Manifesta's Rhetorics Examined: A Conference on European Biennials

A conference titled 'Unpinning the Butterfly' at Manifesta 12 in Palermo in 2018 examined the rhetorical foundations of the nomadic European biennial. The event featured contributions by Elvira Vannini, Lisa Barbieri, and Maria Teresa Lattarulo, and drew on texts by Okwui Enwezor, Hou Hanru, and Marco Scotini. The discussion centered on Manifesta's origins in the post-Cold War 1990s as a pan-European platform, its flexible, outsourced organizational structure, and its ambition to negotiate between local and global contexts. Speakers interrogated concepts of 'locality' and 'globality,' migration as a creative opportunity, and the biennial's role in transcending institutional limits and fostering cross-cultural dialogue. The conference referenced historical precedents like Documenta 1955, Gwangju Biennale, and Johannesburg Biennale as models of politically transformative exhibitions.