Located along the coast, about a 45-minute tram ride from the city center, the second Athens Biennial, titled “Heaven,” is an ambitious, if somewhat disjointed, exhibition bursting with surprises from 141 artists and collaboratives from 26 countries. Organized by artistic directors XYZ (independent curator Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, artist Poka-Yio, and critic Augustine Zenakos), the expansive show includes five central exhibitions housed in a disused indoor parking garage left over from the 2004 Olympics, as well as performatory events — namely “Heaven-Live,” a series of temporary performance-based works curated by Dimitris Papaioannou and Zafos Xagoraris — and a host of off-site projects and installations in seven other venues along the waterfront.

While the main goal of the biennial, which runs from June 15 through October 4, was for the curators to assemble a group of artworks responding to the theme of heaven (the public beach where the biennial is staged is referred to as “Eden”), one result of the undertaking seems to be showing Greek artists alongside their international counterparts, giving them a global context and broader exposure.

Despite the unifying idea, each of the five curated sections in the sprawling, long, and narrow concrete garage has its own agenda and visual approach. The first of these, Chus Martinezs “World Question Center,” lives up to its name, definitely raising more questions than it answers, with an open-ended methodology that doesn’t necessarily make for a cohesive grouping. Martinez, the chief curator of Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), asked each artist to respond to the heaven theme on his or her own terms and received very different responses.

While an interesting approach, the cacophony resulting from installing almost 40 works, many of them videos, in a relatively open setting made it hard to focus on individual pieces. (Also, the temporary walls in this section are slanted inward, giving the whole installation a DIY, somewhat disorienting feel.) Of the two-dimensional works, highlights include the India-ink-on-paper drawings by the late Greek artist Alexis Akrithakis (think Keith Haring, but more refined) as well as Dorothy Iannones graphic stylized silkscreen print The Next Great Moment in History is Ours (1970), a work trumpeting female empowerment and sexuality. The neo-primitive embroidery works on canvas by Aris and Lakis Ionas/The Callas call to mind the American collective Forcefield but suffer, unfortunately, from their informal installation on a freestanding, slanted piece of Sheetrock.

The maze-like layout of the biennial might cause viewers to completely miss, appropriately enough, the second section, Diana Baldons “For the Straight Way is Lost.” Baldon takes an anti-white-cube aesthetic to the extreme, forcing viewers to confront the existing architecture of the space, a series of small rooms with extremely low ceilings in which viewers were forced to crouch and bend to see the work. This section, too, relies heavily on film and video installations, the most effective of which is German artist Christoph Schlingensiefs Stahlweg I–XII (2006), a series of freestanding storage lockers outfitted with small monitors playing videos inside and a hole to peer through. Also included was Carolee Schneemanns Fuses (1965), a silent film of collaged and painted sequences of lovemaking between Schneemann and her then partner, composer James Tenney, with their cat, Kitch, as a witness.

Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, the former artistic director of Art Basel, opted for a more traditional format for her contribution, “Splendid Isolation, Athens,” by using a large, open room — albeit with a sloping, un-museum-like floor on the right side — in which you might catch your breath while taking in works dealing with the natural environment and utopian ideals. Cypriot artist Christodoulos Panayiotous 2008 (2008) consists of a pile of shredded bank notes from Cyprus, useless after the country’s transition to the euro, in a commentary on not only the current global economy but also the complex political situation of a country dealing with internal conflict and an uncertain future.

Argentinean artist Martin Oppel achieved a multihued, glowing effect on the wall by using acrylic paint behind bricks made of foam in Untitled (Ruin, twilight) (2009). And hung throughout the space are 50 photographs from the late Italian artist and designer Ettore Sottsasss “Metafore” series (1970-99) that depict poetic, lyrical constructions and performatory actions. Number 31, Lovers: Every Morning My Girlfriend Gets on the Subway, was photographed in the Israeli desert and shows a naked woman entering a hole in the ground with little more than thin pieces of wood representing a railing.

With its gothic feel and darker tone, “Hotel Paradies,” curated by Nadja Argyropoulou, an independent curator based in Athens, felt more like a nightmare world, but it was the strongest of the sections overall. Argyropolou deftly gathered many works that packed a strong visual wallop, including Polish-born Robert Kusmirowskis D.O.M. (2004), a room-size re-creation of a graveyard, complete with a cemetery wall and fence, headstones, dirt, and a spooky soundtrack. One could also spend some time in a room lined with silver curtains watching several projected Kenneth Anger films on a loop, such as Lucifer Rising (1973) and, on a separate monitor, Mouse Heaven (2004).

Continuing the dark trip was the S&M-inspired Reverie (2009) by Greek artist Vassilis Karouk, a 16-minute, black-and-white video featuring a vampirish dominatrix tempting a fiendish-looking, groveling man reminiscent of the somnambulist character Cesare from the 1920s silent-film classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

“Hotel Paradies” boasts one of the biennial’s most compelling works, a 30-minute, four-channel, stereoscopic-surround-sound DVD installation, The Ideoplastic Materializations of Eva C. by Zoe Beloff, that is very much worth sitting still for, even in the un-air-conditioned space’s oppressive heat (which biennial planners had hoped to avoid somewhat by staying open until midnight). Based on a series of 10 séances held by spirit medium Eva C., aka Marthe Beraud, in Algeria and Paris between 1904 and 1912 and documented in a book by German psychotherapist Baron Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, the work is sexy, funny, and well acted. Beloff’s attention to detail and inventive approach — including providing 3D glasses — pay off in spades and hypnotize the viewer. Still, traditional media also manage to stand out in this section, especially in Krakow, Poland-based Jakub Julian Ziolkowskis trio of detailed paintings, the largest of which, Untitled (2009), depicts a trash heap with a washy multicolored sky, rendered with enviable skill and panache.

Rounding out the biennial is curator and writer Christopher Marinoss “How many Angels can Dance on the Head of a Pin?,” which takes a more spiritual approach toward “heaven.” Mark Wallingers Threshold to the Kingdom (2000) is a projected video installation showing people walking through the automatic double doors of an airport’s international arrivals section. Accompanied by a recording of the well-known Miserere by Gregorio Allegri, the ingenious work may be one of the most literal translations of the biennial’s theme. In sharp contrast, a video by Athens-based collective OMIO, Descent 1 (2009), shows an individual trekking into a tomb-like cave while wielding a flashlight to nearly strobe-like effect. The installation Hunting for Pheasants (2007-08) by Christian Tomaszewski — comprising a maze-like structure of aluminum; a 40-minute video loop; and framed, hand-drawn posters, rendered in the style of the Polish Poster School of the 1960s and 1970s, that hang on striped bands painted on the walls — deals with the subject of historical and fictional victims of assassination. All in all, despite its arcane nature, the work is a visual treat mixing historical references, modern design, and the grim reality of contemporary life.

While not altogether a coherent whole, the second Athens Biennial has lots to offer, not least of which is the hope that even — or maybe especially — independent projects can still thrive in a climate of dwindling museum budgets and cost-cutting measures in the arts.