VCE
Favorite thing: My favorite thing to do in any city is to wander around it, but that’s more true in Venice than anywhere. Early on Friday, I walk across the city to the Arsenale, rush through to where I usually end the day so I can work backwards instead, taking the boat to the deserted Nord. I have an uninterrupted, private view of this sculpture, the way it’s framed by the water and the city. Beautiful.
I have had a magical time in Venice. Firstly, because Venice is always a magical time. Secondly, because a return visit to a place I love is always special. Thirdly, because I feel restored, and centered. I feel more like myself after three days mostly spent outside, in search of art, with time to decompress and actually finish some books for the first time in a while. After so much walking around, so much fresh air, I’ve slept so well. The food, as always in Italy, has been amazing. I’ve been alone. I’m always in Venice alone. I had ideas of going with someone else this time, but honestly, Venice is a great place to be by myself - it’s so absorbing, I am never bored, never lonely.
This trip, I stay in a fancier hotel than I have before here. A little 5* boutique (Ca’ Bonfadini) with 30 rooms, in a quieter part of the city above the train station. My room is huge, and gold, with a beautiful bath I feel too guilty to use because I’m in a city built on water, precariously on the edge of global warming. The hotel is so fancy that when I ask about a boat, they ask if I want a private boat. Why a private boat in Venice, when the public transport system is entirely boats and fantastic, I don’t know. But once I’m outside, feeling alive from the warmth and the excitement of being on my way to the Biennale, I opt to walk instead. I make my way through the winding streets, and over time the route becomes familiar. This is my fourth time here, and I’ve taken parts of this route every time before.
The theme of this year’s biennale is “foreigners everywhere”, it’s a controversial theme apparently, or so one of the hotel staff tells me, possibly many of their typical clientele would think so. But I’ve spent my whole adult life a foreigner to varying degrees, starting with uni in Scotland (technically part of my country of origin, but it does depend who you ask) and then… everywhere else. As a theme, it seems entirely logical, topical, timely. To me at least, although I overhear someone coming out of one pavilion saying in accented English "the left is forcing their agenda upon us". So weird how we use abstract unrelated concepts like “right” and “left”, I think much more about being anti-war, pro social, pro equity. But I guess it’s easier to demonize people when you’re putting them in buckets rather than considering their values and ideas.
Interestingly, I heard this on my way into the Hungarian pavilion, whose techno theme I cannot at all relate to the foreigners everywhere concept. Perhaps to be expected given the political climate there. There is no escaping global politics at a global event though, for starters the event is in two places, the colonizers (mostly) at the oldest part with their special pavilions, built 100 years ago. The colonized at the Arsenale, no special buildings. Maybe some people can ignore that, they way they manage to ignore the bias inherent in the way we draw the map of the globe. But it can’t be ignored that the Russian pavilion is Bolivian now, nor can it be ignored that the Israeli pavilion is closed pending ceasefire and hostage release. The Polish pavilion won’t let you ignore what Putin is doing, the videos showing Ukrainians performing the sounds that Russian weapons made, seared in their memory by trauma, are haunting.
Personally, I find it fun to see colonizing countries grapple with the theme. Both Brazil and Denmark change the names of their pavilions, honoring the origins of colonized territory. The British pavilion with title “listening to the rain” and peaceful videos of water on the ground floor, brings you in, and then on the second floor takes on the violent legacy of British colonialism. The Spanish pavilion, where the artist statement includes that this is the first immigrant artist shown in Spain’s pavillion in 100 years. The US take is a little less overt, but the art is stunning, all these brightly colored pieces in rainbow colors. The only video installation I like, a short multi channel video of music and dance and color and light.
My favourite art though, is the Japanese pavilion, which is a beautiful creative chaos. Water dripping and fruit singing. Amazing. I walk around it, mesmerized, and realize that at this point, most of humanity is a foreign body on the planet we are destroying.
Day two is the Arsenale, which is more diverse, more joyous - I love the South Africa pavilion, with its interesting texture, evocative of landscape. The Saudi pavilion, that one is cool. Manal AlDowayan created these huge wooden pieces, graffiti’d with the thoughts of women. It’s a place where you can walk through and just feel, rather than being told. I think my favorite pieces though are Beatriz Milhazes in the V&A pavilion, and Elias Sime’s work made of electronic parts presented by Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, just outside the Arsenale.
At times, it feels like a lightening tour around the world. I think of my Uruguayan friend in the Uruguay pavilion, my Peruvian one in the Peru Pavillion, my Latvian coworker in the Latvian pavilion, my friend from the country that is now Bosnia in the Bosnia and Hertzegovina. Eventually though, I’ve made my way through all of it, a little disappointed that whilst I liked many things, I didn’t fall in love with anything, and that I mostly didn’t feel so much moved as confronted. I prefer more abstract art, I love technique, shape, color. This biennale, I feel like I appreciate the concept more than the form that concept takes. Like Bouchra Khalili’s migration patterns, amazing idea, well executed, would love it as a web page, but find it harder to appreciate wandering around between many projectors and their looping videos. I think it’s always a problem for me at any art thing, how much I just dislike video installations. The Irish pavilion is about the housing crisis, but is also a video installation - creatively done, recorded by the actors on iPhones, but I don’t know what it is, video installations. The lack of clear arc and the pace of them - almost always too slow - I cannot.
Once I’ve seen everything, I retrace my steps, do a little light (okay not so light) shopping, get a pizza, have a nice evening wandering around, a little lost, but making it back to the hotel as I feel like I cannot walk another step, with time for a hot chocolate and a liter of water before bed.
The third day is the most special. Perhaps this was always the case? But after two days of biennale I have fulfilled what I came here for and am free to do whatever I feel. I start at Peggy Guggenheim’s house, visiting the Kandinskys because I love Kandinsky. I fall in love with the current special exhibition, though. Marina Apollonio, a woman who spent a lifetime mastering circles. Who creates this mesmerizing spinning weeks of meticulously calculated, meticulously constructed circles.
She has been a practicing artist since the 1960’s. Now, it would be so much easier to create these shapes on a computer, but they would be so much less for it. Similar, sure. But hardly the same in your soul. A computer can create an optical illusion. A woman who spent a lifetime on the practice can change your view on circles forever.
I hate AI generated art. Hate it. I don’t think art is the correct word. Art shows a point of view, invites you to look at the world the way the artist sees it. AI shows us what is mathematically probable. Great artists show what is vital, what is fundamental, what is possible.
Having found what I came here looking for, art that causes some kind of existential vibration within me, I spend the rest of the day wandering Venice. I buy an all day boat pass, and hop over to the other island of Giudecca. It’s less crowded and more residential, a nice place for lunch on a busy Saturday. Then I find my way back to the main island, to a store, madera, that stocks in.zu and okay another store whilst I’m in the area waiting for it to open. Venice is my favorite city to shop in Europe, but dangerously so; it’s such a maze I’m more likely to be impulsive, not knowing if I’ll be able to find my way back. There are a lot of overwhelmingly choatic shops, targeting tourists. But if you go a little out the way, pay attention, you’ll find the more focused places, who have something you don’t see all over the place. Mostly the ones who do one thing incredibly well.
After dropping things at the hotel, I hop on another boat to Murano, arriving just as the sun is going down and most tourists are preparing to leave. I wander through the streets, in and out of the shops, until it becomes too dark to be fun anymore, and hop on the boat back again. I make my way back to the hotel, tired but fulfilled, feeling both like I would like to stay here for a month, and also ready to go home.
My last day, I have time but I decide to take it to relax rather than explore. I pack, sacrificing one pair of worn out boots because I had anticipated such an eventuality but otherwise miraculously getting everything in my tiny carry on sized suitcase thanks to the 2-3cm of expansion, and my roomy Isabel Marant tote that was mostly empty on the way over. Then it’s the boat to the airport, across the lagoon.
I read recently that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos generate the amount of carbon in 90 minutes that the rest of us do in a lifetime. I thought about all the flying I’ve done, and some of my other more consumerist tendencies, and thought about how even if I’m twice as bad as the average person, that’s still only 3 hours. And then I saw a post on social media about how we have to fly less, buy less, that that is the reality. This trip, where I take two planes each way for four days, and do so much shopping… well hi, I am the problem, it’s me. But also this kind of tourism is what the economy of Venice is built on. It’s what keeps it going. Last time I was here, Venice was flooding, but this time climate change feels more apparent. It’s so warm, I’ve mostly been wearing just a tshirt. The water is so high, even though it never rained whilst I was here.
Looking out from the boat, watching the ocean and other boats go past, I wonder if one day this place will be visited the way people visit Machu Picchu today. If these visitors will wander around a deserted, abandoned city, only accessible by boat, during low tide, and say, look what these people had. But they were so stupid, they destroyed it all.
And on that thought, I’ll leave you. I hope you’re doing well, friends.
Love,
Cate xo
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