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“Swoon took her boat show to the LIII Venice Biennale Opening,
where it became invisible: so little visual impact looking out
on the open Adriatic Sea from the Giardini”

K i11 The Bienna1e : Some years ago,
Quentin Tarantino successfully challenged the notion that a movie has to last 90 minutes…not for the first time; the industry simply went back to the roots of film as an art form, and only because it seemed profitable. From a narrative point of view, I think it is better to have a story broken down in installments rather than successive installments posthumously added on to try to cash in on a franchise because people want more of the same, which isn’t always true… But I am getting carried away here: after all this is supposed to be about the LIII Venice Biennale and this is to say: the story is being parceled in different installments.

Swoon ’s Descent Down the Hudson

I already wrote 2 years ago about the mirthless anachronism biennials incarnate: after all, Venice invented the franchise, in the year 1895. Now, in the dim light of the financial crisis, megasurveys seem even less pro-active (or pro-creative, to make an etimologically accurate joke, no double-entendre meant) while their bent toward pro-fit seems even less probable for two reasons: the high cost of the productions, both of the event itself and the pieces produced seems an insult to thrift the times call for, while the possibility of return for the investors who foot the bills are less secure.


Unknowingly, I started writing this piece last fall. I was struck by how not one, but two shows were entitled simply: Shit. They were reportedly (and coincidentally) completely different shows and concepts. Soon afterwards, Swoon’s Descent down the Hudson on a flotilla of Coast Guard-wise unworthy ramshackle vessels and trailing multi-artist, multimedia collective in tow docked at the Trump City Piers and by contrast offered a fresh, ingenuous approach to art and art making: quite the opposite, I posited, in a piece that I never finished.

Comorans on Display Outside the Giardini Entrance

Swoon supposedly took her boat show to the LIII Venice Biennale Opening, where it became invisible: so many boats, boat shows and showboats, so little visual impact on punters looking out on the open Adriatic Sea from the Giardini.
Swoon’s was just another MIA exhibition, whereas the boats taken from the Comores Islands, in spite of being mostly a feat of cultural entrepreneurship by a former unknown vying for attention, rather than expressing true creative energy or questions of re-contextualization, had at least a visual impact. These were traditional cargo boats outlawed by the Comoran government in a radical effort at modernization, disassembled, shipped to Venice in containers that were then placed inside the re-assembled boats. And the unknown Japanese gate-crashing the wet center stage in front of the Giardini Entrance, tentatively governing his paper-made (apparently) boat complete of paper made giant red goldfish, made a comedic counterpoint, with real rescue boats falling for his antics and stopping to offer help, before realizing none was needed. It must be remarked, though, that the visual impact of a succession of battleship-size yachts walling off of the waterfront immediately following the entrance to the Giardini (and its implied display of vast economic power) takes another lion’s share: anybody walking to or from the Biennale can’t avoid it, just like in New York one has to walk through the Midtown skyscrapers to get to MoMA.

In art, like in war, today commercial battles are fought donning the cloak of defenders of ideas and civilization, and often it is a war of preemption. For weeks prior, Italian magazines and dailies had been awash in ink baptizing the new bi-yearly art caravanserai that just opened in Venice, trumpeting more shows, more celebrities, more, more… just more. The extensiveness of the media campaign is unusual, but consistent with the ethics and practice of the government in power now. Of course the media-saturation strategy is preemptive: flooding the media creates a buzz of expense account paid journalism, which creates the impression of critical acclaim before
critics have even seen the show. Acceptance seems established, so the impact of negative criticism will be minimized, since it will be in dissonance with the predominant discourse. If you are well versed in Italian politics and culture, the motive is easy to find: the Venice Biennale is deemed a propaganda project of great importance and as such is being made resonate with the echo given to important government projects. Italy’s current Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi knows how to do one thing and that is to stay in the eye of the media. Berlusconi, who is also a media publisher, was an Italian Socialist Party member in more recent, much less militant times, though he never was in jail, yet. Mussolini must have been consumed with envy when Marinetti
, up to then a war correspondent for aesthetic reasons, scored the ultimate media coup: through his working knowledge of journalistic procedures, he landed his Manifesto Futurista on the front page of Le Figaro, The Parisian Daily, and The New York Post of its day, who published it because of the shock value of its proclamations. And that is how Futurism began. This year the centenary of this event is being celebrated, and the crypto-fascists in power now in Italy have decided to go for a second milking of Italy’s main artistic contribution to the XX century.

This combination of visual art and music was a safe haven for this community and the opening and closing reminded me of the vigor of the lower East side of the 1970’s. Bravo to Hanne Tierney.

Taketo Shimada has made music with Tres Warren of Psychic Ills as Messages since 2006. Doug Mosurak of Dusted commented that the Messages 7” record released by The Social Registry “is some heavy, humid drone, pregnant with 4am electricity. Best record in the Social Registry’s singles series to date.” His work has been shown at Postmasters Gallery, Wall Space Gallery and Emily Harvey Foundation.

Calder Martin is a guitarist and visual artist and the founder of the band Vizusa. Arthur Magazine said that Vizusa’s debut LP “VizUSA is the new psychedelic simple, hard: the rock and roll of Buddy Holly bare bones with the doors of perception jimmyin‘ and repetitious riff milkin‘ of Les Rallizes Dénudés.” Calder has produced video projections at the Kitchen for Caitlin Cook and company, and live music and installations at Deitch Projects with Exceptor. His work has been shown at Emily Harvey Foundation and Participant.

Keith Connolly is an artist and musician, and is a founding member of the No Neck Blues Band. His most recent work was exhibited at Parade Space in London. In New York he has exhibited his installations and performed live events at Greene Naftali Gallery, PS 1, Roulette and the Sculpture Center.

Yuji Agematsu is an artist/photographer. For the past thirty years he has been picking up discarded things from the street and meticulously archiving them. He has worked with Tokio Hasegawa, former member of Taj Mahal Travellers, and studied yara with Milford Graves. He is also a fervent fan of Cecil Taylor and Miles Davis.

can we expand Music? curator Yuzo Sakuramoto is a New York-based researcher, translator and the publisher of the legendary, now defunct fanzine Music. He recently translated the liner notes for the Taj Mahal Travellers album, Live in Stockholm 1971 and DVD, on “Tour,” as well as Takehisa Kosugi’s Catch Wave ’97.

Bear Fest benefits include “community involvement,
cooperation between artists, businesses, and local and state government”
John Polak, ECA Marketing Committee

The Easthampton Bear Fest was a public art event in which Easthampton City Arts (ECA) of Massachusetts obtained 35 life-sized fiberglass bears and paid local artists to decorate them. Once painted, the bears were made into a public exhibit, scattered and displayed throughout Easthampton. ECA received the sponsorship of various local businesses, banks, galleries, and media outlets, and is donating proceeds to public schools for arts education.

Painted bear tracks added suspense for pedestrians hunting art

What should an Italian be considering during a trip from the city of Bologna to the city of Venice bound for a biennial circus of art? An Italian who is at that moment reading an article about the Italian Prime Minister’s latest “conjuring tricks.” An Italian who lives in a nation who’s gags, jokes and public clowns have migrated into the institutional sphere using positions of power to harvest techniques of parody from progressive discourse?

Sant Erasmo is an example of the variety of places that constitute the residential area of Venice. It is a big island, where only six hundred people live. It is where the most vegetables and fruits sold at Venetian market are produced. It is covered with Gardens and vast green areas.

I jump from Giardini to Arsenale from Palazzo Fortuny to Punta della Dogana, a new space restored by Pinault Fondation. At the Arsenale there are few works worth seeing; better to spend time at Giardini’s international pavilions.

Someone told me the choice of Bruce Nauman for the American pavilion was a political choice and a very expensive one. Here again, instead of inviting a young talent, we are put in front of another “political choice.” I am known for having criticized this kind of thing and I still do, but in this case the power of the artwork outstrips that of the critic. Among all the art works that I have seen in this 53rd Biennale, those of Nauman and Tillmans really touched me. I’m very happy to have seen Bruce Nauman’s work, which is clear and simple because his manner of drama and capacity for depth leaves absolutely no ambiguity. The work speaks to my heart and mind directly, through lightness, successfully liberating itself from the Biennale’s amusement park culture and taking me along. Wolfgang Tillmans too, shows the beauty of simple images and colors. A good artist is able to create imagery with few things. All he needs is the courage to relate himself directly to the world, without bluffing, simply drawing on personal wisdom and humility.

“Advertisement” Ponte dei Sospiri, Venezia 2009
Photo: Emilio Fantin

Around the city: Inside this huge forest of varied artistic proposals and events we wonder whether a tree, a bridge or a colored wall are works fabricated by artists or if they merely look so. In the biggest museum of souvenirs, the city of Venice, it is difficult to separate daily life from the tourist attraction, especially when every little thing trumpets an industrial parade of art. The famous “Ponte dei Sospiri” (the Whispering Bridge) has been appropriated by a huge advertisement, and is headquarters to the Biennale Press Office. I actually find it one of the best installations of the Arsenale.

Emilo Fantin

Jessica Higgins

I got a bunch of emails about a documentary film on the Williamsburg art scene. I thought it would be interesting and I knew everyone from the neighborhood would be there, so, I let it sit in my email in box. I wasn’t completely sure about whether I should go or not. I didn’t even know this film was being made. I’ve been in Williamsburg for ages, but then again, I spend a lot of time in my studio. Then I got an email from my old pal Erika Knerr (who by the way was the person who first took me to Four Walls back in …….hmmmm…let’s say 1990 or 91? Could that be right? Yikes.) Erika emailed and said she was coming to town to go to the premier and wanted to know if I wanted to go with her. Having a pal to cavort with always makes me more into things, so I said yes. Internally I was still a little reserved about going. If I wasn’t in it and I didn’t even know that it was being made I just figured all the cool popular kids would be there and I would be just watching all the fun everyone else had while I was in my studio painting (kind of like now).

Interviewees

THE MOMA PREMIER
Long story short, Erika couldn’t make it and I went with a new filmmaker friend who is about as far away from the Williamsburg art scene as my new teaching job at Bergen Community College, in Paramus NJ. Gregg Biermann is way cool and he’s a filmmaker so, I thought he could help me be objective when I inevitably would get caught up in recognizing people and places or remembering if I was at some opening or party.

Marcin Ramocki introduced his film, Brooklyn DIY, at the Museum of Modern Art. He had that self-effacing, open quality that Williamsburg artists had and obviously still have so, I was ready to go down memory lane.

Whether I was watching old footage of Test Site mega-parties or succinct, provocative interviews with artists like Ebon Fisher and Ward Shelley, I was glued. The film had an incredibly tough challenge: approximately fifteen years, artists, art making, art in every style and medium possible, community, gentrification, freedom, change, artist run venues, renegades, real estate, documentation and lack of documentation, memory and it’s fallibility, the list of obstacles to creating an accurate film about this subject seemed insurmountable. And here’s the topper – how to make this film an artwork – a living thing that is about the present integrated with the past. With all the obstacles Ramocki faced he also had the best resources any filmmaker could ask for, a bunch of artists. Matt Freedman opened the film with a performance of drawing the history of Williamsburg before the artists came on a white board while Tim Spelios played a drum. Mike Ballou did the majority of his interview wearing a paper maché bear head. (Ken Burns would pay cash money for that.) Amy Sillman was insightful and didn’t mince words while petting her dog. Joe Amhrein, who always seems at ease because of his sincerity and dedication to art. Wild loft party footage. Aron Namenwirth and Nancy Horowitz sitting beside an art installation of Zoe Sheehan Saldaña’s plants growing under fluorescent lights. And I save him for last so you can bow your heads when I invoke the name, “Gene Pool”.

Gene Pool

Afterward, my present tense colleague, Gregg liked it. I was in a fog. I really wasn’t sure what I thought about the film objectively as a documentary. The audience was packed with Williamsburg artists. All of the well-known characters were there, only a few were missing, the critics and writers attended, and of course the Williamsburg artists were there in true form; Williamsburg doesn’t dress up even for MOMA, and they always look great. Part of my fog was nostalgia and part was that the film was stirring up feelings of being inspired. That time was inspiring. The participants were inspired. Clearly Marcin Ramocki was inspired and submerged himself in the material for two years and sunk his retirement account into it, but that’s nothing any artist wouldn’t do, right?

When it was over I didn’t go to the after party. I guessed that the conversation mixed with beer could go a number of ways, of course a lot of praise for Marcin’s hard work and dedication, which he deserved, and opinions on the quality of the film? Would arm wrestling ensue? Would this be Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman at the White Horse? If any crowd could do that this one could. Other responses would obviously be about accuracy or treatment of different aspects of the scene. I went home and emailed Marcin asking for an interview.

Ward Shelley showing a “timeline” of the history of the Williamsburg art scene.

THE INTERVIEW
We made arrangements to meet at Fanny’s restaurant on Graham Avenue. When Marcin politely tried to give me directions my Williamsburg attitude popped up as I quickly told him that I’ve lived here forever and I knew the way. Did I mention that Williamsburg artists wear time spent in the trenches like Purple Hearts?

Marcin Ramocki is a media artist, professor, curator, he ran the art space, vertexlist, for five years and has made two feature films. In his artwork he is interested in collecting groups of information so, the segue into organizing historical data into a documentary film is a natural step for him. His approach to organizing this sort of information is not from an analytical perspective even though he does have an interest in mathematics. We talked about Mark Lombardi’s drawings of diagrams of cons
piracies as having a relationship to the way he parses information into art.

When he gathers information and composes it into an art work he is both sensitive and practical. He chooses the medium that is appropriate for the subject and figures out how best to achieve it. He has as much as he can afford time and money wise and in the end utilizes what he has available. He gave two years, his retirement fund and his dedication to this film. He recognizes that there may be more to cover on the subject so, as well as seeing his project as complete in its own rite, it can also function as inspiration for hopefully more attention to the Williamsburg art scene. Ramocki emphasized, “This obviously is not the final historic story that everybody will have to follow. It is just one story of certain communities. So, I don’t want people to think that just because I didn’t include something it’s a final word. I’m looking forward to all these other aspects of the story to be covered by someone else because obviously I can’t. Probably if I made it the goal of my life to make a ten hour documentary about the Williamsburg art scene I could maybe do it, but within the framework of what I started, I couldn’t so, I just want people to be aware of that and instead of thinking why wasn’t so and so in it they should think ‘hey why don’t I make something about so and so myself’ because that’s the whole idea of it. I’m just another guy living here. I don’t have any money and I made this with my salary and my retirement fund which I don’t have any more. That’s all there is to it. An idiosyncratic story of Williamsburg. I personally believe that I at least touched upon the important things that were formative.”

Joe Amrhein

The interviews that framed the historical footage in the film; Ebon Fisher, Amy Sillman, Mike Ballou, Joe Amhrein, Ward Shelly, Jude Talllichet, Matt Freeman, Ken Butler, etc., were wonderful. As Ramocki said at the premier, Williamsburg artists aren’t shy. Ramocki said that the interviews that became performances such as Mike Ballou talking with a bear head on and Ken Butler demonstrating his instruments occurred naturally. The stories of filming the interviews were charming and the ones that got away were good to know about. One story Ramocki recounted about an interview he would’ve liked in the film was the guy who owns De Vito Paints on Graham Ave. “Originally his customers were people from the Italian community who painted their houses for communion celebrations, then there was a period when no one bought paint. When the artists came it was the gallerists coming in to buy paint for their walls. He told the story of this area though sales of house paint! And I thought ‘wow this could be the bridge between the community that was here before, to the new community of artists’, but he said he wouldn’t do it. I think he just didn’t like being on camera.” Some other people were just camera shy so, some of them ended up being narrators. Eric Heist, of Momenta, who doesn’t appear in the film was absent because of scheduling problems. Ramocki also talked about additional footage of Joe Amrhein discussing Mark Lombardi’s work, that didn’t make the final cut because it felt like a separate subject and became overly dramatic due to Lombardi’s suicide.

Test Site

ANTHROPOLGY OF A CULTURE
Ramocki was very aware of the vastness of his subject and the challenge of “representing the different ‘tribes‘ of Williamsburg” and he acknowledged that he had his own proclivities because of affiliation with his ’tribe’.

When I asked him what he hoped the audience outside the art world would take away from his film he said, “When I was doing the interviews I would tell them to not assume that everybody knows what we’re talking about. That was why I basically sampled different little pockets of Williamsburg and made stories. Obviously I couldn’t cover eveything. I made representative stories and themes. We’ll see, but hopefully they’ll get a sense of this homemade artist community that really can happen in any city with a little luck. Berlin is certainly a similar community and I got an email from someone in Toronto who wanted to see it because he said that they have a couple of wanna be Williamsburgs in Toronto so, they want to see what I have to say. And I think its true that a lot of large cities have versions of Williamsburg. So they’re probably going to get a kick out of it. There’s sufficient amount of fun and party for most people to enjoy it.”

Giglio

Given seven to ten more minutes of film, he would’ve liked to have seen a deeper discussion of the artists in relationshihp to and the pre-existing neighborhood. Since there was so much to cover regarding the art scene and its relationship to the time, location and economic environment, he affectionately said he made the choice to focus on the artists and how they became a community, “My goal was to show this funny community. This happy, funny place.”

He described the process of making the film as a collaboration. He gave great credit to his editor Jessie Stead for her expertise, wittiness and female perspective on editing. He praised Lalo Molina the director of photography. And noted the communal spirit of the crew and subjects as being key in the realization of the project. He humbly added, “This is just one film from one poor Polish guy.” When asked who encouraged him most he responded, “Everybody was into being a part of the film and encouraging the making of it. From the moment Mike Ballou opened the archives of Four Walls. Obviously it needed to be done. There was definitely a need in the community to do it. I don’t know if I was the best person to do it, but there was talk about this person and that person making a documentary, but I was the one to do it. So, I guess my little documentary is the first after all.” We ended by talking about rumors concerning a “real documentary” being made with a “real producer from Hollywood” with “real money” to which Ramocki added, “I feel comfortable being ‘unreal”.”

All photos are stills from “Brooklyn DIY”.
http://www.ramocki.net/brooklyndiy.html