May You Live In Colonial Times - 2019 Venice Biennale

"We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own, for we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society."
 - Alan Watts 

I have been writing non-stop, following the many steps I have taken towards the drastic changes I currently find myself in. 3 days at the Biennale have left me with a tremendous amount of questions and once again, the pre-disposed knowledge I had about the processes that go about curating exhibitions.

Because I chose the assignment of searching for colonial structures within the many pavilions, I highlight my focuses and main interests in finding meaning from, and through art, what constitutes as a nation-state and what the limits of representation and agency that go about the place are.

The White Man and the Čáhcerávga

As part of an installation, The Miracle Workers Collective (MWC) presented their collection of films at the Finnish pavilion, The Killing of Čáhcerávga, a monster that roams around ice and scares everyone away. Juxtaposing this image, Isuma, an Inuit artist collective represented the Canadian pavilion this year with a series of video installations from One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk,  a conversation about land concessions. Indeed, the picture of the white monster has come full circle as Chile's The Emancipating Opera addresses yet again the colonizer's othering by asking: "What the fuck is poetry?", the artist, Voluspa Japra, has made 3 further contributions, including her Hegemonic Museum which has inspired the picture above as part of my final presentation. 

Moving Backwards - Forced to do so? 

I go back to the hotel room, my hands full with brochures and pamphlets and a newspaper titled "Moving Backwards", part of the Swiss pavilion. I grab my highlighter and skim through its pages. Returning back to it now, I wonder about the meanings I have associated with the bright yellow marked sentences. 

proper modernity , we are surely "backwards" from the perspective of a developmental story. 

We do live in a world in which there are several temporalities. - the convergence of distinct historical temporalities that we may then call "global."

Do we, therefore, conclude that globalization is a crucial indicator of modernity? Proper modernity? Or has globalization become a notion we all get to fiddle with? 

"Don't you find it surprising that, in the name of this universalism inherited from the Enlightenment, we continue to impose the same institutional model all over the world and the same approach to experiencing works of art?" 

Globe-al, yet some countries' pavilions remain pushed to the side, marginalized, not included in the spaces of the Giardini and Arsenale. 

When asked about this, an important historical aspect of the Biennale must be taken into account, as some of its structures remain unchanged from the beginning of its founding. Perhaps here, pictures do speak louder than words. 

"Anonymous, stateless, immigrants pavilion" - Who gets to showcase, and who gets left out? 

It has also come to my attention that the Yugoslavian pavilion remained unchanged, with newly founded states showcasing at different parts of the Biennale. The Pakistan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong pavilions, to name a few, are being exhibited in different locations due to room capacity and economic reasons. 

Going back to the "Moving Backwards" text, a sentence has come to my attention and probed me to question the visitors' backgrounds as opposed to that of the workers and cleaners there. A gap remains visible. 

"Working as a part of an institution in a context that is marked by very precarious working conditions for the majority of the people in related communities sets the ground for questioning the position we take in cultural work." 

"a work of art is nothing without an audience." - Who's the audience?

From my personal notes: 

 عم دور عحالي من بافيلون لبافليون, من بلد لبلد. زي و كأنه... العالم عم يتسابق لحتى يثبت هويته, معاناته, وجوده, حتى لو ما كانت شخصية.  و ليش بصير الاشي شخصي لما اسرائيل يصحلها تقدم بايطاليا و احنا مطموسين... مين احنا؟ ليش اعتبرت حالي جزء من المقاومين بالنضال لما شفت صور للجدار و اسماء رُلا الحلواني و دارين طاطور و لورنس ابو حمدان مكتوبين؟ حسيت انه
لازم انتميلهم مع انهم ما بنتمولي. كيف ممكن الواحد يعبي هالغرفة البيضاء بمشاعره و كل هالبولشيت؟

I am searching for myself from pavilion to pavilion, from country to country. It's almost as if the world is racing to prove its identity, suffering, and existence, even if they weren't personal. Why does it become so personal when a state as young as Israel is given a space while we're being hidden? Who are we? Why did I consider myself part of the struggle for resistance when I saw pictures of the apartheid wall and the names of Rula Halawani, Dareen Tatour, and Lawrence Abu Hamdan? It almost felt like I had to belong to them, even though they didn't belong to me. How does one fill up this white empty space with one's feelings and all that bullshit? 

Walls solve problems. 

Why is it that whenever there's an exhibition about war or black excellence, people look at us like it has nothing to do with them? 

I wrote so, and I continue to write the same. On our tour around Arsenale, I come face to face with an image I am oh so familiar with, photographs of the Israeli annexation wall that get a brief description from our tour guide, and a lot of stares for me. Yes, look at it, and while you're at it, listen to the screams that have been recorded during a Palestinian uprising as you pass by and wonder about the concepts of separation. Art is only ironic until it becomes personal. 

I refused to recognize the only work given to an anonymous Palestinian artist at the Israeli pavilion -"Palestinian Resistance" - masturbating in front of a camera with a mask on, apparently an expression of the anger and frustration the Palestinian people carry in their hearts. - I leave this here with no further comments.

I still feel a sense of remorse whenever I ask myself whether the place I come from has helped shape who I am as an artist, and whether I am able to escape from all of it to re-create my own identity. 

It wasn't until the day after, on my last visit to Giardini, did I stumble on the Danish pavilion, which took me by surprise. My first encounters with Larissa Sansour highly impacted my perceptions of Palestinian and Arab approaches to science fiction, another blog for another time.

From my personal notes:

The feeling of loss fails when it is an abstraction -  الحس بالفقدان بفشل لما يكون تجريدي

لقيت اليوم كمان فنانة فلسطينية, لاريسا صنصور, في الدينمارك بين كل المحلات. حكت عن الضياع, الذاكرة, الي بنتميلها و الي ما بنتميلها, عن شجر الزيتون. أول ما شفت الفيلم بتذكر اني فكرت: معقول هاي بيت لحم؟ الخضار ذكرني, مع انه الفيلم كان ابيض و أسود. 

I have found another Palestinian artist, Larissa Sansour, in Denmark out of all places. She spoke about loss, memory, that which belongs to her and doesn't. About olive trees. When I first saw her movie I remember thinking: could that possibly be Bethlehem? The greenery reminded me, even though the movie was black and white.

Detached Contemplation 

"When artists from other cultural horizons continue to be subjected to the dictates of Western art: namely, originality, uniqueness, formal autonomy, and conceptual reflexivity, how can we claim to be aware of the of ongoing changes in the world?" - Charlotte Laubard

I conclude this brief documentation of my 3-day journey and takeaways by seeking answers to the nature of the work non-Western artists are expected to produce in order to appeal to certain conceptualizations and stereotypes they are subjected to. While this has been my own personal attempt to de-construct colonial structures that remain within the Biennale, tremendous efforts by artists have been presented and many have gone unnoticed due to the little amount of time I had spent in such an overwhelming scene.

Perhaps the only way to break the wheel of injustice is by literally moving backwards, rewinding the cassette of events in order to detangle them. What the last excerpt I had highlighted indicates:

"At times we intentionally move backwards to be closer to those who have been before us." 

Could this be a way to shed light on "backwardness"? Those who just cannot seem to reach a definition for modernity, always remaining behind those who have managed to move a step further.

The West, the rest. The north and the south.

Further Works: 

Teresa Margolles - Muro Cuidad Juarez

Colonizing mars?

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster - Martian Dreams Ensemble

Kahlil Joseph - BLKNWS

Jill Mulleady - Riot on the Holodeck

Poem by Dareen Tatour:
Resist, my people, resist them.
I dressed my wounds and breathed my sorrows
So Ali called from his grave:
Resist, my rebellious people.

Shilpa Gupta - For, in your tongue, I cannot fit.

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu - Dear