The 9th Berlin Biennale will take place in early summer 2016.
The collective DIS is composed of Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso, and David Toro. The cultural interventions of DIS are manifest across a range of media and platforms, from site-specific museum and gallery exhibitions such as DIS Image Studio (2013, The Suzanne Geiss Company, New York, US), ProBio at EXPO 1: New York (2013, MoMA PS1, New York, US) or Dressing the Screen for the British Council (2012, UCCA, Beijing) to ongoing online projects which most notably include DIS Magazine, a virtual platform that examines art, fashion, music, and culture, constructing and supporting new creative practices.
Recent ventures include DISimages, 2013, a fully operational stock photography agency that enlists artists to produce images available for private and commercial use, and DISown, a retail venture aimed at expanding creative economies. Across its various endeavors, DIS explores the tension between popular culture and institutional critique, while facilitating projects for the most public and democratic of all forums—the Internet.
Since its inception in 1998, the Berlin Biennale has become one of Germany’s most important events of contemporary art. It is shaped by the different concepts of curators appointed to enter into a dialogue with the city of Berlin, its general public, the people interested in art as well as the artists of this world. The previous eight editions of the Berlin Biennale explored a variety of exhibition formats and involved diverse curatorial agendas.
Curators have been:
- 1st Berlin Biennale (1998): Klaus Biesenbach with Nancy Spector and Hans Ulrich Obrist
- 2nd Berlin Biennale (2001): Saskia Bos
- 3rd Berlin Biennale (2004): Ute Meta Bauer
- 4th Berlin Biennale (2006): Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni, and Ali Subotnick
- 5th Berlin Biennale (2008): Adam Szymczyk and Elena Filipovic
- 6th Berlin Biennale (2010): Kathrin Rhomberg
- 7th Berlin Biennale (2012): Artur Żmijewski together with associate curators Voina and Joanna Warsza
- 8th Berlin Biennale (2014): Juan A. Gaitán
The selection committee for the curatorship of the 9th Berlin Biennale consisted of Elvira Dyangani Ose (Lecturer, Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London), Fulya Erdemci (Curator, Istanbul, TR), Susanne Gaensheimer (Director, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, DE), Edi Muka (Curator, Public Art Agency, Stockholm), María Inés Rodríguez (Director, CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux, FR), Ali Subotnick (Curator, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US), and Philip Tinari (Director, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing).
The Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art is since its fourth edition one of the projects supported by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) as “outstanding cultural event”. In December 2013, the Board of Trustees of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes decided to fund the 9th and 10th edition of the Berlin Biennale again with 2.5 Million Euro each and thus ensures planning stability, enabling the organizers to address issues of content in an experimental way.
The Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art is organized by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation).
Image: DIS, photo by Sabine Reitmaier