“What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know. Yet I say with confidence that I know that if nothing passed away, there would be no past time; and if nothing were still coming, there would be no future time; and if there were nothing at all, there would be no present time.” Substitute “time” with “biennial” in these lines from Saint Augustine’s Confessions (397–400 CE), and you may find yourself at the inquisitive heart of the Oslo Biennial (OB)—a new infrastructure for art in public space that operates programmatically as a work in progress whose duration and outlines cannot be easily assessed. This first edition—which, despite being called a “biennial,” will run until 2024—opened on the last weekend of May. It features 16 works, performances, and temporary projects spread around the city and the central venue in Myntgata 2, a municipally owned nineteenth-century building that hosts a visitor center, offices, film and radio production facilities, and over 60 artists’ studios. Ten new commissions will be unveiled next October, while others will be added (or reactivated in new …