purple DIARY

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Miltos Manetas at the Torre di Pisa, Milan. Photo Olivier Zahm

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A portrait of my friend, the artist Miltos Manetas at night, Avenue Parmentier, Paris. Photo Giasco Bertoli

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Miltos Manetas and me with the portrait Miltos did of me, at the bar of The Bowery Hotel, New York. Photo Olivier Zahm

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Miltos Manetas's girlfriend Catalina with Miltos' portrait of me, at the bar of The Bowery Hotel, New York. Photo Olivier Zahm

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A thought on the 54th Venice Biennale 2011 from Miltos Manetas

The Venice Biennale was good this year - there were a few significant elements showing that, maybe, the annoying situation with contemporary art is now starting to change. These indications were not exactly produced by the individual work of artists or curators, but seemed to have just "happened" in different places. At the Egyptian Pavilion for example, footage of the last performance by a young artist who was killed during the recent revolution, was shown next to footage of the revolution itself.

It's as if Reality, similar to an adolescent that was abandoned for a very long time at the "care" of a pedantic school teacher, is now finally coming of age. Now Reality stops taking lessons from Culture and begins expressing itself by making its very own art and that should be giving us some kind of hope.

Text Miltos Manetas and a view of Crystals of Resistance by Thomas Hirschorn for the Swiss Pavilion.