Barber Shop Chronicles at BAM: infectious? No, more like, healing!

(the title of the post refers to the fact that so much of our vocabulary that should be positive is in fact negative: infectious, battle, crusade, armed with, etc. Down with death, war and disease, up with team work, care, love and peace)

JOYOUS! VIBRANT! ENERGY! SINGING! TALENT! WORDS! BLACK LIVES MATTER! DANCE! INTELLIGENCE! AMBITION! COMEDY! FUN!

Well, why should the actors and playwright have all the fun, and a reviewer only the dull, rationalistic role?
The minute you walked in the BAM Harvey Theater (which has undergone some work, including a gallery, what a grand idea, you can meander through it during the interval or on your way out, or on your way in if you are the kind of person who arrives early at the theater rather than out of breath with your coat half buttoned, and that gallery shows When A Pot Finds Its Purpose, a work by japanese-american (how many of these can there be, but welcome?) artist Glenn Kaino, a radiant installation with a political commentary),
well the minute you walked into that theater you were hit by a vibrant energy, a joyous chaos: actors, techies, members of the audience buzzing on the stage, off the stage, romping music, actors seating people (mainly young women, hum) in the barber chair, selfie opportunities, hip swinging, laughing, smiles on every face, lots and lots of cellphones out and busy recording. Went on and on: was that going to be the show? The whole show?

But no. People were gently shoed off the stage, and the actors threw themselves in a short music dance piece. The play The Barber Shop Chronicles takes place in 6 cities, 5 in Africa, the 6th being London. Some of the vignettes carry a story, others are situations involving caring, forgiving, conflict, and lots and lots of discussions about fathering and politics (a welcome parallel is made between father figures and figures of state authority) politics politics, and sports! The play takes place during one day, the final of a soccer championship between Chelsea and Barcelona.

There is a change of mood through the play that is well controlled by super talented Nigerian Inua Ellams). At first, it's a lot of humor, and the situations and lines were damn funny. The scenes get more serious, more emotional. That's always a risk: everyone wants to laugh. But cry? The emotions of betrayal, and loneliness, and loss were  conveyed gently, by the talented cast.

The transition between the scenes/locales is made by picking a bit of a sentence, a bit of a mood and  turning it by turning into a short piece of dance (movements brilliantly orchestrated by Aline David) and song: pure joy.

Was the play perfect? No. It does not have to be. Some actors were less talented than others. Some moments did not hit their full potential.

It does not have perfect, because it gave so much to the audience. A gift. God these people on stage have talent, and the playwright captured what his people have to say: it's a lot. The African diaspora through Africa, pushed by necessity. What does it mean to be a man? What it mean to be a black man? What does it mean to be a strong black man?

Can't wait to see more work by the young playwright Inua Ellams who was elected to the Royal Society of Literature!

Hum. There were 12 actors on stage. 12 men. No women. Zero women. It's in a barber shop, you say? Someone as talented at Ellams could think of one hundred ways of featuring women in this play. No, having just men on stage is not cute, it enforces that the norm is male. Ellams had better follow this up with the Nail Salon Chronicles...

Will Broadway buy the rights? The concern is that they are going to edit some of the more political, more philosophical materials in order to speak down to their audience. Don't do it.

Friday and Saturday night: DJs will be spinning after the show!

Written fast and furiously by  - -  Arabella von Arx

Speaking of bilingual

There is a tendency to believe that bilingualism (or multilingualism) is expanding thanks to the explosion of the means of communications, and the expansion of education. It seems to be quite the opposite. Languages ​​are disappearing. UNESCO projects that it is likely no more than 500 languages ​​will remain within a century out of currently 6,000 existing languages. Should we preserve languages ​​and which? In the region where I grew up in Switzerland, the local dialect has completely disappeared in the last 50 years. Unless a handful of old people in the countryside remember a few words. It is estimated that at least 30,000 languages ​​were born and disappeared in the last 5000 years. This information is computed in an extensive website that register very interesting global linguistic data.

http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/AXL/Langues/3cohabitation_phenom-universel.htm

In addition, we imagine that primitive communities moved little, but people have always moved, they have emigrated or traveled. Movement is a human aspiration that counterbalances the elemental desire for security and comfort. As the territory of the languages ​​were smaller, the travelers soon were in an area where a foreign language was spoken. They also married women from other communities. Or kidnapped them. It has been shown that men in Iceland descend from the Norse, but the women descend from the Scottish. Conclusion? Icelandic men raided Scotland for women, as their Norse women were disinclined to move to an island where the highest temperatures in summer are around 68F/19C, and nothing grows. Furthermore conquests frequently swept continents, conquerors bringing with them their language which would end up cohabiting with local languages. There was the official language of the government, like Latin in France, and the local idiom like Gaul dialects, or hindi in India, and local dialects like Mulu.

Languages ​​are probably created not only by creolization and natural evolution, but also as a way to distinguish one's community from others, to create an identity.

I admire Michel Foucault, but I regret that he denied the benefits of creolization for languages, as proposed by Martiniquan thinker Edouard Glissant. This petrifying vision of French saddens me. The defense of a monolithic language provides a way to confirm the superiority of France over the rest of the French speaking community in African and elsewhere, and of the educated classes over the working, or non working rather, classes.





Posted by - - Arabella von Arx

The Second Woman at BAM - not a review!

Alia Shawkat live on the left, broadcast on the right

The winter/spring season has started at BAM, with the new curator David Binder. Great expectations! Joseph V Melillo brought shows with a constant quality to BAM: those that weren't good were excellent. OK, they were a few misfires, but few, so very few. Walked out on maybe 3 out of 100s of shows over the years.

The Second Woman is the first staged show of the season. Created by Nat Randall and Anna Breckon, two outstanding women that do a bunch of other things in the show too.

A red box. Neon signs reads "The Second Woman", the decor is 60s/70s living room, including liquor caddy. A woman walks in, Alia Shawkat, in a beautiful red dress and stilettos. Excitement! She's pulpy, topped with a Geena Rowland style blond wig. Two camerapeople sit outside the box, filming. Image is projected on a screen next to the box.
The camerapeople get up, she gets up from her seat and goes and stands in the corner. Man walks in. Kisses her. They talk. Voices are not amplified, hard to understand. The dialogue, apparently, is inspired by Cassavetes' Opening Night. She expresses her insecurities. The man replies, pretending to reassure her, but not really. She throws noodle dish at him. Then puts music on. They dance. She tries to drag the man down to the floor. He won't. She offers him $20 (says in an article $50, and that's what the men get paid for their performance, but I saw $20, maybe fee went down) and he leaves.

That's the basic scene that gets repeated over and over.  Over 24 hours. 100 men. The men are non actors, cast locally. Her dialogue is always the same. The men have a bit more leeway. They can choose between a few options, the most important one being their reaction when she says: "and I love you": they're all uncomfortable by the expectation she sets they respond. They either say: 'and you love me', or "I love you too". The last line has a similar weight: either "I love you", "I've always loved you", "I never loved you anyway"  She is the perfect woman according to stereopical men's expectations: beautiful, sexy, submissive, insecure. But then her sexuality, her insecurities get too much when she tries to drag them to the floor: she has to be beautiful, sexy,  submissive, insecure but within pre established parameters. She says: You don't think I'm capable when that's all I want to be, I just want to be capable. Well, that's exactly what she is not expected to be.

The purpose is clearly to subvert gender definitions. But this feminist show has 1 female actor for 100 male performers! Almost as bad as the Lehman Trilogy!  (winking face here)

The images shot by the camerapeople  are edited live, turning the theater scene into a film scene with alternating close ups, details, wider shots. Visually, the show is stunning. Visually, Shawkat is stunning.

The tension between the two forms, theater and film, is stimulating. The time conventions are different. On stage, normally, time elapses only when the actors are not on stage. The scene acted out here is neither theater nor cinema. It's too short to be either. And that's fine. The actors go through the motion, the woman reacting to each man, often aping him, or at least taking clues for her behavior from theirs. But their acting is not theater acting nor cinematic. It's a different form, not unlike Lepage's 10 hr show Lipsynch also at BAM.

The men are old, young, different ethnicities. One is gay, another is a woman. The repetition of the action, the improvised differences, Shawkat's comedy makes for humor that lacks subtlety.

As the dialogue is nearly fixed, it is the physical aspect of the scene that changes: the way he opens the bag of Chinese food, the way she throws the noodles, their dance. Sometimes he takes the $20, sometimes he doesn't. She's often playful, which antagonizes the agonizing content of the dialogue.

After over 23 hrs on stage, she's still going strong. Alert. Responsive. Spontaneous. It's astonishing. It's actually better because she's looser, and so are the interactions. Over twenty-three hours into the show, she danced a cancan, and these legs were going high up in the air, no cheating. She was also still wearing her stilettos, when her feet must have been jam. There must have been bloody toes constrained in these contraptions. Maybe that kept her awake! But when she went to the floor, she was lying down flat, and thinking: soon, soon I'll be in my bed. And got up again.

Alia Shawkat still going strong after over 23hrs on stage

Here I conclude: it's a compelling show. Pfew! Expectations are not let down. The experimental aspect, the visuals satisfy the curious mind. Somehow the show could be better, the relation between the dialogue and the action could be more meaningful. A piano accompaniment punctuates the series of scenes, and also plays before the show starts. It's intense, repetitive to obsession. Most apt. So is the music track for the dance,  Aura's "A taste of love".

Interestingly, the relationship to the audience plays an important part in the show: how long will people stay? how do they decide when to leave? When to come back? Somehow their lives are brought into the space, whether they took a break to go to the gym or to make love. There is also time to think, to chat in between iterations. The audience is markedly younger on average than the usual BAM theater audience, and many are friends of the male performers, or the male performers themselves. A ticket will get you a red ribbon around your wrist, - you're not supposed to shower for 24 hrs, I guess. At one point, I took a break, went to the bar:
A beer, a glass of white wine and a bag of cookies.
31.50, says the employee, without blinking. The bag of cookies is teeny tiny, like 5 crumbs.
Dollars? I ask.
She does not smile.
It does include these BAM reusable tumblers, so I guess I'll be saving on my next drinks when I bring my own brand of mescal or armagnac in my pre bought tumbler.
I know, this last part is not all that serious or relevant, but it's an experiential blog! I can be serious too, see here.



Written - fast and furiously by -  Arabella H. von Arx

It is entitled "not a review" because the format does not follow the regular review, or essay or article, structure, with their introduction, development, conclusion. It's looser, more spontaneous and aims primarily at reproducing the experience rather than analyzing it.

Arundathi Roy - the audience in the palm of her hands

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Author: Arundathi Roy

Book: Walking with the Comrades

The crowd chatted feverishly while waiting to be let into the auditorium. "Literary sensation!", "brimming with talent", "unique sense of vernacular" were the terms flying around the groups in the foyer. Ages ranging from 16 to 80, they were all educated New Yorkers who had rushed to be part of this literary communion. The doors to the large auditorium opened. Beautifully built of wood and lit as for a crowning ceremony, it held several hundreds of us. There was a rush through the doors, a run down towards for the first rows, a bit of push and shove which quieted down quite soon as we are civilized after all.

Chats, last minute cellphone check, laughs, changes of seat, no change of heart. At last the diminutive woman walked on stage, sat down, took a gulp of water and leant towards the microphone. She raised her eyes towards us, she raised her eyebrows. Not a whisper in the room, nor a cough, nor a scraping of throat or shoe. 

And Arundathi Roy started. She started, and she didn't stop. She started and she didn't let go. Telling us about tribal people being beaten, poisoned, arrested, women being raped, their land being raped. Constantly on the move to escape persecution. Undernourished, under educated, under cared for, families dispersed, belongings null. 

These people in the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Lalgarh have the great misfortune of having their lands sitting on profitable minerals and metals. Where they lived close to nature and far from what is called civilization, large companies have arrived with equipment to dig up the earth and pollute the waters, the airs, the soil. They burn villages, they bring elephants to trample the forest, they scatter babool seeds to make the soil barren.

She had an educated audience that exercise a certain power through belonging to a privilege society, and they needed to know. This was not a literary salon where minds get stroked thanks to highbrow exchanges and eclectic language. This was about the world out there, politics, humans, pain, injustice, ugly holes dug in the earth.

At last she was done. The audience, awed, was a different group of people that had walked into that auditorium an hour before. The moderator announced that the renowned author would now sign books. A long line of people formed from the top of the stairs of the auditorium all the way to the desk she was sitting at. She had asked for our time, for our ears, for our conscience. And now she returned the favour in full. She signed at length everyone's book, talking, smiling, indefatigable, this was the woman who had walked for months through the jungles. She let people take photographs. A young couple was keen on Roy holding their 2 year old in her arms for a snapshot. The 2 year old was uncooperative. Roy waited patiently for the child to be convinced they would all treasure the memento forever, and that an ice cream would be obtained on the way out. Finally the snapshot was taken, the couple ecstatic, and Roy turned graciously to respond to the next request.

Outside the auditorium, people made a beeline for the bookselling stalls, in a much more sober mood now, and purchased Walking With The Comrades, a convincing and commendable work.

National Geographic has a very different approach to the subject. They call Arundathi Roy's "comrades" killers who stand in the way of development.

Down To Earth begs to differ from National Geographic, with hard facts and statistics.

Amnesty also condemns the violations of human rights and the breach of Indian law in the mining regions.

Written and published by  - -  Arabella von Arx

The 10 most underrated women writers

Writer Grace Paley

1. Grace Paley (1922-2007)

American. She’s like an older sister to me. I read her audacious writing, and I think, wow, she was so intrepid! Robert Kaplan posts quotes and excerpts from writers on facebook, and that’s how I discovered her writing. Chance. She didn’t get half the recognition and awards she deserved, and is in danger of slipping into oblivion. Help! Rescue her unique work!

What to read: her short stories. All of them: they're fun and mind blowing and very much grounded in NYC.

Why she should be read: Tone. Freedom of expression. Time capsule. Originality.

French woman writer Violette Leduc

  2. Violette Leduc (1907-1972)

This French writer was mentored by Simone de Beauvoir. The latter was a good writer too, particularly her memoirs, but not underrated. De Beauvoir, and Sartre too, behaved most shabbily at times toward their intellectual competition. But de Beauvoir paid a publishing house to forward secretly Violette Leduc a monthly allowance that allowed her to write. Most elegant. Leduc’s writing was modern in its rawness and authenticity. Totally underrated.

Why she should be read: she was a groundbreaker, her work is unflinching in describing herself and others. There is no need to make allowance when you read her, as you might for mid 20^th century writer.

What to read: La Bâtarde, no doubt. This memoir tells of her origins (she was the illegitimate daughter of a maid and an aristocrat), of her love affairs with both men and women, of her life during WWII when she was a black market operator: fascinating! Raw. Authentic. Compelling.

Swedish woman writer Selma Lagerloff

3. Selma Lagerloff (1858-1940): 

I always feel bad for people who died in the early 1940s: imagine the picture of Europe they took to the grave. She was a lesbian as was Yourcenar. Marriage, and child rearing, had typically not allowed women to develop their creativity. Successful creative women in the 19^th century and 20^th century were usually not marriedL George Sand, George Eliott, the Brontës, some were even crippled like painter Schjerfbeck.

Lagerloff was the first woman writer to win the Nobel Prize (hum, she was Swedish), but is now mostly overlooked.

Why she should be read: her work is of a bold, romantic streak, without any sentimentality: a treat to devour under or over the covers.

What to read: Difficult to recommend something, as she wrote in a whole range of genders. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils is a great book to read to children.  I loved her Löwenskold series, which is more realistic than some of her gothic or fantasy works.

  

French woman writer Marguerite Yourcenar.

4. Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987)

Marguerite Yourcenar won a Nobel Prize yet she is not as read as she could be, maybe because work is often historical fiction but she eschews the traps of the genre. She is admired by a number of writers for her rich prose and for the drama of her work. 

Why: a beautiful stylist, and a great story teller.

What to read: Memoirs of Hadrian (Hadrian wrote an autobiography that has been lost, Yourcenar imagined what it might have been), Coup de Grâce (romantic novella about a dramatic triangle) is a great book gift for a woman in her twenties.

Anecdotal: She had a 40 year relationship with literary scholar Grace Frick. They lived together on an island in Maine.

5. Jamaica Kincaid: born 1949 in Antigua. Alive and kicking.

Writer Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid is a writer who is getting quite a bit of recognition. But that’s not good enough, because she is great, there is not a word that needs to be thrown away in her writing. She will only stop being underrated and scratched from this list when she gets the Nobel Prize.

Why she should be read: there is an undercurrent of passion, in the sense of Christ’s passion, in her work. Her prose is spare and powerful.

What to read: I love The Autobiography of My Mother (great title too), but Lucy is her most famous work.

6. Carson McCullers 1917-1967

Carson McCullers

She married a man also called McCullers who also wrote and drank. Then they divorced. Then they married again. Without ever having to alter her name in her documents. She lived at a time when a lot of creative people did not live long: Jackson Pollock, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Bowles (should she be included in this list?), Albert Camus. She had a funny, sweet face. Her style is supposed to be Southern Gothic. I don’t know, I think she’s just a good writer. Her characters are memorable, they touch the heart without sentimentality. She’s underrated because they don’t read her in high schools when it would be most appropriate content, I rest my case.

Why: great characters that will stay with you. Psychological insight. Depiction of Southern society.

What: Member of the Wedding. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is awesome too, written when she was 23.

Chinese American writer Pearl Buck

7. Pearl Buck (1892-1973) 

She led a fascinating life, being born the child of missionaries in China. She loved China, the Chinese people and peasantry which she described in her works. She was an activist against racism and sexism. The Good Earth was the second-best-selling novel of the 20th century, outsold only by "Gone With the Wind: the two best selling novels are works by women! The people voted!

Why she should be read: great story teller, amazing insights into China at the beginning of the 20^th century.

What to read: Any of the Chinese novels, such as The Good Earth. A great read for teenagers too. I positively loved her memoir, Fighting Angel, about her father, a tender and honest portrait of a stiff Baptist missionary with some redemptive traits. Apparently her portray of her mother, The Exile, is also very good.

Anecdotal: when she was old, she got involved with a shady character, some kind of swindler who squandered most of her fortune. A sad and grotesque endgame for a remarkable woman.

8. Elsa Morante - 1912-1985 –

Italian writer Elsa Morante

You read right, Morante not Ferrante. In my opinion the better writer. A powerhouse of a writer. It’s so inspiring to read explosive works by women who lived when the consensus was that women were weak creatures that could only decorate vases. Women such as Ferrante and Lagerloff and the Brontës, of course, paid no heed to these superstitions, thankfully for us. It should also remind us creators how important it is to go it alone, without worrying about trends and opinions.

She was quite successful during her life. Some of her works were translated into English. However, modern Italian does not always translate well into English, the tone is drastically different. She expressed reservations with some of her translations. She was married to Alberto Moravia, the legendary Roman writer, whose writings also do not translate well into English.

Why she should be read: epic, visionary writer

What to read: don’t, it’s too sad. Ok, if you must: La Storia. The story of an Italian woman and her little boy born from a rape by a German soldier. Mythic. Poignant. Unforgettable. 
The title is often not translated because it is not translatable. La Storia means both “story” and “history”:. Same in French with “histoire”.

9. Jetta Carleton - (1913-1999) - 

Jetta Carleton

Her novel The Moonflower Vine was a success when it was published. Then she didn’t write for another 30 years. Reasons are suggested, she married (not a good idea for women creators in the 20^th century!), she was busy founding a publishing house, but that did poorly. Maybe success was difficult for her to handle? It can be traumatic! Her second, and last novel, The Back Alleys of Spring, was written just before she was disabled by a stroke in the 1990s. It was eventually published posthumously in 2012.

Speaking of which, she’s quite the ghost writer, she died in 1999 but went on a tour in 2012...

Ursula K. Le Guin - 1929-2018 -

My count was 9 underrated women writers, and I could not narrow on anyone else: the Brontës got their due, George Eliott, George Sand have the fame they deserve (easier with a man’s first name, obviously), Marguerite Duras was an ace at self promotion, Alice Munro got the Nobel Prize. A bunch of writers could certainly do with more attention, but it’s not crying out loud: Doris Lessing, Patricia Highsmith (probably more highly regarded outside the US) the best crime writer ever, Françoise Sagan, Nathalie Sarraute, Astrid Lindgren, Sigrid Undset, Goliarda Sapienza, and most likely a whole beautiful array of writers from Asia and African and Latin America we wish we were reading (speak up in comments below!!).

Anyway, I asked around, and thought I would include this writer in the list who I have never read. A science fiction writer, she seems to gather suffrages around her writing, and is working in a genre that has been dominated by men. Time to give her a try.

Why: people say so.

What: The Left Hand of Darkness, according to Harold Bloom.

ሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖሖ

♛ After I posted about the 10 most underrated women artists, readers suggested I post about women musicians, which I felt I was not qualified to do, but am hoping someone else does. But I thought I would enjoy gathering a list of the most underrated women writers. My findings? Women writers have not been as systematically pushed out from the public eye as artists. Most intriguing!

Why? It would be very interesting to investigate this phenomenon in depth, and someone should. Right now, I would venture that there is an immediacy about books as media. No one worries about the original manuscript, the work is the words, its physical support does not matter so much. It’s a consumer good, and if it sells, it sells. The two most successful novels in the US 20^th century were written by women: Gone is the Wind, and The Good Earth by Pearl Buck (see above) Paintings need to be presented in institutions that have been run by men. Museum still show an overwhelming majority of works by white men. Art works have to be reproduced in a costly process to be spread to a larger audience. To become a good writer, writers often recommend reading extensively: that was fairly easy for educated women in the 19^th century. All a writer needs is paper, a pen and ... talent! To become a good artist, techniques need to be learned, supplies need to be accessible and affordable.

Women writers often published under men’s pen names in the 19^th century, which was not the case for women artists who did not experience that need then, or earlier, in the 17^th or 18^th century. The suppression of women artists’ work mostly happened in the 19^th century, once their painting craft became Art with a capital A and was institutionalized via museums, and the founding of art history and theory. Novels were necessary fodder for the 19^th century publications, which needed serials to hook its readership. These publications were not run by an academic establishment, they were profit making companies who didn’t care whether the content was written by a woman or a serial killer or a lemur, as long as it was successful. The 20^th century might have been relatively less egalitarian as serialization disappeared and novels became literature, flanked with literary criticism and theory. Just as painters, women writers who were successful in their lifetime have often been evinced from cultural memory: Pearl Buck, Selma Lagerloff, Jetta Carleton, Violette Leduc, etc.

♛ Two of the books, Hadrian’s Memoirs and La Storia, above are selections of the 100 best books selected by authors such as Salman Rushdie and Milan Kundera. It’s a very interesting list though a bit biased (well, the writers doing the selecting must have felt obliged to pick each other)! 

♛ I tried to use photos of women writers at different times of their life, to give a sample of role models for aspiring writers, young and not so young.

written and published by  - -  Arabella von Arx

Country Pavilions show propaganda at Venice Biennale 2019

These are impressions. Not an essay, not even an article. For the reader planning on going to the Biennale. For the reader who has been to the Biennale, and those who are planning not to go to the Biennale.

Starting by the pavilions is not a good idea for people sensitive to any hint of propaganda. The Venezuelan pavilion which actually exhibited some interesting art made no mystery of its intention (see its claim to being a peaceful nation in a time of absolute corruption and crime), unless it was supposed to be sarcasm which would be screamingly funny, I admit.

Natali Rocha, De Tripas Corazón

The Russian pavilion exposes a crowd pleasing installation of decors and automates inspired by famous works owned by the Hermitage. Come to Leningrad! Sorry, - come to St Petersburg, visit our beautiful Museum endowed with pieces by the Tsars before all that unpleasant communist business happened, make Russia great again. In fact, the exhibit refers to The Return of The Prodigal Son, by Rembrandt. There is a video with some war stuff. We could read it as a criticism to Putin’s war on poor Ukraine. Or as support to same.

In the US pavilion, Martin Puryear comments on being American: subverted hunting trophies, the eagle, the tired myth of the pioneer. Isn’t that another form of propaganda even if the artist is well intentioned? See how democratic we are, we let our artists criticize our identity? The pavilion might be allowing free expression, but this is a facade for a country that has legalized torture and that tramples human rights when it comes to what is termed “illegal immigrants” who are generally people indigenous to the continent.

Liberty, by Martin Puryear

American Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2019

The Ghana Pavilion boasts the great Maestro El Anutsai, stunning self portraits from the 60s by Felicia Abban, and ... Yiadom-Boakye whose top selling work does not exactly express her African roots.

A 112 min film at the Canada pavilion. Maybe I had not slept enough, or was feeling more and more cynical, but the day in the life of an indigenous man, an interesting concept, failed to convince me. Old men obviously suffering from substance abuse hang around the icepack pretending to hold strong to their traditions for the filmmaker’s sake. At one point, two young indigenous girls speak coyly on camera about boys. As if they would. When we know what the sexual reality is for these girls, one of the highest rape rates.

The pavilions push against each other to grab the attention of the visitor: watch our video! Read our long texts! As if the longer the visitor stays, the more success for the pavilion.

All this lead me to extract the following formula:

art x propaganda = propaganda

Which would mean propaganda has similar properties to zero. Works with other variables:

Writing x propaganda = propaganda

Gardening x propaganda = propaganda

Filmmaking x propaganda = propaganda

Hair cut x propaganda = propaganda

What does it mean to have countries show off art, artists in a pavilion? It’s a remnant of a time when countries had pavilions at World Fairs, promoting their national products and colonies. “A major study by Tjaco Walvis called "Expo 2000 Hanover in Numbers" showed that improving national image was the main goal for 73% of the countries participating in Expo 2000. Pavilions became a kind of advertising campaign, and the Expo served as a vehicle for "nation branding".”

The pavilions might show work similar to the Biennale's exhibit but they turn the art into propaganda as it contributes to promoting their image.
To foster the Biennale’s integrity, it’s high time to transform the pavilions into a different form, a difficult, costly decisions as the pavilions, these crowd pleasers funded by individual countries are a boon for the Biennale. The pavilions could have different subsections that could change each edition: social issues one year such as immigration, refugees, gentrification, water access, etc. And another year show art by creators that are underrepresented: outsiders, traditional woman craft, art by children, etc.

I was certainly gripped by the video installation of the Australian pavilion. Which strikes me as a country which is genuinely taking a stab (is that really the expression? So difficult to stay away from violent wording) at democracy.  The videos take place in an imaginary building. Images of people playing music, of meeting places, build a three dimensional space where change and exchanges can happen. Much needed utopia.

Angelica Mesiti, Assembly

The German pavilion felt like a meditative relief with its rocks, its simple installation, its offer for people to sit and stop. A dam, exuding the power of an Egyptian temple, will hold the deluge for how long?

An animated fresco at the Chinese Pavilion:

In the Austrian pavilion, I was delighted to find Renate Bertlmann, an old favorite of mine.

The Danish pavilion exhibited an artist of Palestinian origins Larissa Sansour, a smart move to skirt nationalism. In one room, a huge black globe pushes the limits of the walls. Close up, the black as it absorbs all light, eschewing any shadowing, the globe looks flat, like a disk. Optical illusion. Just as on a daily basis we aren’t aware we tread a globe. But if we take the time to stop and think, we know it’s a globe, and it’s in serious danger.

“May you live in interesting times” is the theme of the 2019 Biennale. It is apparently a curse that a wise man in China threw to an enemy, but its origins are unclear. I wonder what is the literal meaning of the ancient Chinese word, “interesting” seems such a modern concept. It was in fact denounced by Susan Sontag as being linked to capitalism.

The exhibit A, in the Arsenale, makes for a consistent experience. The artists chosen, the work presented, the actual exhibition of the pieces in terms of sequence and placement, form an expressive ensemble. Some artists’ pieces are all gathered in one space, others are sprinkled through the buildings.

A lot of the work feels genuine. That skirted the common case at Art Fairs of walking into through the exhibit and feeling like the works are all screaming as loud as possible for attention: look at meeee!!! Buy meeee!!

There are lots of films. Good films. But feels like a punishment to be stuck inside dark rooms when it’s so beautiful out. Like a physical version of the Internet with its motto: use videos, not still images, not words, to grab attention. Here's a film using big data and scientific data to make a rhythmical symphony of images.

A lot of dried plants, weeds, seaweeds. Indeed our poor oceans know “interesting times”.

Some exhibits are smelly. Nice to have an additional sense stimulated.

A piece with interviews by Skype of soldiers of various armies: most compelling, the constant, the differences, and the sad fact that there are soldiers and there are armies, and as long as we have these, there will be wars.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster takes us on a virtual tour in a beautiful universe where we float or fly. Bubbles come by. Shapes arise out of nothing, stun us with their shifting form, their bright colors, it’s a creation story.

The gut wrenching photos of Soham Gupta, taken in the slums of Calcutta. Humanity reduced to its common denominators pushed to extremes - hunger, love, disease, fear-, the images stab us out of our comfort. A baby looks too big for his mother's body. 

Elegant installation with tartan from Anthea Hamilton:

A piece of the Biennale's heart:

This piece by Liu Wei, Microworld 2018, refers to the molecular but has the size of the macroscopic for our appreciation, with its beautiful shapes and colors. Spectacular, while managing to retain modesty, as it typical of this edition of the Biennale, with its new curator Ralph Rugoff.

Liu Wei, Microworld

Questioning what it means to be "Asian" in our modern world, buddhist lama Khyentse Norbu presents options:

It's good to run into old friends. Painting, a trend making a coming back in the current art world, is well represented, here by Julie Mehretu.

The Biennale also takes place in spaces outside its geography.

Ibis, by artist Mother Nature, found a lot of admirers.

Finally, the wide diversity in terms of origins is welcome though still a lot of Americans and Europeans, but a disappointing number of women artists. Was parity not aimed for?!

Written and published by  - -  Arabella von Arx

Sculptures at the Italian Pavilion