The Independents Liverpool Biennial - Into the light

It has been a while since I last posted, during which I was asked to take a role on the board of the Independent Liverpool Biennial. Its a volunteer position so there is no glory, only death! Last September, the board members were asked to pen a few thoughts on what the Biennial meant to us. So I put together the following, albeit to the best of my knowledge noting was posted on our own Independents web page. I have rediscovered my 2011 draft and thought I'd add it here, to "give it some light" so to speak........

Here is what I wrote:

Journey through the Biennial 7 September 2011

If the concept of art is one related to emergence, then so too is the evolution of the Liverpool Biennial.

My first Liverpool Biennial was in 2004 and my abiding memory was the launch party on Greenland Street. This, for me, was of a journey through darkness. Given that it was my first biennial, I was unsure what to expect, but I was certainly anticipating artistic illumination.

At the locational level, here was some light amidst the very real and physical darkness of an area blighted by post industrial decay. Many in those days, including taxi drivers, were in the dark about where Greenland Street was, and few people knew of the “Baltic Triangle.” Why should they? No one went there, and geometry can be an uninspiring tag for a place, sending you around in circles, making you disappear into (Bermuda) triangles, or being just ……..square.

But something was emerging and it felt right. It was the light of culture, and I was a moth amidst the other moths, being drawn in, and attracted from one artistic beacon to another. Much later, I left the light of the launch party and returned to what was literal and absolute darkness. Within metres of the Greenland Street party area was darkness. There were dark empty buildings, minimal street lighting, and no people. It was like walking through a closed city, an apocalyptic film set, or the aftermath of neutron bomb with all life destroyed, leaving nothing but abandoned buildings.

Then at Central Station normal life resumed, and late night Liverpool emerged with its people, noise and party time energy. The contrast was surreal, absolute, and total.

I’ve never forgotten it. Since then, the Biennial has grown, and so too the Independents Biennial. Some say it’s the fastest growing arts event of its type. And I have been lucky, if not privileged, to contribute to two Biennials; one as a collaborative intellectual participant, the other as a collaborative artist. But I make no claims to be an artist. Rather, I am a dilettante whose dabblings somehow led to something more tangible. But; I had been touched by the light.

Now economic circumstances suggest there are different dark forces in play. Forces that for economic and expediency reasons aspire to dim the light of art and culture. Those of us who care for these things, and this is most of us, and who believe that art can illuminate and reveal, must learn how to light beacons, change the fuse, and keep the light shining. Wherever there is darkness, art and ideas will emerge. And this is the journey of the Independents Liverpool Biennial