TORPOR AND TREMOR IN AN AGING GARDEN
There was a general atmosphere of torpor amidst the national pavilions of the Venice Biennale this year. For example, Berlin is currently becoming the art capital of the world, and so it is puzzling that the German pavilion would choose to exhibit the paintings and sculpture of Thomas Scheibitz which look like the parodies of ‘modern art’ one might find on budget theatre or television sets. This impression was reinforced by the fact that everyone who enters the German pavilion is accosted by attendants who insist on dancing around and singing a repetitive and derisory ditty ‘it’s contemporary, contemporary, it’s so contemporary’ and giggling. The Germans certainly seem to know what they are talking (or singing) about. The Rumanian pavilion was another noteworthy offering, this time by Daniel Knorr who presented the viewer with a completely empty pavilion. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that the entire notion of the Venice Biennale’s national pavilions is outdated in a postcolonial and increasingly globalised context.
This question was directly addressed in the Spanish pavilion which was devoted to Antonio Muntadas’s long-standing On Translation project. I was particularly impressed by On Translation: I Giardini, 2005, which focuses on the problem of the Giardini di Castello: the site of the national pavilions. These pavilions began to be built in the late nineteenth century, and were built and rebuilt over the course of the twentieth century. The central concern, which is particularly evident at the turn of the millennium, is the absence of so many nations from the Giardini, and Muntadas draws attention to this problem. Using the accoutrements of an airport waiting lounge (seating, waste bins, information displays, and an airport hall... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline