제 11회 리용 비엔날레의 카탈로그는 비엔날레의 독립적인 작품 가운데 하나이다. 이 책은 예술 작품을 현시한다. 그 가운데 어떤 것은 시각적이며 어떤 것은 청각적이다. 시각과 청각 작품의 몽타쥬가 모든 몽타쥬들처럼, 이미지와 텍스트 그리고 다중적인 독서로 이뤄진다. 피에르 비스무스, 존 케이지, 로버트 필로우, 요나 프리드먼, 크리스토퍼 캘러 등이 썼다.

The catalogue to the 11 th Lyon Biennale, curated by the Argentinean curator Victoria Noorthoorn is conceived as one of the works of the Biennale itself. This book, such as it is, presents works of art: some are mainly visual, others verbal. The montage of visual and verbal works engenders, like all montages, images, texts, and multiple readings. With texts, works and contributions by Pierre Bismuth, John Cage, Robert Filliou, Yona Friedman, Christoph Keller, Guillaume Leblon and many others.

The creation of the 11th Biennale de Lyon stems from the following sets of convictions:

1. Imagination is the primary medium of knowledge.
2. Imagination allows for the rational and the irrational to coexist productively.
3. Imagination is the primary force for emancipation.
4. A Terrible Beauty Is Born, a verse from the poem Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats that gives the title to this Biennale, brings together two apparent opposites. We are interested in this structure of productive contradiction.
5. This Biennale intends to address a state of confusion in the arts today, where art is conceived primarily as a commodity in the economic market.
6. This exhibition does not chronicle; it distinguishes between art and journalism.
7. It also distinguishes between art and communication. We resist the notion of the need to explain dense materials. If texts are to appear in the Biennale, or the catalogue, they will be artworks in themselves, not external explanatory texts.
8. With W.J.T. Mitchell, we ask what the images and works in this exhibition want and do. We intend to signal the power of the image, one that may drastically alter an established order.
9. We are not interested in the representation of the political, nor do we intend to enact the political. Such desires would be redundant.
10. The 11th Biennale de Lyon is being conceived from Buenos Aires, in South America, for and with Lyon. The artists in the exhibition have been selected as individuals and not as representatives of their countries of origin or regions.
11. The 11th Biennale de Lyon has the ambition to be alive. If it could be considered an animal or a beast, it would choose to be so. If it can be at war with itself, it will attempt to do so.

The 11th Biennale de Lyon will include around 70 artists from around the globe, primarily from Europe, Africa and Latin America.

The Biennale’s catalogue is conceived as an editorial, autonomous work—rather than as a representation of the Biennale per se.