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Culture: I went to the Venice BiennaleAnd all I brought back was this lousy diary
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12-6-03 I’m in town to cover the opening of the 50th International Art Exhibition, AKA the Venice Biennale, AKA the largest and longest-running art spectacle in the universe. Specifically, I’m here to cover the participation of the Czech Republic’s Kamera Skura and Slovakia’s Kunst-fu, two art collectives who have temporarily merged into one “art corporation” for a joint project in the “Czechoslovakia” pavilion. Superstart is a site-specific installation that may or may not be a satirical commentary on the sacredness of the art spectacle. A turnstile, similar to those found at the entrance of sports stadiums, has been installed at the entrance of the pavilion with a digital counter on the wall up above to track the number of visitors. I enter the pavilion and am confronted with a massive sculpture of Jesus Christ with arms outstretched crucifix-style, only he’s hanging not on a crucifix but from a pair of gymnastic rings from the ceiling, and is clothed in athletic garb. The skylight ceiling has been covered in black and filled with blue planets and stars to evoke a permanent nighttime, and on either side are video projections of a crowd of spectators at a sporting event. Every few minutes, a yellow light flashes on Jesus and the crowd cheers, enlivened by his stellar performance. But Jesus doesn’t actually move - he just hangs there as an emblem, a sarcastic shrine to the art-going public’s self-serious perception of art’s spiritual and material omnipotence. Since founding in Ostrava in 1996, Kamera Skura has remained serious in their dedication to the anti-serious. In the words of curator Michal Koleček, most would characterize Kamera Skura’s collective activities as “ ‘non-art,’ ‘stupidity,’ ‘arrogance,’ or, in the best case, ‘a gag’...the individual members of Kamera Skura wouldn’t really be bothered by such evaluations, and perhaps they would even agree with it...” Their artistic output has mainly been performance-oriented, such as a 1998 project in which they promoted themselves as a boy band, putting up posters around Prague and announcing an autograph session on a TV Nova morning broadcast. Other activities include 2001’s Trade Mark, in which they produced brand-name sports clothing at various events by using colored tape to form logos, and an exhibition called Grass at a museum in Košice in which they displayed joints 20cm long and 200cm wide. It could be said that the work of Kamera Skura reveals a deep commitment to the absurd - one that extends beyond humor and into the realm of pathos. Through both their agitation and their members’ insistence on anonymity, the Kamera Skura entity represents a fierce refusal to accept contemporary art’s status as an elite institution. Kunst-fu is the project of Slovak artist Erik Binder, who works in a variety of mediums and shares many of Kamera Skura’s anarchic inclinations. Vladimír Beskid has used the terms “humor, irony, paradox, naiveté of expression and thoughtfulness” to describe Binder’s work. Kunst-fu is “an open platform for open people”; some of these open people have included DJ Čejka, artist Zbyněk Baladrán, photographer Petr Huba, student Erik Schille, and “specialist on the psychology of hens” Tomáš Agat Blonski. Binder also collaborates with his wife Gabriela Binderová under the name Kunst-fa. Together, they recently made a video called Sunday Army, documenting the traditional Sunday schnitzel cooking in a Slovak apartment building. KS and KF are but two (actually, four) of the several hundred artists invited to participate in this year’s Biennale under the somewhat retarded theme of “Dreams and Conflicts: the Dictatorship of the Viewer.” In addition to the 64 national pavilions, the official Biennale program includes 11 large-scale group exhibitions, 50 small exhibitions, several outdoor installations, a daily lecture series, and an Asian guy flying kites. At the opening, there are numerous unofficial performances and happenings as well. Today I saw some naked dude with Styrofoam taped to him walking around like a robot. I also noticed a sign advertising an “artist/curator lifting competition; the winning pair will be invited to all the most prestigious parties!” And Iraqi artist Al Fadhil has been walking around in a t-shirt reading “I’m the Iraq Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale.” |
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Article added on Mon 21st Jul, 2003 [last updated Thu 6th Oct, 2005]Share this page 
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