| Summary: | This thesis explores the tensions between nation building and
globalisation in relation to state-sponsored visual arts projects, focusing
on the Biennale project of the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council
(GJMC). It explores the extent to which this project - aimed initially at
internationalising and then globalising South Africa’s art world following
the demise of apartheid in 1994 - was compatible with key nation building
objectives for state funding of the arts, captured imperfectly in the
country’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). It is found
that the Biennale project was largely not compatible with the RDP’s
objectives for state funding, namely to promote national unity while
respecting the country’s cultural diversity, redress imbalances of the past
in access to the arts, and promote culture as a component of South
Africa’s development, in spite of the GJMC’s statements to the contrary.
Rather the Johannesburg Biennale reproduced the dialectic of economic
inclusion and exclusion endemic to the political project of globalisation,
leading to the creation of economic and artistic ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’
akin to the ‘First World’ and ‘Third World’ divide that the RDP warned
against in its principle on nation-building, and proved to be an
inappropriate use of state resources given the divided nature of the South
African artworld. Furthermore, the GJMC imported uncritically an
exhibition form associated with the discourse of internationalisation in the
first Biennale, and then globalisation in the second, from other Biennales,
based on contestable theoretical positions on nationalism and
globalisation. This they did in an attempt to address a growing financial
crisis in the city by using a ‘one size fit all’ set of policy prescriptions falling
under the rubric of neo-liberalism, including culture-led methods of
enhancing a city’s global status to attract foreign revenue. In particular,
the Biennale did not learn the lesson that the shift in focus in other
Biennales from internationalisation to globalisation, was also accompanied
by growing discontent in these countries about the elitist nature of these
events. I also consider whether it is possible to devise an alternative
Biennale project that uses international contact to unite the South African
artworld, rather than dividing it.
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