Triennale Brugge 2015

Contemporary Art and Architecture Triennial of Bruges 2015
20 May 2015 - 18 October 2015Brugge, BelgiumCurators: Tim Holger-Borchert, Lies Coppens, Michel Dewilde

Since 2007 more than sixty percent of the world population has lived in an expanding network of very large, unfinished cities. Attitudes to this phenomenon of global urbanization differ. On the one hand, a number of experts like Benjamin Barberi regard the city as a solution to a range of global problems. Where the traditional sovereign nation state and large international organisations fail, Barber sees the liberating potential of the city. Eric Corijnii also believes that cities are increasingly junctions for social and political reconstruction. Ruth Eatoniii, on the other hand, refers to the detrimental consequences of global urbanization and to its damaging legacy.

The Triennial sets out to explore this in the unique setting of a historic city that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site: Brugge.

Central to the Triennial is the question of the future identity of the city and its possible role in the rapidly rising levels of urbanization: What can Bruges distil from the recent evolutions that typify the mega-cities? And conversely: can a small city that is protected by UNESCO contribute to the development of a new form of urbanization? In this connection the curators juxtapose two frictions: the representation of Bruges as a static medieval city versus the dynamic image of the unfinished global city. The curatorial team have linked the two frictions by means of a hypothetical question: "What would happen if the five million people who visit Bruges every year suddenly decided to settle here permanently?". (This reminds me of Ai Weiwei's '1001 Chinese Visitors' project, in which he invited 1001 Chinese citizens to visit Documenta 12 in Kassel, explore the town, the exhibition programme, and most crucially - to interact with other cultures. These interactions formed the content of the artwork, documented and preserved by filmmakers and an accompanying book of interviews. Corresponding to this, Ai Weiwei installed 1001 chairs from the Qing Dynasty throughout the exhibition spaces of Documenta 12, to be exposed to, sat on and studied by the German public and the many other cultures present at the exhibition).

Each of the invited European and Asian artists will interpret this area of tension in their own way, linking the fields of contemp art and architecture against the background of the intact historic city centre. Each of the outdoor works will be specially conceived for the 2015 Triennial. The end result of this process will be on show in the public space from May 20th to October 18th 2015, to then disappear from the cityscape. In addition to the outdoor art trail, there will be indoor exhibitions in various locations: De Bond, Arentshuis, the Town Hall and the Spanish warehouses.