When our man-about-art, Josh Love told us he would be making multiple trips to this year’s Venice Biennale (including one by bicycle), we asked him for a no-holds-barred account of this journey. He delivered!
Words & Images//Josh Love
It may sound strikingly obvious, but don’t forget it’s a Biennale. As I found myself roaming around the Gardini trying to attend to as many Pavilions as time would allow I had that moment of simple realisation, it’s not about seeing it all. Not only is that task (almost) humanly impossible, there’s just no point. This may sound redundantly simple but the art of experiencing things does not really work when your in the frame of mind that you just have to take it all in. I’m not alone in finding myself border on the flippant in disregarding most of the shows.
Almost aligning each pavilion and palazzo to a state of good, bad or just the plain ugly. This may sound like an inserted get out clause, allowing
time to be the determining factor in what could be construed as my miscomprehension. Or, I could be addressing taste as the determining factor in viewing a Biennale. Neither is the case.
Compare Venice to an amusement park set in a serene city where you’re ten
years old again. Your parents have just walked through the entrance with you, you’ve complied a mental list of every ride you just have to go on, everything looks attractive and enticing, and yet you end up on the tea-cup ride first. Slightly let down yet still giddy with anticipation for the next ride, you join the queue for the biggest and the best roller coaster ‘ever’, only to find the queue is four days long and your pass only three. This isn’t synonymous with everyone’s experience of the Biennale, namely the 300 or so who did manage to get a booking to see Steve McQueen at the British Pavilion in the first few
days, nor anyone who appreciated the National Pavilion(s) to ones immediate right when entering.
But lets just say that’s how you found it. In the dizzy moment of twofold realisation that I wouldn’t be able to see the Steve McQueen film, and that this wasn’t the worst thing ‘ever’ to have happened, I found myself recognising this childish trait in others around me. There will always be shows which require attention you can’t muster to
actually be engrossed in the work. Likewise, exhibitions which let you down after a commitment of time, but this isn’t what a Biennale is about. It’s fundamentally showcasing nationally funded commissions. Commercial spaces exhibiting the artists they represent, and a few unsigned, uncensored, spaces located in various private palazzo’s.
In which case seeing it all is as broad as encompassing every amusement arcade in Disney Land. After having faltered in finding anything exceptional on my first trip to Venice, other than its comparison to an amusement park, which came
retrospectively anyway. I decided to make my second trip slightly more epic. Just in case my initial assumptions were correct; that the Biennale was an all round let down, I embarked on a cycle trip from London to Venice, knowing full well that it’s the journey that counts anyway. Along with a friend, we set ourselves two weeks to get to Venice and four to really engage with the Biennale. Not to go into the trip in too much detail (namely altitudes, durations, locations, platforms and stations) we set out from Dunquerke,
through Belgium then northern Germany down to Bavaria, through Austria and out into northern Italy.
Although it may sound quite fast on paper, its not. Italy was by far the least exciting country on the trip. Once you hit the Austrian/ Italian border it’s all down hill. Carrying around 50kg up 17% gradients wasn’t too much fun, whilst all the while praying for the next descent (typically 17% too). The descent from Bössen towards Venice being all down hill was initially fantastic until we realised the entire route from there on in would be on cycle lanes. After travelling on off-road tracks and scenic ‘b’ roads,
pedestrian’s nature is not what your used to. It’s not too dissimilar to the Arsenalle at the Biennale, in so being pedestrian’s in a museological sense. Every natural element along the cycle route had a descriptive plaque almost aesthetically indistinguishable from the Biennale’s. Both seemingly a requirement for engagement.
In truth I hadn’t seen the Arsenalle on my previous visit four weeks before (I was only working on a National Pavilion and one disastrous private pavilion) and so had set my hopes high for what was to come. The curatorial pretence for the Arsenalle, ‘Making Worlds’, is such a broad encompassing title so as to remain vague even whilst trying to piece together its reasoning. The first ‘world’ you encounter is a multi-channel African (style) hut installation by Pascale Marthine Tayou entitled ‘Human Being‘.
Without being too presumptuous it could be said that the first meeting point with ‘other words’ is still a post-colonial dictation of ‘otherness’. This is slightly unfair seeing as Tayou is actually from Cameroon and is using culturally relevant styles and mannerisms from the region. This however is irrelevant for the curators intent. Tayou’s practice may be in dialogue with cultural symbols from Cameroon, but the other works in the show are not (as a whole) and positioning ‘other’ (other being the key word) worlds as specific cultural dependencies at the very start is an instant signifier of the lack of rigour invested in the exhibition. I state this because it’s far too common to encounter shows relying on museological structures within which to read the work due to deficiencies in the curatorial approach.
It’s a backdrop which is more of an entrapment that sucks the life out of a show. I don’t normally have to do this but, after a mere ten minutes in the Arsenalle I had to escape for a moment of contemplation, and a fag. I felt conned. After cycling over 1,600 kilometres to see this (much more investment than a train, a plane and a boat) I’d spent €8 (the price of a pizza in some places) on showcase that was not even a show.
Just to make sure you do get your monies worth though I do recommend getting the boat from the café to the Adach (Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage) pavilion. It is quite possibly the best example I’ve ever seen of an over paid design agency constructing a space for art which houses no art.
It is architecturally well put together, stylistically consistent and much like other projects I’ve worked on for them. I consider it a reverse metaphor for the Arsenalle as a whole, whilst the Adach pavilion has little-to-no art in its walls it does have structure. Abu Dhabi also just happens to be the end of culture. This is a grounded statement, if you look at the UAE pavilion its reinforced. Taking the didactic language of late conceptualism the UAE curator has arranged an almost talking head, listen to me (doubt anyone’s got the patience) installation talking about the making of the exhibition and UAE’s global representation and cultural presence.
The text piece to the left of the entry into the UAE pavilion recounts a list of ‘issues’, which in the literal sense read like an individuals emotional issues representative of a seven-nation conglomerate. Just because a nation can identify the fact that it’s stigmatized globally as being a cultural void, and voice this as fact/ as art doesn’t make the issue approachable. It’s as if the UAE have recognised a formulaic system wherein art is seen to be the space to talk in an open, even playing field about a deep rooted ‘issue’ (whilst all the while plugging itself). It’s akin to a trade fair you have no professional interest in, like me attending an estate agents fair (which the Adach pavilion funnily enough is).
Let down and humiliated, I was told I couldn’t even sit on the grass, I left, feeling more exhausted by the Biennale than the cycling.
The Venice Biennale runs through to November 2009, and is nothing like an amusement park, it is though, a trade show of work I have little interest in. For more information on the trans alp cycle route get in touch (now that’s worth it).
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