Actualizing Realism

Abstract

Can [art] make disparate realities perceivable and prompt us to participate reflectively in them? That is the central question to be posed by the 6th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. How can it aid the viewer in assuring him/herself of his/her existence and of the world, in feeling more present in this world? Does it have the means at its disposal which film or other media and art forms do not? How can it call attention to the gap between the pseudo reality postulated by the public and personal life reality, how can it criticize this gap, or raise an awareness of it? How can it convey strange and unfamiliar realities by means other than hermetically sealed narrative forms, and thus reflect this strangeness in our own reality? In the midst of the overwhelming abundance of visual imagery produced incessantly by our media, how can reality and a critical view of its underlying conditions even be created? And finally, how does this reality relate to the present and its “passion for the real”?