The performative has always had a place at the Venice Biennale, often in conspiracy with the spectacular. In 1993, Hans Haacke smashed the Hitler-commissioned marbled floor of the German Pavilion before a stunned preview audience; a few years later, Francis Alÿs sent a peacock to represent him, while in 2013, Alexandra Pirici and Manuel Pelmuş filled the Romanian pavilion with a herd of performers to embody the history of the Biennale. But the successive Golden Lion wins for performance works in the past two years — Anne Imhof’s painfully cool Faust at the German pavilion and Lithuania’s global warming-inspired pop opera, respectively — point to a revived appreciation of live art, amid an ever-so-commodified art world.
“It [performance] doesn’t fit within the very easy economic prison that the art world is still working with,” says Delfina Foundation Director Aaron Cezar, also co-curator of the Venice Biennale’s official performance art programme, allegedly the first of its kind. The excellent series, which takes place only during the preview week and the closing weekend in November (for lack of budget) features fresh works by equally fresh artists like Paul Maheke, Victoria Sin, Boychild and Florence Peake. All deal with identity politics and the ‘spaces in between’ —conceptually and spatially, as the shows unfold across underexploited public areas between the Giardini and the Arsenale, inviting the preview crowd to sit down and rest their tired Balenciaga Triples for a rare moment of shared experience.
“Performance fits outside of the fair circuit,” Cezar continues, as we sit on the grass of the scenic Giardino delle Vergini, where the core performance series takes place. “In a way it offers something completely different for viewers, and it strengthens the capacity for people to see or to understand what bigger issues are at play, because the body is present.” That performance exists outside of art fairs isn’t entirely true (Frieze has run its official live art programme since 2014, and the upcoming edition of Art Basel is hosting a major work by Alexandra Pirici) but that it offers something different, absolutely.
And isn’t that what we’re looking for? The promise of an unmediated experience, transcending the physicality of space and body. If the ’90s marked the apogee of the curatorial turn — a shift from object to context — we are now in the age of the experiential turn, as German theorist Dorothea von Hantelmann suggested. A terminology quickly appropriated by marketers and brands, who now swear only by ‘experiences’ (replacing the term ‘curating’ which too had topped the marketing jargon over the past decade). But the unavoidable fluidity between commercial and cultural contexts concerns me less than its excesses. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy watching Ricky Martin throwing Piña Colada down his throat at Carsten Höller’s Prada Double Club during Art Basel Miami. But are we now chasing an experience, or just sheer spectacle?
This year’s winner of the Golden Lion for the best national pavilion, Lithuania — a collaboration between director Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, writer Vaiva Grainytė and composer Lina Lapelytė — put a spin on what we’ve come to expect from the ultimate performance art experience. Unlike its predecessor Anne Imhof, who represented Germany in 2017 with her fashion-infused, post-apocalyptic durational performance Faust, the Baltic state’s was a comparatively traditional affair. Where Imhof’s brilliance resides in her ability to manipulate her audiences, in Lithuania’s EasyJet-inspired immersive opera, the divide is clear: some twenty performers — including dogs and children — lounging atop an artificial beach, armed with crosswords and donning their best swimwear, serenade their obscured, elevated audience about a future threatened by global climate change. The classically-trained singers never cross or meet the attendees (though you may sign up to volunteer as an extra over the summer, and become part of the work).
While both works have very little in common, — aside perhaps from involving consenting performers — they are equally powerful in their own way. One functions as a mise-en-abyme, staging our own technologically-fueled neurosis as in the case of Imhof’s, while the other— Lithuania — subverts the conventions of performing arts, spatially as much as conceptually. But it strikes me that Lithuania retains a certain honesty about its offer: we know what we’re here for, and we understand how to experience it. Imhof, on the other hand, discreetly trolls her performers and audience at equal measure, hiding under her Balenciaga cap, adopting such a nihilistic position that it becomes uncomfortable — albeit brilliantly so. Yet, I question whether we can afford such ambiguous position draped in high-fashion in the ‘interesting times’ we’re wished to live in (see: the Biennale’s ever-so-interchangeable themes).
On the way from the Arsenale — Venice’s old shipyards — to the main site of the Biennale’s performance series, outside the outdoors café, stands a 90ft, wrecked fishing boat. In April 2015, it transported close to a thousand migrants from the Libyan coast towards Italy before it sank, killing nearly all of them. The project, masterminded by Swiss-Icelandic artist Christoph Büchel, was celebrated by some, as a much-needed reminder of the ongoing struggles of refugees. Others, called out blatant sensationalism. “Nauseous,” wrote French curator Vincent Honoré in an Instagram post, which shows art world celebrities Eva and Adele posing in front of the wrecked ship, smiling. “It shows the cynical and ruthless logic of sensational exhibitions where political correctness and marketing strategy govern upon ethics, research and sensitivity.” Well, yes. Whether intended or not the whole mise-en-scène calls for a profoundly inappropriate photo opp.
That the Biennale puts the spotlight on performance art is to be celebrated. But let’s not forget that all works are performative in nature, in that they produce reality: that is the radical potential of art. Engaging with that reality can lead to meaningful experiences at best, and dire spectacles at worst–the former, has to be earned.
The 58th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, titled May You Live In Interesting Times, is up until 24 November 2019 in Venice