“An opening to the world”
“the Biennale in Venice has more centers than Europe.”
“the Word, Nature, and Theatre. So I would sum up this year’s edition of the venice biennale.”
“It is one of the strict preaching of the whole event. In the Giardini, in the main building, the Stadium has been built. A place for performance but, above all, the so-called oratory where Karl Marx’s Capital.”
“are read by the two actors several hours each day.”
“the Place, the big stage and gradängerna, totally dominate their environment: how to go will be there, and where they are seeping the sounds out. The capital will be an answer at the last biennial’s emphasis on psychoanalysis (when asked among other things, C G Jung’s pictures).”
“the Starting point is thus, as then, entrenched in an ideal world born in the 1800s. Though this time emphasized industrialization, colonialism, brutal capitalism, and resistance.”
“Many works dealing more or less explicitly about work, activism, protest. The artistic director Okwui Enwesor has, not unexpectedly, got into more artists from the african continent and slightly fewer middle-aged white men.”
“Apart from the representationsfrågor – it is as usual short on female artists, of all backgrounds – as has Enwesor built magnificent theatrical and next to the ceremonial room.”
“I Giardini comprises the entrance hall of the arte povera artist Fabio Marius huge ladder up to the decorated ceiling. This possible Jacob’s ladder has its counterpart in the far away, where Thomas Hirschhorn created one of their kaosrum and even seem to have crushed the roof. In fact the Roof off is the energy where Marius ladder is the humorous elegance. Both are expressing vanvördighet.”
“the Way through the building is held together by these clear aspiring works. Add the reading of the Capital and the main exhibition to be scaled to something of a trade show.”
“One of the finest rooms changing, however the tone. Rirkrit tiravanija with his Demonstration drawings are just what they are called. Quite small, meticulous drawings with the motif of the demonstration. Photographs Tirivanija have hired a few thai artists to draw.”
“the Drawings are very convincing, the time spent is a manifestation of the subject’s and the participants’ strength. There is an even pallor that both tones down, reduces, and unites. At the same time as the entire global power structure even in the art world freed by Tiravanija has outsourced the actual work.”
“the Work is at the center of many works, particularly if you leave the main exhibition and to the other pavilions and exhibition venues. But it’s mostly the question of documentary depictions of work, the visible, usually male-coded work.”
“When Jimmie Durham, far away from the main exhibition drill down in the structure, in the work that gets the city to work, the result is delicate objects and sculptures, pipes, glass. The work as a present absence.”
“If the main exhibition in the Giardini is the Word, as is the Arsenale Theatre. A ceremonial form of konstteater, where the old båtvarvets huge room built on to the kyrklik treskeppighet. Performance and loud opera stands against the museum, which stands dominating the large room of the collective, encyclopedic knowledge. The furry – Abdel Abdessemeds menacing ”knivbuketter” – a purely pacifist ending in Sarah Szes The last garden, hundreds of metres away.”
“So built this year’s biennial: rytmiserat, cohesive, elegant. But the title All the World’s Futures is hardly relevant. We are rather still on a documentary and samtidsanalyserande level. If there is no future, for it makes it in the part works, so is the dystopian.”
“Possibly we can rejoice that it is everyone’s, that the keys of the successful japanese pavilion (Chiharu Shiotas The Key in the Hand). The whole world is probably in place. And it is not Europe which is its single centre.”
“In The union of fire and water, with the works of Almagul Menlibayeva and Rashad Alakbarov which interacts with the well-decorated Palazzo Barbaro, drawn parallels between Venice and Baku. In My East is your West, it is even more robust meetings, between Venice and Lahore, when the artists Shilpa Gupta and Rashid Rana, together, create the worlds of european art history and the possible journeys of the east.”
“most concrete is the icelandic pavilion, which this year housed in the church of Santa Maria della Misericordia, utstädad and nydekorerad to the mosque. This konstmoské have been made in the collaboration between artist Christoph Büchel and the muslim group in Venice, in the exhibition serve as the assembly and prayer rooms.”
“It has already been raised voices that the mosque must be closed for safety reasons – the threat is expected to come from both the extreme islamists and the usual military potential of the groups. Sadly, the room is nice and the conciliatory approach, important in times of ever-increasing tensions.”
“the venice biennale is an ever expanding organism. In the years of politics has returned – and the Swedish artists. More than in many years to participate in the main exhibition: Petra Bauer, Carsten Höller, Meriç Algün Ringborg, Runo Lagomarsino.”
“And in the Swedish pavilion, housed in the Arsenale, is a retrospective with Lina Selander. Framed by huge drapes tie it in to the focus sense of theatricality and Selanders consistent work a little bit at the side of the holocaust the mainstream makes her art so completely right in relation to so many other works at the biennial.”
“One of the biennial’s most poignant works is Vertigo, the Sea, a film triptych by John Akomfrah. This woven Moby-Dick together with the flyktingkatastrofer in the world, the Mediterranean all dödsbåtar with the boat people from Vietnam, with the oceans beauty, and the fishermen’s hunger. A challenging film that does not compromise with the poetry. And one of the many works that revels in Nature. In the one where the dying beauty that only a real filming nature can provide.”
“the Word, the Theatre and the Nature – I did not know better I would think that the biennial is really about escape. Both the words and the theatrical is a kind of protection, fetishes besvärjer an increasingly more challenging world. And nature, yes, it might have the answers. Though I have never seen so many burnt tree trunks in a biennial before.”
“All the World’s Futures”
“the 56 th international biennale”
“Venice, 22 november”
