Leaving Venice? (November, final week of Venice Biennale)

Now it looms
the End

Venice as a place of illusions, tensions, ideals. Leaving and arriving.Water versus stone.

It is a city of perpetual conflict.
A constant desire to know, absorb, consume, rationalise, obtain and collect fights an impulse to create, meditate, offload, wander aimlessly, forget and give over to sensation.

No reflections. Meaninglessness brought about by repetition and fatigue. Profundity created by slowly realised associations, and an understanding that only comes with time.
Modernist designs weathered, slowly bending out of function, become objects of art, displayed in a city that constantly restores the ancient. A sense of failed utopia. Failure softened by nostalgia. Romance heightened by gloom and early dusk.

All this with the awareness of leaving so soon, returning to normality.
A last thought... my mind is wandering away on it's own
I wonder if we constantly maintain: appearances, buildings, artworks, to create the illusion of time never passing, of being ever present? What constitutes this importance? Is 'the moment' the only time we touch eternity?

over for now

paddling in the city

art overload

The longer I stay in this City, the more there is that I haven't seen it seems.
There is art pouring out of every available space, some of it still manages to be good. I went to the Giardini for the first time, where all the national pavilions are. It's like a big fun fair for contemporary art. Massive tour groups clamour at the buildings' doors to get a peek and a photo.

There were a few amazing pieces, like Fiona Tan's video installations, Simon Starling's elaborate film display machine, the Nordic and Danish pavilions' menacing houses, Steve McQueen's long slow film, the Australian performance videos and Yoko Ono's text works. Here are some photos from my epic marathon of art viewing.

Hello Venice

I've been busy. Scratching the surface of the Venetian façade.

Migropolis a searching, feeling revelation of the city's underside. Investigating lives, deaths, trade agreements, illegal immigration and movements of peoples across Africa, Asia, and through the "gateway to Europe"
It is an interesting and unoriginal observation that Venice is a city of false appearances. The palazzos facing the grand canal have their masks on, hiding structures, wooden beams, crumbling plaster. Piazzas and waterways are full of colour, byzantine, baroque, gothic, romantic, and gondolas idle around like the props of a city sized theatre.
I'm scared now, this is a city full of ghosts, but they are not the ones we all imagine, Casanova, Titian, Marco Polo, a hundred murdered Doges... they are ghosts, Senegalese, Bangladeshi, Albanian, of those whose boats capsized in the adriatic, and hung from prison roof beams at the prospect of deportation.

It's depressing so it's avoided, and theme park Venice captivates us again.