CIRCA Blog entry about the Venice Biennale

When I read the following entry by Rayne Booth on the CIRCA website, I fully empathized with her struggle not to think of viewing art in a right or wrong way. I specifically had this issue with the Irish pavillion work; I understood the work, but was not gripped by it in such a way to entice me to engage with it fully. My response to Sarah Browne's and Gareth Kennedy's work was disaffected, although I recognized that with further research I might be able to benefit from a more wholesome experience of their work. However, taking into consideration the context of the Biennale, I did not have the energy or the willpower to dedicate an extensive amount of time to a particular piece of work to fully grasp it if I didn't already do so upon first or even second viewing (I had a similar response to the Belgian pavilion in the Giardini, and I left it before I could appreciate it as a new experience rather than a pavilion that had a remarkably similar formula to Sophie Calle's two years ago- a letter translated into several languages with grammatical corrections drawn onto it, drawings and photographs adorning whole walls, etc.)

Unfortunately, that is the way of a Biennale, and perhaps art in a grander sense- not to much time is afforded to realizing that the product is not the object but the thought. The audience is desperate to "get it", so desperate that the slightest kink in the path to artistic enlightenment throws them off and the piece is left to dwell in its own theoretical framework, untouched. But, as is alluded to in the CIRCA blog entry, art shouldn't be about the one winning formula, it should be about interpretation, the multiplicity of responses possible to (aesthetic) experience.

Venetian translations (Wednesday 24 June 2009)
It has now been over two weeks since I got back from Venice, and I'm slowly writing a full article about the exhibition to post here. It's taking much longer than I expected, and I keep procrastinating by reading online reviews and blogs so that now my mind is completely overflowing with the subject and, frankly, a little bored with it. It can be gratifying when I find an article where the writer's opinion is the same as mine, and I feel like I actually might have gotten it right. Then I have to slap myself on the wrist and remind myself that there is no correct way to interpret art. Just because someone has put their ideas down on paper (or online) it doesn't make them any more valid.

While in the midst of my procrastinating / research I came across an interview by Tim Griffin with Daniel Birnbaum, the Curator of the Biennale, in the May edition of Artforum. "I think that a Biennale can be seen as a place where more or less successful translations and productive misreadings take place." Caoimhín Corrigan, when speaking about his (slightly controversial) choice of Sarah Browne and Garreth Kennedy for the Irish pavilion, told an audience at their studio in Temple Bar Gallery & Studios that he wanted to select, not the best artists for the Biennale, but the artists that would be right for the Biennale "this time" That the Biennale can be seen as constantly in a state of growth and flux is a good thing. Rather than treat it as a stall on which to set out our 'best offerings' (artists at the peak of their career), maybe it is more interesting to give the opportunity to less tested artists and, in showing confidence in them, allow them to rise to the occasion.

In the same interview, Birnbaum went on to say, "...if it is true...that with each language's disappearance from the world something of the imaginary in the world dissapears with it, then it is likewise true that the imaginary is enriched with every language's translation into another." One of Kennedy Browne's works at Venice involves the translation of a text by Milton Friedman into 40 languages using Google translate, a game of chinese whispers that in the end results in a page of uninteligalble text a bit reminiscent of beat poetry. For the title of this year's Biennale, 'Making Worlds' was translated into several different languages, and Birnbaum has indicated that the fact that these words take on very slight differences of meaning in each language is an integral part of the title of the exhibition. Sarah Browne and Garreth Kennedy seem to have (unknowingly?) tapped into one of Burnbaum's overriding themes for Venice and, along with the millions of daily users of Google translate, enriched the world's imaginary at the same time.

A Few Links

http://coilhouse.net

blog/magazine about alt culture. Here follows an excerpt from their mission statement:

COILHOUSE is a love letter to alternative culture, written in an era when alternative culture no longer exists. And because it no longer exists, we take from yesterday and tomorrow, from the mainstream and from the underground, to construct our own version. We cover art, fashion, technology, music and film to create an alternative culture that we would like to live in, as opposed to the one that’s being sold or handed down to us. The result, in the form of articles, features and interviews, is laid out on our blog and in our print magazine for all to see. If our Utopia is your Utopia, then welcome! Anyone can contribute, and we encourage you to go to our submission page and get in touch.

http://dazeddigital.com

Dazed & Confused magazine's site. Interesting profiles and articles on photographers, designers, and artists.

Another one of my blogs

pencilledin.blogspot.com



I'm going to be doing a lot of drawing on this one, basically I started this project to motivate me to take pencil back in hand and practice my sketches. Although I might broaden the medium and add in photography, making it a blog about portraiture...

Project Golden Arches: New Blog

Here's a new blog I created to keep track of my project, Project Golden Arches. Please send in photos if you can!


projectgoldenarches.blogspot.com

Some Super Sweet Sites

http://sugarloop.blogspot.com/
Bernadette Sipkes' blog; she showcases her prints here, which are also available to buy.





images taken from her blog.

http://flickr.com/people/yvestown/ AND www.yvestown.com

In the blogger's own words (taken from her about me page):


My name is Yvonne Eijkenduijn, I live with Boris (who I affectionately call 'The Bo') and our cat Boo in an old house in Belgium close to the Dutch border. I was born and raised in The Netherlands but traveled and lived the world and a thousand seas. I've decorated quite a few homes, raised 12 kittens, fell in love only 3 times and baked a lot of cakes. I try to live each day like freshly shaven legs under clean sheets.

I'm a homemaker, lifestylist , blogger and photographer.






http://www.anknelandburblets.com/ AND www.flickr.com/photos/charlottefranklin

From the artist's about me page:

Hello. I’m Charlotte. Pleased to meet you!

Anknel and Burblets are my childhood fairies.

I remember the first time I met them; it was raining and thundering outside and I was watching my mother sew. I was not yet three at the time and they just appeared next to her sewing machine, saying hello, smiling and waving.

Since then I’ve joined them on many an adventure; planting our first yellow snapdragons under my bedroom window when we lived by the beach, writing poetry in the rain under the trees, running away from home with a chilli-bin full of grapefruit, climbing tall trees and taking aerial photos of our house, concocting luke-warm parsley soup for my grandmother, building a highway up in the trees for out cat Bodha, and making a nice milkshake for my brother out of plaster board scraps and weeds.

They showed me how to pat bumblebees, find magic in rain drops and talk to the trees and flowers.