Detail: Exhibitions are rehearsals. ‘Rehearsing’ is liberating, since everything is undecided. In the framework of Shanghai Biennale 2010, curating is not about reaching conclusions, or investigation or representation, but organizing rehearsals. As long as a rehearsal is going on, the theatre of exhibition will remain open to the future. Today, the productivity of the art system far outstrips individual creativity. As a result the artists cannot rid themselves of the nagging feeling that they are in the payroll of the art system and ‘made to order’ by society at large. Everywhere one notices parodies and cosplay. ‘Rehearsing’ calls on artistic colleagues to strip off their theatric costumes and walk out on the institutionalized theatre of art production, sever their ties with the theatre of everyday life and become the ‘undefined’, return to our rehearsing studio and plunge into spontaneous, unfettered rehearsing.
For the Shanghai Biennale 2010, ‘rehearsing’ is not a metaphor for a form of exhibition, but a way of thinking and operating strategy. What the Biennale aims to achieve is to invite a wide range of participants: artists, curators, critics, collectors, museum directors and members of the audience to rehearse in the Biennale, a fertile theatre to reflect on the relations between artistic experimentation and the art system, between individual creativity and the public domain.
The biennale defines itself as a ‘rehearsal’, as a reflective space of performance. As Brecht has noted, ‘Actors in rehearsal do not wish to ‘realize’ an idea. Their task is to awaken and organize the creativity of the other. Rehearsals are experiments, aiming to explore the many possibilities of here and now. The rehearser’s task is to expose all stereotyped, clichéd and habitual solutions.’ The ‘rehearsal’ of Shanghai Biennale 2010 is a self-performative act of the art world, a constant attempt at self-reminder and self-liberation. Rehearsal is wielded against ‘performance’, ‘production’ and ‘discursive practice’. The responsibility of the curators is to differentiate, organize and then mobilize.
‘Rehearsal’ as a theme accentuates the sense of presence and action and aptly divides the curating work of Shanghai Biennale 2010 into two parts: ‘Exposition’ and ‘Recapitulation’. ‘Exposition’ refers to the ‘rehearsal tournaments’ scheduled to be consecutively opened between July and October 2010. And ‘Recapitulation’ is to return the rehearsal tournaments back to the main body of the exhibition in Shanghai, with the three tournaments comprising its core content and groundwork. The two steps, ‘Exposition’ and ‘Recapitulation’ are part of the processes of trial and experimentation of the theme of the Shanghai Biennale on the international stage and it can also be viewed as the Biennale’s emulation of and feedback to the international art scene.
The ‘rehearsal tournaments’ are scheduled to start in July 2010 and close in October of the same year after a three-stop relay. The Biennale plans to invite around twenty influential thinkers, curators and artists from across the world to participate in the ‘rehearsal tournaments’. An ‘Acting Committee’ will be formed at the executive level to assist the curators in academic research and organization of the tournaments.
The ‘rehearsal tournaments’ will bring together thinkers, artists and curators in an attempt to accentuate the convergence of discourse and visual production. Each ‘rehearsal’ will last a week and be housed in different artistic institutions, with works in progress by local artists as its basic plot and the artists’ investigatory document and sensory materials as props. The black box of artistic creation will be revealed by the exposition of the whole creative process, so that it may become a rehearsal ground. Thinkers and curators are invited to play a role in the ‘rehearsal’ by participating via various means ranging from debates to public speaking to writing. The aim is to unleash the manifold possibilities previously sealed in individual creativity. As a creative laboratory, the rehearsal tournaments will hopefully manage to integrate the resources of artistic creation, artists’ ideas, art history, restrictions on the art system, critical discourse as well as the public by juxtaposing them on the stage for a rehearsal.