Manifesta, the first itinerant European Biennial for Contemporary
Art, emerged in a post-wall, globalizing Europe. Founded in 1993, it
organized traveling exhibitions aimed at providing a new framework for
cultural exchange and collaboration between artists and curators from
across the continent. The Manifesta Decade marks Manifesta's ten years
of exhibits with original essays, unpublished images, and texts that not
only document the different Manifesta exhibits but also examine the
cultural, curatorial, and political terrain of the Europe from which
they sprang.Including contributions from philosophers, historians, and
anthropologists, interviews with architect Rem Koolhaas and historian
Jacques Le Goff, and essays by such curators and writers as Okwui
Enwezor, Boris Groys, Maria Hlavajova, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the
collection traces the cultural and political developments of Europe in
the 1990s. It reflects the debates incited by exhibitions such as
Magiciens de la Terre, Documenta, and After the Wall and explores the
changing roles of curators and artists in the new geo-political context.
The issues discussed include the effect of communism's collapse on
Eastern Europe, the role of Biennials in the context of globalization,
and the ephemerality of exhibitions versus the permanence of the museum.
The book's second section traces the history of Manifesta, from its
conceptual foundations and contributions to artistic practices of the
1990s to the relationship of a roving Biennial to themes of
multiculturalism, migration and diaspora. At a moment when biennials
continue to proliferate worldwide, The Manifesta Decade takes Manifesta
as a case study to look critically at the landscape from which new
exhibition paradigms have emerged. The book's 100 images, both color and
black and white, include unpublished installation shots of each
Manifesta exhibition.Copublished with Roomade, Brussels, in
collaboration with the International Foundation Manifesta, Amsterdam.