May You Live in Interesting Times
The review of 58th Venice Biennale Arte for the 2019′ summer issue of The Brussels Times Magazine
Tomas Saraceno. “The Aero(s)cene”, 2019
Venice Biennale is known as a sublime contemporary carnival or the Olympic games of arts: members of the art world both love and loathe it, criticising its largesse world-making ambitions while anticipating and happily participating in it. This year the event is directed by the American London-based curator Ralph Rugoff, who chose as a title for the ancient Chinese curse “May You Live in Interesting Times”. For stability-desiring society, living in ‘interesting times’ means the permanent disturbance of the harmony - the most important value in many Eastern civilisations. The phrase comes out more like an affirmative statement assessing the current time we are living in.
The two main exhibitions of the Biennale occupy the large main exhibition halls in Giardini della Biennale and what was formerly Venetian Arsenal, just a brisk walk away from one another. Both main exhibitions are directly intertwined as they feature a work (at least one) by each of the artists that were selected by Rugoff to represent those ‘interesting times’ we are living in.
In Arsenale, Jon Rafman video room is standing out as a confusing and disturbing cinema. Rafman’s ongoing series of depicting a never-ending surreal, repulsive and seductive dream is rolling for almost 2 hours. The ‘Xanax’ girl, a main protagonist, goes through unimaginable mix of weird events that transcend understanding of physical, moral and ethical presuppositions. Is that a similar experience to flipping through the endless list of TV channels and series on multiplying streaming platforms such as Netflix and HBO?
Ed Atkins. “Bloom”, 2018
Ed Atkins multimedia installation consists of the theatre props with costumes and screens with CGI (computer-generated imagery) wearing them in the evolving narrative featuring, among other characters, the boy and the monk. Their eyes are often full of tears and the skin produces hyperreal sweat. Bridging their ‘unreal’ status with the reality of produced by them emotions, they travel from one screen into another. Presence of the costumes suggests breaking the boundary between the computer-generated fictions and reality of theatrically-generated ones that we play everyday as soon as we put on the ‘costumes’ of office workers, civil servants, service(wo)men, teachers, etc. Maybe The Wachowski’s Matrix is not that interesting as the discovery of possible conspiracy against ‘realness’ but rather is telling us about the structures we’ve created for imprisoning ourselves?
The Chinese duo Sun Yuan and Peng Yu show the most impressive dynamic sculptures that make one tremble. In Giardini, there is a transparent large box with the strange robot inside. The robot is about three meters in size and has an animalistic body with the saddle, which makes it look like a post-apocalyptic horse. Instead of the head, it has a shovel. And this shovel methodically cleans the floor of the box, which is all covered in blood-like red substance. More to that, it doesn’t perform this duty unemotionally - it actually dances producing movements like ‘ass shakes’, almost twerking around the blood that it shovels around. This spectacle is so mesmerising you stand there frozen for at least some minutes (a lot of time in the current context of ever-shortening attention span when the artwork on average received 3-4 seconds of the viewers attention before being captured by smartphone, uploaded on social media to never be looked at again). In Arsenale, also trapped in the large glass box, there is a marble throne resembling the one on which Abraham Lincoln statue is sitting in the Washington memorial. Just instead of the seated leader, there is a metallic whip. First, it rests motionless but after some minutes the mechanism activates it and it starts crazily moving inside of the box whipping the walls of the box and scarring them, while producing the thrilling noise of damage. An astonishing way of portraying the political power.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. “Can’t Help Myself”, 2016
The winner of the Golden Lion, the ‘art Oscar’, is an American video and installation artist Arthur Jaffa who presented in Giardini his latest film on whiteness in the USA. As usual for his oeuvre, the video is comprised entirely from the found on the internet footage. The main part of the story, although ‘story’ isn’t the right word for what you are witnessing, is the ‘confession’ on the present of the race question in the US coming out through the live stream of the sort from the white American seemingly redneck, who calls the things as they are now: the racism, the intolerance, the ignorance towards the historical guilt and so on. An uncomfortable for the very many silent and latent deniers.
Argentinian, Berlin-based artist Tomas Saraceno adds up some light to the ocean of societal critique you are facing in the exhibition. His two pavilions - one devoted to spiders’ wisdom and another one to the rethinking our relations with the air - are suggesting the audience to question the very foundations of what they think and know about the currents of our world. The Spider/Web Pavilion presents arachnomancy cards, reinterpreting the Tarot readings anew and providing us the tool to rethink our relations with ecology of nature, economy and politics. The Aerocene pavilion in Arsenale shows a beautiful utopian vision of the world without fossil fuels, living in harmony with the clean skies. The tools, which Saraceno’s studio develops, are showcased as well - including the backpack that folds out into the flying balloon that can cross the national borders over the air using only the power of the sun.
British artist Jesse Darling shows in Arsenale the installation made of the chairs from the waiting room on abnormally high legs, many of which appear crippled. The chairs are painted bright pink: the association of the stuck and broken promise of the queer project of denormalisation towards a more tolerant, inclusive and not repeating the same mistakes world comes to the mind. Will we ever be there or are we doomed to turn any new movement for liberation into another exclusive club of power-dwellers?
Closer to the exit and the end of the main exhibition in Arsenale, the Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova reduces the overall tension of the exhibition with ever-growing sculptural installation representing the ordinary market that you could find in almost any area of Kiev (and many other cities in the post-Soviet space). The market, which is indistinguishable and bizarrely cosmopolitan, stands as an existential testament to people’s aesthetics or everyday, beyond white cubes and conceptualist thinking outside of the real world. The realness of the market, in which the fruits and vegetables as well as other props are made into sculptures with poor materials such as bathroom tiles, stands as the beacon of the everyday aesthetics.
Zhanna Kadyrova. “Market”, 2017-ongoing
Outside of the main project pavilions, the national cultural elites present their ‘creme de la creme’ of the last 2 years of artistic reflection on the state of the world and its possible futures, often through the prism of the past.
Belgian pavilion in Giardini (the oldest structure there by the way) is showing mechanical life-size figures of the folk ‘Belgians’ methodically performing their duties as the dolls in the ethnography museum. The irony of Harald Thys and Jos de Gruyter, the artists commissioned to represent Belgium, is relevant: the re-opened Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren raised a lot of tension in relation to objectification of the African cultures, their dehumanisation and ongoing colonisation by the oppressive, unreflective European imaginary. Turning ‘Belgians’ into dehumanised mechanical toys with all their everyday cultural habits being shown as props equalises them with the approach of Leopold II towards the people who used to populate his ‘private estate’ of continental proportions.
Brazilian pavilion in Giardini stuns the audience with the bold video installation ‘Swinguerra’. It opens up to the world the evolving and beating with life culture of the resistance dance of the Brazilian North. In the context of the ‘Trump of the Tropics’ rule being established just several months ago, with the abolition of many cultural programmes and social cohesion initiatives while returning to the praise of dictatorship, the project is truly daring. Barbara Wagner and Benjamin Burca shot the reality and dreams of queer, trans and other endangered communities representatives who became more precarious after the recent political changes. In the shadows of the main event I’ve overheard people saying they are afraid the pavilion would be shut by the government after the reviews will go out to print as it might anger Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his vision of queerness as the decease that is supposed to be eradicated. The gesture of the curator and the artists with this project is both inspiring and disarming: but is it really the last bastion of resistance we have left?
The debut of Ghana in Arsenale is a definite highlight: it’s existential, light and at the same time deeply philosophical take on contemporaneity of the country in the context of changing ‘now’ is captivating. The three-channel video installation of John Akomfrah is showing the poetic force of nature, while Ibrahim Mahama’s and El Anatsui’s sculptural interventions touch upon the complex layered reality of contemporary Ghana dealing with post-colonial legacy that is persistent in the minds and setting up the new elites towards becoming the new oppressors. “Freedom”, the title of the pavilion project, is as ephemeral and unclear as it is always. However it is not the definition that is required to move ahead: but the making of a space where the right questions about futures can be asked. Without a doubt, this pavilion is a marvellous example of making this happen.
Lina Lapelyte, Vaiva Grainyte and Rugile Barzdziukaite. “Sun & See (Marina)”, 2019
The pavilion-winner of the Golden Lion is the one representing Lithuania. “Sun & Sea”, staged in the Venetian Arsenal (in the part of it which still has some connection to the former Serenissima’s military might), is an artificial beach created inside of the building with 2 floors. The second floor is meant to provide the observation platform. All of the actors playing the sunbathing crowd are actually opera singers who perform individual arias but also turn into the chorus. The happening lasts for the full opening hours of the pavilion, around 8 hours, with the singers sporadically rotating. You find yourself in an unusual opera: it is hard to make the decision to leave the installation before you spent there at least half an hour (incredible amount of time in comparison to the most of the things you see in Venice - I mentioned the attention span problem before). The libretto of the opera is mesmerisingly philosophical and mostly refers to the apocalypse coming upon us in the form of the climate change. “I cried so much when I learned that corals will be gone… I cried so much then I understood I am mortal, that my body will one day get old and wither. And I won’t see, or feel, or smell ever again…”. Apart of existential philosophy and political critique, they also sing about 3D printing, tanning, elections, fatigue, burnout, vacations and glitter. Although the project is definitely eye and ear catching, I would rather had presented the award to it in the context of the Biennale Teatro (taking place in Venice this year as well) as for the Biennale Arte we are aiming to praise the projects that are not available exclusively for the eyes of the previewing crowds or those who are privileged enough to be able to travel to Venice on specific dates when the full version of the spectacle is presented.
Together with Michal Murawski, Kasia Sobucka and Annie Jael Kwan, I myself co-curated the The Palace of Ritual in Palazzo Dona Brusa during the crazy preview days. We have presented the programme of performances, screenings and talks, where the concept of ‘the ritual’ and its function was addressed in relation of its perverting the political power potential. The academic and conceptual artist Alena Ledeneva, the author of the Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, presented three sculptural installations which embody the various transcultural strategies of power-holding and the danger that comes onto those who value the perfect power above all without realising the ephemerality of their grip on it. AVENIR INSTITUTE had presented in the form of lecture-performances The Penelopiad Project and The Pythian Games of Futures, which are delving into liberating Europe from the imaginary trap of singular vision of itself and open up potentialities for different outlook on the futures of power in the this cultural context.
Alena Ledeneva, Jasmina Cibic, Denis Maksimov & Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll. "The Palace of (Soft) Power", panel talk at The Palace of Ritual, 2019
The preview days of Venice Biennale are also used by growing number of other cities that stage their own spectacle. This year, Helsinki Biennale announced its launch there for 2020 with the activation of the island in the close proximity from Helsinki for the exhibition. In close geographical proximity, Riga Biennale announced its second edition to be opened in the same year. The first edition was curated by Greek Brussels-based curator Katerina Gregos to a critical acclaim. Mark your calendars art lovers and look up the the tickets to Venice this summer: we indeed now going through quite interesting times, and this edition of the Venice Biennale didn’t fail to grasp the multiplicity of the phenomena that we are anxiously swimming through.