pipilotti rist has to remove her video installation in the san staë church in venice which is a part of the swiss presence at this years biennale di venezia.
homo sapiens sapiens, the video installation in question, shows among other parts of naked skin a penis [not the image above], so in a way it does not come as such a surprise that these projections to a church ceiling are now contested by the catholic church. can’t have penis in church.
the question remains, why now? why after months of showing it to thousands of visitors?
at any rate the exhibit is now closed. a personal bummer because we are going to venice this coming monday and we would have really liked to see this piece. but as i said i am not really that surprised. i thought this was bound to happen when i first heard about the work.
so far so news.
what surprises me is that this event is totally absent from all the websites of all the envolved parties. there’s nothing online @ pipilottirist.net, BAK [bundesamt für kultur], Pro Helvetia or the biennale.
guys! when will you start using the internet as the medium it can be?
eg. to instantly post reactions, thoughts, explanations in events like this one?
when?????
i also wonder why art and censorship seem to become very much a permanent fixture these days in switzerland? did we suddenly slip back into the 50’s of the last century or sumink? golly gosh.
I suppose Rist etc. are negotiating with the church and don’t need Blick-style sensationalist headlines to disrupt those negotiations.
And what does this have to do with censorship , I don’t see the connection.
oh gosh, and he even wikipedias me…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_organized_religion