Liverpool Biennale 2018
Every two years, Liverpool is reaching out to promote modern art. Events, installations, artworks, projects are spread across the city, indoors and outdoors.
The title of the 2018 edition: Beautiful world, where are you? promised to stir reactions over controversial types of art or subjects - as it was in the previous years. In 2004, for example, works by Yoko Ono were presented throughout the city centre, My mummy was beautiful, a series of photographs of a woman's breast and crotch. Ouch.
Below is a collage collection of what we managed to catch, a small example of the 2018 Liverpool Biennale. We had only seen patches of scattered 'art' around the city's different venues over a span of a few months. The schedule was packed with events.
On Great George Street on a temporary construction fencing was a long list of names of migrants that died while escaping wrong living conditions. As far as we know, it had brought the most radical response - a few days later large parts of the long lists were torn and worn down.
Politics play a major role in today's modern art.
There were great, quirky installations in St George's Hall, Victoria Museum and Liverpool School of Art and Design, combining science with the freedom of individual expression.
The street-art had a few examples of which the most impressive was a hole with a suspension timber bridge, next to the Liverpool One water fountain.
This year Biennale left us slightly disturbed - we concluded that the festival served its purpose in our case. To be touched and moved by art even in a negative sense, to replace the everyday routine feelings with something unexpected, is interesting, at least.
A lot of harsh stuff, full of reminders of how tragic life can be.
One of the funniest moments was in Bluecoat Chambers when one of us uttered a gasp of sheer exhaustion while watching a pantomime, dragging endlessly. Few more people joined, being 'boredoomed', laughing nervously and looking at their watches. Enough is enough. We went out.
Beautiful world, where are you?