in the sand while the other smoothed them outâan automatic Zen garden, the lazy way to a perfectly empty mind. And Italyâs Bruna Esposito scattered onion skins on marble floor tiles and, remarkably, did not title it
Get the Broom
.
Dimbulb was more than a metaphor at the Biennale. It was often too dark in the galleries to read the names of the works and artists. As if I cared. Somebody put a bunch of portable typewriters missing most of their keys on school desks so that the thoughts of art lovers could be thumbtacked to the wall. I quote one verbatim: â......8888889999993333.â Someone else tied a blindfolded teddy bear to a stick in a roomful of upholstery with the stuffing yanked out. Itâs not your-kid-can-do-this art. Your kid does this and youâre on the phone to the child psychiatrist. Didacticism was to be found, of course. Argentinean Sergio Vega urged Biennale patrons to have their photograph taken next to a handcuffed mannequin with a burlap bag over its head. Alas for poor PFC Lynndie England, of Abu Ghraib snapshot fame, if only sheâd been an aesthetic type. And the first thing I saw on entering the Arsenale was manifestos from some U.S. art collective calling itself Guerrilla Girls. Amongthese was a parody of a movie poster:
The Birth of Feminism
starring Pamela Anderson as Gloria Steinem, Halle Berry as Flo Kennedy, etc. The tagline: âThey made womenâs rights look good. Really good.â As the devil whispered to Rudyard Kipling (but recused himself from whispering to the Guerrilla Girls), âItâs clever, but is it art?â
Actually itâs not clever. The Guerrilla Girls are too young to remember what a babe Gloria Steinem was. She made Pamela Anderson look like, well, Flo Kennedy. And the Guerrilla Girls are too old to realize how beside the point their point is.
Hereâs Indy driver Danica Patrick interviewed in
Newsweek
:
âAre you the Gloria Steinem of racing?â
âThe what? I donât even know who that is.â
Hanging beside the blather was a chandelier fashioned by Joana Vasconcelos from 14,000 tampons. Maybe this was an indignant statement about drudgery enforced by gender constructsâdarn hard to light for dinner parties. Maybe this was an ironic commentary on a visit to Venice where everybodyâs wife wants to buy a great big incredibly expensive Murano glass chandelier. Or maybe this was just a waste of time. The modern art of 2005 wastes more time than the modern art of yore did. You could walk right by a Jackson Pollock drip canvas in half a second. Not so with the dominant creative medium of the Biennale, video art, the finger paint of the twenty-first century. I experienced, as quickly as I could, thirty-six examples of the form and doubtless missed many others because I would stumble into pitch-black exhibition spaces that smelled strongly of face-pierced video art aficionados and would bolt before anything video happened. Also, there were a number of national pavilions, such as Albaniaâs, that I wasnât able to find.
Herewith a sampling of Boring Video Downloads, or BVDs: lonely-looking people talking to the camera; lonely-looking people not talking to the camera; people looking lonely; people with lightbulbs over their heads, which would indicate ideas if this were a comic strip but since this is video art it doesnât; the Rosetta stone being dusted; pictures of an empty movie theater; pictures from an empty movie projector; someoneâs sweaty, hairy back; a city skyline with trash piling up in the foreground in the shape of the skyscrapers (get it?); a fellow who has turned a kitchen table upside down, attached an outboard motor to it, and is cruising across a bay; a man in a bear suit living in the Berlin zoo; cardboard cartons rigged with overhead projectors so that viewers look into boxes full of little naked people engaged in mildly prurient activities; a man in a waterfall with real
Get the Broom
.
Dimbulb was more than a metaphor at the Biennale. It was often too dark in the galleries to read the names of the works and artists. As if I cared. Somebody put a bunch of portable typewriters missing most of their keys on school desks so that the thoughts of art lovers could be thumbtacked to the wall. I quote one verbatim: â......8888889999993333.â Someone else tied a blindfolded teddy bear to a stick in a roomful of upholstery with the stuffing yanked out. Itâs not your-kid-can-do-this art. Your kid does this and youâre on the phone to the child psychiatrist. Didacticism was to be found, of course. Argentinean Sergio Vega urged Biennale patrons to have their photograph taken next to a handcuffed mannequin with a burlap bag over its head. Alas for poor PFC Lynndie England, of Abu Ghraib snapshot fame, if only sheâd been an aesthetic type. And the first thing I saw on entering the Arsenale was manifestos from some U.S. art collective calling itself Guerrilla Girls. Amongthese was a parody of a movie poster:
The Birth of Feminism
starring Pamela Anderson as Gloria Steinem, Halle Berry as Flo Kennedy, etc. The tagline: âThey made womenâs rights look good. Really good.â As the devil whispered to Rudyard Kipling (but recused himself from whispering to the Guerrilla Girls), âItâs clever, but is it art?â
Actually itâs not clever. The Guerrilla Girls are too young to remember what a babe Gloria Steinem was. She made Pamela Anderson look like, well, Flo Kennedy. And the Guerrilla Girls are too old to realize how beside the point their point is.
Hereâs Indy driver Danica Patrick interviewed in
Newsweek
:
âAre you the Gloria Steinem of racing?â
âThe what? I donât even know who that is.â
Hanging beside the blather was a chandelier fashioned by Joana Vasconcelos from 14,000 tampons. Maybe this was an indignant statement about drudgery enforced by gender constructsâdarn hard to light for dinner parties. Maybe this was an ironic commentary on a visit to Venice where everybodyâs wife wants to buy a great big incredibly expensive Murano glass chandelier. Or maybe this was just a waste of time. The modern art of 2005 wastes more time than the modern art of yore did. You could walk right by a Jackson Pollock drip canvas in half a second. Not so with the dominant creative medium of the Biennale, video art, the finger paint of the twenty-first century. I experienced, as quickly as I could, thirty-six examples of the form and doubtless missed many others because I would stumble into pitch-black exhibition spaces that smelled strongly of face-pierced video art aficionados and would bolt before anything video happened. Also, there were a number of national pavilions, such as Albaniaâs, that I wasnât able to find.
Herewith a sampling of Boring Video Downloads, or BVDs: lonely-looking people talking to the camera; lonely-looking people not talking to the camera; people looking lonely; people with lightbulbs over their heads, which would indicate ideas if this were a comic strip but since this is video art it doesnât; the Rosetta stone being dusted; pictures of an empty movie theater; pictures from an empty movie projector; someoneâs sweaty, hairy back; a city skyline with trash piling up in the foreground in the shape of the skyscrapers (get it?); a fellow who has turned a kitchen table upside down, attached an outboard motor to it, and is cruising across a bay; a man in a bear suit living in the Berlin zoo; cardboard cartons rigged with overhead projectors so that viewers look into boxes full of little naked people engaged in mildly prurient activities; a man in a waterfall with real
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