First views of Venice

During our first days in Venice - the preview days of the Biennale - instead of being out and about taking in the sights, I was inside, in the exhibition space shown below, marvelling not at marbles, but at the vast array of colourful trousers.

The outside of the Danish pavilion, looking in to my shelves.

My shelves, from just inside the door.

The display benches.

The view from my bench.

The other views from my bench.

 

    

(Red definitely dominates the trouser colour spectrum, but I've tried to show a bit of a range here.)

Alright, here goes. Time for bit of background and a bit of a description of what on earth we're doing in this amazing place.

I have a job, from 31 May to 27 November 2011, working for Kobe Matthys, in the Danish Pavilion of the Venice Biennale.

Kobe is the founder of Agency, a Brussels based collection of international 'things'.

The connection between us and Kobe was made through Biddy, who was first offered this job but passed it up, and passed it on to me.

Work for Kobe began from Melbourne at the beginning of February, researching and sourcing 'things' from Australia for the exhibition. In April that we finally found out that (some) funding had been approved for my job here and it was time to start making plans for a Venice journey.

So, this list of things, this archive that makes up Agency. 

Each box you see on the shelves contains (in theory) one object - a book, a toy, a t-shirt, a record, a bottle of perfume, etc - and one clipboard with one page of text about the intellectual property dispute in which the object has centred. For this exhibition, the focus is on the notion of authorship assuming that for an object to be art, it should be expressive of a subject's free and individual creativity. Art that doesn't fit this categorisation is refused the protection of intellectual property laws. (For example, indigenous 'traditions' deemed to be in the public domain are not protected.)

The question of the exhibition is: "How can objects be included within art practices?"

All the blurbs about the exhibition refer to me as the 'Keeper', here to facilitate between the archive and the audience. Kobe had intended for me to display items according to the conversations I had with visitors - i.e. one visitor = one box displayed specifically for them. Thankfully Kobe was here for the first few days of the exhibition period though, as we quickly deemed this method untenable. Instead, the idea now is just that I keep the displays revolving, with something on each of the 4 display benches at all times. Additionally, all the 'things' held in the boxes are depicted on a poster (visible in the background of 'The display benches' photo, above), and people can request to be shown particular boxes. Or, like before, based on conversations about the show I can select specific things for people to see.
In reality, only a handful of the boxes have finished texts, so the displays are fairly static. People are more than welcome to see into the other boxes though, and to read the case notes on which the texts will (eventually) be based.

So here I am, working Tuesday to Sunday, 12-6pm, in the Danish Pavilion, in the Giardini, in the Venice Biennale. Come visit!

Lunch with F (mozzarella and prosciutto buns) in the park outside the Egyptian Pavilion.  

The canal by said park.

14 June 2011