Gentrify Everything: New Forms of Critical Artistic Agency

This article aims to contextualize and critically evaluate a curatorial project titled BORG, a biennial event for contemporary art in the city of Antwerp, Belgium. The second edition took place in September 2016 and was themed around the topic of gentrification. Together with a brief account of the sociopolitical context and the chosen curatorial approach, we will look at how biennials operate on both a local and global level, provoking the question of the public: who is it for? This will in turn lead to a question of agency: what is to be done? Which critical strategies can be developed vis-à-vis neoliberal gentrification processes and how do artists enter the picture? From thereon, we will develop a more critical understanding of cynicism and over-identification, and illustrate how these mechanisms are at work in Renzo Martens’ project The Institute of Human Activities as ‘reversed gentrification’. Finally, we will have a look at some of the projects that were part of BORG 2016.