Featured in Liverpool Biennial 2006: Shilpa Gupta, Untitled C-Prints, 2006. Courtesy the artist

The Liverpool Biennial 2008 will be an exploration of the power of the artistic imagination, promise the organisers, with the theme of ‘making things up’ at its heart.

The fifth international art biennial in the city is going under the title MADE UP, celebrating all manner of invention – utopias and dystopias, narrative fiction and fantasy, myth and lies, prophesies and spectacle. The festival will be about imagination as the dynamo behind art, and its capacity to transport us, suspend disbelief and produce alternative realities.

The emphasis will continue to be on commissioning new work, and a great roster of artists is already in conversation with the Biennial producers about ideas for this year’s festival, running from September 20 to November 30 2008.

Among them are…

Ai Weiwei (China), Atelier Bow Wow (Japan), Guy Ben-Ner (Israel), Manfredi Beninati (Italy), David Blandy (UK), U-Ram Choe (Korea), Adam Cvijanovic (USA), Nancy Davenport (Canada), Diller Scofidio + Renfro (USA), Leandro Erlich (Argentina), Rodney Graham (Canada), Tue Greenfort (Denmark), Hubbard & Birchler (Ireland/Switzerland), Jesper Just (Denmark), Otto Karvonen (Finland), Yayoi Kusama (Japan), Ulf Langheinrich (Germany), Gabriel Lester (Netherlands), Annette Messager (France), Tracey Moffatt (Australia), Khalil Rabah (Palestine), Royal Art Lodge (Canada), Sarah Sze (USA), Tomas Saraceno (Argentina), Richard Woods (UK).

An art installation at Greenland Street during Liverpool Biennial 2006. © Richard Moss / 24 Hour Museum

The festival will run over multiple sites as usual, including The Walker (National Museums Liverpool), Open Eye Gallery, Bluecoat Centre, FACT (the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) and A Foundation at Greenland Street.

Art on show at FACT will focus on the power of the mind to make up meaning when faced with complete abstraction and sensory deprivation, while The Bluecoat Centre will look at imagined futures, both individual and collective. Tate Liverpool and Open Eye Gallery will consider the ambiguous territory between the real and the unreal.

More than half of the 30-40 commissions will be situated in the public realm, keeping it a defining feature of the Biennial. A series of major new public art projects commissioned by Liverpool Biennial in partnership with the Culture Company as part of Liverpool’s Capital of Culture Programme will be on show in the city and its neighbourhoods at the same time as MADE UP.

The curatorial team for MADE UP is Lewis Biggs and Sorcha Carey (Liverpool Biennial), Bryan Biggs and Sara-Jayne Parsons (Bluecoat), Mike Stubbs and Karen Allen (FACT), Patrick Henry (Open Eye) and Laurence Sillars (Tate Liverpool).