by Dan Cameron

Here's a spot quiz. What do the cities Sao Paulo, Havana, Kassel, Munster, Venice, Santa Fe, Lyons, Kwangju, Istanbul, and Johannesburg mean to you? Either the preceding list reads as a disconnected set of far-flung travel destinations, or else you're double-checking to make sure you packed the melatonin. If it's the latter, you're probably among those who recognize the extent to which those in the art world racked up Frequent Flyer miles over the last twelve months.
If anything, 1997 seemed to be the year of the never-ending Biennial, with older, more established international shows joining upstart exhibitions in less-known locales. Artists and curators in particular became nomads, trailing each other around the globe, comparing notes on what and whom they saw and on how one artist's work looked up against another's. As a curator constantly fighting jet lag, I have a particular interest in how this emerging globalist mentality has come to inform what is experienced in one's proverbial backyard, and how the two ends of this spectrum might most fruitfully inform each other. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that coming to terms with what Rem Koolhaas has termed the "glocal" is the most pressing issue for curators today, at least to the extent that success at integrating one's local realities with those of the world at large is fast becoming the only sure way to maintain a community's standing in the race for global relevance.