BUCHAREST BIENNALE 5 Brief Final Report
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Brief Final Report
BUCHAREST BIENNALE 5
May 25th – July 22nd 2012
Tactics for the Here and Now
Sunday, July 22th 2012, BUCHAREST BIENNALE 5 – Bucharest International Biennial for Contemporary Art – curated by Anne Barlow, entitled “Tactics for the Here and Now”, has closed after more than 8 weeks, during which it has enjoyed an unprecedented success for a Romanian contemporary art event.
BUCHAREST BIENNALE has gained throughout the years an international reputation and its last edition has expressed the potential for development of this type of artistic event.
BB5 has been composed of the main exhibition, parallel and simultaneous events, an epilogue-exhibition at the Romanian Cultural Institute in Stockholm and lectures. 20 artists from 18 countries have participated, 9 works being produced especially for the biennial.
BB5 took place in 7 locations and publicly intervened in 3 publications.
The research and selection process, as well as preparing theoretical texts took 2 years.
The average age of the BB5 team is 23,5 years, the team comprising 5 employees and 21 volunteers and interns.
The biennial attracted media attention as well as the previous edition. Thus, at the opening press conference over 400 professionals and press participated, both national and international. The biennial was featured by over 100 publications, news agencies, radio and TV stations, blogs, such as ProTv, Frieze, FlashArt, Artforum, Art Monthly, International Herald Tribune, e-flux, Art Agenda, Euronews, The Art Newspaper, The Guardian, Kunstbeeld, Die Tageszeitung, Whitehot, Site, The Economist, Vogue, Elle, Kunstzeitung, Artnet, Afterall, Springerin, Radical Philosophy, Cabinet, TVR Cultural, Romania TV, Digi 24, Adevarul, Gandul, Dilema Veche, Tabu, Vice, Zeppelin and many others.
BB5 had approximately 42.000 visitors, more than 5.000 people during the opening days.
PAVILION – journal for politics and culture – published a special issue, having a total of 208 pages and containing texts written by renowned theoreticians such as Suzana Milevska, Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Tom Holert, Olive McKeon, Simon Sheikh.
The biennial website, the newsletter and the Facebook pages have had more than 80.000 viewers from 81 countries, before and during the event.
The BB5 budget was 124.000 Euro, which make BB5 probably the most under financed biennial in Europe.
BB5 had as strategic partner UniCredit Tiriac Bank. The main institutional partner was Romanian Cultural Institute.
Among the institutions that have contributed to the financing of BB5 were the US Embassy, The Netherlands Embassy, IASPIS, BAM – Flemish institute for visual, audiovisual and media art, Ministry of Culture from Belgium etc.
Respecting tradition, the Romanian Ministry of Culture and the City Council of Bucharest refused to support BB5.
The curator for BB6, which takes place May 22nd – July 20th, 2014, was already appointed and will be announced soon.
Image: Rinus van de Velde, untitled (The Lost Bishop), 2012. Charcoal on wall, 240 cm x 360 cm. Courtesy: the artist and BUCHAREST BIENNALE 5.
