03 June 2011

VENICE: Outside the U.S. Pavilion, a runner pounds a treadmill on an overturned 60-ton battle tank. The visually commanding exhibit at the 54th Biennale contemporary art exhibit reverberates loudly. At the Danish Pavilion nearby, a contemplative exhibition that explores free speech issues is periodically disturbed by the rumbles.

The juxtaposition of the booming Americans and the quiet Danes wasnt meant to make an artistic point but the frictions caused perfectly capture one of the main themes of this years Venice Biennale: Artistic freedom and its boundaries.

Its a matter of negotiation, said artist Kobe Matthys, whose exhibit in the Danish pavilion backs onto the courtyard where the tank rests. I dont mind the tank, because its in the background. But it seems that all the videos pump up the volume to compete. The more silent works, they have to also manifest themselves.

Every second year, the contemporary art world converges on Venice to bask in its latest creations, a movable feast that requires patient navigation of the lagoon citys canals to reach the national pavilions, a main exhibit and dozens of side events. The Biennale opens Saturday to the public and runs through Nov. 27.

This year, a record 89 countries have national pavilions including, for the first time, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Rwanda, Bangladesh, Malaysia and tiny Andorra. But just as telling is who did not come. Bahrain and Lebanon withdrew at the last moment, organizers attributing the decision to unrest at home.

The impact of the uprisings sweeping the Middle East from Tunisia to Libya to Syria resonates strongly in Venice, nonetheless.

The Egyptian Pavilion presents the work of Ahmed Basiony, a new media and sound artist who was on killed Jan. 28, on the third day of the popular uprising in Cairos Tahir Square.

Basiony, a 32-year-old professor at the Helwan University in Cairo, was trying to film a sniper when he was struck twice by rubber bullets. He apparently keeled over, and was hit by a police car, said curator Aida Eltorie.

He was that movement, that symbol of the majority, Eltorie said. He was one of those people killed for the repression happening in Cairo for 30 years, maybe longer.

The exhibit, conceived by Basionys friend and fellow artist Shady El Noshokaty, features five screens projecting video Basiony recorded during the first days of the uprising, interposed with a project he made a year earlier called Thirty Days Running in the Place.

The video of the uprising show the intensity of the protesters, engaged in earnest conversations, commenting about the high prices of lentils. In the running-in-place video, Basiony wears a hooded plastic suit and runs in place for an hour while sensors on the soles of his feet, under his arms and on his chest transmit data to a computer, which is run through a software program to create a digital display.

He is tackling the idea of consumerism, being consumed and wasted, Eltorie said. It was very much about his state of mind, and about what he felt about being an Egyptian.

At some pavilions artists spend months installing their works, but Basionys friends won the Egyptian governments consent to feature his works just at the end of March. While grateful for the opportunity to share his work beyond his native Cairo, they are not yet convinced this heralds a new era of openness. There are no guarantees right now, Eltorie said. We are in a transition now.

Back at the U.S. Pavilion, a runner hops on the tank treadmill for a 15-minute jog every hour.

The project is part of six new works created by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, artists who have collaborated since 1995, for the Biennale.

The exhibition is called Gloria, which curator Lisa Frieman of the Indianapolis Museum of Art said evokes the ideas of the glory of God, and the glory of military battle.

Inside the pavilion, U.S. gymnasts perform routines on recreated business-class airline seats approximating a balance beam and a pommel horse.

Inspired by the pavilions neoclassical architecture, which the artists said reminded them of a bank, they created an automatic teller machine installed beneath a set of specially commissioned German-built organ pipes, which bellow, melodically or ominously, in response to the language selection, pin code and withdrawal amount.

The treadmill-tank combo Track and Field is by far the most attention-grabbing of the works.

They are using an unexpected juxtaposition as a way to generate funny, unexpected results, said Freiman.

Among the unexpected results was the amount of noise it produced.

I have to tell you, at the beginning, and this is so American, none of us knew the tank was going to be so loud. This is Gods honest truth, Freiman said. Organizers immediately worried that it would be perceived as typically American, loud and obnoxious.

In fact, she said, people love it.

Outside the Danish pavilion, curator Katerina Gregos laughs as the treadmill starts up in the middle of an interview. A Greek curator living in Brussels, Gregos has gathered artists from 11 countries to explore freedom of speech in an exhibit titled Speech Matters. She also wanted to challenge the Biennales concept of one nation, one artist.

I think it is so important to discuss this now. We have long since entered a period of counter enlightenment, when hard-won civil liberties are under threat.

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.