The starting point of research supports the thesis that the communications of art include reflection on the entire spectrum of social reality, including the current political context. Different political regimes acquire various communication manifestation within art subsystem, generating their own observations and configuration of meanings. A remarkable example of art communication and political doctrine affinity is Biennale of Contemporary Art Manifesta. Analysis of its communicative practices suggests consensus about the reality of democratic discourse and communication of contemporary art.

Manifesta being originally a fundamentally new European art event in the subsystem of art gradually routinized and became a conservative communication of contemporary art on the political and socio-economic realities of present-day global world. Like all other communications in the art subsystem, it is also provocative and paradoxical: declaring itself distant from politics, it promotes its communication on the politics, and being a non-profit organization accumulates substantial financial resources, targeting on youth with the focus on well known artists etc.

Over the 20-year existence Manifesta acquired certain experience to fit into given circumstances. It never demonstrated inclination towards promoting the ideas and manifestos of local dissidents. Its initial informational message, which has already become a gold standard for curators, is promotion of universal values of European democracy in a way they are interpreted in the current EU policy.

Analysis of Manifesta shows that the emphasis on provocation is a particularly new thing in the communications of contemporary art. It is provocative in the choice of media and forms that make possible presentation of garbage as works of art, or a dissected, mutilated body as apolitical action. Conservative democratic discourse is very close to actual art communication, and ideological variety NGO’s dealing with human rights, social and gender issues is very close to contemporary art environment.