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Australia at the 2007 Venice Biennale

3 artists, 3 projects, 3 sites - Australia at the 2007 Venice Biennale

Susan Norrie, Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, opposite Accademia
opening preview 6.30pm, Thursday 7th June
Daniel von Sturmer, Australian Pavilion, Giardini
opening preview 11am, Thursday 7th June
Callum Morton, Palazzo Zenobio, near Campo Santa Margherita
opening preview 7.30pm Wednesday 6th June

Commissioner John Kaldor
Senior Curatorial Advisor Juliana Engberg
http://www.australiavenicebiennale.com.au
venice2007@ozco.gov.au

Susan Norrie
Susan Norrie explores the pervasive geopolitical issues of a changing world in her three room video installation at Palazzo Giustinian Lolin. HAVOC focuses on man-made interventions and seismic disturbances that have wrought devastation to areas of East Java. She documents the resilience of a people confronting disaster, as well as the broader social changes occurring within a culture.

Daniel von Sturmer
The Object of Things is a multimedia installation created specially for the Australian Pavilion. In The Object of Things video projections and objects are brought together atop a long plywood platform, a continuous floating plane which folds into, over, around and through the pavilion space, shifting heights and direction as it goes.

Callum Morton
Valhalla, at Palazzo Zenobio, is a ruined building, Morton’s childhood home: ‘torched, sutured together and shot through with holes … A monument to all those skeletal structures left dangling after disaster strikes’. The modern dream home, designed by his architect father, is reconstructed to 3/4 scale in Venice, but is no ordinary ruin. Visitors enter an immaculate interior space, a corporate cavity where lifts light up and malfunction, screams are heard, seismic shudders are felt, and muzak soothes.

The Australia Council for the Arts
The Australia Council has managed and funded Australian representation since 1978. Previous Australian representatives at the Venice Biennale include Judy Watson, Howard Arkley, Lyndal Jones, Patricia Piccinini and Ricky Swallow.

Susan Norrie is represented by Mori Gallery; Daniel von Sturmer is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery; and Callum Morton is represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery and Anna Schwartz Gallery.

For more information go to: http://www.australiavenicebiennale.com.au

Pavilion of Republic of Armenia

Pavilion of Republic of Armenia
at 52nd Venice Biennale-2007

June 10 – November 21, 2007
Opening for press and friends:
Friday June 8, 2007 13:00-16:00
Palazzo Zenobio, (Collegio Armeno)
Dorsoduro 2596 T: +041 522-8770
Vaporetto No. 82: S. Basilio stop
Vaporetto No. 52: Zattere stop
For directions visit http://www.accea.info

Artist: Sonia Balassanian
Curator: Nina Möntmann
Honorary Commissioner: Jean Boghossian
Organized by: The Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art
Hosted by: The Mekhitarian Armenian Congregation

Sonia Balassanian-Who Is the Victim?

War has changed. It has ceased to refer exclusively to war between nations, but involves more complex structures and dislocations. The information content the ubiquitous media images convey concerning specific conflicts is thin, they present an unchanging picture of misery as a universal constant of global crisis.

Memory assumes a central role in the lives of people who experience war and henceforth shift between two extremes, the collective necessity to remember and the individual desire to forget. For those who have experienced war or live in fear of one, or who live with memories of a war they actually took part in and survived, the question “who is the victim” is never far from the surface in depictions of war’s cruelty. But what is involved when a viewer of war images takes an interest in or empathizes with human suffering in far-off conflict zones? Not only those killed by war and their relatives are the victims, but all whom the fear of war afflicts. Compassion is an unstable emotion: “Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence” (Susan Sontag). In overcoming sympathy, a potential for action is released, a potential to lead-in to critical protest against an economy of global war.

Wars and crisis areas are a constant feature of Sonia Balassanian’s work. Her concern in her more recent video works are the ramifications of a general war (albeit never referred to as such) being waged against the individual. The images of Balassanian’s multipart video work “Who Is the Victim?” for the Pavilion of the Republic of Armenia at the 52nd Venice Biennale tap into this universalized misery and suffering of war.

Bidoun

Bidoun issue 10, TECHNOLOGY,
now in stores

Subscribe now at http://www.bidoun.com

The spring issue of Bidoun takes on technology in its myriad forms. In these pages, Anand Balakrishnan ponders the relevance of the 1965 sci-fi epic novel Dune given our current historical juncture, Binyavanga Wainana takes on technology as grand gesture in Africa, Eric Fassin deconstructs the Dutch government’s peculiar equation of sexual freedom and democracy, and Marwa Elshakry traces the rather cultish origins of the Suez Canal—in 19th century France, no less. Also, Hassan Khan and Haytham El-Wardany revisit a science show on Egyptian National Television in the 1970s; hosted by an enigmatically zany host named Dr Mustafa Mahmoud, the program magically reconciled the worlds of faith and science—for everyone from spellbound schoolchildren to housewives and stoners.

In the architecture section, Neyran Turan maps the North Sea as a bold new (liquid) territory.

In the film section, Tirdad Zolghadr lends a Gombrichian reading to the new James Bond, wondering if it is in fact a break from the blockbuster leitmotif. And Bruce Hainley looks at the body as technology in the popular high school American drama Friday Night Lights.

In the music section, Sukhdev Sandhu writes about musician Sushil K Dade, better known as Future Pilot AKA—and en route steps through the genre-mashing stylistic frottage that is the Scottish music scene. Michael C Vazquez explores the perils of the decidedly un-politically correct in the works of Seattle-based music label Sublime Frequencies.

And we have our usual installments of exhibition reviews and previews, columns devoted to artist profiles, works in progress, museums, curatorial issues, and arts infrastructure. Here, Elizabeth Rubin accompanies artist Jill Magid as she penetrates various closed systems through her practice, Magali Arriola takes on Los Angeles-based artist Yoshua Okon’s elaborate staged life performances, curator Mirjam Shatanawi looks at the fate of ethnographic museums in Europe, and Sean Dockray recuperates the very lost history of Kingdom of the Dolls—a museum once built of miniature models in the California desert.

In our exhibition reviews section: Claire Fontaine/Sensorium/Wael Shawky/Amir Fallah and Ala Ebtekar/The Exotic Journey Ends/Melik Ohanian/Akram Zaatari/The Maghreb Connection/Camp Campaign/Nazgol Ansarinia/Rokni Haerizadeh. Book reviews: Reading ‘Legitimation Crisis’ in Tehran (by Danny Postel) and Chicago (by Alaa Al Aswani).

Plus, cooking by Shirin Aliabadi and Farhad Moshiri.

Subscribe now at http://www.bidoun.com

For more information go to: http://www.bidoun.com