Video Venice
Jul. 28th, 2007 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusWarning: If you're considering going to Venice for the biennale (and I am, though I'm pretty poor right now), Vernissage TV's ongoing video coverage of the various pavilions will inevitably include spoilers. If you decide to watch the videos instead of jetting off to Venice, well, thank you for not spoiling the world with unnecessary CO2!
France (Sophie Calle)
I like Sophie Calle, this looks like a good pavilion. Sort of Cindy Sherman with more variety, more concepts, more games, more vulnerability.
USA (Felix Gonzalez-Torres)
Cuban -- and dead -- and yet representing America at Venice? Gonzalez-Torres is everywhere, and frankly I find his work dull, dull, dull. His free posters are particularly annoying. You feel obliged to take one, you bash into everyone else carrying them, they clutter your baggage and get damaged, and then when you get home you find how depressing and ordinary they look on your wall. But you can't throw them away because they're art.
Hungary (Andreas Fogarasi)
This video survey of ex-communist cultural centres (run-down, bureaucratic) is interesting, not just from the point of view of ostalgie and its patinas, but also as a meta-glimpse of how culture depends on context, and improvises around local needs. "My favourite medium is the exhibition," says Fogarasi.
Germany (Isa Genzken) First video, second video
The coverage is a little too lingering, but this looks like an interesting pavilion thanks to the unexpected collisions of lexical sets. Luggage with art reproduction, stools with masks.
Spain (Manuel Vilariño, José Luis Guerín, Los Torreznos and Rubén Ramos Balsa)
Spain is really impressing me at the moment. It's the most dynamic country in Europe, with the most interesting emerging culture.
Canada (David Altmejd)
Looks a bit twee and silly.
Brazil (annexe, favela model made by some children)
Quite interesting scale model of a favela. More art by children in the biennale, please!
Belgium (Eric Duyckaerts)
This video is boring except for the moment when a visitor bumps into a pane in Eric's glass maze.
Britain (Tracey Emin)
Tracey has always been super-sincere, but now she seems to be getting respectable, serious and a little dull with it.
Japan (Masao Okabe)
Stone rubbing is inherently rather dull, but as the tragic context emerges -- we're gathering textures of places destroyed by atom bombs -- this work attains dignity and poignancy. It ties in with the recent scandal where the government minister had to apologize for saying the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary -- pretty much the standard Anglosphere view.
UK and others (annexe, Pleinmuseum, video art)
The curator's speech is, I'm sorry, ridiculous and the art pretty meretricious.
Russia (Julia Milner)
Boring net art (so 2002!) and the artist has an annoying "cybercop" haircut. Handsome woman, though.
Russia (Various, Click I Hope)
The epic, multi-screen installation captures my imagination with its aestheticized cruelty. Wave machine is nice. Windscreen wiper videos fresher than some of the more 90s-looking video stuff in there.
France (Sophie Calle)
I like Sophie Calle, this looks like a good pavilion. Sort of Cindy Sherman with more variety, more concepts, more games, more vulnerability.
USA (Felix Gonzalez-Torres)
Cuban -- and dead -- and yet representing America at Venice? Gonzalez-Torres is everywhere, and frankly I find his work dull, dull, dull. His free posters are particularly annoying. You feel obliged to take one, you bash into everyone else carrying them, they clutter your baggage and get damaged, and then when you get home you find how depressing and ordinary they look on your wall. But you can't throw them away because they're art.
Hungary (Andreas Fogarasi)
This video survey of ex-communist cultural centres (run-down, bureaucratic) is interesting, not just from the point of view of ostalgie and its patinas, but also as a meta-glimpse of how culture depends on context, and improvises around local needs. "My favourite medium is the exhibition," says Fogarasi.
Germany (Isa Genzken) First video, second video
The coverage is a little too lingering, but this looks like an interesting pavilion thanks to the unexpected collisions of lexical sets. Luggage with art reproduction, stools with masks.
Spain (Manuel Vilariño, José Luis Guerín, Los Torreznos and Rubén Ramos Balsa)
Spain is really impressing me at the moment. It's the most dynamic country in Europe, with the most interesting emerging culture.
Canada (David Altmejd)
Looks a bit twee and silly.
Brazil (annexe, favela model made by some children)
Quite interesting scale model of a favela. More art by children in the biennale, please!
Belgium (Eric Duyckaerts)
This video is boring except for the moment when a visitor bumps into a pane in Eric's glass maze.
Britain (Tracey Emin)
Tracey has always been super-sincere, but now she seems to be getting respectable, serious and a little dull with it.
Japan (Masao Okabe)
Stone rubbing is inherently rather dull, but as the tragic context emerges -- we're gathering textures of places destroyed by atom bombs -- this work attains dignity and poignancy. It ties in with the recent scandal where the government minister had to apologize for saying the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary -- pretty much the standard Anglosphere view.
UK and others (annexe, Pleinmuseum, video art)
The curator's speech is, I'm sorry, ridiculous and the art pretty meretricious.
Russia (Julia Milner)
Boring net art (so 2002!) and the artist has an annoying "cybercop" haircut. Handsome woman, though.
Russia (Various, Click I Hope)
The epic, multi-screen installation captures my imagination with its aestheticized cruelty. Wave machine is nice. Windscreen wiper videos fresher than some of the more 90s-looking video stuff in there.