B EAST Magazine website

By Joel Alas, B EAST Editor

“YOU wanna see a performance?” the heckler yelled, and dropped his pants, squatted, and shat out a small pile of feces. He wiped his ass with his hand and smeared it on the whitewashed wall as he left the gallery.

When I first heard grumblings about the Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, I dismissed them as the exhausted complaints of weary art tourists. Upon hearing a second round of bitching, I began to question whether there might be problems over at the Biennial.

Then I heard about the shit-smearing.

It occurred on April 29 during a lecture given as part of the Biennial’s night programme. A crowd had gathered to hear Danish artist Joachim Koester discuss hypnagogia – also known as conscious dreaming. Some listeners, upon finding themselves lulled into such a state, grew restless as the lecture wore on.

“This is boring bullshit,” one man yelled from the crowd, and proceeded to heckle the artist.

It was a shock for both audience and organizers, for the Berlin Biennial is one of those aggrandized art institutions that is normally hailed a ground-breaking success before the gallery doors have even opened.

This year the event suffered an extra bout of hype and expectation due to the supposedly risque appointment of Eastern European curators. Local and international press were quick to praise the Biennial based on reputation alone, and scarcely a voice had been raised in criticism until that point, when a lone heckler launched his verbal tirade.
“I actually agreed with him, but I would never think it yell it out loud,”one witness to the protest told B EAST.

As the critic’s abuse continued, others around him began to feel uncomfortable.
“Anyone who wants this guy to fuck of, yell ‘fuck off’,” came a cry. “FUCK OFF!!” the crowd responded.
The man obligingly made his exit. As he passed through the door, someone in the crowd fired a parting shot. “Nice performance,” they yelled sarcastically. The heckler wheeled around and stormed back into the room.

“You want to see a performance?” he said, and proceeded to give the Berlin Biennial it’s most prescient criticism to date. He dropped his pants, squatted, and shat out a small pile of feces. He wiped his ass with his hand and smeared it on the whitewashed wall as he left the gallery.

So how did such a promising event curated by a team of Eastern European artists turn into such a pile of shit? Why did so many audience members come away denigrating the Biennial as boring, unchallenging and entirely disappointing? Well, quite simply, because it was.

To be fair, the shit-smearing incident is only half-valid as a criticism of the event. The defecator in question wasn’t an average audience member – he was a shock artist with his own agenda to pursue. His name was Alexander Brener, a Russian protest artist with a long history of public shitting and other crude attention-seeking actions. Brener spent several years in a Dutch prison for spray-painting a dollar sign over a painting by Russian master Kazimir Malevich at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1997 (see image).
So while Brener can’t be taken as an impartial or unbiased critic, his action at the Biennial in physicalized the opinions of many ordinary ticketpayers.

Read our full critique of the Berlin Biennial in the next issue of B EAST. Subscribe to receive a copy.

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