Not So Great Expectations

Venice is synonymous with tourism. It has been a destination sought out and romanticised about for centuries and remains at the top of many a ‘bucket’ list. It is a city that has positioned itself to benefit from its historical and cultural significance but this may in many ways have contributed to its current state of decay by oversubscription. “Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.” As the American expatriate writer Henry James pointed out the expectations of Venice often differ somewhat from the actual experience. As I work my way through the hundred plus pavilions and exhibitions associated with this year's Biennale I ponder how many artists have used these ideas as a catalyst for their work.     

The Pavilion of Latvia with two exhibitions collectively titled Fragile Nature explore ideas of narrative and individual experience. Miks Mitre¯vics’ playful investigation of the sun demonstrates a rare insight into human nature. Entering a small room the visitor is presented with various dioramas reminiscent of a film-set in miniature. Projected backdrops of glistening water or blue skies, fans blowing tussock-like tufts and lights in a variety of colours are supported by makeshift tables held together with clamps. Figures cut out of photographs look longingly into the distance propped up by small piles of rocks, faux grass and sellotape. 

 

Miks Mitre¯vics’ from Fragile Nature

 

 

Miks Mitre¯vics’ from Fragile Nature 

 

It is a curious presentation made all the more interesting when you walk into the larger gallery space and realise that a series of postcard sized, wall mounted video works showing a range of holiday snaps are actually live feeds from the constructions in the previous room. This is highlighted when the gigantic form of another exhibition visitor walks through one of the ocean views interrupting the blissful image. Whether subconsciously or not Mitre¯vics’ has touched on the transient qualities of the Biennale’s host city. Aptly titled, this exhibition does not appear to be referencing an actual idea of the natural environment but more so it is a relationship to an invented experience that is the focus, an impression that is neither real nor fictional. For each visitor to the exhibition or indeed each tourist to Venice the perception of truth will be very individual and completely unlike the picture postcards in their heads.  

A few doors down is the Scotland Pavilion. On the second floor of the fading Palazzo Pisani overlooking the clustered rooftops of Cannaregio, is an exhibition by Martin Boyce. This show reflects or rather has No Reflections, as the exhibition title suggests, on associations between Dundee in Scotland and Venice, Italy. In producing this exhibition of sculptural and installation pieces, Boyce imagined what it was like to live in a place like Venice. Annotating the intricacies and foibles of a water based city which has changed little in hundreds of years and has definitely seen better days since it was considered a dominant power. Treating the exhibition space as a series of interconnected interior gardens, the artist explores the relationships of location and meaning by producing garden-like objects which could theoretically have significance in any city in the world. In the first room wax paper leaves become the detritus of millions of visitors scattered about raised concrete stepping stones reminiscent of garden features by the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa. A garden bench twists itself into a screen, no longer functional in either form, and a bird-box mounted on a wire mesh pedestal is trapped and useless on the wrong side of the glass windows.

 

 

Martin Boyce from No Reflections

 

 
Martin Boyce from No Reflections

 

 
Martin Boyce from No Reflections

 

Inspired by strange modernist mobiles created in 1925 by Jan and Joel Martel for an exhibition in Paris, Boyce has captured an overwhelming sense of “displacement and abandonment”, playing off the confusing and sometimes depressing dichotomies of Venice. Intending to take the exhibition back to Dundee Contemporary Arts following the end of the Biennale the artist “consider(s) the project as a chain of events, where the process of installing the show, seeing the work in the space and understanding how it functions is particularly relevant.”

It is in many ways a comment on being present in the final days of the Biennale that there is a hint of sadness in the air. The art in many ways attests to this impression. Following all the pomp and energy of the summer opening, many of the exhibitions and venues have lost their newness and gained a used and dusty veneer. It is more than just making farewells or lamenting the end of an experience, it is a particularly unsettling undercurrent, a realisation that this may be the last time you will see this place as it is. With all of its crumbling facades, flooded streets and dwindling locals Venice is changing and the Biennale may need to also alter its format in order to survive.

 

 

Dyddiau Du/Dark Days

One of the nice things about having time to spend in Venice is being able to see the several lengthy films included in this year's biennale. The UK’s representation is particularly film-heavy. England and Wales, for example, have produced beautiful, filmic works that are both well worth sitting through their 40 and 45 minutes respectively.

England's Steve McQueen has envisioned the giardini post-art. Emanating the eerie feeling of a stadium after a match, in this film, the giardini - evacuated - have been given over to a secretive world; human, animal, insect. The camera records with extreme attentiveness, layering a rich tapestry of shiny pebbles, confetti, leaves, and brightly-coloured insects. Huge ships suddenly appear, bizarrely, from behind trees, and the ground is covered with a band of thinly scouring Giacometti-like dogs that walk lightly among the piles of rubbish and leaves like shadowy spiders, barely touching the ground.

While McQueen's film takes the biennale's structures, both physical and imaginary, as subject matter, and is largely silent on any considerations of national representation, John Cale's work is an intimate confrontation with his home country, Wales. As the title, Dyddiau Du/Dark Days, alludes, the film suggests a fairly ambivalent bond. It is in turns both nostalgic and condemning. Building slowly between five screens, placed at awkward angles to each other in the cool dark of a disused brewery, its flickering, disjointed scenes show a ghost-like figure playing at an old upright piano; the floor of a disused slate quarry; Cale’s face contorted in effort as he climbs a Welsh mountainside. A soundtrack, aching, haunting, fades in and out. At times, the screens are left entirely blank.

Legendary for his part in the Velvet Underground, John Cale debuts as a visual artist with Dyddiau Du/Dark Days. The film, like McQueen’s, requires some staying power. Each screening is around 45 minutes in length. If you leave early, lulled into a false sense of security by certain wistful, quiet scenes, or overcome with frustration at its halting progress, you miss the sudden, brutal ending; the axis on which the film's underlying sense of unease turns.

John Cale's Dyddiau Du/Dark Days screened in a disused brewery on the island of Giudecca. The screen shots below are from the work.

Dreaming of the Vertigo - John Cale

Dyddiau Du Wales - John Cale

Maes-y-wern - John Cale

Send me away - John Cale

The making of Un-Pretty - John Cale

Some thoughts on the in-between-ness of Venice

Venice has long been attributed with a particularly in-between-like quality. Perhaps most consistently, it has been described as a gateway, or portal between East and West, inextricably linking European and Islamic worlds through trade and commerce at least since the 8th century. Venice might not have developed from a fishing village into the powerful maritime republic it became, had it not been for its strategic middle position in the trade routes importing profitable luxury goods from the East into Europe. 

As a thoroughfare for religious pilgrims, eighteenth and nineteenth-century scholars and aristocrats undertaking the 'Grand Tour' of Europe, and the vast throngs of tourists it attracts today, it has formed a temporary home to vast numbers of travellers. The travellers, of course, also form this Venice, this liminal place of heightened experience - this carneval or 'backpacking experience' - suspended temporarily in interregnum between the two bookends of routine, familiarity, home and the working year.

The more loquacious of them (from Lord Byron, Goethe, Proust to the Lonely Planet, and of course Art Review/Art Forum/Art Monthly, and one could add to the list Geoff Dyer's recent sharp observation of the jaded biennale tourist, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi), have penned myriad accounts in which a thousand Venices unfold in multiple configurations of the same story. As Erica Jong said about it, it is the 'city of mirrors, the city of mirages'.

Like any city, its in-between-ness continues beyond the specificities of trade economies and histories; a shifting identity that transmutes and is subject to the vagaries of each moment-by-moment as throngs of people move through it and as it passes through seasons and times of day.  Suspended betwixt and between, Piazza St Marco can at any one time take on a multitude of characteristics: early in the morning, during a period of 'acqua alta', it is an expanse of quiet water reflecting the surrounding architecture; mid-weekend, at mid-day, it bristles with the frenetic agendas of camera-wielding tourists. Yesterday as I passed through, it had become a stage set for a wedding shoot; it was unclear to me whether the wedding was real, or an elaborate staging, yet another layer in the multiple layers of representation comprising this city.

Below are a few images of various entrances and portals, found on my rambles through the city.

The eighteenth-century doorway of the Palazzo Fondazione Claudio Buzziol, the venue in which Francis Upritchard's work is exhibited

 
 
 Fabrice Gygi's crystal-like curtain hanging in the entrance to the off-site Swiss pavilion

 

Liam Gillick's hanging strips of soft coloured plastic at the German pavilion

A twisted dream-like evocation of 'door' in Ingmar Dragset's Nordic pavilion

 
 

A doorway in the Icelandic pavilion, leading onto sunlight and water beyond
 

Venice off-season

Venice off-season is a lovely thing. There is the excitement of 'acqua alta', there are far fewer tourists, and the city is bathed in a particularly mandarin-coloured light most evenings.

 

 

Having raced through as many pavilions as possible in June at the start of the Biennial, it feels luxurious to have the time to re-visit works, or to catch opportunities missed the first time round, and to see them in my own time, in ‘slow time’. One of the most interesting exhibitions I have seen the second time round, is a selection of works by the Serbian artist Braco Dimitrijevic at Ca’ Pesaro, one of the collateral events of the Biennial.  

In 1969 Dimitrijevic wrote, ‘There are no mistakes in history, the whole of history is a mistake’. In Dimitrijevic’s conception, time and history is an arbitrary force. Most that pass through it are erased indiscriminately and those that remain in human memory may do so by sheer accident. In the 1970s, Dimitrijevic himself became inscribed in art’s future histories with a series of works in which he acted as self-appointed arbiter of those whose names and faces will remain. An emergent artist at the time, he became known with his ‘Casual Passer-by’ works, in which he photographed unkown people from London’s streets and hung the resulting large-scale portraits in public sites, such as billboards and the facades of buildings.

Some of Dimitrijevic's more recent works are installed in the foyer of Ca' Pesaro. A large framed portrait of Franz Kafka sits at an angle in a little boat crammed with a collection of old leather shoes. Together, Kafka and the shoes set sail into the backwards and forwards flowing eddies of time past and time future. 

 

  
 

In the context of the Venice Biennale, Dimitrijevic’s work serves as a reminder of how we all participate in the construction of recognition and commemoration, and raises important questions as to the systems of legitimisation implicit within the structures of large-scale biennial-style exhibitions.

Upstairs at Ca’ Pesaro is a group exhibition titled after the brilliantly ghoulish 1973 Nicolas Roeg film Don’t Look Now, set in Venice.  The curator, Milovan Farronato, of the gallery Via Farrini in Milan, has placed a selection of contemporary works in seemingly arbitrary choreographies around and within the baroque and nineteenth-century works of Ca’ Pesaro’s historical collection.

Works run into and spin off each other in what to appear to be chance or entirely subjective configurations. A projection of green and yellow lights by Nico Vascellari is refracted in a set of mirrored panels and spills out onto the surrounding walls and over nineteenth-century busts in a room-size Gesamtkunstwerk.

 

 

 

A work by Paolo Gonato consists of a collection of damaged umbrellas that limp brokenly over the gallery floor, passing the sculptures and paintings of previous centuries like the straggling remains of a small army of tired and hungry insects.

 

If confusing and at time a little garish, the overall affect of the exhibition is, certainly, like the name-sake film, one of a feeling of estrangement, dislocation and lingering menace.

 

Meet the Venetians - Part 2

LUCIA VALLE

Venetian attendant for Judy Millar, Chiesa La Maddelena

Born: Venice, 1979 (Aquarius)

Lives: Cannaregio, Venice, Italy

Occupation: Church/Museum attendant

Political views: Liberal

Languages: Venetian, Italian, basic French, basic English

Lucia earned her Laurea in Cultural Heritage at Universita Ca Foscari. While she is currently employed as an attendant for many Venetian churches and museums, such as Museo Diocesano Sant’Appollonia, she is keen to rediscover her creativity working with ceramics and in sculpture. In time she would also like to curate and coordinate art exhibitions here in Venice. While Lucia was born in Venice, she still finds the city beguiling and unique, where unexpected encounters can be an every day occurrence. Travel is a priority, particularly to locations with vast open countryside and mountains to explore. Lucia believes there is a huge generation gap in Italy manifested by its political milieu and dominated by conservative Catholic ideology. She insists that the chasm is so wide that it is often difficult for the younger generation to have a voice, which she finds frustrating. This view is shared the majority of the Venetian attendants. Lucia’s interests are broad and eclectic, straddling the arts, sciences and cuisine...with the occasional Judy Garland movie thrown in for good measure.

 

MARIA MALTAURO

Venetian attendant for Judy Millar, Chiesa La Maddelena

Born: Vicenza (her mother is Venetian)

Lives: San Polo, Venice, Italy

Occupation: Church/Museum attendant

Political views: Complicated

Languages: Italian, English, basic French, basic German

Maria studied in Vicenza until tertiary level and subsequently moved to Venice where she enrolled at Universita Ca Foscari to gain her Laurea in Italian Literature. Currently, she is employed part time for IMAGO (a Venetian organization for churches and museums), as a guide. Maria is hoping to find a new job but laments that the opportunities in Venice are stagnant, which is why many Venetians who do not work in fields around tourism or arts heritage and conservation generally seek employment in other regions of Italy. While Maria has traveled extensively around Europe including England, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, Slovenia and France, she would love to visit New Zealand to hike in the mountains. Maria adores Venice for its tranquility and lack of cars, and the fact that the city still offers surprises even after living here for so many years. Maria has two brothers, one who resides in Vicenza and the other in Rome. She has a dog called Liz, two cats named Fatina and Fusolino, and three kittens called Spot, Tris and Rossolino. Maria is amused by the fact that at one time Venice had many resident cats, but since they were removed from the island, rats are evidently on the increase.

 

EMILIANO RAVAGNAN

Venetian attendant for Judy Millar, Chiesa La Maddelena

Born: Aviano, 1976 (Aquarius) (both parents are Venetian)

Lives: Mestre, Venice, Italy

Occupation: Church/Museum attendant

Political views: Pro Berlusconi

Languages: Italian, Venetian, basic English

Emiliano has been resident in Venice since he was born. At present he lives with his mother and has one sister who lives nearby them in Mestre. Emiliano gained his Laurea at Universita Ca Foscari in Computer Science and has been employed by IMAGO since April, working between church venues in and around the city. As well as being the only male in the team, Emiliano is also the sole Berlusconi supporter, much to the dismay of his Venetian colleagues. The quiet and tranquil aspect of Venice, despite the tourists, appeals to him, as does the slow pace of life. He is, however, greatly perturbed by the amount of litter that is generated every day as well as the magnitude of graffiti that seems to populate a vast majority of Venetian buildings. Emiliano takes his work very seriously and can often be seen studying the guide to La Maddelena church in earnest, intermittently reporting his findings with great enthusiasm and to the amusement of the New Zealand attendants.

The mafioso of Venezia?

 
Mafioso of Venezia?

If there is one thing you can be sure of on the winding streets of Venice, it is the presence of the gondolieri, lounging on bridges and trying to persuade people to take an 80 euro gondola ride. Whilst the tourists are often swayed by their cocky charm, most Venetians have less time and patience for the gondolieri. Why would this be? I decided to conduct some undercover research during my time in Venezia.

 

Suspicious activities...

So, it turns out there are all sorts of archaic rules and regulations surrounding the trade of the gondolieri. The whole business is very insulated and secretive, as you can only become a gondolier if your father was a gondolier, or your grandfather. Some Venetians refer to the gondolieri as 'the mafioso of Venice'! Justifiably so, it seems, as they don't have to pay the same tax rate as other Venetians, leaving the gondolieri laughing all the way to the bank and spending their euros on drawers full of stripey t-shirts and funny hats. 

 
 
Gondolieri 
 

Hmmmmm, so all this points to a very tightly controlled, closely knit fraternity who are not pestered by the Commune di Venezia. A couple of years ago a Venetian woman Giorgia Boscolo caused a great uproar when she expressed her desire to become a gondolier. Legitimately so, as her father (who is called Dante!) had been in the business. She finally proved to this masculine establishment, after many hours of training and testing, that she could row boats with the best of them.

Thanks to Ann Shelton for snapping this photo of Giorgia in action whilst she was in Venice:

Giorgia Boscolo, the first female gondolier of Venezia.

Meet the Venetians

Most would agree that one’s perspective of a city is enriched by having direct access to those who actually live in it, day to day. As attendants, we are so very fortunate to have this access in the form of our wonderful Italian co-attendants, all of whom are fiercely proud Venetians by birth and/or ancestry and all extremely smart and capable individuals. 

Since many of the visitors to the Biennale are locals, our Venetian cohorts are indispensable to us. In addition to performing daily duties alongside us at the venues, they are able to assist with communication breakdowns & re-direct lost and weary tourists/Biennale visitors, offer the occasional Italian language/history lesson, give recommendations to the best restaurants in the city far from the tourist hordes, engage in lively debate about the NZ exhibits and on occasion, wax lyrical about the complexities of political alignment within Italy. All with the utmost grace, professionalism, and with a smile. 

Present throughout the entire duration of the Biennale until it’s conclusion in November, our Italian colleagues will meet each of the NZ attendants for the duration of their post and must also say ‘Arrivederci’ on their departure. In other words, the Italians are running the endurance race, and we kiwi’s are the relay team alongside them. 

Over dinner last week the subject of farewells was ever present since the occasion marked the completion of Thomasin’s six-week term at the Biennale. Veronica, our remarkable Venetian/Sardinian/NZ host, lamented at the frequency of the NZ attendant turnover, explaining that close bonds are very quickly established and that for her and the girls who remain, departures still come as a shock. Acutely aware that I am already two weeks into my own term, I am mindful that my experience of Venice has been greatly impacted by meeting these girls and am resigned to the fact that when it is my turn to exit, there will be tears! 

But for now, I thought it was about time that our delightful Venetian whanau were introduced….

ANNA DE STEFANO

Venetian attendant for Francis Upritchard's Save Yourself, Palazzo Mangili-Valmarana

Born: Venice, 1988 (Taurus)

Lives: Lido, Venice, Italy

Occupation: Tertiary Student

Political views: Liberal

Languages: Italian, Venetian, Intermediate English, Basic German

Anna is currently a tertiary student studying for her Laurea (degree) in Art Restoration at Universita Ca Foscari. To enable her to undertake the highly specialized restoration work that is required in Venice, Anna intends to gain practical experience in either Rome or Florence following her graduation. Anna is a triplet and relayed an amusing story about the time she and her sister became local celebrities for dating a pair of twins. Anna would like to travel and is especially keen to visit London. She enjoys drawing and reading romance novels including literature by Jane Austen and Emily Bronte. Her pick of the Giardini is Tomas Saraceno from Argentina located in the Italian pavilion. 

MARZIA ORTOLANI

Venetian attendant for Francis Upritchard's Save Yourself, Palazzo Mangili-Valmarana

Born: Venice, 1988 (Leo)

Lives: San Polo, Venice, Italy

Occupation: Tertiary Student

Political views: Liberal

Languages: Italian, Basic Venetian, Intermediate English, Basic French

Marzia is studying for her Laurea in Art Conservation at Universita Ca Foscari. Like Anna, she intends to work abroad or in a larger city such as Rome or Milan for experience and eventually settle back in Venice to raise a family. Marzia’s maternal family originates from Southern Italy. Marzia is grateful that she has been raised in Venice and considers it rare to find a place where you can walk the streets alone at night without fear of harassment. She is fervent and liberal in her political views and is concerned that the youth of Venice are being overlooked in favor of economic gain through tourism. Venetians, especially young students, are slowly being pushed out of their city, since the housing and rent has become so inflated as a result of foreign demand for summer vacation houses and investment rentals for tourists. Marzia’s favorite authors include Milan Kundera and Dino Buzzati. Her favourite city is Rome and she would most like to visit New York. She owns a dog called Febe and is fiercely unapproachable before her breakfast has been consumed.

ANNA DAL BARGO

Venetian attendant for Judy Millar's Giraffe-Bottle-Gun, Chiesa La Maddelena

Born: Brazil (both parents are Venetian), 1991 (Aries)

Lives: Piazzale Roma, Venice, Italy

Occupation: Secondary School Student

Political views: Liberal

Languages: Italian, Basic Venetian, French

Anna is in her final year of secondary school, ‘Franchetti’ in Mestre. She is studying in the Classical School for Humanistic subjects (which includes Latin, Greek, Italian and English languages and literature) to which she transferred after completing two years of Scientifica (Science) school. Anna hopes to study medicine and psychology at the University of Padua. She is currently reading the Italian neoclassical author, Ugo Foscolo, a writer of similar stature and philosophy to Goethe. Anna plays the piano, flute and guitar and enjoys writing short stories and plays. She is particularly interested in developing narratives around the psychological transition from childhood to adulthood. Anna is currently working on a marvelous short story that gives life to the characters in Frances Upritchard’s exhibition. We eagerly await its publication!

Next blog: Maria Maltauro, Emiliano Ravagnan & Lucia Valle

End of the affair...

Being at the back end of the attendant schedule has its merits – the average temperature is more forgiving heading into the European fall and while the archetypal cobbled streets still heave under the weight of tourist flocks, the pedestrian traffic has eased somewhat following the crescendo that peaks during the mid-summer vacation high season. 

The down side is that by late September, pickings diminish slightly in terms of sourcing content for our blog. Previous attendants have accurately conveyed a sense of daily life in Venice, from navigating one’s way throughout the maze of crowded Venetian alleys, and sound musings upon the various Biennale pavilions on offer, to the fabulous produce markets and the finer intricacies of selecting the perfect gelato. Finding a topic that hasn’t already been covered can pose a challenge. 

However, what struck me quite rapidly in my first week of being resident in Venice (yes, aside from the frenzied plethora of sightseers and Kodak moments at every turn) is a dynamic tension between the ephemeral and the permanent. That while a transmutable disposition pervades the city’s arterial routes, characterized by the constant flow and circulation of people and water, there is a sense of timelessness that exists, augmented of course by the physical presence of the city itself – the dominance of the enduring materials of stone, mortar and marble that form it’s streets and architecture, encasing you on all sides. (Coming from an island swathed in green, the contrast is jolting and we kiwi’s tend to seek out refuge in the few concealed parks known mostly to the locals). 

But while Venice’s transient populace reinvents itself daily, the city itself remains a faithful, enduring entity. Indeed, Venice’s history as a contested site coveted for its strategic position as a major trading route, has seen numerous territorial rivalries played out over the centuries between bordering regions and from further afield, the Lomards, Turks, Dalmatians, Austrians, French and Spanish. It seems that still, even now, everyone wants a piece of Venezia and many of her passing suitors must at some point end the affair.

And so I leave you with a fond farewell to Thomasin, my departing flat mate and chef extraordinaire, accompanied by an amusing observation made by one of the Venetian attendants after I had asked her how, as a Venetian, she felt about her city being besieged by an endless torrent of admirers – 

‘Venice is like a woman, she is tired and stressed and needs a holiday herself!’

Well said Anna! 

Tourism 2009

I wonder if there is a part of Venice which hasn't been photographed? It seems unlikely. Every day the city is consumed by thousands of tourists capturing and re-capturing the city in photos, like flocks of hungry birds pecking away. I have spoken with the Venetian attendants that we work with about how they feel about the tourists. They are mostly resigned to their presence in their city. Indeed, 50% of the workforce in Venice work to support the tourist trade, so there is a symbiosis occurring in this crumbling city. However, after 5 weeks in Venice, considering myself somewhat of a local, I sometimes just want to tell them, 'Go and look at your own city! And stop looking at this one!'

San Marco Piazza is a web of people taking pictures of every part of the square. Seeing this activity on a daily basis makes one kind of allergic to taking photos, except of other people taking them:

 

 

 

Here's Boris Groys on the effects of contemporary tourism on the modern city:

"Tourism monumentalizes a city. The gaze of the passing tourist transforms relentlessly fluid, incessantly changing urban life into a monumental image of eternity. The growing volume of tourism speeds up this process of monumentalization. We are now witnesses to a sheer explosion of eternity in our cities. Even when you go, for example, to New York and visit the South Bronx and see drug dealers shooting each other (or at least looking as if they are about to), such scenes are imbued with the dignified aura of monumentality. The first thing that strikes you is yes, that’s how things always have been here, and that’s how they will stay—all these colorful personalities, picturesque ruins and danger looming at every corner. Later, you might read in the papers that this district is due to be “gentrified,” and your reaction would be one of shock and sadness, similar to what you would feel upon hearing that the Kölner Dom or the Eiffel Tower were to be demolished to make way for a department store."

What is especially monumental in Venice at the moment is the advertising which is currently covering the Doge's Palace and Bridge of Sighs. Huge swathes of advertising are smothered across the facade of the building, apparently contributing to the costs of the restoration work which is being undertaken. These costs is easily accounted for by the innumerable photographs which are taken of these giant billboards every day and sent all around the world. I think they are advertising sunglasses or necklaces? Evidently the Commune di Venezia's strict rules about preserving the picturesque views of Venice are able to be swayed when there is a bit of capital involved.

I risked my life amongst the tourists for these pictures:

 

 

Biennale within a Biennale within a Biennale

On a free day recently I set off for Giudecca, a small island in the Venetian lagoon, in search of the Palestinian and Welsh pavilions. Because Giudecca it is not connected directly to the main areas of the Venice it is much quieter and less covered in tourists. When I went there on a Sunday there were Venetians doing normal things, like going to church and doing their shopping. Sometimes Venice feels a bit like a theme park so it was nice to see these normal activities taking place.

2009 is the first time Palestine has had official representation at Venice, and the exhibition is one of the ‘collateral events’ which operate alongside the national pavilions. The show, 'Palestine c/o Venice', includes a mixture of established and younger Palestinian artists and is housed in an ex-convent down a series of narrow alleyways in Guidecca. I spent over an hour there, finding the work not only rigorous and challenging but also intent on dismantling the epistemology of the Venice Biennale and the power relations it seeks to support.

Emily Jacir’s project, Stazione, brings into focus the fraught relationship between Venice and the Arab world. Jacir has translated the names of the numerous vaporetto stops on the Grand Canal into Arabic and written these alongside the Italian names. The influence of Byzantium and the Arab world is everywhere in Venice, from small architectural influences in the windows of Palazzi to the grand, fading Byzantine opulence of the San Marco’s Basilica.

Jacir’s obvious intervention into the public transport system, and suggestion of an alternative urban design, seems to have been too much for the Commune de Venezia. When I visited this show there was a sign stating that the work had ‘been cancelled’. There were some language difficulties with the venue attendant, so I was unable to ascertain the reasons why, but it seems likely given the stringent rules of public signage in Venice that Jacir’s suggestions of cultural exchange, both past and present, weren’t taken to enthusiastically by the local authorities.

Khalil Rabah’s project 3rd Riwaq Biennale 2009, A Geography: 50 Villages took the form of the press information for a supposed Palestinian Biennale, to take place in 50 villages scattered across the fragmented country of Palestine. Each site, Rabah writes, ‘will be in partnership with local institutions and communities…and will not feature any large-scale, central exhibitions.’ Rabah hijacked the Palestinian pavilion at the Venice Biennale as a space to promote the 3rd Riwaq Biennale. Set up in the exhibition space is a pile of flyers, postcards from each site, and set up of chairs and some video footage.

Images of Khalil Rabah's project 3rd Riwaq Biennale 2009, A Geography: 50 Villages:

I am still trying to ascertain whether or not this proposed Palestinian Biennale is actually taking place, or whether or not this is a propositional gesture by Rabah. I’m am beginning to suspect the latter. A Geography: 50 Villages highlights the power structure of the contemporary Biennale, which necessitates a centralized city to house such an event. How does one hold a Biennale is a country with such a complicated geographic and political situation as Palestine?

This work got me thinking of a future where all countries used other Biennales solely as an opportunity to advertise their own nation’s Biennale. It would be like a traveling sideshow, each site simply being an advertisement for another curatorial concept, or list of big name artists, which would never eventuate because the participating countries would co-opt the site for their own promotional purposes. This Borges’ library-like arrangement is not entirely unlike the present, where nation states jostle for artistic supremacy and exposure in an increasingly crowded global exhibition schedule of Biennales and events.

One conception of Borges' infinite library:

 

More information about Palestine's representation at Venice can be found here.