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Afterimage, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Maeve Connolly

These distinctions are highlighted by Gregory Sholette in a critique of what he terms a "revisionist" history of site-specific art, developed by Miwon Kwon among others. In "News from Nowhere: Activist Art and After, Report from New York City" (Third Text 45, Winter 1999: 45-56) Sholette examines the political contexts that shaped the emergence of site-based art in the 1970s. He notes that the designation of this work as mere institutional critique, in which site is transformed into "content", involves a denial of the various ways history may function to structure the physical and conceptual specificity of public space. Kwon has argued, however, that 1970s site-specific art and contemporary site-oriented practices are equally "symptomatic of the dynamics of deterritorialization" (One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity, MIT Press, 2004: 157). She proposes that both respond to a perceived flattening of differences between places, by exploiting or re-imagining the uniqueness of places through recourse to "authenticity of meaning, memory, history and identity".

As a curatorial project deeply invested in the specificity of particular urban sites, Manifesta 5 seems to fall within the terms of Kwon's critique. Yet although the curators are certainly sensitive to the "uniqueness" of place, the choice of location seems to suggest an awareness of the complexities of global deterritorialization. The Basque country is also a site in which the historical forces shaping the physical and conceptual specificity of place are particularly difficult to ignore. On the eve of the 2004 general election, just months before the exhibition opened, a number of bombs were detonated in Madrid's Atocha railway station. The Basque separatist group ETA was initially held to be responsible, prompting public protest as well as of condemnation from the right wing government. But when the bombings were revealed as the work of Islamist terrorists, the political landscape altered dramatically. A newly installed socialist government withdrew their cooperation in the war against Iraq, and sought to rebuild a damaged political relationship with the Basque regional authority. These events serve to underscore the extent to which even ostensibly local or regional struggles over territory are shaped by, and in turn shape, the global balance of power.

One further issue concerning the logic of deterritorialization, and its opposite, must be addressed before turning to the exhibition itself. Manifesta 5 takes place in the shadow of Bilbao, a city that has become one of the most prominent symbols of art world globalization and urban reinvention. A lavish exhibition detailing the city's transformation from industrial shell to tourist site is currently touring several European capitals. In my own home-town of Dublin the show was located in the Guinness Storehouse, a tourist attraction in the heartland of a industrial zone that has been designated for redevelopment. The Gehry-designed Guggenheim, built on the bank of the River Nervion in 1997, is both the flagship of the new Bilbao and an illustration of the often unequal dynamics of local-global exchange. The Gehry building may have put Bilbao on the international art world map but the Guggenheim Foundation was one of the major beneficiaries of this transaction. Even before it opened, critics of the project (such as the Basque architectural theorist Joseba Zulaika) were quick to realize that it would be little more than a franchise, subsidized by the tax contributions of Basque citizens. Guggenheim Bilbao is primarily a prominent showcase for an international brand name, collection and curatorial team, and its blockbuster exhibitions are devised primarily to appeal to tourists. Manifesta 5 takes place at a critical distance from the city and the kind of local-global partnership it has come to represent, even though it undoubtedly benefits from passing international traffic arriving via Bilbao Airport (another architectural showpiece). The siting of the exhibition in the disparate urban spaces of Donosti and in Pasaia provides a means of exploring the relationship between touristic and industrial urban identities, and an opportunity for reflection on the dynamics of gentrification. Donosti is a prosperous and elegant seaside town, favored by Spanish and French tourists, and it has escaped much of the aggressive development that has blighted the resorts of the Costa del Sol. The stereotypical resident is wealthy and retired and property values are very high, apparently surpassed only by Barcelona and Madrid.