The Ctrl+P Journal/Biennale of Contemporary Art is an institutional critique of the hegemonic biennale. A hypermedia exhibition embodied in several PDFs — “perhaps the lowest and most throwaway file form, a poor format”* —  sited in an e-journal and unthemed, Ctrl+P J/B is an exploration of how an online PDF art journal can be made into a critical site for biennale-making. It is also a proposal for a possible sustainable future-pandemics biennale model. Work on Ctrl+P J/B started in 2021, the second year of Covid.

A biennale with zero-financial capitalization, it relies completely on the social and cultural capital of all involved. Operating within the gift economy of friendships, it has no ties to national or to international funding agencies or corporations. It is not oriented to feed the global art market. Its ecological footprint is a fraction of that of the hegemonic biennale. It operates outside the structures of economic power. Therefore, it is a biennale of resistance in its non-alignment with dominant values of neoliberalism. 

The first Ctrl+P Journal/Biennale of Contemporary Art consists of seven PDF exhibitions developed by eight curators and organizers, and one proposal for a “PDF pavilion” by two critical theorists. Eighty participants are exhibiting in this biennale. The members of the curatorium of Ctrl+P J/B1 are Founding Artistic Director Judy Freya Sibayan, Curators Edson Cabalfin, James Clar, Michael Eddy, Linde B. Lehtinen, Yumi Janairo Roth, and Dominic Zinampan. Exhibition Organizers are Lena Eriksson and Varsha Nair. Jonathan Beller and Neferti X. Tadiar are the Cultural Theorists who proposed a PDF pavilion. 

*Beller, Jonathan and Neferti X. Tadiar, “Sociality at the End of Art.” Ctrl+P Journal/Biennale of Contemporary Art, 2024.
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Click on the image to view the whole biennale.