BERLIN— An obvious problem with international mega-exhibitions like biennials is that the general visitor who arrives after the exclusive opening events often misses out on a good part of the excitement. The Utopia Station at the 50th Venice Biennial in 2003, for example, was a chaotic but dynamic hub of performances and lectures during the early part of the almost five-month exhibition, but later became a rather ruin-like setting, where one got only a faded glance of what might have happened there before. The curators of the fifth Berlin Biennial (bb5), taking place from April 5 through June 15, are challenging the critical temporality of a show by offering a different format. “When things cast no shadow,” as the show is called, will be divided into two parts: the usual daytime exhibition and a program of “fleeting events in the dark” scheduled nightly throughout the duration of the biennial. ARTINFO spoke with Kunsthalle Basel director Adam Szymczyk, who is curating the Biennial together with Elena Filipovic, about this and other organizing principles of the show.

Adam, I’ve heard the phrase “Day and Night” in conjunction with the biennial – is it the organizing theme of bb5? And did the theme change at all as you developed the show?

The concept has changed a lot over the past year. The biennial’s title is “When things cast no shadow” — the phrase “Day and Night” was just a way of attracting attention to the two different parts. One part is exhibitions in different locations, both conventional art venues such as Kunst-Werke (KW) or the Neue Nationalgalerie (NNG) and less familiar or typical venues. But no matter what the location is or how big they are or what they are about, these shows all necessarily share similar characteristics: They open at a given place in the morning and close in the evening — whereas the night program is different. It takes time, not space. We invented this series of events, which is called “Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours” (my nights are more beautiful than your days) as a possible subversion of the traditional, static exhibition format. The titles [of the biennial and the evening programming] complement each other.

The night events take place both in conventional spaces, such as theaters or cinemas, as well as in the planetarium and other less familiar locations. And they speak to very different audiences: There’s a theater workshop by Augusto Boal, a nominee for this year’s Nobel peace prize; a performance by Alexandra Bachtzetis; a live music event in which Keiji Haino provides the soundtrack to JO — a recent film by Cameron Jamie; and lectures ranging from one on the history of levitation by Olaf Blanke to one on robotic technology by Holk Cruse.

The title “Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours” is borrowed from a movie by Andrzej Zuławski. What is the relation?

First of all it’s a beautiful line, but I also highly value Zuławski’s cinema. We have two things by him in the biennial. In addition to the title, which is borrowed from this rather less important erotic thriller from the late 80s, there is The Silver Globe, a highly ambitious but unfinished Polish science fiction production from the 70s. The director will be at the screening.

You curated bb5 with Elena Filipovic. Had you ever worked together before?

No. I was appointed to run the Biennial, and when I came to Berlin I realized that I wanted to do it with someone. It was not so much about bringing in a collaborator who I know well, but rather someone with whom I could have a conversation and who would bring in some aspects that I could not.

I guess finding the right locations was a big part of framing bb5 conceptually – especially in regard to the last edition, which Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni, and Ali Subotnik held along Auguststrasse in Berlin’s central Mitte neighborhood. You are still using the Kunst-Werke, which is the “home” of the Berlin Biennial, but you’re also expanding to the Neue Nationalgalerie, designed by Mies van der Rohe, and to the Skulpturenpark Berlin Zentrum, a sculpture park located within the former military zone or “death strip” that divided East and West Berlin. What kind of works will you show in these two challenging, historically significant venues?

The KW was once a house where people lived, and something of that remains in the atmosphere of the whole compound. The building housed industrial enterprises in the 19th and 20th centuries and now it can be seen as a venue typical of the 90s, when places of production were turned into places of exhibition. In this sense KW exemplifies the fate of Mitte quite well. Then we needed to find a location that is more remote and has a completely different significance, which is what made me think of Berlin’s serious exhibition spaces. The first and only one that came to my mind was the Neue Nationalgalerie, which appears to be a very well planned and carefully built space, though in fact it is enormously difficult [to install art in].

The Skulpturenpark, in comparison, appears completely chaotic. The group of artists who run it have made very minimal interventions in the area; they turned it into an art venue mainly by naming it. The Biennial’s temporary occupation of this territory refers critically to the idea of public sculpture, which is an important theme of discussion in postwar Germany, perhaps more than elsewhere in Europe.

There’s also the Schinkel Pavilion, with changing exhibitions curated by artists. Are these artists bb5 participants?

Yes. In the Schinkel Pavilion we have five exhibitions. The first, for instance, is Jeanette Laverriere, a Swiss designer who lived in Basel in the 20s, before moving to Paris [she turns 100 next year]. Her show is a collaboration with Nairy Baghramian, who also presents her work at the NNG.

Is bb5 a Berlin-specific biennial?

I think it’s impossible to be specific to a city, because any “city” is really just an image of that city. So you have to be image-specific. We chose three venues [in addition to the Kunst-Werke] because they represent three different types of exhibition spaces. NNG offers an unobstructed view onto the surroundings through transparent glass walls, but you are still enclosed, like a fish in an aquarium. The Skulpturenpark, in contrast, has no walls and also no borders.

Was the pool of international artists living and working in Berlin, which I think is incomparable to any other city in the world, a gift or a curse when you were putting together the artist list?

I think it was a gift. There are many artists who are part of the Berlin scene in the show, especially young ones, which testifies to the liveliness of this scene. We made new discoveries. There are 50 artists in the daytime exhibitions and more than 60 in the night part, and more than half of them are people whose work I had never seen before.

Can you talk about some of the artwork in the show?

More than 80 percent of the works are new commissions, which makes it a complicated show to talk about beforehand. But I can give a few examples.

Anna Molska, aged 25, is the youngest artist in the biennial. We have her installation of two videos: “Power” and “Work” – two simple notions of physics illustrated with use of actors and inanimate objects. Kilian Rüthemann from Basel is there with a large-scale outdoor work for which he’s perforated the ground of the Skulpturenpark with hundreds of holes. We’re showing Japanese photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki’s rarely seen series of photographs from the 1970s, “Park 1” and “Park 2.” One is night shots from a gay cruising area in a Tokyo park; the other is the series in which the photographer shadowed voyeurs who were watching couples make out in a park. And there is Thea Djordjadze, from Tbilisi, who is now living in Germany and who is showing an amazing ensemble of fragile sculptural installations at Neue Nationalgalerie.

One project that’s changed over time is by Ulrike Mohr, who is based in Berlin and has been involved with the Skulpturenpark. She was planning to transplant five trees that grew wild on the roof of Palast der Republik [the landmark former East Berlin parliament building that was recently demolished despite protests from the public] and replant them in the exact same configuration in the Skulpturenpark. We proposed to push the project a little bit further and bring the trees to the roof of the NNG, which is similar in size to the Palast der Republik’s. We thought it would give the project more exposure and would lend new meaning to the NNG. But permission was refused, so the actual project will take place in the Skupturenpark, though it’s being documented at the NNG.

What’s going on in the other venues?

In the KW we have an embedded artist, so to speak. Cezary Bodzianowski decided to live in one of the studios and he has already been doing inconspicuous performances around town. One involved drawing people out of the subway exit with a U-shaped “magnet” made of styropore. And Tris Vonna-Michell will turn the attic of the KW into a space of his own, with sound works originated during his recent stay in Detroit and evolving during the show. Some of the work we show in the Biennial will remain in constant flux throughout. And some will just be there. The Biennial is oscillating between transience and presence, as we all do.