This conference gathers researchers, curators, artists and writers to explore the Biennial form as the site for the production of contemporaneity in art and exhibition making. How does the transnational Biennial format organise the world as an amalgamation of different cultures, operating episodically across times and places, in the dynamic relation between the local and the universal? 

Participants include: Elise Atangana (Artistic Director, 2nd Kampala Art Biennale 2016); Geoff Cox (Associate Professor, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University); Elmgreen & Dragset (Curators, 15th Istanbul Biennial 2017); Juliana Engberg (Artistic Director, European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017); Marina Fokidis (Head of Artistic Office, Documenta 14, Athens); Verina Gfader (The Contemporary Condition research project, Aarhus University); Anne Kølbæk Iversen (The Contemporary Condition research project, Aarhus University); Jacob Lund (Associate Professor, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University); Francesco Manacorda (Artistic Director, Tate Liverpool); Raimundas Malaŝauskas (Co-Curator, Liverpool Biennial 2016); Terry Smith (Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Pittsburgh); Sally Tallant (Director of Liverpool Biennial); convened by Joasia Krysa (Director, Exhibition Research Lab, Liverpool John Moores University, in partnership with Liverpool Biennial).

Download the full Conference Schedule and see Speaker Biographies.

The conference takes place during the penultimate weekend of Liverpool Biennial 2016, which includes performances by international artists Coco Fusco, Adam Linder and Marcos Lutyens presented across the city.

Organised by Liverpool Biennial and Aarhus University, in partnership with Liverpool John Moores University’s Exhibition Research Lab and International Curators Forum (ICF).