Rethinking Biennials Part Two with Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel
By Holly Howe
Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel is chief curator of the second edition of the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art – RIBOCA2. A French curator and writer, she is Director of the Fondation Lafayette Anticipations in Paris and former curator at Palais de Tokyo. She shared with our members how her plans for the biennial changed in light of Covid-19.
RIBOCA2 was schedule to run from May to October this year under the theme “The End of the World”. Little did Rebecca know when she worked on the concept last year how pertinent it was to become. On 14 March, the team reached a decision that they would have to freeze all of the projects, despite installation having already started for some of the works.
The collapse and rebirth
While the initial show was originally about collapse and the end of the world, the new iteration has been retitled “and suddenly it all blossoms”. Even Rebecca was amazed by how her original theme had become so relevant:
“We were astonished and surprised to see that what the biennial was speaking about…was happening in front of our own eyes. Because of the Covid crisis we were understanding more than ever how much we were entangled with other species, other beings, how much we are porous, how much we cannot design and think about human exceptionalism – we are not beyond our part from the world.”
They decided to still try to open this year and to build the show as much as they could. The show will now happen in Andrejsala – an industrial port in Riga – which is a space unknown to many of Riga’s inhabitants, having been closed since the early 2000s. The project will reopen in this 20 hectare space. Rebecca explains its significance:
“What do we inherit from Soviet times? What do we inherit from a space that is trying to embrace capitalism yet really struggles to? A territory that is poisoned and toxic from years and years of industrial activity. But also a territory where life is coming back – you have cats and birds everywhere and wild plant species that took over.”
The biennial is imagined as a wander, an experience that should last four to five hours, which encourages visitors to embrace other rhythms.
“We have a moral duty to not expect to come back to a normality that we despise or are not interested in but embrace this moment that is showing us the limits of our power and control and think about what can we do with that.”
What to do when you can’t ship works
Rebecca now sees it becoming the experience of the collapse of our dreams as well. While many of the works in the biennial were produced onsite, about 15% of the works were due to come from abroad, and these are now unable to be shipped. This led to creative thinking from the team. For example a work by Udo Rondinone that can’t be shipped from Switzerland will now be reproduced locally. Some works will appear as printed reproductions. For other, they will have an empty space where the works should have been.
Visitors will now experience the presence of past dreams according to Rebecca, and will think about how we make do with what we have. “The project is between a ruin and a renovation site – which is more or less what the world is going through now.” She believes you have to be creative and resilient and that we need to come together to find ways of making things happen.
What could a catastrophe exhibition look like?
Rebecca feels it should be an exhibition that doesn’t pretend to be in touch with the world.
“On the ground it reminds me of the movie Dogville, you will have the trace of what should have been present and then disappeared. We are still not sure if people will be able to visit the show.”
One solution she came up with early on in response to the fact that they may not be able to open to the public was to make a film. “The distance of the camera, of us looking at works, each one of them speaking about a new world, will help us understand what this new world could be.” She is directing the film herself, and will shoot a film with a crew over three weeks that will follow the path of the exhibition and that serves as a meditation. She sees the art works as acting like guides, becoming voices for new perspectives for thinking about this possible new world, and hopes to release the film early next year.
The public programming has also been impacted as none of the conversations and talks can now take place in a live format. However, they were fortunate that most of the contributors agreed to switch to a digital platform so the talks can still take place in an online environment, and these have been running since May when the biennial was originally scheduled to open.