How Does The Shanghai Biennale As A Global Contemporary...

Before listing the limitations of the original research design, I will briefly summarise the research question and methodologies. Original research and limitations With a throughout case study of the 11th Shanghai Biennale and the concurrent local project 51 Personae, the main research question is: to what extent does the Shanghai Biennale, as a global contemporary art institution, articulate the sense of place for individuals through its local projects and public programming? To further look at the global-local interconnection, I put the second research question here: What evidence is there of ‘dialogue and collaboration’ between global and local artistic fields in this context, and how does it contribute to the making of local†¦show more content†¦The Audience Agency (2011) suggests that the success of an event depends on how it defines its aims and objectives, and the audience perception is an important strand of evidence for the assessing. As the Shanghai Biennale is always exploring the ‘ultimate connection between urban life, contemporary art and the public’ (Shanghai Biennale, 2016), it should be evalua ted by measuring whether it manages to connect and engage the public. Thus, it can be argued that the current research only interprets the biennale from the perspective of those who are producing or curating artistic works, rather than the visitor or the ‘audience’ of the biennale. Therefore, an alternative design calls for the participation of the visitors and attempts to see their behaviour during the events and how do they interact with, engage in, and interpret the Shanghai Biennale. Alternative research design To cope with the limitations of the original design from the two aspects, the alternative approaches I take for the research are participant observation (or ethnography) and self-administrated questionnaires among visitors. Although the new research will still use mixed-methods, it is organised according to the ‘convergent parallel design’. This design is characterised by simultaneously collecting qualitative and quantitative data with equal priority, and merging the outcomes of both approaches to illustrate a more complete picture