The Contemporary art Biennale at Lyon, opening today and running until the end of the year, revolves around the notion of ‘temporality’. Curators of the event are Nicolas Bourriaud and Jérôme Sans, with art direction by Thierry Raspail who founded the event in 1991. The passing of time and the everyday are addressed in a systematic way with the addition of some artifice, pauses, loops, synchronisation and fast forwards make it more unusual.

The basic question is this: with which of these modalities is art identified today? Talking about time “is also a way – explain the two young curators of this edition, who have been directors of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris for three years – of compiling an inventory of the 1990s”. A decade in which the concept of time was at the centre of many movements, from conceptual art to Fluxus. It is not however an event with just a single theme. The work of 61 artists and 25 specially made productions as well as 35 discoveries (or rediscoveries) will be spread around five locations in the city.

Space is given over to dialogue between contemporary artists with different approaches: Dieter Roth and John Bock are compared with Tom Marioni and Erwin Wurm; Rivane Neuenschwander with James Turrell and Ann Veronica Janssens. Finally, attention is given over to counterculture and experimentation from the 1970s by Terry Riley, Brian Eno, Gordon Matta-Clark and Robert Malaval. E.S.

14.9.2005 – 31.12.2005
Experiencing Duration. Biennale de Lyon 2005
La Sucrière, Port Rambaud, quai Rambaud Lyon
Museum of Contemporary Art, 81 quai Charles de Gaulle
Villeurbanne Institute of Contemporary Art, 11 rue du Docteur Dolard
Le Rectangle, Place Bellecour
Le Fort Saint Jean, Ecole national du Trésor, 21 montée de la Butte
T +33-04-72980850
https://www.biennale-de-lyon.org