Varieties of Cosmopolitanism in Art Festivals

Cosmopolitanism, internationalism, multiculturalism, transnationalism: these terms have all – to some extent – been presented as varieties of a contemporary preoccupation with the limits of identity, and the possibilities that new imaginaries present for a contemporary world characterized by inequality. The art worlds examined here are as embroiled in these preoccupations and possibilities as other aspects of society; their difference is that they do not so much debate and develop them as display and perform them. We are concerned with how cosmopolitanism – as distinct from the other terms above (see Delanty 2009) – is part of, and results from, these displays (Papastergiadis 2007). As this chapter will show, art festivals demonstrate that what has sometimes been identified and denigrated as aesthetic cosmopolitanism (Tomlinson 1999; Sassatelli 2012) may more usefully be repositioned within the more encompassing cosmopolitanism and brought to bear on how new types of communities can be created beyond the constraints of localities.