Venice Biennale: critical diary

The Biennale has proven to be quite easy to get into as gate security is not as rigid as it could be. With just one copy of the preview invitation it was possible to get multiple people in using the old ‘pass the invitation through the fence’ routine. I get the impression the people scanning the tickets at the gate are not paid enough to care about enforcing the security too rigidly. They simply do the minimum that is expected of them and no more. I rather like the way they do not adopt a morality that is not their own but instead appear to remain themselves while at work.

OK I realise that I’m not going to see much in the way of manifestos here; I might well not see any at all. I will instead write about what I see and try to develop some of these observations into my own manifesto thinking.

So I’ll start with the documenting of the Biennale. There are loads of these guys, and they always are guys, walking up and down with serious tripods and lumps of AV equipment slung over their shoulders. Some are being directed and some are just on the hunt looking for something to shoot. They are just the tip of the iceberg however. Iphones and cameras take pictures of people taking pictures, this must be one of the most over-documented scenes I have ever witnessed.

What can this proliferation of imagery say then? Is it possible to talk critically of society or of the Biennale itself or does everything finally become recuperated through the insatiable PR hunger of the event itself and become neutralised as a form of criticism? I am quite uncertain, to tell the truth, though I will return to this question.

Maybe it is simpler to ask what, if anything, is precisely wrong with holding a highly successful mediatised event that people want to prove they attended? One problem can be that the idea of the event comes to dominate the actuality of it. If people are so busy clicking, tweeting, posting and reporting about an art event at which the art is less present than the circus taking place around it then it is perhaps time for the art to find, or construct, a more sympathetic frame. I’m aware that this situation is in part a product of the short timespan for the preview (3 days) and a large volume of art professionals whose work is dependent upon network building. Still, I also have the impression that this tendency towards the circus taking over is actively embraced rather than guarded against and this finally colours everything coming out of here with a celebratory “look at us, we’re in Venice!” tone.

Now onto fashion. Black is something of an art world colour, there is a far greater amount of it to be seen here in Venice these days than I suspect is usual anywhere else, except perhaps at a Sisters of Mercy reunion concert. The wearing of black can be done for many reasons and one of them is simple practicality: if you are traveling you can wear black clothes more than once while white clothes require more washing. For the Biennale however I think it can also have a further meaning. Black can be worn to give the impression of being above colour: the wearer adopts a guarded position of not giving anything away. This is attractive as in a context such as this anything you do, say or wear can have the tendency to be read as a statement, and black can appear to be a safe place to go: knowing, detached and individualistic. The problem is it never quite suceeds in concealing taste, it is identifiable as a position in its own right. The solution then that the true pros adopt, and there were many in Venice, is to lighten up an otherwise dark wardrobe with a feature or two to prove they are still alive.

My journey to the Gatwick already offered something: a gift that should not be ignored. There was a young woman sitting in front of me on the seats prioritised for disabled and older people. She was sitting by the window and she had a case wedged into the seat next to her thus taking up both the two seats. She was also wearing headphones and listening to music from her phone, drifting in her cloud from A to B. This is a common enough sight today: an unconscious rejection of public space and public etiquette. She was doing fine in her bubble and was trying her best to remain comfortably inside of it.

I am conscious that this psychic privatisation of public space is rather commonplace, to the point that even mentioning it runs the risk of appearing distinctly retro. I believe it is worth observing all the same as it is not a universal given, it is a tendency specific to a certain time and space: the one that I happen to occupy. In this state of withdrawing into a private experience whilst in public space, other people are liable to become no more than obstacles, dead meat standing in your path.

A further thing observed en route: seated beside me on the plane was a woman going over lists: an excel chart, a series of word documents and some hand-written notes. From this I gathered she was from some sort of advertising or promotions agency and was attending the Biennale in this professional capacity. The sort of writing she was poring over has, I guess, largely replaced the manifesto, a form I hope to see more of in Venice. Today the carefully worded press release or mission statement is where the action largely is. When political manifestos are produced they all too often read as insipid documents with all the literary weight of a toaster’s operation manual. The manifesto has been largely consigned to the fringes as the political class have become more concerned with the management of appearance thus employing small armies of PR staff in the tit for tat PR offensives waged between the various parties. Blair, for example, maintained till the bitter end that the Iraq war’s unpopularity was due to a failure of communication and was not due to it being a mistaken policy.

Is the manifesto an outmoded form then? Yes perhaps it is, but that does not mean that it is of no use. Rather, it just means that it comes with baggage, with the expectation of being a strident rejection of something or another and of promising more than it can deliver. It is expected to have a rhetorical flair that is public and somewhat theatrical in contrast to the press release that is private and rational in appearance.