Venice Biennale says run like 'elle

Yesterday I did a whistle stop tour of the 54th Venice Biennale, an international art show held every two years, where several countries host pavillions showing a national art works from some of the art world elite.

The Biennale has a reputation for being very politically motivated, and this year was no exception. But I’m not here to talk about politics, instead I’m more interested by themes – and conveniently enough a strong theme this year was water. Which is pretty apt, considering that Venice is a city built upon water.

Both the Israeli and Turkish pavillions (Turkey has been one of the most talked about pavillions this year) were based around water, and the US pavillion had a runner posted on a running machine atop a tank!

Turkey - a water filtration machine

Israel - another water filtration machine

The Louis Vuitton pavilion which was entirely based round water. In two rooms were videos of water filling up a container against gravity, and in the main room were five upturned boat sterns, which contained videos of water pushing against the hull of a fast boat.


All this was set to a loud soundtrack of rushing water.

USA

On a slightly different note, the last time I was in Venice was during the Venice Marathon, and due to the fact that it’s an archipelago, a series of platforms are set up throughout the city, for runners to continue their route without break. So it looks like a series of rickety little bridges which runners traverse. It never appealed to me before (in fact I distinctly remember thinking they were made for doing it), though now it is rather more appealing…