http://desertointernet.com/Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte, Sounds Like Venice
July 9, 2009 • 9:26 am 0
DesertoInternet.com (Miltos Manetas and Rafael Rozendaal 2009)
July 3, 2009 • 4:35 pm 0
Life is like a film. But, there will be no film (Steppes of Dreamers – Ukrainian Pavilion)
PinchukArtCentre © 2009. Photos by Sergei Illin
Steppes of Dreamers
Life is like a film. The many things that happen and the many forms that life takes on – are of an ephemeral nature. They are all fleeting. Things, events, situations, thoughts, emotions, desires, ambitions, fears, drama…they all come, pretend to be all-important, and before youknow it they are gone, dissolved into the nothingness out of which they came. Were they ever real? Were they ever more than a dream?
This is the basis for the collaborative effort between Illya Chichkan and Mihara Yasuhiro. Working together in the uncharted boundary where art and fashion meet, they will examine the past, present and future of the Eurasian landscape through various cinema metaphors – inspired by the great Ukrainian film director, Kira Muratova. Their four large-scale art installations, inside and outside of the Palazzo Papadopoli is an ambitious project for a Biennale. Both Illya Chichkan and Mihara Yasuhiro will demonstrate a single, unique vision about identity, travel and consciousness.
The focus of the installations at the Palazzo Papadopoli and the large billboard at Academic Bridge are based on a fictional story created by the artists and influenced by the surreal cinema work of Kira Muratova. In their story, Nicolo Papadopoli – the mid-19th Century owner of the palazzo – travels to Ukraine, Mongolia and China, finally reaching the Sea of Japan, retracing Marco Polo’s journey. The exhibition is in essence a film set, containing all of the components of a film – script, props, lights and music. But, there will be no film.
At first glance, Chichkan’s (Ukrainian) and Yasuhiro’s (Japanese) installations appear to be well-packaged trans-cultural events. But their rhetoric has an underhanded virtuosity, capable of producing unexpected effects with a bit of black humour tossed in discreetly. As the film director, Kira Muratova once remarked, the purpose of cinema is to move us. So too, the work of Chichkan and Yasuhiro consistently realizes cinema’s highest aim: they create artworks whose extraordinary power lies not only in how deeply they make us feel, but also in how they let us see the complexity of our consciousness in meaningful environments, which help us to live in dreams.
Illya Chichkan at one point in his life was a fashion designer and then later became an artist. Mihara Yasuhiro started out as an artist and then became a fashion designer. Their backgrounds and current perspectives raise a number of questions. Who is an artist and who is a fashion designer? What is the role of the curator? Does a person need a title or a role? When are you just yourself?
Using various techniques, Illya Chichkan and Mihara Yasuhiro put the spectator in the position of realizing the transitory nature of perception by emphasizing the process of consciousness. We enter these physical spaces. We recognize the elements around us. We take for granted certain situations. To awaken within the dream is our purpose now. When we are awake within the dream, life dramas come to an end and a more wondrous dream arises.(Peter Doroshenko)
Artists:
Illya Chichkan (1967, Kyiv); Mihara Yasuhiro (1972, Nagasaki, Japan). Kinichi Ogata (1970, Sendai, Japan)
Original music created for the exhibition by Fuyuki Yamakawa (Tokyo, Japan)
Location:
Ukrainian Pavilion
Palazzo Papadopoli
San Polo, 1364
30125 Venice, Italy
Organising Institutions:
PinchukArtCentre
Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine
Partners: International Brand: Nemiroff – Partner of the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 53d Venice Biennale
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , Steppes of Dreamers, Ukrainian Pavilion
June 30, 2009 • 5:35 pm 0
Heute morgen starb Pina Bausch
Heute morgen starb Pina Bausch, die Tänzerin und Choreographin des Wuppertaler Tanztheaters. Ein unerwarteter schneller Tod ergriff sie fünf Tage nach einer Krebsdiagnose. Noch am vorletzten Sonntag stand sie mit ihrer Company im Wuppertaler Opernhaus auf der Bühne.
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte
June 26, 2009 • 5:55 pm 0
Lago Morto @ Rock – Paper – Scissors – Kunsthaus – Graz
Tour vittoriese dei “Lago Morto”, band punk hardcore composta dall’artista Nico Vascellari, da Giovanni Donadini, creatore del laboratorio “Canedicoda”, Riccardo Mazza e Christian Zandonella.
Per 15 giorni il gruppo, del quale è in uscita l’lp + dvd per “Von Archives”, etichetta di Nico Vascellari e Carlos Casas (filmaker di Barcellona), si è esibito solo ed esclusivamente a Vittorio Veneto, nei posti più insoliti della città, costantemente videoripreso: alla pizzeria a metro il “Crostino”, alla lavanderia a gettoni in via Oberdan e al negozio dell’usato “Chi cerca trova”.
“Questo è uno sforzo collettivo” ha più volte ripetuto Nico Vascellari durante i concerti. “Lago Morto”, infatti, non è solo un gruppo ma è un progetto artistico, che si configura come occasione di aggregazione, come momento sociale, al quale, di volta in volta, ha contribuito il pubblico presente. “Lago Morto nasce per rimanere a Vittorio Veneto – spiega il Nico Vascellari - Abbiamo accettato di suonare a Graz solamente a patto che una parte di Vittorio Veneto potesse venire con noi. La Kunsthaus pagherà due corriere che trasporteranno circa 120 persone da Vittorio Veneto per assistere al concerto”.
Il progetto è stato presentato alla Kunsthaus di Graz sotto forma di installazione video, nell’ambito della mostra “Rock – Paper – Scissors. Pop Music as Subject of Visual Art”, a cura di Diedrich Diederichsen
via: oggitreviso.it
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , 8ttaven, A Flower Kollapsed, Canedicoda, Christian Zandonella, Giovanni Donadini, Lago Morto, Lucertulas, Nico Vascellari, Riccardo Mazza, With Love
June 24, 2009 • 2:55 pm 0
Comoros Islands Pavilion
The Djahazi boat has been for centuries the only means of transportation for Comorians, a way to communicate with the nearby countries and to create new commercial relations.
In 2006, following the modernization of the port, the use of the Djahazi was prohibited, thus interrupting a longstanding tradition of Comorian dockers on the islands and placing the Comoros in a new chapter of global economy.
In 2008 Paolo W Tamburella traveled to Comoros to investigate what happened to the dockers and to their boats. He discovered that the Djahazis had been abandoned in the port and were sinking in the water. In a month long effort the artist and the dockers focused on the restoration process of one Djahazi with the goal to ship it and present it in Venice. The Djahazi was split in half and placed in a 40ft container that is currently traveling on a cargo boat to Europe.
Two weeks before the opening of the Biennale the container, the artist and the dockers will arrive in Venice. The Djahazi will be reassembled, loaded with a shipping container as it was up to 2006, to finally dock in the water area in front of the main entrance to the Giardini for all the duration of the Biennale .
In the words of Octavio Zaya in his essay for the Biennale general catalogue:
“Paolo W. Tamburella has fixed and restored one of the twenty eight boats forsaken at the port, with the help of workers from Moroni, but not as an antiquarian and nostalgic affectation. On the contrary, in Venice, this vessel, which will be loaded with a regular shipping container used in most of today’s trade, will stand as a metaphor for an ambivalent globality, bringing together hope and despair [...] emergence and emergency, in a sort of cautionary tale about the new forms of the expendable in a world of uncertainty and transition [...].’”
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte, Comoros Islands Pavilion , Paolo W Tamburella
June 23, 2009 • 1:40 pm 1
Gayané Khachaturian. Painter of Dreams (Armenian Pavilion)
Gayane Khachaturian at her Studio in Tbillisi, 1985
Photo by Zaven Sargsyan
When I was selecting the National Pavilions to follow during the Biennale, I was very sad to hear that Gayané Khachaturian just passed away on 1st May 2009.
Gayane Khachaturian was born into an Armenian family in Tbilisi, capital of the Soviet republic of Georgia. Her mother was a Zog, member of an ethnic group, which legend associates with Jewish tribes, but which in Armenia are regarded as Armenians and are much respected there. In her teens she attended an art school for children, but after a grave illness, which apparently affected her psychologically, she ventured to work on her own – even though she has to be in the proper mood to create, needs to feel the resisting texture of the painter’s medium and works to a musical accompaniment. Hers is an agonizing search for her own manner, for a means of expression, for symbols with which to depict her own characters, the trees, the moon, a horse, or a lion … her Weltanschauung stems from the typically Caucasian scenery, with its mountains, vividly colored fruits and verdant green, and the peculiar Eastern way of life and mores of the Caucasians, with their national and social attitudes and their eroticism: from “World Encyclopedia of Naive Art: a hundred years of naive art”, Oto Bihalji-Merin, Nebojsa-Bato Tomasevic, London – F. Muller, 1984. pp. 293-4
So my first interview in Venice was with Edward Balassanian, Commissioner of the Armenian Pavilion
Here the interview. In her memory.
(Edward Balassanian – on Gayané Khachaturian and Armenian Art – by Ilari Valbonesi)
armeniapavillon_slv.mp3
GAYANÉ KHACHATURIAN
P A I N T E R O F D R E A M S
Commissario/Curatore: Edward Balassanian
Commissario Onorario: Jean Boghossian
Sede: Palazzo Zenobio ex Collegio Armeno Moorat-Raphael, Dorsoduro 2596, Fondamenta del Soccorso
Edward Balassanian:
Of 8 million Armenians around the world 3 million live in the present-day Armenia. Armenian Diaspora is culturally very rich and diverse. Artists such as painter Arshile Gorky (USA), seascape painter Hovhannes Ayvazovski (Russia), cinematographer Sergey Parajanov (Georgia) are among many prominent names of the international art scene that are from Armenian Diaspora. Gayané Khachaturian, albeit less known, rightfully belongs to this esteemed group of artists. She was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, and lives and works there to date.
Gayané Khachaturian’s works are distinctly allegoric. They are inundated with colorful and rich collection of symbols referring to unending parables and metaphors from her personal past and her collective memories of the Armenian community of her native town. On an occasion she has said that many of “the stories” on her canvases are influenced by the tales her grandmother told her in her childhood.
Her colorful canvases are reminiscent of such world masters as Marc Chagall, Arshile Gorky and even Hieronymus Bosch of a much earlier era. Chagall spoke of the lives, trepidations, joys and grief of his people in the “Old Country” in a representational manner. Arshile Gorky expressed the same in the abstract—witness, his “How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life…” Gayané is as story-teller as Chagall. However she is much more personal, delving into deep layers of her own psyche and inner feelings. She is reservedly abstract in the use of colors and forms as Arshile Gorky is, and as intriguing in concept and composition as Hieronymus Bosch. Like Bosch, she often “packs” her canvases with personages turning them into “static” scenes—snapshots—each telling a very personal story, expressing a feeling from deep inside.
Her works are “theatrical”. Each canvas seems like a frozen mis-en-scène of a play—a theater scene. Her portraits resemble personages, dressed up and made up, ready to step on the stage. This attribute seems to be under distinct influence of her friend and contemporary, cinematographer and accomplished painter Sergey Parajanov.
Gayané Khachaturian has been selected to represent Armenia because she is one of the important links on the “chain” stretching from the depths of history—Armenian illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages—to the present day. Her colors, composition concepts and the “story-telling” are all in concert with the roots and branches of the same tree. While Armenian illuminated manuscripts depict the stories of the Gospel, Gayané tells stories of mostly personal and delicate emotions, and often communal issues and concerns.
It is noteworthy that selection of Gayané Khachaturian has independently coincided with the 53rd Venice Biennale Director and Curator Daniel Birnbaum’s intent to “explore strings of inspiration that involve several generations and to display the roots as well as the branches that grow into a future not yet defined”.
There is a wealth of Armenian artists—Arshile Gorky, Yervand Kotchar, Martiros Sarian, Minas Avetissian and others—who tie Armenia to its past and form the source and the basis whence contemporary Armenian art feeds and on which it lays foundation.
Gayané Khachaturian is one of the few artists still living, who belongs to and represents this invaluable “procession” of treasures.
Catalogue on PDF: http://www.accea.info/images/pdf/09_05N2_Gayane_Catalog_on_A4.pdf
MESSAGE OF CONDOLENCE OF ARMENIA’S PRESIDENT SERZH SARGSIAN ON PASSING OF RENOWNED PAINTER GAYANÉ KHACHATURIAN
Armenian fine arts suffered a great loss.
Gayané Khachaturian, renowned painter and master of fantastic colors and allegoric characters passed away.
After Parajanov she became the exemplary symbol of the Tbilisi Armenian community,whose name has long surpassed national and ethnic boundaries.
Her art, through her luminous personages has indeed led us to bright horizons of optimism.
Alas, her major solo exhibition at this year’s International Art Biennale of Venice will take place without Gayané Khachaturian. I present my deepest condolences to her relatives and enthusiasts of art. Let us console in the fact that the artist is mortal, but art created by her is eternal.
May 2, 2009
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte, Armenian Pavilion, Sounds Like Venice , Armenia Pavilion, Edward Balassanian, Gayané Khachaturian, Ilari Valbonesi
June 22, 2009 • 5:24 pm 0
MIHA ŠTRUKELJ x=0 / y=0 Interference in Process (Slovenian Pavilion)
Sounds Like Venice
About the Slovenian Pavilion
Speakers: Alenka Gregorič/Curator, Miha Štrukelj /Artist, TSS announcers: Crystal16 and Mike16 /
Created by: Irena Pivka, Brane Zorman
interviews recorded: march – june 2009 Skype & Ljubljana
Album : http://www.flickr.com/photos/miha-strukelj/show/
Opis projekta
x=0 / y=0Šum v procesuDela Mihe Štruklja se utemeljuje na raziskavi mehanizma percepcije, ki ga analizira s pomočjo orodij klasičnega slikarstva, vendar na način, da vanj vsebinsko prenaša aktualne razmisleke o perceptivnem in slikarskem dejanju kot zavezujočih eksistencialnih dejanjih v pogojih sodobnega subjekta.Umetnikova percepcija je tisto, kar je v razmerju do umetniškega dela v položaju nemega, nevidnega pogoja. Percepcija je nujni pogoj produkcije umetniškega dela, a je sama izključena iz končnega produkta; je slepa pega končne podobe. Kako dostopiti do nje? Kako jo napraviti vidno? Kako v končni podobi ohraniti materialno sled percepcije?
V slovenskem paviljonu na Beneškem bienalu Štrukelj obravnava vprašanje percepcije v petih enakovrednih segmentih.
Slovenia is represented by a project from Miha Štrukelj, conceived as a total artwork and based on four thematic levels and media: painting, wall drawing, drawing and Lego picture. The exhibition deconstructs the picture plane with the aid of the grid as a structural and conceptual basis, where the painting is deconstructed and reconstituted through the disillusioned gaze of the subject. The themes of Štrukelj’s artistic practice arise from a fascination with media-manipulated images and expand into the iconography of anonymous urban topography, and the isolated, quiet presence of the human figure. This approach is reflected in all the work, with the exception of the Lego-picture which portrays natural landscapes, a rare motif in Štrukelj’s work.
Miha Štrukelj’s work is based on researching and deconstructing the mechanism of perception, which he analyses with the aid of traditional representational media – painting and drawing – but so as to include a thoughtful and critical examination of the act of perception as the threshold of the individual’s self-definition. Since the end of the1990s, his painting has examined critical events in recent human history: from the Chernobyl disaster and the technologically sophisticated view of the distant phantom scenery of the Gulf War, which played itself out before the eyes of the world in the blurred reality of infotainment, to another climax of human self-destruction – New York’s Ground Zero. Meanwhile, Štrukelj’s canvases, drawings, drawing interventions on walls and Lego brick jigsaw puzzle images are home to motifs from city centres, anonymous and seemingly disparate details of cityscapes, crossroads, bridges and buildings, which create a different, parallel, more intimate and personal cartography of contemporary reality, formed by momentary glimpses, ’snapshots’, where the human figure is only accidental.
The Venice project is a combination of approaches characteristic of Štrukelj’s output in the last few years, its most prominent segment being wall drawing. He has used the wall as a support medium only three times before Venice. The support medium is different than in older works while the content and application of fragmented images remain the same. However, in the latest mural, the thematic and formal starting points are taken one step further – while the urban environment is again more abstract and devoid of human figures, the individual returns, but in a very subtle way.
Miha Štrukelj (1973, Ljubljana):
Works primarily in painting, and has also focused on drawing and site-specific work in the last two years. He examines the process and boundaries of painting and explores urban environments and their perception. He has recently received two awards – the Pollock-Krasner Grant 2008 and the Henkel Drawing Award 2008. He has also been selected for ‘Slovenian Art 1995–2005′ and ‘Seven Sins; Ljubljana–Moscow’ at the Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, and various other national and international shows. His work is included in the volume ‘Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting’ (Phaidon). He is currently artist-in-residence at ISCP in New York.
The exhibition x=0 / y=0, Interference in Process is organised by Škuc Gallery with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.
Commissioner: Aleksander Bassin
Deputy Commissioner: Tevž Logar
Curator: Alenka Gregorič
Co-curator: Noel Kelly
Venue: Galleria A+A
Slovenian Public Exhibition Centre
San Marco 3073, Venezia 30124
How to reach us:
Line 2
Boat stop: San Samuele
Opening hours
June (every day 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.)
July–November (Tuesday–Sunday, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.)
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte, Slovenian Pavilion, Sounds Like Venice , Alenka Gregorič, Brane Zorman, Irena Pivka, Mihe Štruklja, Slovenian Pavilion
• 4:43 pm 0
SANT’ELENA- La seduzione nel segno (Richard Nonas, Marya Kazoun, Minjung Kim, Maria Elisabetta Novello, Svetlana Ostapovici, Gaia Scaramella)
The Forest of Sant’Elena:
Music by Gary Marlowe
produced by gary marlowe for bear&kaiser
recorded at maresole studio, Venezia
SANT’ELENA- La seduzione nel segno
Richard Nonas, Marya Kazoun, Minjung Kim, Maria Elisabetta Novello, Svetlana Ostapovici, Gaia Scaramella
4 giugno – 30 settembre 2009
A cura di Martina Cavallarin
Intervista/Interview con/with Richard Nonas
Intervista con Martina Cavallarin e Laura Guadagnin WAVEs ( women arts/associations venice)
cavallarin_womenartvenice_slv.mp3
“Sant’Elena è una mostra di ricostruzione e riproposta per tematiche e spazi in cui sculture e installazioni abitano, di confronto generazionale e geografico, di sperimentazione e ricerca, di dialogo tra linguaggi e codici stilistici.
In estensione tra terra e acqua l’esposizione si articola sul dialogo tra l’installazione dell’artista storico Richard Nonas e le opere di cinque artiste- Marya Kazoun, Minjung Kim, Maria Elisabetta Novello, Svetlana Ostapovici, Gaia Scaramella-. L’opera di Nonas fonda il dialogo con gli altri lavori per aprire una dimensione di riflessione che cresce tra simboli e sculture, tra l’estensione dei limiti e la seduzione espressa nel segno.” Martina Cavallarin.
A legare le differenti esperienze e i vari linguaggi è la comune necessità di una ricerca affondata nel segno, in cui drammaticità, simbolo, carica emotiva e indagine formale, contribuiscono alla nascita di lavori delicatamente struggenti, la cui carica poetica trova ulteriore ragion d’essere nella forte relazione con l’ambiente e la storia che lo accompagna. Secondo questa prospettiva, il misticismo e il mito legati all’immagine di Sant’Elena (madre di Costantino e quindi figura storica –anche della cristianità- ma anche protettrice degli aghi e dei chiodi) forniscono la suggestione per interventi che ne raccolgono l’eredità e ne riversano l’emblematica cultura nella stratificazione degli interventi. Tra terra e acqua si palesa quindi un racconto dai molteplici capitoli, e in cui tra opere dai linguaggi differenti, visioni, apparizioni e codici, emerge la sottile seduzione della storia e della sua vibrante attualità.
Richard Nonas costruisce un’installazione site specific, cui faranno idealmente da emanazione le opere, sempre installative e create per quest’evento, di Marya Kazoun (installazione e performance: materiali –vetro, latte, tessuto- a servizio di una narrazione dolorosa e salvifica), Minjung Kim (un cubo di cristallo che emerge dall’acqua, simbolo di spiritualità tra apparizioni e sparizioni), Maria Elisabetta Novello (grandi quantità di cenere, suo materiale privilegiato e contenente aghi e chiodi come nella leggenda della santa, sono raccolte in teche di plexiglas, totem d’intangibilità, presenza, memoria, visibile e invisibile), Svetlana Ostapovici (sulla linea della denuncia e della ricerca attraverso fotografie documentaristiche e l’uso del mosaico) e Gaia Scaramella ( installazione di una gigantesca sfera di 260 cm di diametro in un intreccio tra incisione, segni ossessivi, informazioni e ironia).
(foto vernissage 4 giugno ore 17)
Coordinamento artistico: Elena Forin
Coordinamento culturale: Laura Guadagnin
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , Gaia Scaramella, Maria Elisabetta Novello, Martina Cavallarin, Marya Kazoun, Minjung Kim, Richard Nonas, Svetlana Ostapovici, WAVEs
June 21, 2009 • 5:40 pm 0
Krzysztof Wodiczko. Guests
audio of the press release
poland at the 53 art exhibition in venice 53rd international
Krzysztof wodiczko – Guests – opening
4.06.2009, 5 p.m.
I was very impressed and touched to read Hanna Arendt words at the very entrance of the Pavilion.
True Avant-garde and human lesson
Krzysztof Wodiczko, Goście/Guests, 2008-2009,
projekcja wideo/video projection, (szkic projektu/project visualisation), dzięki uprzejmośco artysty i Zachęty Narodowej Galerii Sztuki/
courtesy of the artist and Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw
krzysztof wodiczko. Guests
53rd International Art Exhibition in Venice
Pavilion Commissioner Agnieszka Morawińska
Curator of the Exhibition Bożena Czubak
Assistant Commisioner Małgorzata Osińska
The protagonists of Krzysztof Wodiczko’s projection in the Polish Pavilion at the 53rd International Art Exhibition in Venice are immigrants, people who, not being ‘at home’, remain ‘eternal guests’. ‘Strangers’, ‘others’ are key notions in Wodiczko’s artistic practice, be it in the projections, the V ehicles, or the technologically advanced Instruments that enable those who, deprived of rights, remain mute, invisible and nameless to communicate, gain a voice, make a
presence in public space.
The projection, created specially for the Biennale, transforms the space of the Polish Pavilion into a place where the viewers watch scenes taking place seemingly outside, behind an illusion of windows, their projection on the pavilion’s windowless walls. The individual projections, the images of windows projected onto the pavilion’s architecture, open its interior to virtual, but at the same time real, scenes showing immigrants washing windows, taking a rest, talking, waiting for work, exchanging remarks about their tough existential situation, unemployment, problems
getting their stay legalised. The slight blurriness of the images reduces the legibility of the scenes taking place behind milky glass. Wodiczko plays with the visibility of immigrants, people who are ‘within arm’s reach’ and, at the same time, ‘on the other side’, referring us to their ambivalent status, their social invisibility. Both sides experience an inability to overcome the gap separating them. The Biennale visitors are ‘guests’ here too, of which they are reminded by the images of immigrants trying, from time to time, to peek inside.
The project, dealing with the multicultural problematique of alterity, concerns one of the most burning issues of the contemporary world, globally as well as in the EU, where a discourse of acceptance and legalisation is accompanied by often restrictive immigration policies. The author worked with immigrants based in Poland and Italy, but coming from different countries of the world such as Chechnya, Ukraine, Vietnam, Romania, Sri Lanka, Libya, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Morocco. In his Venice project, Wodiczko combines the unique experience of his earlier indoor projections, staged in galleries or museums, which opened the otherwise isolated art world to the outside world, with a performative nature of his outdoor projections which allowed participants to animate public buildings with images of their faces or hands and the sounds of their voices.
The whole scenario is a result of the artist’s many hours of meetings and discussions with immigrants in Rome and Warsaw, which eventually caused him to revise his original idea of presenting the situation of Polish and Eastern European workers in Italy. The current situation, the tensions surrounding immigration issues, the restrictive regulations being introduced by the EU member states in an attempt to seal their borders, the dramatic situation of illegal immigrants caused by, among other factors, the global crisis and a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment—all that
directed Wodiczko’s attention towards the experiences of immigrants crossing Europe’s borders.
Krzysztof Wodiczko
in conversation with
John Rajchman
(fragments from the
exhibition catalogue)
. . . Krzysztof Wodiczko: There’s a long history in my work of involvement with strangers. Today the whole issue is coming back as urgent. In the early 1990’s when I worked with Swiss strangers it was during a time of an outbreak of European xenophobia. I’ve done lots of work in this area but until recently had thought or hoped that the situation was changing. But I now see we are witnessing the return of a whole wave of xenophobia within the context of the European Community. So the question is: what is the cause of this? And what can we, as artists, do about it? It is clear that strangers are coming from outside the EU and that Italy is one of the European countries most affected by of an influx of undocumented immigrants who are coming via Greece and Ireland, seeking employment or simply trying to move on to Germany. Sometimes they come from Turkey or from African countries and then fall under the rules of the Dublin convention that forces them to register in the first country they arrive in, where all the procedures leading to work permits must be done. The further they go the more impossible it becomes for them to get aid from various governmental or non-governmental agencies. This is in addition of course to the old issue of the Roma people who are 3rd or 4th generation of residents of Italy who have no work permit. Because they have no permit to work they have to survive outside the law where they are blamed, abused, provoked.
John Rajchman: So part of what makes this a European problem is the actual laws, the whole legal structure; and the existence of these workers “outside” can be used to raise questions about the laws themselves. Maybe artists can have a role in allowing us to see these laws not so much in terms of their justification or enforcement, but rather in terms of the modes of existence they suppose or institute. There’s something direct affective, what you call “existential” about their situation, which you are helping to make visible. It has to do in particular with the concrete work they do, and the ways they are at once distant from and near to us, strange and familiar. That is a problem that, aesthetically speaking, is often associated with theatre or theatricality; and in some way, your piece is a kind of theatrical montage of affects concerning this relation. It has to do with seeing and being-seen, with proximity and distance, of course, but also with the ways those things are in turn connected with affects like fear and pity.
KW: That brings up a kind of unintentional functional role that these strangers might play and the possibility of reinforcing these functions and creating conditions in which they could become actors in a democratic process. It is clear that for the most part these conditions are not possible forthem. They survive by being quiet, invisible, smiling all the time, in always being kind. They’re kind because they don’t want to ever get into trouble. Maybe this is a self-defeating attitude in the long run because they should be the ones to speak up, to open up and let us see the world from their point of view and so stimulate and instigate a kind of questioning of the process both political and legal of the European Community and the role of national in it. Of course it’s never easy; but in creating conditions in which their voice can be heard various cultural and artistic processes may be of help. The political and educational work that is already being done by various organizations could include artists and cultural animators. These strangers would then be able to say something, to actually speak, rather than others speaking about them or on their behalf.
JR: That’s right. Documentaries or media treatments of their situation is often about them without them actually speaking, or speaking freely, fearlessly, outside of the frameworks of mere tolerance or therapy. Which brings me back to the theatrical side of your work—the sense in which it involves an enactment in which we are brought into existential contact with them. We had been talking about this earlier—the role of the public in Venice, the ways it is invited to relate to these guests, these strangers, to listen to them, to allow them to speak themselves. There seems to be an element in your set-up which helps fee us from the traditional affects, the famous Aristotelian catharsis of fear and pity. We often see a mediatic, it not a governmental, campaign to incite fear with respect to these people; and at the same time, they often just help up for our pity, our tolerance.
Entering your piece, we are involved in a different kind of catharsis, a different kind of theatre, which involves an element of distanciation. It think this an affective problem you’ve been treating in a number of different ways in your work—for example in your projections, but also in your vehicles and instrumentations.
KW: It’s different with the instruments and the equipment, the prosthetics I designed for and with strangers. That’s a way of giving them a possibility of developing their capacity to speak. And also for who are strangers to them to become close and to open their ears without so much fear, out of curiosity and entertainment. So it’s a kind of performance. That’s one possible approach. Another is to take advantage of the prestige of historical symbolic structures like monuments that bear witness to events and stand for their authority.
There it’s a matter of appropriating these structures or creating the conditions for strangers to do so.
The vehicles and projections as it were ‘arm’ strangers so that they can speak a bit more freely, and also help us to be a little less fearful in listening to them. But in an interior piece like this one it’s a different situation for the audience since they are actually inside something. They’re not facing an external presence of the strangers. Through the fog of the windows the viewers are put in a space in which they turn back toward their own interior, their own inside. They’re put in a situation in which they must in fact acknowledge the way they see the world from inside themselves. So its this other interior that’s opened up such that they don’t simply exteriorize these strangers; they don’t really know who they are and yet they’re very close to them, which produces a disturbing, yet strangely familiar situation. For in fact, in our lives, they are very close to us. They wash our clothes, they take care of our children, they cook, they clean the windows in our offices, they see us and we see them, and yet there is a wall between us and them. We see them from our side of this invisible wall, but they also see us all the time, even if they never tell us what they see. The problem is to create conditions for these people to say something through this wall, to break it to some degree. But you mention fear and pity, and I add here identification.
JR: Yes. I think we could even say dis-identification—a theatre of dis-identification. And yet we remain quite close to these actors, to their real situation. One might even use Brecht’s old word “alienation”. Within the more classical proscenium theatre, Brecht wanted to be precisely anti- Aristolean—in his epic theatre, in breaking with our identification with the characters, one would come to see their real social situation. But your creation of an interior condition is rather different from the classical stage; and the characters for the most part are real workers, real strangers, speaking without script.
KW: Exactly. There’s a kind of dis-identification. The aim of this material projection is actually to make it difficult to identify with situations and those people and yet to listen to them and understand their concrete stories, the concrete conditions of their lives, rather than to think of them as people with no stories, no history of their own, and therefore to think they don’t exist. I just want to let them tell the story. Those with no history have no choice but to tell their stories, and in this way to testify to a wrong that is outside of the usual narratives. They become something like historians, critical historians—they testify, they bear witness. This testimony is not confession but a kind of
public testimony. Therefore we can learn something from them without necessarily identifying with them.
JR: So we don’t fear or pity them. We come closer to seeing their situation.
KW: Yes, we might fear them less the more we learn about them but also there is another issue we were talking about: tolerance. I mean a stranger can say being tolerated is better than nothing; but tolerance is also a way of taking a superior position from which to look at others.
JR: Spinoza was opposed to pity on just those grounds. Nietzsche too. We are so gratified by our easy compassion for the suffering of others that we never in fact really see them or listen to them.
KW: It’s not about us being higher than them or them being smaller but of them speaking to us, teaching us something. The foggy window through which we see them and yet don’t see them, and vice-versa, translates something of this disturbed identification. We see these guests doing their work, renovating the scaffolding, and suddenly they see us eating breakfast, taking a shower, but we don’t know if they’re even interested in us or if they know anything about us. In the piece you’re both in the situation while at the same time breaking with it—that’s the “alienation effect”. . . .
JR: Venice of course has a long and complicated history as a great cosmopolitan city. It was the site of the first European biennale, the start of the global biennale fever we see today. In some sense it was more “international” than “transnational” in its conception, more like the 19th century situation of competing nation-states. And of course your piece is going to be in the Polish pavilion in which you are maybe yourself a kind of “dangerous guest”! Earlier in Venice, after all, you represented Canada.
KW: For the issues of what’s happening in the world around us, the national identities in those pavilions are somewhat dubious. When I visited Venice during the winter, without the Biennale, it was an incredible experience. Those pavilions were in a fog, in the night, in the cold, some of them with partially opened doors with the cold wind blowing through the chained gates. Polonia, Romania, Germania, Italia—it was like a graveyard of national identity, a catacomb of national identity. In this context I was reluctant to bring up the issue of Polishness. It was difficult for me because I feel like I have abandoned my nation to contribute to a kind of deconstruction or redefinition of Polishness. That’s why I couldn’t do the kind of thing Hans Haacke did with the German Pavilion for example.
JR: And yet there’s a way you’re also very Polish.
KW: Of course I’m Polish. I lived in Poland for 33 or 34 years straight and if after I went to many
countries and lived in so many other places, so did many other Polish people. I am not alone.
What does it mean to be Polish? To be of Poland? But also to participate in undoing oneself as
Polish? That’s the way to be Polish. Because in my continuing process of questioning my identity,
Polishness remains at the core—that’s anyway my Polishness. I am Polish in the way my Jewish
mother was very Polish at the same time so that everything was very Jewish, but also in a Polish
way. My father was a Czech Protestant. He had doubts about Poland all the time. He was very
critical, very involved in transforming Polish culture as a musical conductor and director.
JR: So there’s a Polish way of not being Polish?
KW: And a Hungarian way, an American way? Sometimes when I’m called Polish, I feel like I’m about to be deported to my old country, or worse, to Poland, the stereotype or clichés. But when I call myself Polish, it’s in a different manner. I feel in such a case free to provide my own definition of Polishness, however convoluted and unstable—to issue to myself my own passport, through my own immigration office, a passport with my own singular or multiple intellectual,artistic, social, historical, geographical, ethnic entry and exit visas, stamped with my own temporary and permanent resident permits.
JR: In a strange way, that’s also something that your undocumented guests are telling us about. They’re also pointing to a kind of deconstruction of national identity, but in a very different kind ofpolitical and affective or existential situation.
KW: Yes, I think these guests who are making this project on the other side of the windows will be doing something like this. I feel that this is what makes the pavilion Polish. For me politics is a matter of creating a public space—a space where people bring meaning, and share and recognize each other, include each other, but also undo their identities, argue and question—that is politics. If you don’t make these efforts, you return to the old situation. It’s the same with art. . . .
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , Ilari Valbonesi, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Polish Pavilion
June 20, 2009 • 1:51 pm 0
Michelangelo Pistoletto moltiplica l’infinito alla Biennale d’Arte di Venezia 2009
Photo Courtesy: Elly Nagaoka
Check the multiplication:
Video courtesy: http://www.labiennalechannel.org
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , Elly Nagaoka, Michelangelo Pistoletto
June 19, 2009 • 6:18 pm 0
Lithuanian Pavilion: TUBE by Žilvinas Kempinas
Interview with Žilvinas Kempinas by Ilari Valbonesi
Photo Courtesy: Elly Nagaoka
Walking Wonder Woman Credit : Laura Palmieri
Lithuanian Pavilion
Žilvinas Kempinas
TUBE
Scuola Grande della Misericordia, Cannaregio, 3599/A
June 7 – November 22, 2009
Commissioner Laura Rutkutė,
Curator Laima Kreivytė
Galerija Vartai, Vilnius
This year for the first time, visitors to the International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia – will be able to enter the majestic building of Scuola Grande della Misericordia and experience the installation TUBE by Žilvinas Kempinas. This Renaissance building dating back to the 16th century and designed by the famous Venetian architect Jacopo Sansovino is located in Cannaregio, northwest of Venice, and will house the Lithuanian pavilion.
Žilvinas Kempinas is widely recognized for his bold use of videotape as a sculptural medium. This large-scale installation, TUBE (created at the Atelier Calder, Saché, France), resonates with the environment of the floating city and creates a space where vision and movement are linked by means of the body. TUBE addresses the physical and optical experiences of the viewer, and the passage of time, while creating the feeling of being inside and outside simultaneously.
One can describe TUBE metaphorically or geometrically but to be appreciated it must be experienced directly. No image can convey the gradual accumulation of sensory experiences awaiting visitors who pass through the translucent tunnel of parallel lines. Kempinas changes the function of magnetic tape from an information carrier to a linear map of time and space.
Žilvinas Kempinas was born in 1969 in Plungė, Lithuania. He lives and works in New York. Solo exhibitions: Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2008); Le Grand Café, Saint-Nazaire, France (2008); Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius (2007); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2006); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2003); Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York (2004, 2006, 2007).
Selected group shows: Espéces d’espaces, Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York, The Immediate Future, Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden (2009), Now Jump, Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin/Seoul, (2008), Manifesta 7, Bolzano, Italy (2008); New Work: Zilvinas Kempinas, Alyson Shotz, Mary Temple, SFMOMA, San Francisco (2008); Go East, Museum of Modern Art, Luxembourg (2008).
In 2007 Žilvinas Kempinas was awarded the Calder Prize and was the resident artist at the Atelier Calder in Saché, France, from January to June of 2008.
The Lithuanian Pavilion is accompanied by a catalogue published by DuMont Buchverlag. Contributing authors: Professor at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, Alfonsas Andriuškevičius, Curator of the Lithuanian Pavilion, Laima Kreivytė, Curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Veronica Roberts, and Professor at the University of Plymouth (UK), Malcolm Miles.
Opening hours: 10 am – 6 pm, closed on Mondays except 8 June
Boat stop: Ca’ d’Oro
The Lithuanian Pavilion is principally funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania.
Patron of the Pavilion is the Prime Minister of the Republic of Lithuania Andrius Kubilius.
Supported by Danutė and Alain Mallart, Sutkienė ir partneriai, TEO LT, Logotipas, Libra Vitalis and Lietuvos Rytas.
http://www.tubeinvenice.com
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , Elly Nagaoka, Ilari Valbonesi, Lithuanian Pavilion, Žilvinas Kempinas
June 18, 2009 • 11:09 pm 0
The Seductiveness of the Interval (Romanian Pavilion – 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia)
The Seductiveness of the Interval
Live Pavilion and Audio Interview with Andrea Faciu and Ştefan Constantinescu. Ciprian Mureşan was eating.
Here: BloccoRomania.mp3
Romanian Pavilion – 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Artists: Ştefan Constantinescu, Andrea Faciu, Ciprian Mureşan
Commissioner: Monica Morariu
Curator: Alina Şerban
Exhibition design: studioBASAR -Alex Axinte & Cristi Borcan
The Seductiveness of the Interval, the project
The winning team, made up of artists Ştefan Constantinescu, Andrea Faciu, Ciprian Mureşan, curator Alina Şerban, and architects Alex Axinte and Cristi Borcan (studio BASAR) – selected following the competition organised by the Ministry of Culture, Religions and National Heritage in late January – offers a reflection on the exhibition as a semantically mobile autonomous spatial and temporal structure, which suspends quotidian experience in order to enclose spectators within a temporal and spatial interval with which they become eventually complicit.
Directing a constrictive exhibition route, marked by stage-set and mise-en-scène elements, artists Ştefan Constantinescu, Andrea Faciu and Ciprian Mureşan pursue an unfolding of the viewing experience that reaches a crescendo, establishing a new relationship between objects and space, between the viewer’s time and the exhibition
time. The artists’ projects (subjectively) juxtapose events, real-life situations, and stories, whose narrative and discursive structure recalls the world of theatre, film and literature.
Delimiting a reality that is theatrical and temporal par excellence, The Seductiveness of the Interval sets out to draw the subject into a new reality, not just as an observer, inviting him to identify a network of motivations, causal links between multiple landscapes, sequences and transitions presented within the exhibition, in order ultimately
to ensure the coherence of the whole.
http://www.seductiveness-of-interval.ro/
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte, Romanian Pavilion , Andrea Faciu, Ciprian Mureşan, Romanian Pavilion, Ştefan Constantinescu
• 9:18 pm 0
20090604_ 53BV_022.jpg and 20090604_ 53BV_025.jpg (Tomas Saraceno)
Tomas Saraceno, Galaxies forming along filaments, like Droplets along the Strands of a Spider’s web (2008)
Fare Mondi // Making Worlds // Bantin Duniyan // Weltenmachen // Construire des Mondes // Fazer Mundos
Biennale di Venezia, Giardini.
Photo Courtesy: Elly Nagaoka
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , Elly Nagaoka
June 17, 2009 • 6:40 pm 0
Jan Fabre: From the Feet to the Brain. Press conference: Friday, June 5, 2009, 12.30 noon with lunch at 1.30 p.m.
Audio: Jan Fabre Press View
Jan Fabre
From the Feet to the Brain
June 6 to September 20, 2009
Curator: Eckhard Schneider
Inviting curator: Giacinto Di Pietrantonio
Press conference: Friday, June 5, 2009, 12.30 noon with lunch at 1.30 p.m.
Jan Fabre: From the Feet to the Brain. Press conference:</span>
Opening: Friday, June 5, 2009, 6 to 10 p.m.
Jan Fabre’s new work series “From the Cellar to the Attic – From the Feet to the Brain,” which he elaborated for the Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2008, represented an important step in his work development. With five room-filling sculptural tableaus, Fabre created a mythical world of horror, beauty, and metamorphosis that was hardly conceivable in conventional artistic terms and constantly alternated between reality and dream. The installation followed the layout of the human body. Five exhibition levels with metaphoric titles borrowed from different zones of the body – starting with the feet in the basement and ending with the brain on the upper level – created a gesamtkunstwerk of mysterious complexity.
Thanks to the cooperation of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo (GAMeC), Studio Fabre, the Kunsthaus Bregenz and the support of Linda and Guy Pieters, Jan Fabre will be installing his five sculptural tableaus at the 53rd Venice Biennale, giving a broad international art audience the chance to rediscover this gesamtkunstwerk.
With the installation “From the Feet to the Brain,” Fabre ponders the artistic rules of his work and the bounds of his previous artistic practice. His basic principles can be broken down as follows: 1. the awareness of the power of the images of the real that was discovered in the Flemish Primitives, further developed through the visual force of performances and theater, and finally emerged in the form of sculptural tableaus; 2. the extreme concentration on the body as the crystallization point between life and death, agony and fulfillment; 3. the fascination for the insect as a symbol of metamorphosis, as the subject of intense investigations, and as an important material for drawings, objects, and wall and room-filling installations; 4. the constant application of the mechanical, self-driven principle in all artistic activities, a principle that originates from the discovery of the body and the behavior of insects; 5. the fascination for mirroring and doubling, which is the point of departure for many works.
“The Feet,” “The Sex,” “The Belly,” “The Heart,” and “The Brain” – these five elements, each in its own way visually overwhelming, will be presented anew in the halls of the Arsenale Novissimo. Never before has Jan Fabre so radically made the human body the main motif of both the overall composition and the individual parts of a work. At the Kunsthaus Bregenz the tableaus were arranged vertically; here, they are set up horizontally. With the pictorial interpretation of the theme, Fabre exhausts all the aesthetic freedoms introduced in his work and at the same time focuses on perhaps the most dominant theme of his oeuvre: his own body. “From the Feet to the Brain” shows us the artist’s ideal vision of life and more clearly than ever before reveals the consciously chosen artistic anachronism that constitutes his specific and sometimes also misunderstood artistic uniqueness.
The five installations at the Venice Biennale 2009
The belly:
Ik heb een stuk van het plafond van het koninklijk paleis moeten uitbreken omdat er iets uitgroeide, 2008 I had to break down a part of the ceiling of the Royal Palace because there was something growing out of it
Fabre copied a fragment of the permanent installation he made in the Mirror Room of the Royal Palace in Brussels. For that installation, Fabre covered the ceiling of the room using more than 1,000,000 wings of the jewel beetle. Before Fabre’s intervention, this room was meant to be decorated in honor of Leopold II and his accomplishments in the old Belgian colony of Congo. In a reaction to this permanent work created in 2001, Fabre “breaks down” a part of the ceiling because something – history, represented by a black (Congolese) man – is growing out of it. He turned this part of the ceiling upside down, creating a monumental 10 × 10 m installation.
The feet:
Schuilkelder-atelier voor de kunstaar-krijger, 2009
Shelter-studio for the artist-warrior
Fabre created a shelter-atelier comprising different thinking models he made in the 90s. The shelter-atelier (which is a cement cube) is composed of an entrance space, an official space, and the artist’s secret studio. In the first space, the corridor to the official space, Fabre presents 3 lambs growing from the ceiling. These lambs refer to the baptism, the spiritual cleansing of Christ. In the official space, Fabre installs 7 tin baths painted with blue BIC ink and two “brain-legs” coming down from the ceiling. The baths symbolize the ritual place of purification but also refer to Fabre’s insomnia; he uses his bathtub as a sarcophagus where he calms down to draw and work. The “brain-legs” on the other hand represent the memory of the feet, the feet as a brain. The secret space is a studio filled with ammunition and experimental organic material. This is the artist’s lab, a place to hide and work.
The sex:
Fontein van de wereld (als jonge kunstenaar), 2008
Fountain of the world (as a young artist)
For Fabre, this installation represents the sex and therefore the force of his creative potential. He presents himself as a young man with a constant erection lying on a bed of 150 gravestones. The man symbolizes a fountain ejaculating a sperm-like fluid in a constant rhythm. The gravestones on which he is positioned are engraved with names of insects that refer to artists, philosophers, and writers who, according to Fabre, are or will become part of the history of the world. In a way, he is surrounding himself with friends who support and influence him in a spiritual and artistic way. The installation is part of a series of self-portraits in which Fabre discovers and explores the fluids of the body, as he has done in his blood, sperm, tear and urine drawings. Around this, the early drawings Fountain of the World are shown. These drawings have served as a thinking model for this work.
The heart:
Het toekomstige hart van barmhartigheid voor mannen en vrouwen, 2008
The future merciful heart for men and women.
Fabre creates a poetic installation, using 3,000 human bones and 10 skulls made out of Murano glass to create two altars facing each other. Some of the skulls and bones are painted with BIC-blue ballpoint ink, which makes reference to the baths in the shelter-atelier. The color blue represents the hour blue, the mystical moment of the day when nocturnal animals go to sleep and diurnal animals wake up. On the one altar/sarcophagus, Fabre presents a male heart, which is closed. On the other, we find a slightly smaller and more elegant female heart, which is open. These hearts are made out of a mosaic of human bones and represent a model of the future heart of mankind: a merciful heart that cannot bleed.
The brain:
In de loopgraven van het brein als kunstenaar-lilliputter, 2008
In the trenches of the brain as an artist-Lilliputian
From a wooden balcony inspired by Flemish staircases Fabre offers a view of a timeless battlefield with 4 trenches leading to one big crater. In this crater we discover the skinless head of a giant. On this head stands the artist, presenting himself as a Lilliputian, digging his way through the brain, discovering not only the structural physiognomy of the face but the terra incognita of the brain. Whereas sex represents the force of the artist’s creative potential, the brain is the place where it happens. This is why Fabre regards the brain as “the most sexy part of the body.”
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte
June 16, 2009 • 5:25 pm 0
Venice in Venice
Gerry Fox on Venice in Venice, interviewed by Ilari Valbonesi, Venice 3 June at 2pm at Palazzo Donà delle Rose
Filmmaker and artist Gerry Fox invites us to explore the labyrinthine rooms of a gothic palazzo to reach the heart of VENICE IN VENICE, a fifteen screen, site-specific installation that captures the rituals, drama and traditions of Venetian life.
Palazzo Donà delle Rose
Fondamente Nuove
Cannaregio 5101, Venice
Download the flyer as a PDF
Exhibition continues:
7 June – 28 June 2009 (Tuesday – Sunday, 11am-7pm)
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , Gerry Fox, Ilari Valbonesi
June 15, 2009 • 3:39 pm 0
The Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) Party in 53 ° Venice Biennale
The Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) is the institution in charge of conserving and promoting the heritage and culture of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. It was established in October 2005 as an authority of the Government of Abu Dhabi. Internationally it is contributing to the strengthening of intercultural dialogue and the appreciation of different cultures by developing projects that encourage the sharing of cultural traditions and experience.
Pre-inaugural Under the Patronage of His Excellency Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH). The event included the announcement of the participants’ list and a discussion with the Curator Catherine David on ADACH’s debut at the 53rd edition of the Venice Biennale. The event took place in a large tent constructed on a platform at 1.8 meters and located in the midst of the construction site of the Qasr Al Hosn Cultural Quarter on May 3, 2009.
The ADACH Platform for Visual Art was recently created in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates and is the result of a vision and master plan aiming at the development of a network drafted on a rhizome of people and ideas through concrete projects. Following some pics of the very interesting set they chose for theVenice Party at Arsenale, Spazio Thetis on 5th June 2009.
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , ADACH
• 2:58 pm 0
Sinking World
Everywhere I go in Venice there are signs reminding me the danger of drowning in the sea. But if you go out the Santa Lucia Station, on the right side there is a wall with a very interesting graffiti estatement:
“Venice is sinking”
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte
June 8, 2009 • 3:43 pm 0
Still (Life) in Venice
I am so tired I cannot even speak. pics are still in the camera, etc.
… tomorrow
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte
June 6, 2009 • 9:54 pm 0
Making Worlds
(Finally, in alphabetical order). We’re at the Iceland pavilion, and here’s a guy, Ragnar Kjartansson, who actually makes worlds. The exception to the rule. He isn’t satisfied with the possibilities of technology, installation, site-specific etc. So he goes there and does it himself. For the entire duration of the show, and even longer… six months, this time. At Rovereto (Manifesta) he inhabited a room with friends and sang (very nicely too)… the presence of an old gramophone seemed like a signal… “You see, sound reproduction technology hasn’t actually advanced much beyond this thing… whatever speakers I use, it will still be so different from the experience of me actually being here and singing, while my friend is actually here, playing the piano.” LISTEN
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , biennale, iceland, manifesta, ragnar kjartansson, steve piccolo
• 9:26 pm 0
Jaking Worlds
You decide. Slang dictionary def 4
Jake
My take is “legitimizing”, which usually means sanitizing or making what is threatening safe for consumption. An inevitable fate, perhaps, but some people manage to escape it. The Fear Society seems jake in our book. Unjake world no. 8, on the other hand, is the LA punk scene… packaged for easy consumption. Try out this found object, the inspiring (but not scary) “have a beer with fear” by historic punk group Fear. LISTEN
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , fear society, jota castro, LA punk scene, slang dictionary, steve piccolo
• 6:50 pm 2
The Fear Society – Pabellón de la Urgencia
Tania Bruguera put a bullet in a pistol, spin the cylinder, place the muzzle against her head and pull the triggers to shot her brain.
Today @ The Fear Society – Pabellón de la Urgencia.
Venice. 3.20 p.m.
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte
• 5:48 pm 0
From Feet to the Brain
From the feet to the brain, the building created by Jan Fabre on show in Venice from today
Arsenale Novissimo Venice – Spazio Thetis 107 and 109.
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte
• 5:43 pm 0
Portrait of a Young Artist as a Biennalist
Ragnar Kjartansson and his model at the Icelandic pavilion in Venice 2009
Today @ 10.30 a. m.
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte
• 4:15 pm 0
Faking Worlds
Faking, in the positive sense of the term. If art suggests a way of looking at worlds, then it must to some extent be separate from them, detached. Worlds already exist. It is not impossible to imagine artists making a world and then suggesting a way of looking it, but maybe we can’t really use the term “making”. Instead, it is faked. Some say the world is a collective creation, but it might be more accurate to say that the world creates us collectively, just as a language speaks us (Heidegger), rather than letting us speak it. The idea of making worlds may be fraught with all the dangers of out-and-out hubris.
And in a less positive sense of the term, when the art world gets its mitts on a truly vital, spontaneous cultural world it generally breaks its new toy. Fifth victim: graffiti (’70s) and street art (now).
LISTEN (basketball throwdown / cold crush brothers vs. fantastic freaks – wild style 25th.ann.)
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , language, rap, rhyming dictionary, steve piccolo, street art, victims, wild style
• 7:07 pm 0
Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Eternal Guests
The protagonists of Krzysztof Wodiczko’s projection in the Polish Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Art Biennial are immigrants, people who, not being ‘at home’, remain ‘eternal guests’. ‘Strangers’, ‘others’ are key notions in Wodiczko’s artistic practice, be it in the projections, the Vehicles, or the technologically advanced Instruments that enable those who, deprived of rights, remain mute, invisible and nameless to communicate, gain a voice, make a presence in public space.
At the Pavilion’s Entrance you can read Hanna Arendt’s words :
Refugees driven from country to country represent the avant-garde of people
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte
• 6:37 pm 0
Lamya Gargash
U.A.E is the First Arabian Gulf Country to Create a National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. And (photo) she is Lamya Gargash, the first U.A.E. artist to represent with her work this great novelty.
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte
• 7:43 pm 0
Aching Worlds
Does Big Art stand by, smirk or just look the other way when a true cultural hotbed is wiped off the map? First victim: Storyville (by order of federal government… then Katrina and W finished the job). LISTEN
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , steve piccolo
• 7:34 pm 0
Here we are. Welcome to Venice Biennale
Let’s start the blog. And sorry for delay but we had some sort of problem with radio trasmission from Arsenale. And yesterday in Italy was bank holiday. Festa della Repubblica. Can you imagine? Now is working fine.
In the mean time we have already seen some Pavilions. Stay tune with the radio and blog to find out more. Only a quick note and a picture : of today’s early morning procession through the streets of Venice for the launch of New Zealand Pavilion led by a Māori kaumatua who gave the traditional New Zealand blessing of inauguration to the exhibitions. Followed by a spectacular powhiri (Māori welcome ceremony) by a 20-strong award-winning Kapa Haka group accompanied by a performance by Moana and the Tribe. You should have seen the faces of venetian people … just got up to go to work …
The Maori blessing will open our Sounds Like Venice – every day – starting from tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.
Message from Brane and Irena, our radioCona partner: phew! we are looking forward to see you soon.
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte
May 30, 2009 • 3:46 pm 0
Sounds like Venice
Sounds like Venice : dal 3 giugno 2009 un flusso continuo di trasmissioni radio, audio e video performance che assemblerà le testimonianze, i suoni e le voci della cultura mondiale provenienti da Venezia e dalla 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte, intitolata Fare Mondi//Making Worlds//Bantin Duniyan//制造世界// Weltenmachen//Construire des Mondes //Fazer Mundos…, diretta da Daniel Birnbaum.
Sounds like Venice a cura di RAM LIVE in collaborazione con Radio Cona, e la partecipazione di artisti internazionali, sarà trasmesso dalla stazione radio temporanea situata all’Arsenale di Venezia nello Spazio Thetis .
Filed under: 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte , 53. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte
March 5, 2009 • 4:07 pm 0
At the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream Event
On Saturday, April 29, 1967 John Lennon and his friend John Dunbar went down to the Alexandra Palace in London to attend the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream event.
Filed under: Uncategorized , Dream
