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On
50th Venice Biennale:
Artwork Makes The Everyday Life of the Viewer Easy
by Beral MADRA
Turkish
Pavillion at 50th Venice Biennale
This opportunity of being on the same platform - even
if it is an illusion- makes the Venice Biennale the most
sought art place to be in. This year even Iran, which
is one of the most introvert countries in the world, acquired
a pavilion and realised its first participation in the
21st century.
As
a hyper exhibition of artworks under the grandiose title
of Dreams and Conflicts: The Viewers Dictatorship, the
50th Venice Biennale is fiercely decisive for the 70's
and 80's protagonists and wide open to the expectations
of young generation artists, designers and architects.
By placing renown/unknown, rich/poor, optimist/pessimist,
compassionate/cold-blooded artists from three generations
and different socio-political and economical backgrounds,
side by side, the curators of the Arsenale shows have
broken the rules of hierarchy within the international
art-world and arranged a confusing track for the viewer.
However, the remains of the old rules were still to be
observed in the group exhibition in the Italian Pavilion, where
there is that conservative, subtle and balanced transitions
from one artist to the other. The everlasting modernist
order of pavilions in the Giardini seeks to restore the
damaged sense of equilibrium of the viewer. The conflict
between the new pursuit for modernist aesthetics and the
post-modern, contaminating everyday simulations furnished
the biennale with a chaotic structure, which could be
exciting, if it was consciously made. Evidently,
it is an almost impossible task to orchestrate more than
60 curators (pavilions, arsenale, extra 50) to a more
or less harmonious tune… The viewer on the other
side, coming to Venice for the opening days, was not able
to consume the event (8 exhibitions in the Arsenale,
30 pavilions in the Giardini, 20 pavilions in the city
and the 50 Extra) in its entity..
In Venice Biennale, due to its national representations,
artists from countries with obscure political and economic
infrastructures have to breathe side by side with artists
from well-fare democratic countries with omnipotent culture
industries. A fact, which is a challenge, when articulated
in an intelligent manner, but also requires a certain
resistance from these artists. The flagrant manifestations
of artists from the Asian territories profoundly reflected
this urge for a better recognition, by elaborating the
content and form of their works more than substantive.
Very annoying were the performances and images of some
of these artists, playing the role of the colonized or
saluting self-orientalization by articulating the traditional,
folkloric and tourism elements, such as attractive traditional
garments, Zen meditation and accentuation of Asian or
African identity. The lack of critical thinking and anachronism
of some of the artists from the post-periphery is also
evident in the artworks that are only dealing with the
material to
create mystical reflections on nature and life or exploiting
it with decorative connotations. The numbers of the video-works
were reduced in favor of paintings, evidently as a growing
consensus between the curators and the art market. No
doubt selected with care, but once more, the videos were
the disputable in their form and content all over the
biennale. The border between the journalistic documentary,
narration, caricaturist commentary and conceptual work
was blurred in many video-works and installations.
On the other hand, this possibility of being on the same
platform – even if it is an illusion- makes the
Venice Biennale the most sought art place to be in. This
year even Iran, which is one of the most introvert countries
in the world, acquired a pavilion and realized its first
participation in the 21st century.
Every year Venice is becoming more and more vulnerable;
the heath, the
humidity, the excessive biennale crowds induced the
working conditions
and the infrastructure of the city. Customs was blocked,
transportations were slow, electricity broke and after
all the Venetians were in agony. Yet, they had to yield
to the difficulties, because of the enormous income the
biennale provides for the city every two year.
The adventure of the participant country, which has no
pavilion in the Giardini, starts with searching a space
in the city, preferably on the main arteries of the labyrinth
to catch the attention of the international art experts
and the press. Available are palaces and churches with
rents between 15000 to 60000euro for six months. The next
step is to provide accommodation for the artists and the
exhibition crew, a choice between fairly expensive hotel
rooms and apartments. For example for our group of five
we had to pay around 6000 euro for 10 days of accommodation.
The transport of the works, the production and distribution
of printed material, the production of works, the installation
costs in the exhibition space, the maintenance of the
exhibition etc. are exhausting the modest budgets of the
countries with obvious economic deficiencies. Yet, for
many Venetian individuals and groups, this burden has
become a flourishing business.
12th of June, when the biennale was opened to the press
and media, the exhibitions in the Arsenale were 40% unfinished.
The crowd, some among them barefoot and nearly all with
fans in the hands, was streaming from exhibition to exhibition
in the Corderie, where the magnificent space was divided
to claustrophobic sections with white walls. It is hard
to understand; after all it has been discussed about the
transmission between the space and the artwork, that curators
and artists can sacrifice the grandeur of a historical
space to the precarious existence of the artwork on white
walls. Being intrusive, I witnessed how hastily
the experts and the journalists were looking at the artworks;
practically three or four days are not enough to look
at the 400 artists exhibiting in different venues in Venice.
So, the experts and the journalists have no possibility
to discover something by themselves but to follow the
rules and look at
the artist already known and supported by well-established
galleries, dealers, art critics and curators.
The ecstatic - not to say hysteric - environment of the
opening days is obviously an outcome of the art system,
born in the late modernism and became a self-consuming
grotesque in post-modernism. The actors of modernism were
the artists creating ideologies; today the actors, favoring
the system linked to the global capitalism, are manipulating
the position of the artists according to the requirements
of the network. Within this network, the viewer is submissive,
silent and confused.
Looking to the 8 exhibitions in the Arsenale, one can
see the scheme of the network. The artists of the exhibitions
who can never come side by side in the real life (most
of them probably have never met each other) seek here
equal recognition. Have they ever discussed with each
other the concept, installation and relation of the works
and the exhibition?
Prominent and protagonist artists of the recent past such
as Art&Language, Gilbert&George, John Baldessari,
Anselm Kiefer, Michelangelo Pistoletto,
Roman Opalka and renown architects such as Rem Koolhas,
Araki Isozata,
Hasan Fathy have accepted to exhibit with completely unknown
names and
newcomers in an environment where there is no inner dialogue
and coherence. Their "noble" modernist works
are put in collation with works that are articulating
everyday life realities and trivialities that have got
off the rails. Seems to be an interesting turn in the
history of contemporary art!
Utopia Station, at the furthest end of the Arsenale, is
a mega-neo-fluxes show and the tail of the Biennale, as
the rigidity of the national pavilions dissolves here
into free debate and gains some political vision. It also immediately reminded me Progetto
Oreste Uno, a creative initiative of a large group of
artists of Italy coordinated by Cesare Pietrouisti,
Pino Boreste and many others during the 48th Venice Biennale
in the center of the Italian Pavilion. The fact
that, interdisciplinary debate, process demonstration,
employment of mass media technologies and strategies can
reach larger and broader public, created a new generation
of artists with one foot on the high art, the other on
the mass media.
Here, I will not write in depth about the pavilions of
USA (an overloaded and repeated imagery of black identity),
Great Britain (I haven’t seen such a decorative
pavilion before), France (sterile and distanced), Germany
(would Kippenberger install this underground vent into
the pavilion, when he had seen the last global war?) Japan
and Korea (always in favor material and technology), as
these will be reviewed extensively in newspapers and art
journals extensively.
The most striking event in the biennale was the two "closed"
pavilions. The pavilion of Spain was sealed to access
by Santiago Sierra, with a crudely made wall behind the
main entrance and by two policeman (!) in attendance at
the back door, allowing only the viewers with the Spanish
passport to enter. As Spain is a member of EU, even the
access of EU citizens was restricted! This is an artwork
with effective political protest on what is happening
in EU and Spain concerning the emigration
politics. The closed Venezuela Pavilion is not an artwork,
but an act of censor by the Ministry of Culture of Venezuela.
One of the censored artists Pedro Morales insisted on
coming to Venice to protest (please refer to (www.pedromorales.com;
www.cityrooms.net; www.orinokia.com). In remarkable juxtaposition
as artwork and reality, these metaphorically and factually
sealed pavilions, do not only cast a doubt on the power
of art, artwork and the artist within the state apparatus
of the democracies and within the free forum of the biennale,
but also on the role of the viewer, who is inactively
watching the ambiguity.
It is difficult to take a distance and annotate the works, I
have seen in three days. Bonami's intention to reflect
a wide range and variety of contemporary art production
became an accomplishment, so that one can neither track
the statements of the curators of the international exhibitions
nor find a consensus between the pavilions. Within the
complexity of the biennale I could discriminate and categorize
some facts:
- There is a significant contradiction between the artworks
of the well-fare Europe and USA artists and the artists
of the rest of the world:
The former are tranquil and latent and transformed art
into a stratagem (for example Bruno Gironcoli in the Austrian
Pavilion, Sylvie Eyberg and Valerie Mannaerts in the Belgian
Pavilion, Jean-Marc Bustamante in French Pavilion, Candida
Höfer in German Pavilion, Ruri in Iceland Pavilion,
Little Warsaw in Hungarian Pavilion); the are in
emergency and crisis and use art as a force (for example
Sora Kim& Gimhongsok in The Zone of Urgencey,
Ratomi Fani-Kayode in The Faul Lines).
The memory of contemporary art plays its game too frequently...
Since Jean Clairs Biennale genetic deformations or the
post-human representation has been totally consumed and
almost lost its excitement. Patricia Piccini's silicone
creatures in the Australian Pavilion, Maurizio Cattelan's
robot Charlie, Charles Ray's Female Figure and Berlinde de
Bruyckere's "the black horse" in "Delays
and Revolution" (Bonami& Birnbaum) are being
chased by the phantoms of the works of the Chapman
Brothers, Ron Mueck, Katherina Sieverding (Rat King) and
Kiki Smith. Or, David Hammons' bronze Buddha’s
may pray for safety (with safety pin on a string in between
them), but this has been done before many times by Nam
June Paik (since 1974)…Haven't we seen enough cars/trucks
before, for example Wim Delvoye's Cement Truck,
Soo-Ja Kim "Cities on the Move in the 48th
Biennale ? Alfredo Juan's stainless steel jeep and Damien
Ortega's decomposed VW, even with convincing concepts,
look like surfeit examples.
-
There were two significant panel discussions during
the biennale. The second version of Venice Agendas,
organized by Audio Arts, London, Nuova Icona, Venice,
Wimbledon School of Art, London, Cardiff School of Art
&Design (UWIC), in association with the commissioners
of Wales and Scotland, and supported by the British Council
took place in Metropole Hotel. To three breakfast sessions,
dealing with the issues and questions such as "Biennale
in a new century", "The new and recent presences
at the Biennale", and "Is the Biennale 'a charming
anachronism' in danger of sinking?" prominent representatives
of various institutions and free lance curators were invited
to contribute.
In fact, aside from the main pavilion, with the three
of the new presences, Scotland with the exhibition "Zenomap"
in Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, Wale's exhibition in
the ex-Birrerie in Giudecca and The Henry Moore Foundation
exhibition "Stopover" in the newly restored
Convento dei Santi Cosma and Damiano on the Giudecca,
Great Britain was the most ambitious participant of the
Biennale. This extensive presence reflects the apparent
decentralization and independence of regional art production
and management as well as a fruitful competition between
the institutions. The two Giudecca venues were the most
charming and suitable places among the places that can
be acquired in Venice. These exhibitions were strategically
highlighted with rich receptions and parties. This
is another sign that the sanctity of the pavilion politics
are being critically exploited by the new generation curators
and artists.
As to the question, whether the Biennale is a sinking
ship, one could say that it is rather drifting than sinking.
Drifting in the stormy global politics and economy waters.
Looking back to the Biennale of 80's and early 90's, when
the milieu was still naïve, idealistic and romantic,
the last biennale tend to be shrewd, sarcastic, an market-oriented
with the sophisticated opening days visitor profile.
However, the Arsenale shows, among them particularly the
Utopia Station, with works of political content and statements
may stir an argument among the protagonist
intellectuals of the world, the biennale in its entirety
seems to be powerless to resist the severe political agenda
of the world. After all, at a time when on the political
and economical level, a new border are being drawn between
the regions, religions and cultures the Biennale (and
all other multicultural exhibitions) aim to break the
borders, at least in their concepts and contents! This
task requires an effective theoretical and practical reciprocation
and exchange from its components.
Two grand scale exhibitions are being held in Praque and
Klosterneuburg to accentuate this reality. Organized by
Giancarlo Politi and Helena Kontova, editors of Flash
Art magazine, together with Milan Knizak and Tomas Vlcek,
directors of the National Gallery in Prague, the inaugural
edition of the Prague Biennale aims to create a pluralistic
vision of contemporary art. In this new biennale the concepts
we are very familiar with "peripheries become the
center,” and "dissolution of the
dichotomy between periphery and center " are going
to be articulated by a large group of curators.
The other more accentuated event is Blood & Honey-
Future's in the Balkans is
curated by Harald Szeemann in Klosterneuburg. Sponsored
by The Essl Collection 73 artists from Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Bulgaria, Kosovo, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova,
Romania, Slovenia, Turkey and Serbia-Montenegro will exhibit
their work on an area of 3,500 m2. The significant aim
of this exhibition has been declared as "to
awaken western sensitivity to the existence of this cultural
landscape".
What I can deduct from these actions is that the international
contemporary art front is slowly approaching Middle East
and Near Asia!
To the other forum, CEI (Central European Initiative)
www.ceinet.org organized by Trieste Contemporanea
Committee www.tscont.ts.it under the auspices of
Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in collaboration
with the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice and supported
by CEI, Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia and Beba
Foundation, directors, experts and curators from Yugoslavia,
Poland, Lithuania, Moldova, Hungary, Ukraine, Czech Republic,
Croatia, Latvia, Slovenia, Romania, Russia, Macedonia,
Turkey and Italy were invited. The ongoing fragility in
the infrastructure and networking of the contemporary
art institutions because of the economic and political
deficiencies and instabilities was the main topic of this
forum. After plenary sessions and workshops a declaration
was signed by
the participants, calling support from governments and
international
organizations in the form of continuous structural and
financial contributions, stressing the autonomy and freedom
of creativity from any type of political pressure and
instrumentalization and accentuating the necessity of
exchange programs and partnership projects. It should
not be overlooked that the presence of CEI countries in
the Biennale after the wall, has immensely contributed
to the totality as well as to the regeneration of the
picture of contemporary art production in Europe.
What should also not be overlooked in this years Biennale
were the projects and products of various work-shop for
the improvement of the urban and civil infrastructures
of the city; a refreshing attempt to activate the engagement
of the local and international viewer. The regeneration
of the Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee, The
Cord, the spatial connection of the exhibitions with a
200m long steel cylinder created by a group of architects
( Archea Associati) and The Artificial Reserve, a project
coordinated by Cesare Pietroiusti with the students of
the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice were some of these
new presentations.
I would like to go back to my catalogue text and examine
the viewer's position in this mega-show. The ideologies
of art maintain their function as being a part of social
life and the critical conscious of the society, and artists
face the situation in which patterns for orientation and
action of the past no longer work more than the society.
They are the ones who find new options and actions to
provide answers for everyday life conflicts and major
emergencies. With Paul Vanguiem 's words "Everyday
life always produces the demand for a brighter light,
if only because of the need which everyone feels to walk
in step with the march of history. But there are more
truths in twenty-four hours of a man's life than in all
the philosophies."
Despite all the generalization, standardization and totalization
in the world, these twenty-four hours still makes all
the difference within the supremacy of the corporate economy
and global politics. The bloodstained pages of the
last decade, 11th September and its savage outcome is
the production of everyday activity of the human being,
which paradoxically has imprisoned and poisoned his/her
everyday life. It is a perfect vicious circle! The artists,
evidently aware of the eminence of it, approaches these
twenty-four hours in detail, itemize and particularize
the facts with his/her inevitable sophistication and self-contempt;
the magnitude of this task can be seen in the images of
desperation, emergency, clamor and transgression. The
viewer generously but cunningly gives the artist the right
to intervene into the minute details of the common life,
and the authority to cry out his message to the world
from a headland, to make him an accomplice.
_
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E-mail to Beral Madra: btmadra@turk.net
©
Beral Madra / June 2003
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