I found most of the exhibitions i saw at the Arsenale, Venice's sumptuous ex-dockyard, to be quite disappointing. Especially the Italian Pavilion. God! What happened there? What have we done to deserve such an embarrassingly pompous exhibition?

There, i've said it.

The biggest sow at the Arsenale, however, is international and takes place at the spectacular building called the Corderie, a 319 metres long space once used to make ropes and cables for the Italian navy. The theme this year is a bit of a catch-all (as it is often the case in Venice). "Fare Mondi // Making Worlds is an exhibition driven by the aspiration to explore worlds around us as well as worlds ahead. It is about possible new beginnings--this is what I would like to share with the visitors of the Biennale," explained artistic director Daniel Birnbaum in his statement.

One of the most striking artworks for me was Pascale Marthine Tayou's installation Human Being which fills in a gigantic room with a bric-a-brac of objects, furniture made of recycled material, colourful figures, videos and urban noises that re-creates the activity of that small village that we call our world.

At first, the wooden huts on stilts evoke a shantytown or maybe an African village. As you come nearer, however, you realize that the windows of the dwellings act as screens that show activities taking place around the world, there are workshops, small manufactures, people walking down the street or sitting around a meal. It's both joyful and mysterious.

The space is inhabited by strange little figures. Their hair are masterfully entangled with lovely hairpins or feathers, their round bodies are wearing strips of old cloth or Flemish lace. Sometimes they also have bright jewellery on. They gather in little clusters. Each group following a different fashion. Some of them seem to be conversing in tight, knit clan as if they were plotting. Others seem to welcome you inside their circle.

Pascale Marthine Tayou was born in Cameroon, he now lives in Belgium but travels around the world with his artworks. He trained as a lawyer, not an artist. He's a nomad, his identity is split between locations and the paths he could have or did take. That's a condition that the installation tries to reflect.

Finally! I made it to the Venice Biennale. My dislike for a city i associate mostly with plastic gondole and unreasonably-priced limp panini takes a short break in mid-October. The weather is pleasantly cool and sunny and that's usually the time for me to visit a fairly quieter Biennale (until you step inside the always sardined room showing Nathalie Djurberg's wonderful little videos and creepy flowers but more about this one really soon.)

I'll kick off the Venice reports with the show MADDESTMAXIMVS at the Australian Pavilion. I wasn't expecting to like that one as much as i did. A 1:1 'sculptural' replica of the V8 'Interceptor' car driven by Mel Gibson in Mad Max and parked at the entrance of the show almost made me run in the opposite direction.

Still from Interceptor Surf Sequence, 2009

Still from Interceptor Surf Sequence, 2009

The vehicle started to make sense when i entered the pavilion. MADDESTMAXIMVS reflects Shaun Gladwell's addiction to extreme sports such as skateboarding, BMX bike riding and break-dancing. Instead of exploring the urban backdrop he has used his public to, the artist ventures into Australian hinterland and desert regions. All Gladwell knew about the location until then came from cinema and in particular the Mad Max movies.

The first video i saw in the pavilion was mesmerizing. A motorcyclist seemed to be surfing a running car as if he were on a wave. Although the car is following a seemingly endless road at very high speed, the images are shown in slow motion. "Slow motion gets away from the high-speed, high-impact imagery of MTV that was also part of the 'Mad Max' films. I'm more interested in distilling, slowing down," explained the artist.

Still from Apology to Roadkill (1-6)

Still from Apology to Roadkill (1-6)

A second video features the corpse of a kangaroo on the side of highways (one never thinks of kangaroos as roadkill, right?) The same motorcyclist appears again. He never removes his helmet, he takes the marsupial in his arms and carries it like a pieta to a more dignified place for burial.

The location to the Australian outback confers a haunting dimension to the videos. A political dimension too i suspect. It's hard not to think about the suffering of indigenous Aboriginal inhabitants, in particular the fate met by the Stolen Generations. Last year, the Australian government issued a formal apology for the mistreatment that the traditional owners of the land featured in the videos had been submitted to in the past.

Not only is the Mad Max-style car parked at the entrance of the pavilion (who would steal it anyway? The only vehicle you can drive in Venice is a boat), the motorcycle that stars in one of the videos has been implanted in the outer wall of the building. The videos were so good i think i should just ignore the vehicle antics.

Centred Pataphysical Suite, 2009

Downstairs, a tower made of monitors - Centred Pataphysical Suite (2009) - shows performers spinning on the spot either skateboarding, break-dancing, dancing on hig sticks or BMX riding.

The Arts Newspaper tv has a video interview with the artist, Australia Council for the Arts has another one featuring a journalist with a super quirky accent and Vernissage.tv had a long look inside the show.

The Venice Art Biennale runs until the 22nd of November 2009.

Global Cities at the Tate Modern in London. It's a pocket version of an exhibition that was running last year at the Arsenale during Venice Architecture Biennale. Cities, architecture and society, curated by Richard Burdett, focused on the key factors facing large scale metropolitan areas around the world. Last year, some critics were unhappy with the show, saying that there were too many facts and figures and not enough architecture. I guess some might find that the Tate version of it lacks to much of a fine art aura. Whatever... i found the show engrossing.

The starting point is the fact that today more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. "The 21st century will be the first truly urban era, in which more than 75% of the world’s population will live in urban areas, much of it in mega-cities with more than 20 million inhabitants concentrated in the countries undergoing rapid development in Asia, Africa and South America. In the meantime, many Western and European cities are shrinking, or have been forced to re-invent themselves in order to adapt to a post-industrial condition."

Saõ Paulo: an apartment building for the wealthy overlooks a favela, ironically called Paraisópolis (Paradise city). Photo: Luiz Arthur Leirão Vieira (bigger caption)

The Turbine Hall which hosts the Global Cities exhibition is big but not quite as much as Venice's 300-metre long Corderie dell’Arsenale. That's probably one of the reasons why the London version is tinier, there's more focus on London obviously, less photographs by artists who portray urban sprawl, the London team also skipped a few cities --namely Barcelona, Berlin, Bogota, Caracas, Milan-Torino and New York-- which in some cases made perfect sense (who'd say that Milan and Turin provide the most exciting examples of urban life?) But if the London gig is not enough for you, there's still plenty of paper fun in the catalogues of the Venice Architecture Biennale (Amazon USA and UK)


View from the balcony apartment on the island Gezira over Zamalek, Cairo, by Heiner H. Schmitt Jr.

So we're left with Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo. Information and data are painted on the walls to demonstrate on these cities are being transformed in social, economic and cultural terms. Besides, each city is studied through five thematic lenses – speed, size, density, diversity and form.

Venice has polystyrene 3D graphic presentations to represent the density of the cities, London had wooden ones. The models compare the number of people living within the administrative boundaries of the cities, the highest the peak, the higher the density.

The Tate website is very informative and clear. I'm not going to repeat what's already there. Instead i'll just present and link to some of the photographers whose work is on show at the Tate for the way they engage in a sometimes spectacular way (for its beauty or creepiness) with urban phenomena.

Scott Peterman's Mexico City Ecataepec, 2006 (bigger)

There's quite a few images so the show proceeds over here!

The Nordic Pavilion hosts the work of artists from Finland, Norway and Sweden. This year, the focus is on the performative character of the exhibits. Starting right at the entrance with It would be nice to do something political by Toril Goksøyr and Camilla Martens, where a black man is cleaning non-stop the glass window of the pavilion throughout the biennial. An "ironic commentary on the correctness in acting politically as an artist."

Inside, the visitor becomes the performer. With his interactive dart board installation --I, the world, things, life, Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren invites the audience to grab plastic arrows and throw them at the black and yellow dartboard. By doing so, the public is constantly modifying the artist's work.

Helsinki-based artist Adel Abidin has set up a little travel agency ABIDIN TRAVELS that caters for those who'd fancy vacation trips to Baghdad.

You are greeted by a sarcastic animated commercial, advertising a special offer for a holiday in Baghdad. The video gives you all the information you need to make the most of your hols: the cars you can rent tend to be of the military types; museums are closed, but that doesn't really matter as most of their content was looted anyway; you're advised to carry around candles or a torch with extra batteries, for the times when electricity is unavailable; you are advised to stay at a hotel of the lowest possible quality (the posh ones are targeted by Fundamentalist Muslims, or the National Forces), etc.

If the adventure tempts you, a computer is at hand to book your fly (you can also do it online.)

In a darker tiny room, another video monitor shows real images of the life that Iraqis are living in Iraq. The sound is covered by the voice of an American woman welcoming visitors, and American soldiers singing and playing instruments in one of Saddam’s palaces during Fourth of July. There are also brochures and posters to take away with you.

Just outside the pavilion, Liberté, by Lars Ramberg, functions both as a piece of art and public toilets. 3 unisex and self-cleaning toilets coming from the streets of Paris were painted in red, white and blue with the inscriptions «Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité».

They didn't work when i was there but here's what is supposed to happen: Inside the toilets, three different radio programs broadcast historical speeches; Charles De Gaulle, King Haakon VII, Franklin Roosevelt, etc accompanied by national hymns from Norway, France and USA.

My images of the pavilion.

More Baghdad: Cherry Blossoms, Shadows From Another Place - Baghdad <> San Francisco, Baghdad in Brooklyn, What I Did Last Summer, Vantage, a game about war causalities.

Morrinho means 'little hill' in Portuguese and alludes to the shantytowns, or favela, located on the hills surrounding Rio de Janeiro.

In 1998, kids built up a miniature reproduction of their favela (Pereirão, perched above the upper class Laranjeiras neighbourhood) using bricks and other materials left-over from building their own house. The model covers 300 square meters, and is inhabited by scavenged toys (plastic cars, little figurines carrying AK-47s or a ball, etc.) which are used to re-create scenes of everyday life in a favela: from dance events to clashes between gang members.

(via)

Fame came to Morrinho in 2001 when filmmaker Fábio Gavião put together a documentary about the mini favela. Since then portions of the brick favela have traveled all over the world, the latest stop is at the Giardini of the Venice Biennale.

A Morrinho NGO has been created to contribute to the social and economical development of the region and surrounding area. The organisation is carrying out 3 projects: TV Morrinho, independent productions and contracted productions; Morrinho Turism, guided tours of the Morrinho model and exhibition Morrinho, showing a replica model in a smaller scale in other cities.

The NGO also plans to offer workshops to provide professional skills for the residence of the "Pereirão" community. These workshops focus on areas such as audiovisual, art education, Brazillian culture, Youth and Citizenship and others.

The favela reappears at the Arsenale in the work of photographer Paula Trope who documented the project together with the children of Morrinho. She made pin-hole cameras out of tin cans and handed them to the boys so that they could take pictures.

Bonus: a Morrinho video re-enacting a demonstration after a drug dealer is killed. With a stack of dominos playing the role of 4kg of cocaine. (via Daddy Types.)

My images on flickr.

Related: Modular favela structure.

This edition of the Venice Biennale confirmed once again that the Chinese do know what appeals to Westeners. Curator and critic Hou Hanru has invited female artists -Cao Fei, Yin Xiuzhen, Kan Xuan and Shen Yuan- to create site specific works in the spectacular petrol warehouse and in the Vergini Gardens.

Actually that warehouse is so spectacular that you almost forget about the artworks exhibited there. Yin Xiuzhen managed to compete with the space by hanging 100 missiles, each of them shaped like TV tower and wrapped in knitted fabric, above the petrol containers (in the original project, the huge containers were covered with textiles as well.) There is an unmissable contrast between the feminine, crafty and soft texture of the textile and the masculine (the most appropriate word is "phallic") shape of the TV towers-turned-weapons which perfectly befits the traces of war and blood that the visitor can detect in the former armory.

I briefly blogged two of the artist's previous works: International Flight, a seven-metre-long replica aeroplane, and the Portable Cities, a series which uses dirty clothes and discarded materials Xiuzhen finds in the cities she visits to create 3D models of those cities. For another of her previous works, Fashion Terrorism, she turned old pieces of clothing into soft replica of items which cannot be brought on planes (pistols, knives, axes, etc.). She then packed the items in her suitcase and traveled from Beijing to Germany, going through customs and security searches.

Fashion Terrorism

The most talked about work is Cao Fei's exploration of the online world (yawn!) Second Life. Let me just point to New World Notes where Wagner James Au had the artist talk about her project. And to a second interview of Cao Fei at Art Fag City.

Although the work wasn't part of the show, i can't resist posting another image and link to Cao's Cosplayer series.

Cosplayers: Golden Fighter

Kan Xuan's contribution to the pavilion are 2 video works, the first one is a fascinating animation of a Buddhist sculpture and the other stars a naked girl dancing on a pedestal in the back of a garden. Meanwhile Shen Yuan's giant bits of baby milk bottles and accessories are scattered all over the garden.

My images.