We have been away! But will be settling back into work straight away.
Going to the Venice Biennale was on the agenda and it was mind blowing as ever. So many new influences and ideas; green neon lights and the smell of babies, the idea that a flower which is present in a room is a witness to various sociopolitical events, the head of a Russian fighter pilot blown up to at least 10 times it’s original size, a depressing fair ride that went too slow and gave no view, a whole room full of shredded money, moving trees, razor blade wheelchairs, a genderless person walking on a treadmill with a constantly changing background, Canada’s fake shop full of blurry objects, a room made entirely of staircases dictating your every move, Israel’s pavilion covered in tires and the loss of people and their languages.
These are just a handful of the amazing things present at the biennale this year but our highlights had to be the Venezulan pavilion, in which there was a film made by Argelia bravo. The film began by three women walking onto a stage with babies in their arms. The only strange aspect to this was that all three were wearing balaclavas – suggesting that they might be criminals (in particular terrorists). They sat down on some folding chairs with their babies and after a minute or so began breastfeeding. At first they were doing so very discretely but by the end of the film they had completely removed their tops and bras. For me, this is promoting the idea that someone who might be perceived to be a criminal does not lose the ability to love for those they care for. There was also a sense that it was hinting towards the issue of public breastfeeding, which has been in the media semi-recently.
A futher highlight was from the Giardini was another film, this time in the German pavilion, by Hito Steyerl. It was called ‘Factory of the Sun’. The film is set within a 'virtual motion capture studio' and is itself shown in a motion capture studio and is in the form of in game in which you are imprisoned as a slave in said motion capture studio. The game appears to be about the immateriality of light as a medium of information and switches between different levels of reality, exploring notions of truth that supports and surrounds our understanding of the world.
The next day we ventured to the Arsenale in which we saw a film, which contained props that became the centre of attention. The title was ‘Games Whose Rules I Ignore’ and was by Boris Achour. Achour had invented six games, all of which are played by two people and involve inventing relationships – emotional, poetic or conceptual – between the two players. The game becomes a sculpture, a vehicle to represent this new relationship, with each film having a specific visual characteristic and relationship to sound. The games are being fictionalised and documented simultaneously, they are not performances but narratives that centre around a game whose rules remain unknown to us.
Steve Mcqueen also showed his film ‘Ashes’ named after its subject matter; a man nicknamed Ashes. It’s an incredibly sad and moving film that was shown on a double-sided projection screen. The initial side that we encountered was one in which Ashes’ remains are moved from an unmarked grave to his final resting place (organised by Mcqueen) with voiceovers by two of the man’s friends briefly describing his life. They talk about how they knew him from childhood, how they fished and dived together, and how his chance discovery of drugs on a beach set off events that culminated in his brutal murder. On the next side there is different film, shot many years before of Ashes sitting on the prow of a fishing boat at sea, initially sitting with his back to you but later standing, smiling, laughing. Everything about the piece is beautiful: the setting, the cinematography and even the graceful main actor.
Theaster Gates presented a film too (Gone Are the Days of Shelter and Martyr) and was accompanied by a bronze church bell, a wall of slate roof tiles and a mostly-complete statue of a saint. These are the items that Gates and his team have salvaged from the now-demolished Roman Catholic Church of St. Laurence in Chicago. The church, which gradually fell into disuse, was on the border of changing ethnic and denominational communities. Gates uses the semi-demolished church interior to screen an affecting, atmospheric video filmed with his collaborators, the Black Monks of Mississippi: two powerful performers raise and drop heavy church pews to an irregular beat while a cello plays softly and, in the background, a blues-gospel chant creates a lyrical, mournful mood.
The final highlight from the Arsenale was ‘Latent Images, Diary of a Photographer’ by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. When first coming into contact with the piece one is faced with a 20ft tall wall filled with what appear, at first, to be blank books. Yet, when you feel daring enough to remove them from the shelf and arm yourself with the letter opener on a nearby desk to slice the pages in order to reveal the contents. You will be rewarded with an incredibly detailed description and this is on every page until you arrive to a photo of a film canister. The film is never developed; nevertheless each photograph is documented in a notebook after it has been taken. His pictures can therefore be read, giving free rein to the reader’s imagination. There’s a sort of privacy to this, a sense that only the photographer will ever see the image that he took and even so he will have probably forgotten the exact scene he now believes it to be. Essentially the work is a participative performance, carried out by its audience.
On the final day we visited Palazzo Grassi to see an exhibition curated by artist Danh Vō. The curation of the show was a work of art in itself. The pieces contained in each room were chosen and positioned exquisitely. A clever example of this was that there was a room, which contained a work by David Hammons titled ‘Flies in a Jar’. In order to get into this room one had to go through a work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. This piece is called "Untitled" (Blood), and is a curtain made up of red beads, otherwise known as a fly net. It’s clever aspects like this, which really brought the show together.
Just before going to Venice we also got the chance to see a performance by Chris Dobrowolski. It was presented to the audience as a sort of lecture, which began as a sort of introduction to contemporary art and goes on to discuss his, potentially fictitious, residency in Antarctica. The idea that this could all have been faked is hinted at throughout the entire performance whilst he’s making fun of the stereotypical tools a lecturer might use (laser pen and meter long ruler). It felt like a brilliant pairing of Ryan Gander mixed with Richard Dedomenici. One of the funniest aspects of the performance was when we ridiculed the team building exercises of ‘business types’. However, the performance was not merely a joke but contained intelligent references to many major artists from Damien Hirst to Marcel Duchamp.