The Subversion of the Spectacle: Derives a la Biennale di Venezia

Batycka The Subversion of the Spectacle: Derives a la Biennale di Venezia

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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


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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.


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the eighteenth century. Indeed as Louis Dupré, 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 it’s 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 today’s

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

1LouisDupré,quotedinJonathanIsrael“Enlightenment?WhichEnlightenment?”JournaloftheHistoryofIdeas,Volume67,Number3,July2006.


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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.


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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 Paine’s 1794 theological pamphlet, now typically used to denote the


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movement’s 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 d’etre.

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,16701752”NewYork:OxfordUniversityPress,2006.2ImmanuelKant,“AnAnswertotheQuestion:WhatisEnlightenment”1784.


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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 Newton’s monograph Philosophie Naturalis

Principia Mathematica published in 1687, laying the foundations for the laws of


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universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which came to dominate the

scientific view of the universe for the next three centuries. Newton’s 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:AHistory1543–2000”(2000),241.


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church and state, but also a myriad of other sources including Machiavellian

republicanism.2

The Encyclopédie1 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 d’Alembert, Baron

d’Holbach, Montesquieu and many others. The Encyclopédie addressed topics

as diverse as science, religion, philosophy, natural history, economics, politics,

literature, mathematics and music. Many authors in the Encyclopédie 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 Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, 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 modern-

humanism” 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 Locke’s Second Treatsie of Government. In fact, ideas separating

the state and finance were nothing new, echoed also by Denis Diderot, editor of

the Encyclopédie, who proclaimed in unison, “if exclusive privileges were not

granted and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there

1DanEldenstein,“TheEnlightenment:AGenealogy”2010.


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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:AGenealogy”2010.


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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.” D’Espiard wrote in The Spirit of

Nations (1753) “climate is, for a Nation, the fundamental cause…the 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”,20031RobespierrequotedinH.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 Counter-

Enlightenment, 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 1713–1796. 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 Rousseau’s 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.

1 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 Biennale’s 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

it’s 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 financial 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 Biennale’s 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 Brück, 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 board’s 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 Moscow’s 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

1950’s 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 Biennale’s 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.” Saunders’s 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


25

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-à-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

Biennale’s history. More recent Biennale’s 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 1970’s continuing into the 1980s and into

1990s, must be seen against the backdrop of neoliberalism more generally, or


26

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

ʻeducatedʼ).” 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


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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 can’t

dance, I don’t 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 d’Andorra, Saudi Arabia,

Kingdom of Bahrain, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Republic of Rwanda, Congo and

India”1 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 Marx’s 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 Société Réaliste, 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!

Documents

The Subversion of the Spectacle: Derives a la Biennale di Venezia