11th International Istanbul Biennial and Berthold Brecht

"The 11th International İstanbul Biennial takes its title from the song 'Denn wovon lebt der Mensch?', translated into English as 'What Keeps Mankind Alive?'. The song closes the second act of the play The Threepenny Opera, written in 1928 by Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill. Based on Brecht's assertion that 'a criminal is a bourgeois and a bourgeois is a criminal,' the play set out to revolutionise theatre as both an artistic form and a tool for social and political change. 'What Keeps Mankind Alive' will serve as a script for the exhibition––even a quick look at the lyrics discovers many possible themes, such as the distribution of wealth and poverty, food and hunger, political manipulations, gender oppression, social norms, double morality, religious hypocrisy, personal responsibility and consent to oppression, issues certainly 'relevant', almost predictable.

"It certainly seems that, seen from the dominant contemporary perspective(s), Brecht's Marxism and his belief in utopian potential and open political engagement of art all look a bit dated, historically irrelevant, in dissonance with this time of the crumbling of institutional Left and the rise of neoliberal hegemony. But the real question is, isn't this in fact symptomatic? Isn't the way in which Brecht is now 'forgotten' and 'unfashionable'—after his immense popularity in the 1960s and 70s and a smooth transformation into 'a classic'—precisely the indicator that something has gone wrong with contemporary society, and with the role of art within it?"

No. It isn't an indicator of anything except that Brecht and the Ottoman Empire are gone with the wind.