Legitimising the Ephemeral: The Exhibition Magazine as Epitome of the Contemporary

The dissertation focuses on the magazines published by biennial exhibitions, herein called exhibition magazines. Departing from the analysis of the periodic relationship between magazines and biennials, I look at the two formats in tandem, as temporal constructions— whose existence extends between the past and the future, whilst existing in the present—in a continuous tension between becoming (ephemerality) and unbecoming (institutionalisation), which is, I argue, the very feature that allows them to engage with contemporary art and contemporaneity’s own becoming. Representing the dual drive between becoming and unbecoming, the exhibition magazine serves to disseminate the biennial through space and time, acting not only as a promotional tool, but as a vehicle through which the exhibition’s temporality is narrowed and transformed to engage with contemporaneity and audience. I depart from an historical-chronological perspective to consider the first three exhibition magazines: la biennale published by the Venice Biennale between 1950 and 1971, the documenta journals which have been revived with different formats at every new iteration of the show since 1997, and the Manifesta Journal published by Manifesta between 2003 and 2014. Building on the case studies, alongside a practice-based approach comprising of the development of an art periodical database and the launch of a journal devoted to the study of art’s ostensivity and exhibitions, titled OBOE (On Biennals and Other Exhibitions), I have been able to demonstrate the intricate—at times submissive, at others mutinous—relationship between magazines and biennials and how they both come to define contemporary art and engage with contemporaneity’s demands. Indeed, I argue that while these magazines are a niche within the niche of art periodical studies, they have become exemplary in representing the relation of mutual servitude between magazines and the art system at large.