New Cambridge Observer Correspondent Mark S. Hoffman recently returned from Venice Bieniale 2024--the renowned international festival featuring the work of more than 400 artists in its central exhibition and national pavilions. He found much of the work provocative–and took more than 2000 photos. Early on, he found the lines of people waiting to enter galleries so daunting–even during the press preview (April 17-19, 2024)– that he skipped quite a few exhibits. Finally, he decided to brave the crowd at the German Pavilion. After waiting in line for over an hour he got inside, only to find himself in another, slow moving, line. He came to consider that line part of the exhibit and to see it as instrumental to his understanding of the artwork displayed there. Here is his review:

The Venice Biennale is huge, with more than 330 artists, 30 collateral exhibits and many unofficial shows and events. Thousands of media professionals covering it during the press opening creates long lines for art that has gotten the best pre-exhibit writeups. After avoiding the long lines for the first two days, I decided to experience the line at the well-liked German pavilion and learned an interesting lesson. After rushing through other exhibits and waiting in line for this event, I felt I needed to spend more time in the exhibit and gradually came to understand it better and even appreciate it.

I started by going to the front of the line and asking people how long they had been there. Most said they’d been waiting for about an hour. Then I went to the end of the line, know how to pace myself while doing research about the show on my phone. An hour and 10 minutes later I got into the exhibit.

In the first big room, just to the left, was a small room with a fascinating concept: shadows in the air. At the far end of the room was a bright light hidden by the hub of an (approximately) 40-bladed fan spinning very slowly. There were clear shadows of the blades on the floor and walls, but also there were shadows cast on the dust in the air. What I didn’t know until later was that this was a miniature of a spaceship designed as a home for generations of travelers. I never found out why a spaceship would have a huge fan in the vacuum of space.  However, if (by my guess) each blade was 300 feet and it took 20 seconds for a full rotation, the centrifugal force at the tip of each blade would be about the same as gravity on Earth. Maybe that would be good for something.

Further to the right was a large (about 30 feet) video of some sort of pagan dance circle in verdant woods accompanied by loud penetrating music.

The third item in the entrance room was a 3-story circular building. This building had a 25-minute line that got some people to bypass it, but, for me, just being in that extra line created an important experience. The line went about two-thirds around the building, so while standing in it, one could not see where it ended. The line was in the corner of the entrance room so I could not move much from side to side to get much of a look at the line in front of me.

After moving about halfway up the line, I could see the large video over the heads of the people in front of me. I watched the six people in the video who were moving in a circle. Gradually, every other one turned transparent and disappeared. Then the remaining three did the same. The view of the empty forest was replaced by an immense spacecraft with a tiny spacecraft docking to it. I got the sense that the 6 people had been transported to the space station.

I got to watch the video several times as the line moved forward to no visible end. The loud pulsating music seemed to pull me forward. I felt like I was one of the Eloi being pulled to underground slaughterhouses by the sirens of the Morlocks in the 1969 movie version of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

But there was no slaughterhouse, just some scenes from a post-apocalyptic dystopian world.

The first floor contained documents that might have helped explain things except that it was too dark, the letters too small, and the text was in German.

The first floor also had some type of workshop.

The second floor was a living space. The kitchen was covered in dust and grime. There was some sort of play going on. I saw a couple in bed with some clothes on. They got up, walked a few feet in opposite directions, and sprawled out on the ground. I also saw a third person on the ground. Whatever was going on was moving too slowly to piece it into a story.

The third story was a roof where one could look down at the people in line and milling about, and also see the big video.

The next big room had a small video on a TV. This showed a woman “expert” talking about the climate catastrophe and the huge spaceships being built by the richest countries to support hundreds of generations of humans as they traveled through space with the possibility of finding a new home. The concept of Earth would become myth rather than fact. This was the only explanation of the rest of the exhibit.

There was also an area where visitors could lie down on flat couches and look up into a hemisphere of projected images of the inside of the spacecraft as it rotated.

This exhibit is well worth the wait in line. The technical execution of each part is excellent, especially the shadows in the air and the large video and sound. The exhibit is deliberately designed to not be linear and the more time you spend in it, the clearer the meaning of each part will be.

–Mark S. Hoffman

The Bienniale, curated by Andriano Pedosa, will be on view through Sunday, November 2024.
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.