A few months ago, I saw an open call for artists and curators to join the 2025 edition of The Wrong Biennale which is described as “an ever expansive, decentralized art event that unites artists, curators, institutions, and the public through a global exhibition of exhibitions.” I love this! Having written The Democratisation of Form* (2019) and Image in the Age of Entanglement (2020) for the undergraduate degree I completed before doing my MA, both of which address the structural upset, dangers and hopes associated with our increasingly liquified paradigm, The Wrong’s ethos is right up my street. The focus this year is AI, so even more aligned with my research, and the call stresses an “Embrace [of] timeless creativity, joy, and artistic innovation, highlighting wonder and pushing on the positive aspects of humanity.” Applicants are encouraged to “Avoid themes centered on hate, conflict, controversy, current news, or violence.” All of these aims align very much with my own research. Not because I have my head in the sand; my work is intensely political. I just think the dominant trend in recent years, which The Wrong’s open call seems to be a reaction against, has proven to be immensely counterproductive. Hito Steyerl (2023, Oltermann) exemplifies this position perfectly. When asked whether she sees “art as a way to point a finger at social injustices, to educate people?” her reply is a resounding “No”. She explains and I agree wholeheartedly, “It would be pointless if art worked like that. If you want to make a difference with art, which is a motive I perceive as questionable [me too and my italics], then the single most stupid approach would be to tell people off. It would be a surefire way not to get through to people. And it would be the opposite of thinking. [….] I don’t like being lectured – and I expect my viewers don’t either.” This anti-lecturing stance is emphasised in a review I read just this morning about the second series of Such Brave Girls (Samadder, 2025) – which, incidentally, I cannot wait to watch, as the first was excellent. Samadder writes, “…the show has no message other than that life is absurd, pain inevitable and people ridiculous. That makes it more clear-sighted and honest than any show telling us what to think.” [Again my italics. I am in the middle of writing a review for something which may or may not see the light of day, in which I plead with galleries to stop doing this – lecturing. Galleries increasingly frame exhibitions as educational interventions.] The drive to tell everyone what to think and how is analysed in Anna Kornbluh’s Immediacy (2024) which I have mentioned several times on this blog after reading it a couple of months ago. In Kornbluh’s view, we are all suspended by and within our rolling, ever-present media, being spoonfed bite-sized chunks of information that prevent us from thinking at all. These commodified chunks of ‘education’ can seem directly related to how children are taught in mainstream schools nowadays – with a view to answering narrow questions within a narrow curriculum with very specific answers only. Meaning that all can be pulverised into data along with the children themselves for the sake of league tables. Immediacy arises from and reinforces an entanglement consisting of economic drives along with the media we all consume, and a long-term ‘anti-theory’ and anti-thinking that threatens to prevent us from imagining a less destructive paradigm. She writes, “Immediacy and the non-thinking it perpetuates impedes the public, conceptual, and reasoned mediations that are essential to limiting the devastations of deinstitutionalized society, privatization, and ecocide, and crucial for imagining different frames of value, meaning, representation, and collectivity.” Crucially, Kornbluh’s call for ‘conceptual and reasoned mediations’ doesn’t mean more didactic interventions or theoretical lectures – rather, she’s advocating for the kind of contemplative engagement that allows genuine thinking to emerge, precisely what art that tells people off prevents. Perhaps art that celebrates creativity rather than chastises people is the very approach The Wrong’s guidance encourages.
Since the aims and concerns discussed above are at the core of my work, illustrated in my undergraduate essays linked at the beginning, I applied to curate a pavilion and was very pleased to be given the go-ahead by David Quiles Guillo, who runs The Wrong. Since I am not a curator but I am a proponent of working with others, I asked Kim Shaw to get involved and was delighted when she said yes, as she has years of experience and a fantastic network to draw from too, which is an added bonus. Several artists who explore similar themes had suggested working on something together, so I approached them as well, and I am happy to say we are now a group of six.
However, we are looking for five more artists to join us and have released an open call of our own.
Please visit The Doughnut (W)Hole to find out how to apply. The open call is free and runs until the 15th of August. The online exhibition will go live from Nov ’25 to March ’26. The Doughnut(W)Hole, our pavilion, is broadly themed around AI, loss and absence – with a healthy dash of hope. You will be joining Maria Ahmed, Sarah Deane, David Koh, Evangelia Danadaki and me, along with Kim as lead curator.
Flora Dunster (Central St Martins), Sam Mercer (The Photographers’ Gallery) and Christiane Monarchi (Hapax Magazine) will be joining Kim to help with the selection process, which will be driven by curation for our pavilion in this relevant, sometimes troubling, sometimes exciting arena that The Wrong has developed.
Read about The Wrong in this New York Times article called What’s Right About The Wrong Biennale? Quite a lot, according to the journalist! (Paywalled, but there are ways to access a limited number of free articles.)
Visit some of the related research and early interventions from the artists already involved via the following links: Maria, Sarah, David and me.
*Please take a look at Adam Curtis’ (BBC, 2025) Shifty, the final episode of which is titled The Democracy of Everything. In my materialist view, everything is form and form is everything. If I were to update the essay, this series would likely be referenced.
Refs:
Field, SJ (2020) ‘Image in the age of entanglement’, SJField – OCA Level Three Study Blog, 13 August. Available at: https://sjflevel3.photo.blog/2020/08/13/cs-a5-final-edit-of-essay-image-in-the-age-of-entanglement/ (Accessed: 12 December 2023).
Field, SJ (2020) ‘Image in the age of entanglement’, SJField – OCA Level Three Study Blog, 13 August. Available at: https://sjflevel3.photo.blog/2020/08/13/cs-a5-final-edit-of-essay-image-in-the-age-of-entanglement/ (Accessed: 12 December 2023).
Hampton, C. (2018) ‘What’s Right About The Wrong Biennale?’, The New York Times, 23 January. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/arts/design/the-wrong-biennale.html (Accessed: 30 June 2025).
Kornbluh, A. (2023) Immediacy, or The style of too late capitalism. London New York: Verso.
Oltermann, P. and @philipoltermann (2023) ‘Post-internet artist Hito Steyerl on refusing honours, buying her work back – and fighting big tech’, The Guardian, 13 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/jun/13/post-internet-artist-hito-steyerl-refusing-honours-big-tech (Accessed: 10 July 2023).
Samadder, R. (2025) ‘Such Brave Girls: TV so hilariously savage it will make you yowl with pleasure’, The Guardian, 28 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jun/28/such-brave-girls-tv-so-hilariously-savage-it-will-make-you-yowl-with-pleasure (Accessed: 30 June 2025).
Shifty – Series 1: 5. Part Five – The Democratisation of Everything [TV series] (2025). BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002d2k5/shifty-series-1-5-part-five-the-democratisation-of-everything (Accessed: 30 June 2025).
Such Brave Girls [TV series] (2025). BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0gqd7m8/such-brave-girls (Accessed: 30 June 2025).