biennale di venezia 2007: great art in a crap place3 min read

and: some crap art in great places as well

my title should actually be, “great art in a beautiful, even if overrated place with shitty, pseudo-romantic athmosphere and (for the most part) arrogant, unfriendly natives”. but that wouldn’t be a snappy title, or would it now?

“i have always taken the weather personally.”

we discovered this quote by roni horn in a small magazine called “list – islandic art news”. it somehow really resonated, especially since this is the second art festival within a month, where the weather has been attrocious. we are back in bern now, my shoes are still wet.

i left my heart in venice

i have always really liked rafael lozano-hemmer‘s interactive art, so i was very pleased, that his work was featured at the first ever mexican pavilion. “pulse room” was especially great: installed in an L-shaped room, it picks up people’s heart beat and transmits it one after the other to rows of lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. it’s a great moment when you realise, that the room is pulsating with all the previous visitor’s heartbeats.

i will die

one of the strongest pieces at the arsenale was a video installation by yang zhenzong; and this is a huge compliment coming from me, someone who usually does not like video art much at all. the artist travelled to different countries asking people to say the simple, short sentence “i will die” in their respective languages. the resulting videos are projected next to eachother very generously. it is truely impressive to watch all the different people with their different cultural backgrounds cope with making this statement.

adi da samraj

adi da samraj is the lastest name for the controversial spiritual teacher formerly known as da free john among many other names. apparently he has started to create digital art and in only his second exhibit ever has managed to get an exhibit at an off-venue in venice this year. i really didn’t want to like his work, and aethetically i still don’t – visually it is cheesy, much too colorful and hard to look at -, but after seeing it i have to admit that it emits a very strong vibe. a super intense energy seems to get transmitted by his work. while i don’t have a problem with art used to convey subliminal message, i still do wonder how it was possible for this work to make it to venice and to be advertised very extensively all over the place.

the swiss are wimps

it is truely embarassing to see, how the swiss have reacted after the last edition of the biennale had brought some controversy, when pippilotti rist‘s video installation in san stae had to be closed down. the swiss solution was to build a clean-cut exhibition room into the beautiful church, creating a room inside teh church that could be anywhere really. why not remove it from the great setting of the church flat out? this is the most wimpy solution ever. sad. the art shown there is crap too. go home, swiss. he he. yves netzhammer is great <3 though!!!!!1

here’s my flickr set