Sunday
Sun. 09-11-2008: Visiting the Liverpool Biennial 08
On our last day in Liverpool we visit a few spots of the Liverpool Biennial 08, an art event which already had previous editions, so before Liverpool became Capital of Culture. Only this year the Biennale’s setup was bigger and featured more international artists. Obviously, the Capital of Culture helped the Biennial to drew more attention to arts and culture activities in Liverpool.
The Liverpool Biennial takes place in more than twenty spots in the centre of Liverpool. A free map takes the visitor along all the places in a walk through the city. There’s also a catalogue available with background information on all the art projects on display.
Besides that, the socalled Independents Liverpool Biennial 08 takes place at the same time, only these events are spread out through the suburbs of Liverpool and are not curated by the city’s institutions. A few examples of the Independant we’ve already seen in Garston.
Most people working for the Biennial are volunteers. One of them is Zoe. We ask her about her background, her opinion on the Capital of Culure and the legacy of Liverpool 08. The interview is split up in two parts.
At the Biennial 08 visiting centre, we get in touch with another volunteer named Shaun. He agrees with an email interview (he’s a bit nervous to get interviewed on camera). As soon as we have his say, we’ll post it here.
On our short break we take some coffee, fruit juices and pies in Egg, a nice lunchroom on the third floor of a building close to Bold Street. All of a sudden we are offered a treasure map from a girl, which actually is an invitation to drop by some sort of a art sale next to a nearby parking garage. We decide to have a quick look. After a short stroll we end up in a small garage box full of amateur art works, homebaked foods and antique stuff taken from dusty attics, all for sale! It’s nice to see how the community itself creates cultural/artistic events on its own. The art in here doesn’t really appeal to our taste, but that’s a different story.
Finally we visit an exposition called Future, Fiction and Fantasy. All the art works here are actually made by 18 different schools from aroud the area, in collaboration with professional artists. Some of the projects are quite original and visually very impressive . It’s a good thing to see how schools are involved in the whole Biennial programme!