It was certainly the conference which caused the biggest interest among the visitors so far. There was a line of people waiting to come in, but not all of them were able to do it.
The performance started with a couple playing check on a stage, followed by Ono's love sounds, her breaking the chair by saying "no one will tell me what to do", her reflects on the public with a mirror and, with words "are you still walking on a thiny ice" she closed the first part of the performance.
The second part consisted out of two film projections. One was a musical one to which she danced and the second was focused mainly on her life history. The odd thing in this second film was that it was so strongly related to her life in general. We saw the first pictures of her life, her childhood, the stories about her parents, etc. She was attentively describing each scene. The narration followed chronologically her life, shows she did, statements she made, mainly focused on the idea of spreading around the world the words "I love you". It ended up with the song of John Lennon "Imagine" and their kiss. All the time during a projection Yoko Ono was siting on a chair, turning her back at the public.
There was not too much of discussion about her work with the curator David Ross. She basically answered the questions asked by the public, and shortly after it was over.
People could take a piece of a broken vase that was left on a stage and keep it for ten years, when they were suppose to gather again and recreate the same vase.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Architecture and narrative- L.Gillick, A.Ogut
Today's rather refreshing conference was held between Liam Gillick, British artist presenting German pavilion, and Ahmet Ogut, Kurdish artist presenting Turkish pavilion. The discussion was coordinated by Tim Griffin, the editor of Artforum.
The peculiarity of this conference was the decision to confront precisely these two artists. Usually, we have almost immediate association of Gillick with the rest of the relational artist. But this time, confronting his work with the one of Ogut's, gave a new and refreshing prospective to his art practice. This was also a great opportunity to point out the importance of Ogut's work, for he's still little know in the western art scene. The fact that the whole auditorium was completely full was just one of the indicators how much was interesting this kind of confrontation.
The main discussion was about the importance of pavilions, buildings, spaces in general and their relavance in a creation of ones identity. Can they be observed as a carriers of doubled identity, as Ogut would put it. According to him, when seen trough the eyes of narrative, the identity of pavilions could be thought of as the objects in themselves or as the artist in a subjective role. On the other hand Gillick, in his work, was taken by the idea of a "pavilion that was never built". He was trying to rethink about the structure and the concept of the given and rather complex space. As he puts it: "I still wanted to fight the building without talking about the things we already know about." To use a given space, along with its historical implications, in all its potentiality but by narrating, in a same time, about its present conditions form a different prospective. For Ogut "if you rebuilt a building than it becomes melancholy". It's not by chance that his buildings have frozen a few seconds before their irreversible destruction. By doing so he suspends time, space and our memory engraved in them. Even dough it might be seen as rather private reflections one could have, that intimate memory spreads easily into a collective one. As a silent hunter.
The peculiarity of this conference was the decision to confront precisely these two artists. Usually, we have almost immediate association of Gillick with the rest of the relational artist. But this time, confronting his work with the one of Ogut's, gave a new and refreshing prospective to his art practice. This was also a great opportunity to point out the importance of Ogut's work, for he's still little know in the western art scene. The fact that the whole auditorium was completely full was just one of the indicators how much was interesting this kind of confrontation.
The main discussion was about the importance of pavilions, buildings, spaces in general and their relavance in a creation of ones identity. Can they be observed as a carriers of doubled identity, as Ogut would put it. According to him, when seen trough the eyes of narrative, the identity of pavilions could be thought of as the objects in themselves or as the artist in a subjective role. On the other hand Gillick, in his work, was taken by the idea of a "pavilion that was never built". He was trying to rethink about the structure and the concept of the given and rather complex space. As he puts it: "I still wanted to fight the building without talking about the things we already know about." To use a given space, along with its historical implications, in all its potentiality but by narrating, in a same time, about its present conditions form a different prospective. For Ogut "if you rebuilt a building than it becomes melancholy". It's not by chance that his buildings have frozen a few seconds before their irreversible destruction. By doing so he suspends time, space and our memory engraved in them. Even dough it might be seen as rather private reflections one could have, that intimate memory spreads easily into a collective one. As a silent hunter.
LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX: Paul Chan in conversation with Jeffery Schnapp
“I thought you wanted to talk about sex?” Paul Chan asked playfully of Jeffrey Schnapp. Of course, we were all there in the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale this afternoon to hear Chan talk about his new work “Sade for Sade’s Sake” which is installed on the decaying brick walls of the Arsenale. Schnapp asked Chan if the title of the work offered a guiding structure through the 5 hour and 45 minute installation. In turn, Chan toured the audience through his creative approach toward making the work, admitting that he first started with his love of words. “At first I wanted to explore making a sexually explicit work without working with the body. But then I realized, that was ridiculous!” Although Chan’s shadow animation involves a multitude of bodies and body parts, he notes that the way the work is structured, like a ballad, reflects his interest in re-inscribing the idea of sex in another form. “Poetry, with it’s rhythms, repetition, and cadence, creates a sensation in the body and our mind that somewhat approximates the sexual.”
Schnapp asked about the role of the reoccurring storyteller in the work. Chan noted that in Sade’s “120 Days of Sodom” episodes of sexual debauchery were interrupted by afternoon storytelling sessions told by madams of the night. “He understood that to create the most heightened sense of desire, one must distance the thing that you want” Chan said of Sade, pointing out that this was the role of the storyteller in the book and in his animation.
Chan was careful not to make Sade out as either a hero or a villain – he approaches Sade’s text as raw material that can be changed and amplified for future use. Noting that Sade wrote his book while a prisoner, Chan spoke about the theme of escape - “It is important to be able to detach from the present moment. The most intimate form of engagement is escape. Escape creates a sense of inner and outer integrity and gives a picture of what freedom looks like. “ In this respect, Chan does not regard the book so much as an escape route for Sade, but more of an idea of “what escape and what freedom looks like.”
Chan’s artistic practice is leavened with a sense of political struggle and conviction, and he drew from these sensibilities when questioned by Schnapp about the limitations of using pornography. “Porno has changed with the times and we are now in a time of the purification of porn” He noted that pornography, in its earliest forms, was often used as a political weapon and a form of social critique, “titillation was a way to make people feel” the issues at hand. Some where along the way, he noted, pornography “fell victim to the division of labor” and has left us with contemporary images of porn that employ every advance of media technology to capture what is “real,” but it is ultimately empty of meaning, as it only delivers that which is literal. In this regard, “the literal is the ultimate special effect” quipped Schnapp.
Continuing in this vein, Chan referred to Sade’s text as an exhaustive cataloguing of sexual practice that is at once poetic in its repetition, but also as cruel and rigid as the religious order responsible for his imprisonment – a telling case of the oppressed using the tools of his oppressor upon the objects of his own desire. Interestingly, Chan drew a parallel between the mechanism of Sade’s application of stifling rigidity to cataloguing sexual practice – one that rendered an autonomy of pleasure which was essentially mechanical and sterile – with the movement in the art world of applying increasingly rigid readings and categorizations of art, which are done in the name of the autonomy of art, but which may also handicap the ability to derive pleasure and read deeper complexities that the work may intend to offer. In fact, Chan stated that the reason why he chose to include the interludes of colorful geometrical compositions in “Sade for Sade’s Sake” was to “recreate a polyphony” of points of access to the material by including sources of sensual pleasure that must have been on the chateau’s walls – sunlight windows and artwork on the walls –but which had been entirely absent from Sade’s original text.
In the end, Chan admitted that he anticipated having a conversation that might have spun out in more somber tones, but the conversation was, surprisingly full of humor, and of course peppered with devious pleasures, and intellectual delight. On the closing note, Schnapp wondered out loud, how apt Foucault would be at reading Sade? Chan was taken aback by the thought “Now that is interesting…and I wonder how Sade might have read Foucault? I can see them now, holding hands, like in a claymation!”
Schnapp asked about the role of the reoccurring storyteller in the work. Chan noted that in Sade’s “120 Days of Sodom” episodes of sexual debauchery were interrupted by afternoon storytelling sessions told by madams of the night. “He understood that to create the most heightened sense of desire, one must distance the thing that you want” Chan said of Sade, pointing out that this was the role of the storyteller in the book and in his animation.
Chan was careful not to make Sade out as either a hero or a villain – he approaches Sade’s text as raw material that can be changed and amplified for future use. Noting that Sade wrote his book while a prisoner, Chan spoke about the theme of escape - “It is important to be able to detach from the present moment. The most intimate form of engagement is escape. Escape creates a sense of inner and outer integrity and gives a picture of what freedom looks like. “ In this respect, Chan does not regard the book so much as an escape route for Sade, but more of an idea of “what escape and what freedom looks like.”
Chan’s artistic practice is leavened with a sense of political struggle and conviction, and he drew from these sensibilities when questioned by Schnapp about the limitations of using pornography. “Porno has changed with the times and we are now in a time of the purification of porn” He noted that pornography, in its earliest forms, was often used as a political weapon and a form of social critique, “titillation was a way to make people feel” the issues at hand. Some where along the way, he noted, pornography “fell victim to the division of labor” and has left us with contemporary images of porn that employ every advance of media technology to capture what is “real,” but it is ultimately empty of meaning, as it only delivers that which is literal. In this regard, “the literal is the ultimate special effect” quipped Schnapp.
Continuing in this vein, Chan referred to Sade’s text as an exhaustive cataloguing of sexual practice that is at once poetic in its repetition, but also as cruel and rigid as the religious order responsible for his imprisonment – a telling case of the oppressed using the tools of his oppressor upon the objects of his own desire. Interestingly, Chan drew a parallel between the mechanism of Sade’s application of stifling rigidity to cataloguing sexual practice – one that rendered an autonomy of pleasure which was essentially mechanical and sterile – with the movement in the art world of applying increasingly rigid readings and categorizations of art, which are done in the name of the autonomy of art, but which may also handicap the ability to derive pleasure and read deeper complexities that the work may intend to offer. In fact, Chan stated that the reason why he chose to include the interludes of colorful geometrical compositions in “Sade for Sade’s Sake” was to “recreate a polyphony” of points of access to the material by including sources of sensual pleasure that must have been on the chateau’s walls – sunlight windows and artwork on the walls –but which had been entirely absent from Sade’s original text.
In the end, Chan admitted that he anticipated having a conversation that might have spun out in more somber tones, but the conversation was, surprisingly full of humor, and of course peppered with devious pleasures, and intellectual delight. On the closing note, Schnapp wondered out loud, how apt Foucault would be at reading Sade? Chan was taken aback by the thought “Now that is interesting…and I wonder how Sade might have read Foucault? I can see them now, holding hands, like in a claymation!”
John Baldessari in conversation with Daniel Birnbaum and Steven Henry Madoff
The "key" artist of Biennale 2009 John Baldessari, presented his work in front of a crowded audience. Daniel Birnbaum and Steven Henry Madoff were both feeding the conversation with the artist, while a huge quantity of journalists literally invaded the Teatro Piccolo.
In the beginning of the talk, Daniel Birnbaum announced the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement prize to John Baldessari, and than introduced some artworks showed in different points of the exhibition. When we say Baldessari we can actually think about a complete artist of an older generation who explored since the 60's alternative ways of making art and who tryed to figure out what art is. He argues about the notion of site-specific installation in relation to the value of language in his works.
On the facade of Ca' Giustinian palace, facing the Canal Grande, appears one of his famous sentences: "I will not make anymore boring art".
He replies to this, describing the need of Art to concern about relations, and this is the reason why he also painted the main wall of the central pavilion of the Giardini (now called Palazzo delle Esposizioni, known as Padiglione Italia since last year).
Consequently the Palazzo wears a new identity, and Birnbaum was entusiastic about giving the chance to realize new works for the Biennale to artists of new and old generation. He describes the Baldessari's wall painting as an intense and strong impact on the viewer. In my opinion the artwork gives us a different kind of feeling, such as curiosity, for example!
Steven Henry Madoff, the organiser of the series of conversations between artists and curators, focused on the great personality of the artist, in particular on his professional experience as an art school teacher. Baldessari said he was managing the teacher career in the same way of the artist one. "Students have to be considered as young artists" he said.
Conversation between Fiona Tan and Saskia Bos
"How we represent ourselves and how we interpret the representation of others"
Whit this quote we can idealize the artist work. But that's not enough.
Fiona Tan is representing Netherlands in the Padiglione Olanda at the Giardini. She proposes a multiple projection of videos, time and site specific based. The exhibition, called Disorient, is a video-installation where the viewer is captured by motionless images and moving portraits. The atmosphere is incredible culminates on the main piece of the exhibition based on Marco Polo's figure. Fiona Tan highlights links with a past and a present Venice, recognizing the crucial role of the city since the 13th century.
Fiona spoke for a while about the poetry of the architecture of Rietveld's pavilion and about the mutual connection between artwork and space. Looks like if the artist was firstly inspired by the dutch master-architect ability on organizing spaces and volumes. Even the cover of the catalogue uses the pavilion's plan as a decorative module. Actually Raise and Fall installation is unusual because of the screens proportion, stretched on the vertical line imitating the windows rhythm. We all must recognize that the dutch pavilion of Giardini is really a jewel of modern architecture...
Thursday, June 4, 2009
inside- tenderness
After a thoughtful observation that his work carries a lot of tenderness inside and hides a certain vulnerability, Wentworth agreed. He added that most of the objects have a sense of belonging which makes them unique, but that possession is also what makes them fragile because it's easily lost.
London
It was more that underline the deep connection between London as a city and the Wentworth's work. According to the artist, his work wouldn't exist without it.
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