Luca Bergamo
Director, Rome Biennial

Chronicle of a Long-Lasting Attempt On May 29, 1999, the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean opens in Rome. More than 50,000 square meters of the ex-Mattatoio of Testaccio, designed by Herzog at the beginning of the century to "industrialize" the slaughter of livestock, came back to life after almost twenty years of neglect.
Only by the middle of April 1999, did we receive the formal authorization to use the complex: just one month to transform the venue and make it suitable to host the shows, the works, the conferences of the Biennial and, most of all, the thousands of people that, we hope, are coming to visit it.
So, 7,000 cubic meters of waste cluttering up the "pelanda dei suini" disappear; this space, cleaned out and arranged, will host the urban performances and the workshops of Sarajevo.
After an intense confrontation, an entire nomad camp agrees to move temporarily into a campsite just outside the city, thus making available the 20,000 square meters of the "campo boario," that will host the big concerts of the famous stars invited and the smaller ones of the selected artists.
We manage to relocate functions occupying more than 10,000 square meters of indoor space, including: a depository of abandoned electric equipment, a depository of scenery from the Teatro dell'Opera, a depository of impounded motorcycles, several depositories of very old paper voting ballots, temporary offices of the city police which had become permanent by that time, and so on. Each transfer requires long and laborious discussions in order to find satisfactory solutions and not to cause conflicts that would make it impossible to vacate the complex.
A huge effort, but for what? We "Romans" joined the circuit of the Biennial (at that time it was not an association but an informal network) only in 1997, just before the Turin edition.
An entrance which took place in the context of a transformation of the policy of the Municipality of Rome that for the first time in the city, at the end of 1995, institutes a Youth Policies Office. The councillor is Fiorella Farinelli, one of the most dynamic and farsighted administrators that the city ever had. The new councillorship immediately gave life to a series of interventions to support the development of autonomous decision capacities for the youth, to invest in new creative and entrepreneurial talents (Enzimi and the Prestito d'Onore for example), to give visibility to the huge creative potential of a generation often described as aboulic, weak-the X generation, the central theme of discussion only when some of its minorities are protagonists of socially deviant behavior.
A new approach, that addresses the youth as a social group and not in connection with eventual particular conditions of hardships and marginalization where minorities, even important ones, are protagonists. Hosting the Biennial seems then to be coherent with the guidelines the city has outlined with regard to the field of youth policies.
Therefore, we present the candidature of Rome to host the 1999 edition to the International Committee (deliberative body of the network at that time) gathered during the Biennial of Turin.
Simultaneously, and unexpectedly, another candidature, although quite vague, is presented by the city of Sarajevo.
Fiorenzo Alfieri, at that time Councillor for the Youth Policies of the Municipality of Turin, proposes to integrate the two candidatures.
Even if caught a bit unaware-we knew nothing of another possible candidature-we immediately accept this proposal. Thus, in the winter of 1997-98, the International Committee of the network approves the project of a Biennial to be held in two connected phases: 1999 in Rome and 2001 in Sarajevo. Less than a year and a half left before May 1999, the date we committed to open "our" edition.
Sarajevo has just come out of a terrible war that had decimated its population and had torn its social, cultural, and political fabric apart. Therefore, we decide to plan the edition of Rome in view of a privileged relationship with the history of Sarajevo and with all that she represented for Europe and the entire world.
We choose the Other (the relation with diversities) as theme of the event, and sign an agreement between the two municipalities to promote an international Architecture competition for young artists, for the design of the new Sarajevo Concert Hall.
The Municipality of Sarajevo itself chooses the Concert Hall as the object of the competition. The Municipality of Rome will promote and carry out the competition in two phases, assigning the direction of the jury to Zaha Hadid.
The edition of Turin 1997 is a success. Yet, the potential of the Biennial seems to be still greatly unexpressed to us.
In our opinion (and eight years later I can still confirm it) the representatives of the "members" of the network tend to perceive and appreciate almost exclusively the "artistic" dimension of the event, underestimating its potential and sensational political and cultural value.
Twenty years later, the intuition of the founders still amazes me: to bet on youth and on local governments as the main characters of a citizens' diplomacy to build peace, better than what has been demonstrated by the countries' diplomacy.
This is the most innovative idea in this globalizing and urbanizing world. The only real counterweight to the global dimension of financial interests rises from the cooperation among local communities, in particular the urban and metropolitan ones. And the youth absolutely plays the leading role in cultural production, in the voluntary services, in the thousands of forms of social and civil participation that can be undertaken.
The proposal put forward by Alfieri arises from a clear account of the political and cultural situation.
This is the reason why the Municipality of Rome immediately agrees to it.
In spite of that, the discussions that at that time and still today often characterize the social life of the network, do not focus on the sense of its own being and on the policies that should follow but sometimes turn into harsh confrontations, on the technical and organizational issues of the activities.
In any case, in our attempt to face the challenge of integrating two following editions, we present our proposals at the meeting of the International Committee held in Rome in the spring of 1998. This proposal is for an event containing a lot of new ideas (some breaking with the traditions of the Biennial) but also, in return, a considerable financial commitment that allows us to nearly double the number of artists invited and to enlarge the network towards the south of the Mediterranean, thus reaching dozens of new members in one go, from eleven areas not permanently present in the network. At that time (and unfortunately to date), each edition of the Biennial hosts a complex of art projects that represents the "algebraical" sum of the selections made by each member (city, ministry or nongovernmental organization) within its own territorial competence. The selection is carried out through the application of common goals and rules, but it is as much evident that the locally instituted juries interpret these criteria in their own way and express sensitivities much different from one another.
This process is extremely respectful of local diversities, but makes it difficult to find an underlying theme and to give to the program of the event that degree of "coherence" that would allow the visitor to interpret the phenomena characterizing the art world and show business and that the event aspires to represent.
The Rome edition therefore proposes a new disciplinary articulation that groups together the traditional disciplines in which the event is subdivided, trying to represent the growing integration between forms of expression and the role played by new technologies in accelerating this phenomenon. Internationally renowned artists agree to curate exhibitions of the various sections of the Biennial, with the objective of offering an interpretation of the phenomena represented and of the trends of the art world. Therefore, personalities such as Jannis Kounellis, Manuel Vazquez Montalban, Zaha Hadid, Javier Mariscal, Jean Claude Gallotta, Agricantus, Ferzan Ozpetek, Veniero Rizzardi, and Gianfranco Vissani carry out their task with commitment and conscientiousness, contributing to greatly increasing the artistic and cultural value of the event.
For the categories where in the previous editions we encountered most difficulties during the selections, the Biennial 1999 presents sections by invitation only, leaving complete freedom of choice to the curators, within general fixed parameters. This originates three exhibitions of great interest and quality, proposing excellent ideas in their respective areas: Contemporary Music, Cuisine, and Architecture.
The latter category presents the projects received for the international announced competition to design the new Sarajevo Concert Hall and hosts the jury who will select five finalists.
In order to give strength and visibility to the most generally cultural dimension, Rome 1999 also hosts a series of conferences, organized in collaboration with the University of Rome and thanks to the work of Stefano Cristante, entitled "Discorsi sui Metodi" ("Discourses on Methods"). The title is an homage to the complexity of thought, to its epistemological and political implications, and to its standard-bearer Edgar Morin, who accepts our invitation to chair the opening session. An extremely rich meeting calendar, unique in the history of Biennials, that, thanks to the Biennial itself, brings to Rome some of the most stimulating intellectuals of the world. But it is also a profound discussion on the relation with the Other and it builds a bridge between the expressive dimension of the works exhibited in the Mattatoio and the cultural and political debate, at that time deeply influenced by the Balkan war.
We want the Biennial to be an occasion of dialogue and confrontation with the local community and those attending it. But we also intend to communicate the city's commitment to promote the emergence of cultural innovation and the self- promotion of a generation that is the driving force behind this innovation. Hence, we combined with the "official" event a fringe section whose program, in the end, will be as rich and dense as the official one.
Finally, with an eye toward the network internal organization, the International Committee held in Rome during the Biennial at last approves the transformation of the informal network into an Association under European law. A change that we considered necessary in order to ensure the capitalization of the considerable investments made by the host cities in a trademark of common property, so as to ensure continuity among the various editions, the transmission of the history and the knowledge acquired, so as to become more programmatic and effective also in fund-raising and communication.
In the space of three weeks (that was the duration of the event), the Biennial of Rome presents to the visitors more than 100 shows, nearly 800 works of visual arts and installations, about a hundred design projects, more than 400 preliminary projects for the Sarajevo Concert Hall designed by architects underthirty from more than twenty-two countries, and so on.
Naturally, the level of quality is heterogeneous but, undoubtedly, each field presented several outstanding contributions, well acknowledged by the critics and the audience. The original work of the mind and the labors of more than 3,000 artists (architects included) becomes part of the heritage and of the direct experience of a wide general public. Nearly 90,000 people visited the complex, despite the fact that it was necessary to charge an entrance fee to the Mattatoio meet the budget.
Yet, something went wrong. Maybe the organizational dimensions of the event were excessive. Neither the network nor we ourselves are fully conscious of all the management implications. Several organizational problems arise, affecting the internal harmony, due to the dissatisfaction (sometimes well grounded, sometimes not) of some delegations.
Furthermore, many works and artists arrive at the eleventh hour, after immense difficulties and infinite pressure on the Italian diplomatic representatives: the war in Kosovo slows up the stream of shipments coming from non-EU countries (and France temporarily suspends the Schengen Agreement); many of the works and artists coming from the Southern Mediterranean shore cannot leave in time and arrive in Rome just a few days before the opening, or in some cases even later.
Therefore, not everything goes on as planned.
Nevertheless, in the eyes of the audience and the independent journalists (not following any delegation) the event is a success and has been widely discussed in extremely positive tones: a few months after the Biennial, we can still find traces of gratifying reports in art magazines of Hong Kong. Six years later, I still have a vivid memory of the ups and the downs. In the end, a positive catalogue. The event itself was beautiful, but exhausting beyond all reasonable limits. An eventful period, rich in emotions and discoveries, in problems and solutions, in intellectual and human enrichment for me and for all those who, like myself, conceived and carried out that edition of the Biennial.
The Biennial in Rome gave concrete form to the real vocation of the almost 100,000 square meters of the Mattatoio, that, at that time, were destined for commercial and sales use. At present, an important renewal project is about to start on the Herzog complex. This area will soon become a Cultural Production Center devoted to innovation and to the presence of the Faculty of Architecture and the Department of Arts, Music and Performance of the Terza Università di Roma. The Biennial changed the urban destiny of one of the fundamental quadrants in the development of the city.
Several artists who participated in the Biennial have obtained important recognition, many increased their own credibility and prestige, and all had the rare chance to live a unique experience of meeting, exchange and learning.
Even though with an often exhausting slowness, the Biennial began its life as an Association and independent organization from the host city of Rome. Not so bad after all.
I only have one real regret. Together we decided to devote the 1999 edition to Sarajevo. The war in Kosovo made it difficult to communicate our message, nevertheless the competition for the design of the Concert Hall ended up with the selection of the winning project.
The winner was UFO (Urban Future Organization), an architectural office led by Dennis Balent-the Slovak team leader-and comprised of two Swedes, an Italian, a Chinese, and an Indian. They won the competition thanks to a project considered by the jury as "superior to average winning projects in international competitions." It is a hypogeal project, beautiful and very technically advanced, that combines the modern idea of function and an original interpretation of the territory. The realization of an underground concert hall, providing a brilliant solution to acoustical problems, transformed into the opportunity to create a public park, embellished by the light coming from the underground spaces of the structure. Since the area chosen by the Sarajevo City Council stands at the geometrical center of the valley hosting the city, on the border between the Hapsburg and the Yugoslav part of the city, the design solution optimizes the qualities of the space, turning it into a place of real connection between the different souls of Sarajevo, a park of hope that conceals and unveils the temple of music, language par excellence of the intercultural dialogue.
Nevertheless, the Biennial network and its members never really committed themselves to exert the required political pressure towards the EU institutions in order to raise the funds for its realization.
However, the geopolitical composition of the network, the undeniable symbolic value of the project, and its high aesthetic and technical quality, could have motivated the strong commitment of the European Union to support an initiative that would have represented a symbol of the inspiring values of the Union.
On our part, we involved the President of the Commission and the Stability Pact for the Balkans, yet unable to follow our initiative with the fervent commitment of the representatives of the institutions of the Association member cities.
Thus far, the project has not been financed, although it is formally integrated into the urban planning of the Municipality of Sarajevo.
I am convinced that this is the most evident sign of the reductive interpretation often prevailing among the members of the Biennial, and that to me represents the greatest limit to the definitive success of a brilliant idea. It is as if everyone feared the greatness, the importance, the influence capacity that the Association could express.
Sooner or later, this fear will be overcome. It would be a pity if this does not happen. I believe that once this psychological barrier is overcome, the Biennial will establish itself by far as the world's most important event in the field.
It has already been so in some circumstances, it can be and it will be even more.