***Disclaimer: 2012 IS THE SEASON FOR TREASON welcomes contributions from activists as to do with the issues of BB7. Our team does not fully identify with the critique by Howard, but nevertheless we decided to republish his take on the matters which is simultaneously a call to participate in the unsanctioned action.
“Unsanctioned”
Berlin Biennale 7
April 27 to July 1, 2012
“Unsanctioned” is a self declared event of the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2012), initiated by the African-American artist Howard McCalebb.
Polish artist Artur Żmijewski is the curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale. He appointed the Voina group from Russia and Joanna Warsza from Warsaw, Poland as Associate Curators, who have worked together with him to develop the concept and the program.
Unsanctioned is an art event that is to take place throughout the city of Berlin, as an “unsanctioned” event of the 7th Berlin Biennale – to include and represent “artists of color.” All artists of color (Black, Asian, Latin–American, and or “mixtures”) are invited to join Unsanctioned as a guerrilla action to protest the systematic exclusion of marginalized social identities (artists of color), residing and working in Berlin, from participation in mainstream Berlin art institutions. This guerrilla action is a staged incursion into this important Berlin cultural event, through self-inclusion. It is an action to expose the hypocrisy of the fake “radicalism” that the 7th Berlin Biennale is assuming and posing.
Time and again, we are subjected to these so-called radical art world hipsters, who use institutional power to stage ersatz art world rebellions. The art world hipster and his fake authority defying stunts, only pretends to be a progressive with radical views on political, economic, and social reform. A true reformist rebels against the self-perpetuating theater of the opinion-making organs of cultural authority. When the prevailing norm is obsolete and or cannot be justified on moral grounds, progressive minded people must take action. Progressive Liberalism is not just sex, drugs, and Rock n’ Roll – it involves real world insights that are a necessary confrontation with the status quo. There is a necessity to question the predispositions of institutional authority. The program of the 7th Berlin Biennale does nothing of the sort. It continues the policies of exclusion.
Unsanctioned is a call to “litter” the city of Berlin with “unsanctioned” publicly performed or placed artworks!
