The Subversion of The Spectacle: Derives A La Biennale Di Venezia

Batycka The Subversion of the Spectacle: Derives a la Biennale di Venezia
The Subversion of the Spectacle: Derives a la Biennale di Venezia Dorian Batycka
Abstract: The Venice Biennale is the oldest and longest running exhibition of contemporary art in the world. Begun in 1895, the Venice Biennale is centered on exhibitions contained within national pavilions, which in 2011 represented a record number 89 national participants. This study attempts to understand the emergence of the Venice Biennale within several unique social, political, scientific, philosophical and economic developments, dating to what is generally referred to as The Age of Enlightenment and the Italian Unification Movement. In addition, this study also attempts to contextualize the proliferation of the Venice Biennale within several more recent developments in social, political and economic history, including both World Wars, the Idea of Europe, the Cold War and Globalization. This study concludes with a critique of the underlying exhibitionary policy of the Venice Biennale, largely informed by more recent developments in curatorial and aesthetic theory. Key Words: Venice Biennale, Enlightenment, Risorgimento, Contemporary Art, Politics, Aesthetics, National Identity, Post-Fordism, Cultural Production
What is critical consciousness at bottom if not an unstoppable predilection for alternatives? Edward Said The 54th International Biennale of visual art in Venice, ILLUMInations, directed by Bice Curiger, opened to the public on Saturday, June 4th, 2011. As the oldest and longest running exhibition of contemporary art in the world, begun in 1895, the Venice Biennale is centered within official and satellite exhibitions contained within national pavilions that in 2011 represented a record number 89 national participants (there were 77 in 2009).1 The title of the 54th edition of the Venice Biennale, ILLUMInations, contained a not-so subliminal reference to the concepts of light and nation, a juxtaposition of concepts dating back to the Enlightenment. According to Venice Biennale chair Paolo Baratta, [t]he countries pavilions are a very important characteristic of the Venice Biennale, it is an old formula envisaging the presence of states and yet more than ever lively and vital.2 Channeling these lines of flight, the purpose of this analysis will be to critically analyze the history and politics of the Venice Biennale right up to the present day. In so doing, this analysis will attempt to understand the genealogy and intellectual history of the Enlightenment. This includes an analysis of several unique social, political, philosophical and scientific developments, dating back to
1WebsiteofVeniceBiennale:www.labiennale.org,2012. 2Ibid.
the eighteenth century. Indeed as Louis Dupr, author of The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture proclaimed, if we are to understand our relation to the Enlightenment, we must attempt to describe it as it understood itself, even while trying to understand its role in shaping the present."1 Consequently, this inquiry will also provide an historical analysis concerning the unification of Italy leading up to the emergence of the Venice Biennale in 1895, and the ways in which Italy sought to integrate into the industrialized Fordist political economy of the late nineteenth century. It is important to mention that this analysis will be a struggle - albeit not always successful - against my own internalizations concerning the ideological state apparatus and the rationalized logic that is the discipline of art + history political economy. In the wake of my own perspective, writing in Western Europe and Canada in the early twenty-first century, immersed in ideas like postmodernity, globalization, neoliberalization and the simulacrum of todays deconstructed urban spectacle-esque environment, it is important to address the spectre of my own subjectivity. In so doing, I wish to address the impossibility of the task at hand: to write a comprehensive narrative deconstructing the history of the Venice Biennale from a socio-political economic perspective, by recognizing that this narrative cannot possibly escape the identificatory processes of my own subjectivity and fragmentary essence, that is, my own historical epoch whatever that may be. However, I would like to pack a pipe and smoke the
1LouisDupr,quotedinJonathanIsraelEnlightenment?WhichEnlightenment?JournaloftheHistory
ofIdeas,Volume67,Number3,July2006.
critical spirit of Walter Benjamin and cool out a little. This will help me conceptualize historical analysis as that which seeks to peel away the ideological layers of the past, in order to catch a glimpse of the present and future, indeed as Benjamin had it, out of infinite distance into infinite proximity.1 In so doing, this essay will therefore function as an historical unpackaging of several discursive events leading up to and including the proliferation of the Venice Biennale as the preeminent contemporary art exhibition in the Western world, as well as the political economy according to which it emerged as such, albeit from the position of an outsider me, Dizzy F Richard/Sans Papier/Radical Aesthetics/Dorian
1WalterBenjamin,TheArcadesProject,trans.HowardEilandandKevinMcLaughlin.
Part I. The Age or Aesthetics of Reason?
Free Bradley Manning Graffiti Intervention by Anonymous Stateless Immigrants, Dome of U.S. Pavilion, Venice, 2011 (Creative Commonz)
The Enlightenment is a term that escapes any easy definition or defining set of characteristics. As a movement of intellectuals originating in Europe in and around the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment spanned a wide array of topics relating, but not limited to, liberty, justice, science and nature. The term has also been used interchangeably with the Age of Reason, a term taken from the title of Thomas Paines 1794 theological pamphlet, now typically used to denote the
movements turn towards the separation of church and state and Catholic religious dogma as a whole. These issues no doubt influenced debates concerning arts and culture within the 18th and 19th centuries. The aesthetic sphere, still very much in the shadow of Kant is perhaps most well represented in Romantic painting and literature, largely developed in opposition to Neoclassicm in addition to ecclesial authority, pre-ordained social hierarchies, religious intolerance and the restriction of free and open expression, ideas arguably precipitated in seventeenth-century Holland by Baruch Spinoza.1 The infamous French historian and philosopher of the Enlightenment Voltaire once proclaimed, "nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense." Immanuel Kant described the Enlightenment as man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity and the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters.2 As problematic as it is to define, perhaps the most agreed upon characteristic of the Enlightenment is that it exists not as a singular unifying set of political or philosophical ideas and narratives, but rather the disposition of reason as an epistemological raison detre. This manifested in what became known as the quarrel between the Anciens and the Modernes, an intense literary, scholarly and artistic debate that occurred in France in the early 1690s. This quarrel pitted the Anciens, who were predisposed to the Classical knowledge developed by those such as Aristotle
1JonathanI.Israel,EnlightenmentContested:Philosophy,Modernity,andtheEmancipationofMan,
16701752NewYork:OxfordUniversityPress,2006. 2ImmanuelKant,AnAnswertotheQuestion:WhatisEnlightenment1784.
and thought it could in no way be surpassed; against the Modernes, who venerated ancient scholarly texts but with the benefit of hindsight. The Modernes believed society had built on the knowledge contained within Classical texts, and due to developments in science and technology were now superior in thought, knowledge and historical progression and advancement. However, this quarrel was conditonal on an intellectual climate in some parts of Europe that fostered a society of letters and an oscillatation of different ideas, back and forth back and forth. As such the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns became somewhat of an elitist and academic battle royale, that gave way to intense metaphysical, political and economic debates, ecyclopedic in scope, that also involved a rearticulation of narratives, ideologies, identities, republics,
subjectivities and so on. Within this intellectual milieu, the concept of reason went on to influence and undermine the power of the Roman Catholic Church, and also proved foundational in the development of new nation states. Indeed similar to the way Constatantine I used Christianity as a political tool for the unification of Rome in 313, the concept of reason began to cultivate a cult like following by intellectuals and scholars beginning in the late 17th century, thereby assuming a key function in naturalizing and promoting the Enlightenment as well as the establishment of new republics and nation states. By the turn of the eighteenth century Europe was still very much under the spell of Newtonian science, with Newtons monograph Philosophie Naturalis Principia Mathematica published in 1687, laying the foundations for the laws of
universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which came to dominate the scientific view of the universe for the next three centuries. Newtons view of nature, brought down to the level of human reason was a feat that led him to be greatly popular and highly repsected in his own time. In fact, Voltaire and Locke viewed developments in Newtonian in science in relation to ideas concerning nature and natural law, and applied his theories to social and political ideas as well. As John Gribbin notes, although it was just one of the many factors in the Enlightenment, the success of Newtonian physics in providing a mathematical description of an ordered world clearly played a big part in the flowering of this movement in the eighteenth century.1 As a result Newton became a key figure influencing many of the central protagonists, characters and ideas developed during the Enlightenment, inextricably influencing the movements intellectual core. In The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (2010) author Dan Eldenstein suggests that the Enlightenment witnessed a wide range of genuinely Modern developments in political and philosophical thought. Eldenstein suggests that it was during the eighteenth century that the Modern notion of political representation was fully developed and by the end of that century, at least two countries, the United States and France, had constitutionalized representational forms of governance. This was influenced not only by reason but also by political and economic circumstance as well, namely the desire to serperate
1JohnGribbin,Science:AHistory15432000(2000),241.
church and state, but also a myriad of other sources including Machiavellian republicanism.2 The Encyclopdie1 is the single most important text in the entire canon of Enlightenment thought. When it was first published in 1751, it was described by editor Denis Diderot as meant to change the way people think.2 The tome is considered even today standard reading for anyone interested in understanding the taxonomy of Enlightenment thought. It includes formidable contributions from the likes of Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean Le Rond dAlembert, Baron dHolbach, Montesquieu and many others. The Encyclopdie addressed topics as diverse as science, religion, philosophy, natural history, economics, politics, literature, mathematics and music. Many authors in the Encyclopdie opposed Catholic religious dogma, while advocating for the separation of church and state and put forth the philosophical disposition of reason above all else. According to Dan Eldenstein, many thinkers during the Enlightenment also analyzed the disposition or spirit of the law, with those who became known as the Philosophes (marginally associated with the Modernes), concerning themselves with ancient politics, as did their intellectual adversaries in the academies and salons, those
2DanEldenstein,TheEnlightenment:AGenealogy(2010),200. 1Original
title Dictionnaire Raisonn des Sciences, des Arts et des Mtiers, English: Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts. 2Denis Diderot as quoted in Lynn Hunt, R. Po-chia Hsia, Thomas R. Martin, Barbara H. Rosenwein, and Bonnie G. Smith, The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures: A Concise History: Volume II: Since 1340, Second Edition (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007), 611.
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generally described as the Anciens. The Philosophes mediated their interest in ancient politics through the lens of Early Modern humanism, whereas the Anciens proffered a more or less Classical interpretation. Eldenstein posits that the Philosophes knowledge of ancient politics [was] mediated by early modernhumanism as they were generally unwilling to consider political representation as a viable solution for large republics, which they tended to view as a contradiction in terms.1 This can be seen as an early problematization of political identity and representation more generally, manifest in art and culture through large scale exhibitionary projects including the early Paris Salon and perhaps most explicitly the Universal Expositions, both of which came to function as a way to normalize large scale republican projects through spectacle, industry and desire; predicated and effectively conditioned by the concept of creating singularities of national identities through distinct hierarchies of political, aesthetic and industrial representation. In The Spirit of the Laws written by Baron de Montesquieu in 1748, Montesquieu advocated for constitutionalism, the separation of powers, the preservation of civil liberties and the rule of law, building on a number of works including John Lockes Second Treatsie of Government. In fact, ideas separating the state and finance were nothing new, echoed also by Denis Diderot, editor of the Encyclopdie, who proclaimed in unison, if exclusive privileges were not granted and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there
1DanEldenstein,TheEnlightenment:AGenealogy2010.
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would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed.1 Swiss-born Jean Jacques Rousseau conceded to these sentiments as well, suggesting that the original deeply flawed social contract (a la Thomas Hobbes, led to the modern nation state, precipitated at the behest of the rich and powerful, who Rousseau believed cheated the populous into letting go of their civil liberties and who instituted inequality as a fundamental feature of human society. Somehow from this milieu came large-scale political projects emerging from the American, French and British revolutions, through the atomization of parliamentary democracy vis-a-vis local and national election cycles, and the hijacking of reason applied to matters of social and political organization. In general, both the Philosophes and the Modernes were equally devoted to current events such as the rise of the commercial industry, cultural developments in art and literature, as well as the philosophical and scientific developments of their contemporaries as well as those of their ancient predecessors. The commercial industry during the eighteenth century became increasingly important. The rise of mechanization, or what some have described as Fordism, precipitated in England with early industrialization, namely, in 1765 when James Hargreaves (c.1720-1778) a carpenter by trade, invented his
1DenisDiderotquotedinDanEldenstein,TheEnlightenment:AGenealogy2010.
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cotton-spinning jenny.In the late eighteenth century colonial trade and commerce continued to dominate and the manufacturing of household goods such as metals and textiles was needed to feed a growing consumer demand. In short, the spokes on the wheel of modern capitalism were in motion and the world was quickly moving towards Industrial mechanization. Emerging from these developments the national pavilion framework deployed by the Venice Biennale initially existed as a way to use art and culture as a means of establishing national identity. As Maurizzio Lazzarato states using art and culture to establish national identity has a standing long tradition, a tradition that can also be found in the French Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment. David Bell, author of the Cult of the Nation in France (2003) suggests, to an extent that has not been recognized, in the decades after 1750 French writers devoted enormous time and energy to analyzing the general phenomenon of national character or national spirit. Works by the major philosophes form only the most visible part of a huge mass of writing on the subject, including books specifically devoted to it, articles in periodicals, and long discussions in history and travel literature. Bell goes on to state the republicanism that emerged during the last decades of the old regime and triumphed during the Revolution therefore saw no more fundamental task than changing the national character. Bell further elaborates on this and states that the desire to develop a national character emerged in direct opposition to the terrestrial order of the Catholic Church, without reference to God or a divinely
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ordained king. Voltaire, harnessing his inner criticality wrote of national character, the spirit of a nation always resides with the small number who put the large number to work, are fed by it, and govern it. DEspiard wrote in The Spirit of Nations (1753) climate is, for a Nation, the fundamental causethe principle cause presiding over the genius of peoples. In fact, it was climate, language and culture that came to be seen as prominent themes of describing national character developed throughout the Enlightenment. Montesquieu chimed into the debate as well, climate, religion, laws, the maxims of the government, examples of past things, moeurs, and manners; a general spirit (of the nation) is formed as a result.1 It can therefore be argued that the French Revolution was precipitated by a general tendency toward reason followed by an attempted renewal of national character. Robespierre even alluded to this when he said, considering the depths to which the human race has been degraded by the vices of our former social system, I am convinced of the need to effect a complete regeneration, and, if I may so express it, to create a new people.1 Thus it can be gathered that the Venice Biennale emerged from a period when national identity and character became incredibly influential within European intellectual thought and history. In many respects the Enlightenment contributed a wealth of discourse pertaining to reason in relation to nature, society and politics, all of which were
1MontesquieuquotedinDavidBell,TheCultoftheNationinFrance:InventingNationalism,2003 1RobespierrequotedinH.CBarnard,EducationandtheFrenchRevolution,CambridgeUniversityPress,
1969.
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not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts pertaining to social and political concepts as well. With the benefit of hindsight, the consequences of this were not only the rise of nationalism throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century in Europe and beyond, but also pointed assessments attempting to define national character (using art and culture as a means of developing this definition). Therefore, the Enlightenment must be seen within the context of nation building and the development of national identity as a whole. After the French Revolution, European intellectual history went through what those lated coined the CounterEnlightenment, but the main ideas stemming from the Enlightenment continued to grow beyond the borders of France, Germany, Holland, the United States and England. By the time Italy was politically unified with the addition of Venice in 1866 and Rome in 1870, the ideas of national character and espirit philosophique in relation to reason, which had been percolating throughout Europe for over 100 years, were at last given the fertile soil of a politically unified Italy to take root.
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Part II. The Risorgimento and the Venice Biennale
Flash Mob Solidarity Sit-In Against Border Politics and Spanish Austerity Policy, Spanish Pavilion, Giardini, Venice, 2011 (Creative Commons)
The historical events leading up to the unification of Italy also known as the Risorgimento, are complex, multifaceted and unique from region to region. From 1559 to 1713, most of Italy was under the rule of Habsburg Spain followed by the rule of Habsburg Austria from 17131796. These events were followed by the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) which saw Venice, or what was
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formally known as the Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia, remaining independent for over a millennium (697 1797). The Republic of Venice remained independent partially due to its unique topography but mostly due to its proclivity for trade and the economic prosperity acquired by the city-state during the High Middle Ages.1 According to Edward Muir, author of Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (1986), in an act of communal genius, late medieval and Renaissance Venetians intertwined the threads of parochialism, patriotism, and the ideal of la vita civile to weave their own sort of republican, popular piety. In this endeavor, the Republic of Venice anticipated Rousseaus warning in the Contrat sociale, that a state, if it is to endure, must enlist not only the interests of men but their passions as well.2 These passions alluded to by Rousseau inferred myths and grand narratives collectively cultivated by Venetians who shared a geopolitical history, something they were able to collectively cultivate for over 1,100 years, passed down in the canons of painting, music, literature and drama. The Venetian, Florentine, Napolietan and Roman canons went on to provide the foundation for a unified Italy to celebrate and promote its national character internationally. This was without a doubt a quintessential aspect in the early days of the Venice Biennale, whereby all other nation states could participate and celebrate their cultural identities as well.
Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, The Meaning of the Myth, page 10, Princeton University Press, 1986. 2 Ibid.
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By 1796, the Republic of Venice lost its independence and was no longer able to defend itself from the armies of Napoleon, succumbing to the Austrian occupation shortly thereafter after Napoleons defeat at Waterloo. As such, the long history of events that led to the unification and creation of the Italian nation state took a number of years to realize. In 1798, The Papal States and Rome fell largely under French military influence culminating with the invasion of French forces and troops. At this time the rest of Italy was under the direct influence of Habsburg Spain and Habsburg Austria. This situation remained largely unchanged until The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), held in response to Napoleons defeat in 1814, was tasked with redrawing the map of the European continent in which Italy returned to the position of pre-Napoleonic small independent states. After the Congress of Vienna, the north eastern portion of present day Italy again came under heavy Austrian influence, and at the time, the struggle for unification was seen by many Italians as primarily in opposition to the Austrian Empire and the Habsburgs, who in turn vigorously repressed nationalist sentiments.1 Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternich who attended the Congress of Vienna, even went so far as to state that the word Italy meant nothing more than "a geographic expression."2 According to Henrik Mouritsen, The Carbonari (coal-burners) emerged as a secret revolutionary organization in southern Italy in the early nineteenth century, inspired by the principles of the
1
Henrik Mouritsen, Italian Unification: A Study in Ancient and Modern Historiography, University of London Institute of Classical Studies, 1998. 2Quoted inAstarit Tommaso (2000). Between Salt Water And Holy Water: A History Of Southern Italy. p. 264.
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French Revolution and organized many political actions and interventions beginning around 1820. It did not take long for the Carbonari movement, led by Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini, to spread into the Papal States, the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Modene and the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia. In addition, there were also several conservative constitutional monarchic figures involved in these early revolts, including Count Cavour and Emmanuel II, who would later become the first king of a unified Italy. The early revolutionary activity from 1820-1830 culminated in the Two Sicilies insurrection (1820), followed by the Piedmont insurrection (1823), both of which tried to expel Austrian rule and unify the Italian peninsula. Both of these insurrections failed and prompted the Austrian army to march across the Italian peninsula, crushing the resistance of each province that had previously revolted and arresting many Italian leaders of the movement. By 1848, revolutionary sentiments had sprung up again, beginning on January 5 with a strike in Lombardy as citizens quit smoking and playing the lottery thus denying Austria the associated tax revenue, in an act of collective economic civil disobedience.1 In February 1848, there were also revolts in Tuscany the results of which were a newly formed Tuscan constitution, after which a breakaway provisional government was formed. Soon thereafter, in February 1848, Pope Pius IX granted a constitution to the Papal States. After the War of 1859, also known as
1Henrik
Mouritsen, Italian Unification: A Study in Ancient and Modern Historiography, University of London Institute of Classical Studies, 1998.
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the Second War of Italian Independence, only four states remained in Italy the Austrians in Venice, the Papal States, the newly expanded Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (annexed in the war of 1859), and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with Naples added shortly thereafter. On February 18, 1861, Victor Emmanuel organized the deputies of the first Italian Parliament in Turin, with the Parliament declaring Victor Emmanuel II the King of Italy. Only Rome and Venice remained under foreign occupation, with the kingdom of Italy seizing upon the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian war in 1866, to regain control of Venice. Rome was not fully under Italian rule until 1870 when French troops were recalled following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, with the subsequent fall of Napoleon III officially ending the Second Empire period. This long struggle for independence and unification no doubt had a tremendous influence on the formation of the inaugural Venice Biennale. However, with political unification fully achieved, the Italian nation state now sought to unify itself culturally as well, and thus, the oldest and longest running exhibition of contemporary art in the world, la Biennale di Venezia, was born in 1895. The initial idea for the Venice Biennale came in 1803 when the mayor of Venice, Riccardo Selvatico, and the Venetian City Council passed a resolution to set up a biennale exhibition of Italian art. This resolution was a smart move and in 1894, it was decided to adopt an invitation system by which to invite selected foreign artists, decided by a jury, of which the economist and scholar Antonio Fradeletto was nominated Secretary General. Throughout 1894-95, construction
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was underway for the Palazzo dell'Esposizione (exhibition palace), located in the Giardini di Castello, comprised of a distinctly neoclassical structure, an architectural evocation of Classical and republican virtues.
Image 3: Palazzo dell'Esposizione, Giardini, 1895 (Stolen from the Biennales Site, O.G. shit)
The inaugural biennale was also held to coincide with the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of the King and Queen, Uberto I and Margherita di Savoia. This was done in order to enhance the publicity of the Biennale and to add to the event a level of international prestige. According to Enzo Di Martino, the first biennale in 1895 attracted 224,327 visitors over a period of six months, with 516 works by 129 Italian artists and 156 international artists, also generating an immense amount of profit from not only entrance fees but also the sale of 186 art works.1 Indeed as Valetine Moreno suggests, the [city] council based their project on the
1Enzo
Di Martino, The History of the Venice Biennale, BPR Publishers, 2005.
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successful experience of the Great Exhibition (1851) and the Monaco International Art Fair, seen as a mechanism to boost the local economy at an international level. No doubt, the inaugural Venice Biennale was modelled on other large-scale exhibitionary projects including the Paris Salon, more so after its collapse largely after 1881. The next five biennales held in 1897, 1899, 1901, 1903, and 1905, were all held in the main exhibition venue, the Palazzo dell'Esposizione, until Belgium built its own separate pavilion in 1907. Enzo Di Martino asserts that it was at this time the municipality of Venice encouraged states to begin constructing their own venues in the Giardini, in order to reduce the economic burden on the city and to increase international participation. This proved to be an ingenious move with the Biennale significantly expanding in size while simultaneously transferring burdensome financial liabilities to nations desiring to participate. Following the construction of the Belgian pavilion in 1907, other countries quickly followed suit, including Hungary, Germany and Great Britain in 1909, France in 1912 and Russia in 1914. As Moreno points out, although this shift demanded a considerable nancial investment from those particiapting, it also enabled the existence of national exhibitionary projects whereby states were now assured curatorial, aesthetic and political autonomy and carte blanche over whom and what is shown and displayed. These pavilions in essence function as de facto embassys and factories pumping out the culture of those in charge, those towing the party line, those ultimately subsumed within the production machine of large scale national propaganda projects.
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Between 1916 and 1918 the Biennale was cancelled due to the outbreak of the First World War. When the Biennale resumed in 1920, there were some deep organizational changes. For the first time in the Biennales history, the post of the Mayor of Venice and President of the Biennale was split. The government commissioner, Nunzio Vitelli, appointed Giovanni Bordiga as president, whilst the new secretary general was Vittorio Pica. Emerging from this came an intense conflict between schools of art and different ideologies, made explicit much later during the Cold War. In 1922, following the appointment of Pica and his proclivity towards the Impressionists and Die Brck, the town council was set up as an administrative board to work alongside him, initially comprised of 7 members functioning in part as a board of directors. In 1930, following these structural changes yet another series of significant changes were once again enacted, this time by the national fascist government. These changes inextricably transformed the Biennale yet again, with an Ente Autonomo (Autonomous Board) by Royal Decree and law no. 33 of 13-1-1930. Changes were also passed concerning financing and the boards articles of association by a decree in 1931.1 According to Nancy Jachec, author of Politics and Painting at the Venice Biennale (2007), these new wave of legislations enacted in 1930 allowed Mussolini to use the Biennale as a propaganda machine for his regime. Jachec states that by 1942 [the Biennale] had become largely a showcase for Axis and Axis-occupied countries, and for neutrals. Interestingly, in 1930, the pavilion of
1Enzo
Di Martino, The History of the Venice Biennale, BPR Publishers, 2005.
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the United States was built in the Giardini. In 1935 however, Italy was expelled from the League of Nations for invading Ethiopia and the regime cultivated its alliance with Germany, thus limiting participation in the Biennale largely to Axis and Axis occupied nations. The outbreak of war disrupted the Biennale yet again, with the last edition of the event held in 1942, resuming again in 1948, with Europe in shambles and in dire need of new moral, political and cultural consciousness, following the atrocities of both World Wars. According to Jachec, immediately following the Second World War the Biennale turned into a tool for national and international reconstruction, gearing toward what became known as the idea of Europe, formally introduced in 1955 the mandate of which was to:
Strengthen cultural relations with a view to developing European culture, to make Europe a single cultural entity without thereby sacrificing its remarkable variety, to disseminate the idea of European unity and to foster the European spirit in this and future generations.
1
In May 1947, the Italian Communist Party (Partito Communista Italiano PCI) was expelled from the national government, a prerequisite for Italy to acquire Marshall Aid, despite the fact the party made up nearly 20% of the popular vote.2 Jachec suggests that this situation proved incredibly polarizing for the Biennale and the visual arts in Europe in general, inextricably linked to Neorealism, the Italian variant of Social Realism made compulsory for visual artists who were part
1Council
of Europe, Directorate of Information, European Culture and Council of Europe (Stratsbourgh: Council of Europe, 1955), p. 153. 2 This is an estimate. In 1946, the PCI won 19%, which translated into 104 deputies; its joint ticket with the PSI in 1948 yielded 140. Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943-1988) (London: Penguin, 1990). Pp. 99, 118.
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of the U.S.S.R. This was part of Moscows response to the events of 1947-48 including the Marshall Plan, the establishment of Western Europe, and Atlantic organizations such as the Committee for European Economic Cooperation and NATO. In fact, a study conducted by Caroline Brossat observed that the in the 1950s there was a Eurocentrist assumption that American culture was intrinsically European, propagated by the Council of Europe, resulting in the interchangeable use of the terms European culture with Western culture. According to Jachec, given the high number of artists involved with the PCI, the Biennale was inevitably a flash point for conflict between the communists and the Europeanists, whose politics spanned the spectrum of what started to become, in 1958, the centre-left. Moreover, during the early Cold War years (1948-1964) the Biennale became a site of cultural conflict between the East and West, with gesture painting epitomizing the style of the Biennales official post-war world vision, soon becoming an international visual language used to unite Western Europe and the United States on the basis of a shared European cultural heritage. In fact, according to Frances Stonor Saunders, starting with black accounts siphoned off from the Marshall Plan in the late 1940s, the CIA created or used nonprofit organizations such as the Ford Foundation to funnel millions of dollars to institutions like the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its affiliated programs. Saunderss study observed how gesture or action painting, exemplified in the work of Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists, was thought by many in the US art establishment to be the very embodiment of
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free and open democracy, a trend governments and regimes in Western Europe desired to align themselves with as well. Saunders suggests that via the Museum of Modern Art under Nelson Rockefeller, its president and advisor to Eisenhower, the Abstract Expressionist style was heavily disseminated in clear opposition to the style of the East and artists associated with Stalinist social realism. Indeed as suggested above, during the early Cold War the Biennale existed as a diplomatic tool to promote the Idea of Europe manifest in gesture painting and abstract expressionism. This style of painting must be seen in contrast to Stalinist social realism and representing two conflicting world-views, communism and capitalism. These polarizing world-views became synonymous with the construction of national identity vis--vis their formal and stylistic differences, with the Venice Biennale becoming ground zero for cultural conflicts that arose as a result of the Cold War. In 1974, in solidarity with the situation in Chile, artists participating in the Biennale decided to cancel the event that year. Instead, artists mobilized to create a Freedom for Chile event to oppose Pinochet, who took power through a violent military coup. This was perhaps the most political event in the Biennales history. More recent Biennales have been characterisized by a lack of formal innovation and deeply rooted apathy concerning innovative political and controversial art works ideas. The Venice Biennale, in the wake policies put forth by Regan and Thatcher in the late 1970s continuing into the 1980s and into 1990s, must be seen against the backdrop of neoliberalism more generally, or
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the desire to commodify and normalize cultural expression within a framework of financial speculation and capitalist desire. Arguably, this same truth-value system applied to cultural enterprise that began in the 1970s is still around today. The Venice Biennale, for its part in attracting legions of curators, artists and critics from all over the world, has become nothing more than a trophy case for industrialists, politicians and their artistic and creative friends and daughters. This can be seen in the very format and organization of the Biennale, that has remained largely intact since the Cold War era, with the exception of some minor organizational changes, continuing to solicit the participation of nation states committed to the idea of Europe. This intimate relationship between the Venice Biennale and the promotion of national identities can be analyzed within the context of what Maurizio Lazzarato contemporaneously describes as the capitalist valorization of art and culture. Within this framework, in which States are able to integrate artistic and cultural practices in accordance with a strategy that superimposes disciplinary and surveillance devices, Lazzarato suggests these practices in effect, feed the tourism, leisure, and amusement industry in order to build museum lands (Bilbao), museum-cities (Venice), museum-districts (Vienna), exhibition-cities (Kassel), or festival-cities (Avignon), from which [nation states] monetize and capitalize on the artistic and cultural desires of the public. Lazzarato further suggests these practices are also the driving force behind the luxury industry that exploits their results, just as industry exploits the results of pure research, to
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sell lifestyles to the new millionaires of globalization and to the upper-middle classes. Relating to this strain of thought, author and cultural critic Valentine Moreno suggests, any country with a pavilion in Venice (most desirably in the Giardini) is assured a powerful position in the field of art, emblematically reaffirming their same position in the global scenario.1 Thus the politics of representation in the context of the Venice Biennale implies a neo-imperialist exhibition typology based on state valorization of art and culture, first introduced during the Enlightenment, based on the separation of roles (artist, work, public, critic, curator, etc.), through devices (museums, festivals, theatres, exhibitions) and assessment criteria that show and proclaim art to be a separate activity which is exercised by specialists and experts for a public (which is to be educated). This assertion is re-affirmed by the simple fact that many governments, usually through their foreign affairs departments or cultural ministries, own, administer and manage their national pavilions. This fact alone suggests that the Venice Biennale exists as an institution in servitude of disseminating the dominant hegemonic cultural values of the political and economic elite. Today, the dominant political/economic class is completely transnational and exists largely in clandestine servitude of corporate and financial interests.
1Valentine
Moreno, The Venice Biennale and the Canada Pavilion, 2010.
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Many have argued that today there exists a global trend toward austerity measures begun in the 1970s with what is known as Reganomics, or Trickle Down Economics, evolved from the ideas of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economic Theory. This brand of economic theory, forcefully implemented in many parts of the world including Chile in the early 1970s, consists of a reduction in government spending on public programs such as education and culture, a reduction of income tax and capital gains for the wealthy, and reduction of government regulation in financial markets allowing for corporations to privatize public resources and industries. David Harvey refers to this process as Neoliberalism, a trend in political economic policy he suggests continues to flourish today and involves the participation of quasi-multinational actors such as the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization, whom today, are the preeminent institutions in collaboration with the dominant political class of establishing the new world order. Opposition to this came to a head with several anti-globalization movements most explicitly with the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, continuing today with protests and uprisings simultaneously occurring all over the world. In the context of this geopolitical situation, Jacques Ranciere has extensively written about the politicization of aesthetics. Related to this is what Marco Scotini describes as the hybridization of art and politics, or the new paradigm for the turn of the millennium in which activist art, identified with political practice and creative experimentation with media emerged in clear
29
opposition to post-Fordist cultural production and Neoliberal political-economic policy more generally.1 This involves reterritorializing political struggles inclusive of a rich set of aesthetic elements including bodies and objects situated in time and space: marches, protests, sit-ins, occupations and blockades, in addition to performances, paintings, videos, installations and sculptures. This
conceptualization of politics and aesthetics or rather the comingling of the two reframes, reintensifies and reconstitutes the two in relation to one another. However, one must still pay attention to the specificity of bodies involved in this new stratification, bodies of race, gender, and class, bodies of desire, objectification and docility. For within this milieu, or rhizomatic set of relations in which there is a lack of distinction between aesthetic and political regimes and stratifications of culture and politics, political and aesthetic practice can either play an antagonistic force to global capital and value production, or it can contribute to resistance and revolution, both of which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Indeed as Emma Goldman famously proclaimed, if I cant dance, I dont want to be of your revolution.
1MarcoScotini,NeoCapitalismandReTerritorialization,NoOrder,No.1,ed.MarcoScotini,2010.
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Part III. What is to be done?
Soldout Grafitti Action by Anonymous Stateless Immigrants, Greek Pavillion, Venice, 2011 (Creative Commons).
The Venice Biennale emerged at a time in Italy when the concept of national character was extremely important to nation building. Not much has since changed and the exhibition today functions in much the same way: as the diplomatic and cultural arm for the dominant political economic elite to promote and normalize the concept of the nation state within an increasingly small
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undifferentiated schema of national ideologies. As we have discussed and in the context of world history, the Venice Biennale is intimately related to the Enlightenment, the Italian unification movement, the First and Second World Wars and the Idea of Europe, the Cold War, Globalization and the new world order, and as a result it can be considered a cultural microcosm of these historical movements and events. In relation to the 2011 Biennale, Director Bice Curiger stated "the term 'nations' in ILLUMInations, applies metaphorically to recent developments in the arts all over the world, which includes several countries participating for the first time this year: Govern dAndorra, Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Bahrain, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Republic of Rwanda, Congo and India1 These coutnries must spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to participate in an exhibition far away from their borders and we must therefore begin to question the value of this international exhibition in promoting and normalizing various nationalist projects culturally, politically, economically, etc. Indeed, when one considers the political economy in which the Biennale operates, as an old formula envisaging the presence of states and yet more than ever lively and vital, the reasons for participation become clear. As Hal Foster questioned in Design and Crime (2003), political economy now dominates social and cultural institutions," but, is there a way out of this hegemonic mafia like milieu? Is there a way to subvert the ideologically bankrupt cultural institutions (such as the Venice Biennale) and the capitalistic valorization of art and culture
1
Statistics from website of Biennale: http://www.labiennale.org/en/art/exhibition/54iae/
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as a whole? In short, what is to be done by practioners of art and culture in our present moment, locally, practically and specifically? In the words of Marco Scotini, what needs to be done now is to acknowledge the artistic and cultural industry as a new field for political struggle, and its actors as those who put aside the reassuring masks of their identity as artists or curators in order to see themselves as different productive subjectivities: art workers, cultural producers, knowledge workers [] while taking account of the ultimate transformation of knowledge into a fictitious commodity within cognitive capitalism. For Scotini, the current task of artistic and cultural professionals is to go beyond the legacy of Institutional Critique in favor of a socio-labourist point of view capable of equating art with any other form of labour in the social production machine.1 This transformation must go beyond the boundaries of traditional capitalistic organization and seek to question and subvert the underlying power relations inherent within cultural institutions, such as the Venice Biennale, and attempt to critique the power relations and the political economy in which these institutions operate. In fact, the Venice Biennale can also be seen within the context of what is now known as Biennalization more generally, a concept emerging from the fact there are 100s of these events all over the world including Documenta, Gwanju, Manifesta and so on. Many of these large-scale exhibitions seek to provide municipal politicians with an opportunity to capitalize on what is perceived as the culture industry, a concept
1MarcoScotini,TheManifestaBrand,NoOrder,No.1,ed.MarcoScotini,ArchiveBooks,Berlin,2010.
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with lingering connotations to neoliberalism, specifically, the speculatation and financialization upon which much art and culture is produced, exhibited and made today. These large scale exhibitionary projects include Documenta and Manifesta, both of which are also reliant upon armies of volunteer invigilators and administrators, even soliciting the participation of artists who must pay their own way on the grounds they will assuredly gain international prestige and gallery shows in New York and London based on the exposure they receive from (insert any biennale name). In addition, students of art history find themselves in a similarly precarious position, in which interns = infinite free labour for museums, biennales and corporations alike. This is where conversations regarding politics and aesthetics must be contested and resisted, realized and localized, in the very institutions such as the Venice Biennale that shape and atomize global forces and relations of cultural production. Today, what needs to be developed is a methodological research based praxis channeling the critical spirit of several twentieth century avant-garde movements (including Surrealism, Dada and Situationism), through a
rearticulation of the organization of labour and power relations traditionally employed by Fordist (and post-Fordist) regimes of cultural and artistic production. This type of critical praxis is metaphorically alluded to in Marxs Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach, in which he states: Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. Indeed the same came be applied to artists whom have hiterto only interpreted the world in various ways,
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whereby the point is to change it. Moreover, it can be argued that this type of critical praxis can be found in the work of several collectives practicing today including Chto delat? whose work domestically within Russia creates a platform in which to posit targeted political critiques through protest actions, publishing projects and theatre, music and cinematic interventions into Russian culture; or Et Cetera, whose work within Argentina and internationally uses guerilla style tactics such as street theatre to engage with notions concerning border politics and the philosophical propensity of errorism; or The Raqs Media Collective, the members of which use poetics, politics and paradox to critically engage with issues such as difference within India and beyond; or The Critical Art Ensemble and Electronic Distrubance Theatre, two collectives that have explored points of convergence and divergence within the domains of art, critical theory, technology and political activism; or Socit Raliste, a Parisian cooperative that works with political design, experimental economy and territorial ergonomy; or Metahaven, a Dutch studio for research and design that has developed designs for Wikileaks; or What, How and for Whom, an independent curatorial collective that actively engages in issues concerning representational and identity politics. Indeed as Scotini suggests, feeding the production system with an innovative critical spirit is useless if this does not entail its transformation.1 This initial transformation must first attempt to rearticulate the working conditions of artistic production and indeed a breakdown of subjectivities as a whole, forming a new typology of
1MarcoScotini,TheManifestaBrand,NoOrder,No.1,ed.MarcoScotini,ArchiveBooks,Berlin,2010.
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artistic production by using the aesthetic imaginary in servitude of building new worlds that defy the logics of profit, fundamentally questioning the government valorization of art and culture so acutely manifested in the very foundations of the Venice Biennale. -Peace to all the lumpenproletarians/comrades, unite!

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