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.
Curated by Jean de Loisy and Ilan Wizgan, Israeli artist Sigalit Landau's political and environmental installation One Man's Floor is Another Man's Feelings
presents a series of video, sculpture and image imbued with symbolic
gesture. Landau's work is set around the lowest place on earth - the
Dead Sea - one that is scene to an ongoing ecological disaster. Pipes
run across the Pavilion's ground floor, in a series of installations
such as The Cave and Water Ladders where these
core irrigation systems stage water as message of life and knowledge, whether
it be frozen, salt, fresh, poison or absent. In her film Salted Lake,
worker's shoes covered in the heavy salt crystals in the water of the
Dead Sea melt into the frozen lake in the revolutionary European city of
Gdansk. In Azkelon, a "knife game" is staged, the title of the
film a hybrid of neighboring towns Aza (Gaza) and Ashkelon which share a
beach though separated by a border. Beyond her installations and most
radical is Landau's unique proposal to the Jordanian and Israeli
governments to construct a bridge that would connect the two
countries across the Dead Sea using salt pillars and crystals. Her
extensive research into water and crystallisation processes would this
time create a crystal bridge, not only serving the borders of
co-existence but also defining a focal space for the political,
ecological and economic crisis. Landau's work becomes the metaphor for
the volatile tensions of the Middle East, one that powerfully progresses
the unbreakable ties between the poles of nature, man and survival. Text Sophie Pinchetti and photo Olivier Zahm
Representing straw-filled human forms inspired by T.S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men, the message by Geoffrey B. Small for the 54th Venice Biennale 2011 was one of activism and hope for a non-nuclear future. As part of the remarkable initiative LOGOMANIA: This is not a flower, Small's work comes together with Ukrainian photographer Roman Tcherpak, filmmakers Elizaveta Kleinot and Andrey Gutsul. Presenting video, photography and still life installations, the artists' work is their response to the serious threat looming over Venice with the government's proposed constitution of the new and untested EPR nuclear reactor a mere 20km away from Piazza San Marco. Scheduled for 2013, the EPR reactor (AREVA EPR: European Pressurised Reactor) is the world's largest and potentially most dangerous nuclear reactor in history - two of which had currently been under construction in Finland and France, now questioned by authorities.
Posing a permanent risk to Venice and far beyond, a nuclear disaster in this area would not only cause widespread contamination, destruction of our natural resources but also the evacuation of over 20 million people, affecting Western Europe on a grand scale. Actively raising awareness around the realities and costs of nuclear energy, the artists' case is supported by the technical report and analysis of a nuclear power plant positioned at Chiogga, Venezia as conducted by University of Vienna Institute of Meteorology and the Eco Institute of Vienna for Greenpeace Austria 2010. Amongst the works included in the presentation, activist and fashion designer Geoffrey B. Small created his still-life installation using original pieces from his Logomania Revisited collection. His message, as seen in a film: 'What they tell us... What they don't tell us.' Tcherpak produced a special series of photographs around the deserted city of Prepyat, Chernobyl for Small's collection of t-shirts launched to support France's largest anti-nuclear organisation SORTIR DU NUCLEAIRE, to allow the further development of renewable energies. As a rising new generation of international artists, their intent is one that comes as a sincere reinvigoration against propaganda and the forced, unnecessary risks governments are willing to take - forward the creative fight to save the planet from nuclear apocalypse.
To find out more about Geoffrey B. Small's anti-nuclear project click here.
The activists, American designer Geoffrey B. Small and Ukrainian photographer Roman Tcherpak, whose anti-nuclear installations This is not a flower...Chernobyl. Fukushima. Venezia? were showcased at the 54th Venice Biennale 2011. Photo Olivier Zahm
+
