Performance does feature in the Biennale but it is usually rather safe and of secondary importance unless you step outside the official sites. Rather than a national pavilion presenting the work of a performance artist, live performance, when present at all, tends to be integrateintod into an exhibition the impetus for which comes from a curator and or visual artist whose primary medium is not performance. There are exceptions to this rule from time to time such as the Croatian Pavilion of 2005 but these are very much the exceptions that prove the rule. So, while performance does feature in the pavilions, as I will describe, it can often feel as if it is there more as a way of creating events that draw attention to the space, an alternative or better still, supplement, to a drinks reception.
The Italian Pavilion featured this sort of performance: a woman dressed in black (of course!) is takes off her clothes, lays them out and, once naked, puts them back on again. She does this slowly and seriously whilst turning 90 degrees at a time in a circle. She does not engage in eye contact with the crowd, mostly of men, who gather in front of her. The performance runs like clockwork and an absolute barrier between viewer and performer is maintained. The performance was not clearly credited and seemed to be taking place as some sort of sideshow, a bit of spice to liven up the space but nothing that need be taken too seriously.
The Romanian Pavilion also featured performance and here it played a more central role. A group of performers dressed in everyday clothing enacted artworks from previous editions of the Venice Biennale. They gave the title of the work and a short description of it (in English) whilst holding a bodily gesture derived from the artwork. The works they referenced ranged from 1930s sculptures to recent video art and it created a review of sorts. The performance made better use of space but had a lifelessness about it that made it suffer in the context of the Biennale where a pavilion within Giardini or Arsenale will typically get no more than 5-minutes to make its mark upon visitors. With such a low attention span and such a bustle of spectators crammed on the merry go round, performances within the pavilions take place in quite un-conducive conditions. While the Romanian Pavilion presented a work that responded to the history of the Biennale I felt it completely missed the present situation of the biennale relying upon a rather hermetic performance language.
