City of dreams: the second Valencia Biennial addressed the theme of the "Ideal City," while serving the real-life PR interests of this ambitious, revitalized Spanish metropolis - Report From Valencia

At a time when international art festivals seem excessive in both number and scope, is there a case to be made that smaller is better? A fine test case was on offer last summer at the second Valencia Biennial, a four-month visual- and performing-arts roundup that opened a few days before the Venice Biennale and the Basel Art Fair. With an impressive budget of $4.2 million (compared, say, to the Istanbul Biennial's 2003 total of $1.95 million), Spain's third largest municipality (population 741,000) mounted six sizable exhibitions, 37 site-specific installations and two "communication projects" a series of architect-designed publicity stands and a drawing contest for children--all under the theme of the "Ideal City." Meanwhile the "City of Performing Arts," a companion program presided over by Greek actress Irene Papas, offered five drama productions, including one directed by Peter Brooks. Overall attendance exceeded the previous biennial's total of 240,000.

Biennial director Luigi Settembrini, best known for his previous oversight (with Guggenheim curator Germano Celant and Interview magazine editor Ingrid Sischy) of the 1996 art-and-fashion biennial in Florence, entrusted Ideal City curatorial responsibilities to several specialists from a wide range of fields. The result was a collection of exhibitions that varied greatly in artistic sophistication, intellectual rigor and audience appeal.

Most solicitous of public approval, nearly to the point of pandering, was a show of 100 black-and-white portrait photos by Sebastiao Salgado at the Museo Valenciano de la Illustracion y Modernidad. Culled from some 10,000 images captured during a one-month sojourn in the port city, these selections have many formal characteristics in common with the classic work of August Sander: subjects looking straight into the lens, their occupation and social status intimated by dress, setting and work-related objects, their personal character suggested (we can only guess how accurately) by physiogonomy and demeanor. There the comparison ends, however, since everything that is subtle and emotionally nuanced in Sander for example, the frequent interplay between sharp-focus foreground and (spatial and psychological) depth-inducing background blur--becomes blatant and didactic in Salgado. Yet there can be little doubt that his publicity-shot handling of priests, beggars, musicians, businessmen, market-stall vendors, bullfighters and others in "The Face: Mirror of Society" gratified the Biennial's political organizers as well as those local viewers willing to play the instant-recognition game.

Also made for easy viewing was "A&M: Department of Proper Behavior" at the Convento del Carmen. Curated by architect William Alsop and artist Bruce McLean, both from Britain, this exhibition brought together over 50 artists, artisans, design groups and writers in a celebration of shopping as--according to the organizers--it ought to be. A devotee of Cedric Price and Archigram, Alsop believes, as enunciated in his catalogue essay, that "standardization is a dirty word" and commercial venues made on his festive model should be places to furnish dreams." This conviction translated primarily into merchandise (tables, sofas, chairs, lamps, appliances and gadgets, all for sale) tricked up as "art" and distributed in and around various entertainment areas, including several tents showing artist videos, a bar, a hair-cutting station and a fun-house-style moving floor that challenged the viewer's balance. Thus "A&M" ended up duplicating the very strip-mall mentality it purported to disdain. Meanwhile, no mention was made of the convent's original spiritual alternative.

In an isolated political gesture, the husband-and-wife team known as Praxis (New York-based Brainard Carey and Madrid native Delia Bajo)--whose work involving live performance, video and painting has been shown in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and at MOMA--returned Alsop's letter of invitation as a protest against their respective governments' pursuit of the war in Iraq.

Engaging, even entertaining, but much more substantive than the above two shows, "The Museum of the Imperfect Past" by British filmmaker Mike Figgis (best known for Leaving Las Vegas, 1995) consisted of various anecdotal installations set in the creepy interior spaces of the derelict Palacios de la Calle Exarchs. Entered from a vacant lot, these once-refined chambers (soon to be converted into a luxury hotel) feature such elegant touches as ornate the work, chandeliers, casement windows, monumental staircases and mural-bedecked walls, offset by peeling wallpaper and piles of rehab debris in low-level light.

"Museum" visitors, wandering through a veritable labyrinth over several stories, encountered various unsettling scenes. On the cavernous ground floor, a road accident was evoked by a female dummy sprawled in front of a tiny red cat" with a male dummy at the wheel. Both were splotched with "blood," and--to an accompanying soundtrack of highly dramatic music--both occasionally moved a mechanical limb. In The War Roam, an a higher floor, two mannequins sat on a chair in front of a TV (actually a video monitor playing combat footage) in the center of a floor strewn with crumpled beer cans. Airplane models dangled from the ceiling. With his hand under the skirt of the girl doll perched on his lap, the boy doll occasionally turned his head in the direction of viewers at the room's roped-off doorway.