Fuck Architects: Chapter III

1st Brussels Biennial, 2008

Brussels Biennial,

19 October, 2008 – 04 January, 2009

Curator: Pierre-Olivier Rollin

 

The First Brussels Biennial opened on 19 October, 2008, the latest to follow in Europe after Moscow had its second edition in 2007. Organized under the general theme of Re-used Modernity, the first Brussels Biennial was inspired by World Expo 1958, an event fifty years ago in which technological progress, modernity and universalism took center stage.

For Brussels, the World Expo had meant the building of the underground North-South railway connection and it is along this very pulse beat of Brussels that the biennale’s exhibition was staged. The deserted former Post Sorting Center and the Anneessens-pre metro station were the main venues, with one or two art works also placed at the Central Station and the Van Goethem Hall of the Belgian National Bank. All venues are situated along the North-South axis of the railway network, the ultimate modernization project of Brussels.

But what makes the First Brussels Biennial different from other European biennales, is the curatorial concept of its artistic director Barbara Vanderlinden, who invited alternative institutions within the Hollocore (a term used by architect and theorist Remco Koolhaas for the region spanning the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Germany) and beyond, to develop exhibitions rethinking the notion of modernity in a globalized world.