Biennial rising---Prospect.1 New Orleans The spectacle of disaster / The disaster of spectacle and the aesthetics of globalization

This dissertation examines the current, seemingly endless proliferation of global art biennials. While discourses on biennials tend to generalize "biennialization" or "biennial culture," this project explores two major temporary exhibitions in the city of New Orleans: The World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, 1884-1885 and Prospect.1 New Orleans: An International Contemporary Art Biennial (November 2008-January 2009). Of particular concern is the relationship between each exhibit and the structural as well as ideological production/re-invention of New Orleans. Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina's landfall on August 29, 2005 and the disaster that ensued, both the largescale human as well as social and economic devastation, what are the ethics of viewing promulgated by Prospect.1? Is it merely another form of disaster tourism? How is Prospect.1 complicit in the ritualized transmutation of "other" bodies into commoditized---"brandable"---symbolic artistic practices or mere "performances of alterity" for the global art market?;Rather than establishing a teleological history of festival events in New Orleans, corralling all evidence to fit within the logic of a singular point of view, this dissertation situates these two exhibits as parallel events, whose specificities and continuities help to foreground their similarities as much as their differences. While the cityscape is primarily a site of emplacement and displacement, this dissertation is an attempt to embrace the slippages, like the subtropical ooze, which forms the solid foundations of New Orleans.