stronger impact than BergArt had as a festival in its own right. At the same time, within the field of music, theatre, film and dance, Bergen has flourished, with several well-known and artistically recognized festivals. What increasingly seemed obvious was the lack of a festival-like event for the visual arts. The idea of a biennial for visual arts from 2009 was consequently relaunched by the Commissioner for Culture in 2007.
The new Arts Plan, 'Bergen City of the Arts 2008-2017', unanimously adopted by the City Council in 2007, states an ambition of Bergen as the most interesting and innovative city for art and culture in the Nordic countries by 2017. As one important part of this vision, one wants to develop a biennial with significant artistic quality, and a will to discuss the biennial format with its dilemmas arising in the encounter between political ambitions and artistic freedom. This problem revolves around art’s institutional autonomy, independent of public directions, and the political and instrumental use of the biennial, and of art in general, as a means to city development.
The City of Bergen, by Departments of Cultural Affairs, Business Development and Sports, have in the light of the issues above, asked Bergen Kunsthall to organize an international art symposium in 2009 focusing on the biennial. The plans for the biennial itself have been postponed from 2009 until 2011. This solution was due to the acknowledgement, that the biennial format at the moment is being discussed and evaluated internationally. These ongoing discussions will be productive to take part in and make into a starting point for the founding of a Bergen Biennial. Instead of looking upon the increasing number of biennials, internationally - and even within Norway – as a competition and obstacle, the reconsidering of the biennial concept relevant to the international discourse right now, could be used as an important backdrop and basis of discussion.
Bergen Biennial Conference
