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Why should anyone care about another new biennial? To be clear,Prospect.1 New Orleans, curated by Dan Cameron, differs fromother megashows by virtue of its site: America’s most baffling, heartbreaking,elating, and unique city. Coming during a presidentialadministration teeming with betrayals of the American public (anunprecedented fiscal crisis, the normalization of preemptive war, thedismemberment of privacy in the name of “security”), the failureof New Orleans before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina may wellgo down as Bush’s crowning indignity. A biennial taking place inNew Orleans has no choice but to acknowledge the implicit politics oforchestrating something of this magnitude there, which is why theproject appealed to Cameron, who curated the 2003 Istanbul Biennial.“I think the time is ripe for a totally different framework for leveragingthe world’s interest in new art into something both useful and meaningful,”Cameron says. “I believe that society at large is now ready toadmit that the government failed, and continues to fail, New Orleans,so the way we promote cultural tourism through Prospect.1 has a lot todo with appealing to prospective visitors’ sense of civic duty and pride.”

In a sense, it’s awkward for New Orleans to play host to anythingwith a whiff of “the institution” as it relates to visual art. Its art sceneis informal and is centered on music and performance. There’s nothingquite like the hypnotizing ritualism of Mardi Gras Indians (eightMardi Gras suits designed by Victor Harris, Big Chief of the Fi Yi YiIndians, will be a Prospect.1 highlight) or a brass band bursting into abar and blowing your ears out before casually dispatching for the nextplatform. Then again, social awkwardness has a way of dissipating inNew Orleans, and while local artists are cautious (especially aboutout-of-towners parachuting into devastated neighborhoods), they’replanning a slew of fringe events that might very well steal the show,such as guerrilla public-art actions sponsored by Aorta Projects, andrevelry and reverie at the city’s vital row of galleries on St. ClaudeAvenue. Prospect.1’s roster includes a healthy number of New Orleansartists—Willie Birch, Harris, Jacqueline Humphries, and SrdjanLoncar among them—as well as a nice list of non–New Orleanians,like Allora and Calzadilla, Cai Guo-Qiang, Cao Fei, Kalup Linzy, andJulie Mehretu. Its venues are scattered throughout the city, from aBaptist church to the Contemporary Arts Center to a furniture store–cum–multipurpose cultural destination. In 2006, after breezingthrough a Whitney Biennial loaded with statements of political impotence,a friend commented, “The whole show should have beenabout New Orleans.” Finally, it will be.

Prospect.1 New Orleans will be on view from November 1 through January 19, 2009. For more information, visit prospectneworleans.com. 

"Prospect 1: New Orleans" originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' November 2008 Table of Contents.