It would not occur to us to demand a prescription for nostalgia. Yet in the seventeenth century, nostalgia was considered to be a curable disease, akin to the common cold. Swiss doctors believed that opium, leeches and a journey to the Swiss Alps would take care of nostalgic symptoms. By the twenty-first century, the passing ailment turned into the incurable modern condition. The twentieth century began with a futuristic utopia and ended with nostalgia. Optimistic belief in the future was discarded like an outmoded spaceship sometime in the 1960s. Nostalgia itself has a utopian dimension, only it is no longer directed toward the future. Sometimes nostalgia is not directed toward the past either, but rather sideways. -- Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (2001) I will preface this with an obvious statement. When reviewing a biennial, one is not reviewing the works as they exist autonomously, but how they exist as part of a collective curation. Even with the demarcation by author...
A critical revue of contemporary art in the city.