Circa 114: Review
Venice: The long weekend
Interviewed by Suzanna Chan in The Nature of things, the eponymous catalogue for Northern Ireland's participation in the fifty-first Venice Biennale, Hugh Mulholland describes what motivated him to put together the events that happened around the city over The long weekend, by explaining that he wanted to leave some things to chance. This intentional pursuit of the unpredictable is resonant of the curator's expressed wish to also foster elements of surprise as part of the curatorial project. With all that happened over the days and nights of The long weekend it was apparent that those most surprised of all were the tourists, police, gondoliers, and the people of Venice in whose field of vision the artists' actions materialised as if out of the blue.
Moored at Campo San Barnaba, late at night, Nicky Keogh and Paddy Bloomer's boat made of Belfast detritus attracted small crowds of local passers-by who stopped, smiled, and laughing with pleasure, wondered at the spectacle of the thing. From time to time the boat was boarded from the shore by onlookers. The BinBoat, a phantas-magoria of sounds and images, proved irresistible to even the most territorial users of the waterways. Stories circulated of gondoliers laying down their oars to applaud the vessel on the Grand Canal and of policemen taking photos as mementos. The latter was all the more poignant as Peter Richards, having several locations under his belt prior to setting up his portable camera obscura on St. Mark's Square, found his progress halted through the intervention of the police. A good-humoured encounter, by all accounts; nonetheless the presence of the box proved to be perplexing enough to render it a Rumsfeldian 'unknown unknown' and needing removal.
Meanwhile, in the same square, the hoards fed the multitudes, as tourists acquired sachets of bird-feed to attract the pigeons. The little packets were adorned with anecdotes of urban folk and civilian life in Belfast, part of Aisling O'Beirn's project, which also included the addition of decals of voice patterns to cups in a lagoon-front café on Giudecca, the island opposite but closest to Venice itself. Elsewhere, walking the streets of Venice were Richard West and Stephen Hackett, aka Factotum, the publisher of The fair. The freesheet featured reports, commentary, and histories on fairs big and small, past and present, of guns, cars, livestock, leprechauns, and tugs o' war, with contributions by Leontia Flynn, Gillian McIntosh, Paul Young, Colin Graham, Vanessa Toulmin, Paul Moore, Daniel Jewesbury, Rok Stupar, Tony Swift, Jason Mills, Eamonn Hughes, John Morrow, Ruth Graham, Brian O'Kane, and Gerald Dawe.
The start of the The long weekend was heralded by Sandra Johnston's performance, in the late evening, at the Istituto Provinciale per l'Infanzia. Johnston, who was also showing a video work in the longterm exhibition of Northern Irish artists at the same place, allowed a crowd to gather and find their feet in a small garden otherwise hidden by a high wall from the adjacent street, or calle. Listening, as Johnston spoke, the need to watch her movements came and went. The audience was led by her fragments of apparently remembered scenes from another place and recollections of her passage through the city in the days prior to the performance. An array of sounds mingled in the highly acoustic environment, where minutiae are especially amplified. As the performer and the assembled moved through their paces, of course a mobile phone rang and a small blue window opened up in a woman's hand, bringing Johnston closer to the people around her and vice versa as the transgression was assimilated by Johnston into the unfolding oral narrative. The lady vanished and the gathering moved from an area with few paths to a paved courtyard, Johnston all the while motioning the imagination of the listeners, challenging the group to lead or to follow.
Alistair Wilson's installation Turning the tide opened the following evening, appropriately during a Venetian downpour. The installation of four fountains produced in a industrial block foam replicated the central fountain in the historic courtyard of the Locanda ai Santi Apostoli. The courtyard opened onto the Grand Canal, the ambient sound of the busy waterway adding to the sound and projected images of Wilson's installation.
For five days in October the artists and curator had an audience with Venice and the Biennale. Misgiving about the invisibility of the event due to its being unconnected to some other similar Biennale-centred activity betrays a myopic view of what is possible within otherwise conventional frameworks and is blithely ignorant of the value of happenstance in the everyday experiences of the chance witness, the backward glance, the snap, and the souvenir for all the people - and the artist - who were part of The long weekend, whether by accident or design.
Valerie Connor is an author
Venice: The long weekend, 6 - 11 October 2005, Venice
