LIVERPOOL, England—It is mostly known as the city of the Beatles, the Liverpool Football Club, and ferries across the River Mersey, but under the 2008 European Capital of Culture tag — boasted by one or more cities in the European Union (previously the European Community) each year since 1985 — Liverpool is putting on a new face. This year's Liverpool Biennial, which opened September 20 and runs through November 30, is part of that effort. And though it's easy to be cynical about a show that seems like part of a marketing scheme, “MADE UP,” as this fifth edition is called, proves to be an engaging venture aimed at a range of audiences.

The biennial's core exhibition is spread out across the city, with artworks on view in three of the largest contemporary art venues — Tate Liverpool, the Bluecoat, and the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology (FACT) — as well as ten site-specific installations. The biennial’s artistic director, Lewis Biggs, looked to artists to create new pieces that worked “beyond documentary,” stating his hope that the overarching theme — the power of imagination — would prevent the deluge of information that inhabits and inhibits 21st-century life. The result is a show that at times verges on mere spectacle but nonetheless remains enjoyably creative, with installations by Ai Weiwei, Tomas Saraceno, and David Altmejd, among others. One of the most successful contributions is Diller Scofidio + Renfo’s Arbores Laetae (Joyful Trees) (2008), a land installation consisting of 17 hornbeam trees planted in a roadside green space. What at first appears to be a natural scene is subverted upon extended viewing, as three of the trees, and a small circular area of space surrounding each of them, slowly rotate on a submerged roundabout. The effect is subtle, contemplative, and almost magical.

Yoko Ono returns to the hometown of her late husband with an evolving installation at the ruined St. Luke’s Church, titled Liverpool Skyladders (2008). Ono has invited visitors to donate stepladders to be placed alongside one that she has installed in the overgrown, roofless space, the end goal being a forest of the everyday items. The day before the biennial opened, Ono’s plan was looking like it would succeed: Half a dozen had already been added, each with a name credit and note from the former owner.

Other projects are less subtle in their attempts to grab the viewer’s attention. FACT’s exhibition of mostly multimedia artists seems to have been curated with the water-cooler effect in mind, comprised as it is of largely experiential artworks with a “wow” factor and photo-op potential. Ulf Langheinrich’s 3D projection LAND (2008), filmed in the historic widescreen CinemaScope format, even comes with a prop — a pair of 3D glasses given to each visitor to enhance the effect of strobes and flashing patterns. Yet ultimately, the work leaves one cold, lacking any deeper meaning.

Tate Liverpool offers an exhibition curated by Laurence Sillars that investigates imagined places and spaces. Israeli Guy Ben-Ner contributes his film Second Nature (2008), in which a fox and a crow, trained for films and television, reenact the Aesop fable The Fox and the Crow. In this version, the animal trainers are revealed and their techniques exposed; the two trainers also break into an excerpt from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Ben-Ner’s fellow countryman Omer Fast also investigates the constructed reality of film in his 30-minute video Take a Deep Breath (2008). The work tells the story of a film crew telling the story of an Israeli doctor who tries unsuccessfully to save a man caught in a bomb blast, only to realize later that the dead man was the suicide bomber. Also of particular note in the Tate show are detailed abstract photographs of modernist architectural masterpieces from Luisa Lambri, an epic allegorical landscape in oils by Ged Quinn, and cinematic light boxes featuring gothic scenes from the American West by Rodney Graham.

Concurrent to the biennial's core program, two established art competitions have also opened. Shortlisted entries for the £25,000 ($45,500) John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize, which was awarded to British artist Peter McDonald, went on view at the Walker Art Gallery, where they remain through January 4, 2009. The Chapman brothers were part of the jury selecting 35 works from the 3,222 submissions, alongside art critic Sacha Craddock and painters Graham Crowley and Paul Morrison, and their influence can be seen clearly in a show that revels in the grotesque and apocalyptical — particularly the submissions from Sam Dargan, Stuart Pearson Wright, and Alex Gene Morrison. The second open competition, for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries prize, presents work by the best of the U.K.’s recent arts graduates, according to its jury for this year, artists Richard Billingham, Ceal Floyer, and Ken Lum. Historically, the prize has been a good gauge of who is likely to go on to bigger things, with Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, and Gillian Wearing passing through its ranks. This year’s 57 selections — on view at the A Foundation through November 22 — range from conceptual and beautiful balloon sculptures by 22-year-old David Stearn; to sublime, photographically manipulated landscapes by 29-year-old Sarah Michael; to the satirically cruel films of British duo Allsopp and Weir.