arsenale…

Another surprise…’cos normally with the Art Biennale i don’t like the Arsenale as a venue, it’s so huge and cavernous (beautiful in its own right of course), filled with a great vomit of art…video and sound are all thrown in together to the total detriment of all concerned…in the end you feel assaulted by the art while struggling to remember any one piece…

“If Buildings could Talk” – People watching a 3D film installation by Wim Wenders (not so great – using some of the ideas from Wings of Desire but none of the poetry!)

…so imagine my surprise as i find myself enjoying the Arsenale experience. There seem to be fewer pieces for a start and they are more considered, some are site specific, undaunted by the scale of their environment and there is much less video which (in this venue’s case) is a good thing  and the video that is installed is decently isolated so it does not invade its neighbouring environments…

“Balancing Act” by Ensamble studio

“we have understood the whole arsenale as a theme of multiple counterpoint, where after the appearance of the original space, different voices occur around that theme, developed and carried in intervals, creating a complex compositional sequence, an architectural ”fugue”, in which different spaces follow one another, and in which the dissonant balance of the ‘balancing act’ is just one chord.”  Ensamble Studio

Meanwhile in Croatia…

Croatia’s floating pavilion

Croatia had this great idea of building a pavilion on a barge and floating it to Venice. They built the pavilion…they even floated it…But it never made it to Venice as they experienced extreme construction problems…the thing collapsed, see here for some rather marvellous photos…

…a quiet but heartfelt cheer for the architect who still bothers, or indeed is capable to put pen to paper and eschew, at least for a little the PC…

Gratuitous shot of Venice…

Indigenous Venetian architecture – this is a Squero – unusual in a city built from stone – the traditional wooden structure where gondolas are built…

other architecture biennale 2010 posts on this blog:

plenty of money and full colour brochures

society of the spectacle

other pavilions

rural urbanism and rethinking happiness

more giardini

venice biennale of architecture