Katie Holten: Laboratorio dell Vigna , 2003, installation shot; photo Ros Kavanagh; courtesy Valerie Connor

Laboratorio dell Vigna , Katie Holten's project for the Venice Biennale , is a nebulous entity. It exists at a physical site, as a series of pamphlets, as a residency and through organised public events. It is a network of ideas configured during a fifty-day stay in the city and presented at Ireland's off-Giardini pavilion, the Scuola di San Pasquale. This venue has been as much a base of operations for the artist as a temporary gallery for the project and this is indicated by the presence of Holten's desk, a large working area covered by her research materials, drawings and post-it notes. This creative corner is situated upstairs in the Scuola, while downstairs there is an assembly of much smaller wooden desks, perfunctory stalls that have been constructed to accommodate the key production of Holten's residency, a series of pamphlets entitled Papers .

Each Paper has a title ( Love , Flying , Nothing , Water ) and is an intriguing collection of references, sketches, articles and images with a glossary at the end. The glossary is a cross between a thesaurus and the Devil's Dictionary, so that the entry in the Flying paper for altitude is the informative Height, esp. above sea level , while ryanair is described as The budget "I'm never flying with them again" airline . The exception to this is Paper www , a collection of website links arranged alphabetically that would seem to be the artist's internet browser history during her time in Venice. Given the low-tech, laid-back format of the Papers , it is surprising that Holten has established a distinctly didactic feel to the area where we are offered the opportunity to study the booklets. The contrast between the study-hall atmosphere on entry to the Scuola and the energetic productivity upstairs demarcates a curious line between artist and visitor. For the dedicated art-goer that has actively sought out the space or the ambling tourist that has happened upon the Campo della Confraternitą, the environment of the Laboratorio della Vigna isn't conducive to continuing the conversations Holten has cultivated during her time in Venice. It is as if we are locked out of the creative loop, positioned firmly as an observer rather than participant in the generation of information central to the work.

Fortunately, the Papers can be taken away. The plurality of thought tendered in the texts can be better absorbed elsewhere. The diversity of material is in turns entertaining, informative, stimulating, dull and frustrating. Pretty much a reflection of the Biennale itself. The fragmented approach adopted by Holten and Francesco Bonami, chief curator at Venice, risks dissolution into a postmodern play of meaning, and the challenge of taking on such a multiplicity of statements is to channel the sum of disparate parts into a compelling and significant whole.

Katie Holten: Laboratorio dell Vigna , 2003, installation shots; photos Ros Kavanagh; courtesy Valerie Connor

The sprawl of ideas on show in the Arsenale felt unwieldy and while the title of the event, The dictatorship of the viewer , suggests that this unformulated approach was a deliberate tactic, i.e., the editorial decisions lie with the spectator, it cannot disguise a serious abdication of curatorial responsibility. In Holten's work, however, there is a suggestion that her work is about this failure, about the collapse of coherency in our information age. The inclusion of Alan D. Sokal's notorious essay Transgressing the boundaries: towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity , hints at this, as does the oft-quoted line from Beckett: "Ever Tried? Ever Failed? No Matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." As with Santiago Serra's brick wall in the Spanish pavilion, Laboratorio della Vigna is a response to the impossible situation of Venice itself, a biennale of nation-states in an era of globalised identities. In comparison with the spectacular instantaneous wham of Serra's installation, Holten's contribution is a more subdued work, but both artists successfully stage the important questions of who and what the Biennale is for.

Fióna Kearney Visual Arts Officer at University College, Cork.

Katie Holten : Laboratorio della Vigna , Venice Biennale, June - November 2003; curated by Valerie Connor