The ghost of cultural tourism appears in many of the processes generated by biennials in far-off locations. A sense of exaggerated nativism through the idealization of place, and misunderstanding of homegrown processes, are constant risks that befall visiting artists and curators, while self-exoticized “locals” frequently attempt to exemplify some type of essential and coherent identity. Always present is the impossibility of authentically observing, experiencing, and representing a specific context, even when the methods and systems used to capture that experience may be firmly objective, or even empirical. These observations were central preoccupations when renowned Tijuana artist, Marcos Ramírez ERRE, asked me to generate a project to represent his independent space Estación Tijuana in the Encuentro Internacional de Medellín MDE11: Enseñar y aprender. Lugares del conocimiento en el arte (MDE11: Teaching and Learning. Sites of Knowledge Through Art) —a multi-venue art biennial “not biennial” in Medellín, Colombia, then preparing its second edition.

As an artistic classification, the term ‘performance art’ is fairly contentious within the contemporary art world. Over the past 40 years, the artistic practice has evolved to encompass myriad forms and titles in an attempt to adequately categorize the genre. Artists, curators and scholars readily agree there are historical sub-movements within the genre, such as body art, live art, etc., but the term ‘performance art’ has been largely accepted as the definitive term and subsequently integrated within both art historical and popular discourse.  Some argue the classification of ‘performative’ is misleading and antithetical to the conceptual basis of most works done in the 1960’s and 70’s.  The term portends theatricality and therefore misconstrues or alters the intentions of the work because of the association with entertainment.

I recall with clarity that moment, a few months back, when it seemed I had finally lost the plot. On April 3rd, throughout dinner and during my cab ride home, I had been receiving text messages from a friend who was attending a highly anticipated auction that evening at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, The Ullens Collection: The Nascence of Avant-Garde China. Among the sale’s 106 works were many historically significant paintings made during the decade between 1985 and 1995, including early efforts by artists who later became the most well-known and commercially successful of their generation, such as Cai Guo-Qiang, Liu Xiaodong, Wang Guangyi, Yu Hong, Zeng Fanzhi and Zhang Xiaogang. According to a statement issued on behalf of collector Guy Ullens, liquidating his collection of Chinese art was a way “to give these works back to the country.”

The rapid and painful consequences arising from the incorporation of Greek economy in a regime of European and international supervision aimed at preventing the bankruptcy of the Greek financial structure has already been made visible. Processes that appeared at the start of 2009 are now gradually exacerbating: subversion of employment relations due to the introduction of flexible working arrangements, increasing unemployment, deterioration of living conditions, bankruptcy of many enterprises, repayment default of personal and business loans, and dislocation of the welfare state. As a result, a large group of young people are now seeking new opportunities for work and professional development in international markets, beyond the dead-ends of a Greek reality, while increasing criminality and a growing environment of social rage and violence has accomplished an overall picture of social agitation.

Since German reunification, the capital Berlin has been in a permanent state of reconstruction that has not proceeded in nearly as linear a development as the continuously present cranes might imply. The city has become a place where many temporary occupations and empty spaces make the potential for new art-making practices in the urban realm possible. While comparing contemporary artists in New York and Berlin for my PhD research, I discovered the role that many artists play in re-imagining cities today. Inspired by urban anthropology and art history, my research has focused on the way in which artists conceptualize and represent “their” cities. Local conditions, myths and discourse as well as the global art world plot the coordinates that, I argue, define urban art practice: examining the idea of artists as activists through artists strategies and processes related to urbanity.

To our generation of cultural producers, location has long ago liberated itself from geography. We map our location on a transregional lattice of shifting nodes representing intense occasions of collegiality, temporary platforms of convocation, and transcultural collaborations. As we move along the shifting nodes of this lattice, we produce outcomes along a scale of forms ranging across informal conversations, formal symposia, self-renewing caucuses, periodic publications, anthologies, traveling exhibitions, film festivals, biennials, residencies, and research projects. This global system of cultural production takes its cue from the laboratory: as in all laboratories, the emphasis is on experiment and its precipitates. However, to the extent that this system is relayed across a structure of global circulations, it also possesses a dimension of theatre: a rather large proportion of its activity is in the nature of rehearsal and restaging.

Since the 1960s more than a dozen contemporary art magazines have circulated in the San Francisco Bay Area. A few have left but continued printing, but at present no printed periodical addressing contemporary art remains. There have been some gaps in coverage over the years, but looking back over the timeline, from the Sixties up to the present there’s always been at least one critical journal. This doesn’t, of course, mean they’ve been wildly successful or even widely distributed. This turn-over and transience is typical of the Bay Area, a place where new ideas are tolerated if not encouraged, and the persistent appearance of yet another new initiative means there’s always been an active scene here, if only just in the process of becoming.