Home Americanism American Politics, a Tank, and the International Stage: The Venice Biennale

American Politics, a Tank, and the International Stage: The Venice Biennale

Yes, I am going to require at least a modicum of research for this piece, which is— above all else— a discussion of the place of artistic representation in American and international politics.  I am going to send you to The New York Times, where you will find a recent review of American’s emissary artists at the Venice Biennale art festival, published by Roberta Smith.  The article is called “Combining People and Machines in Venice.” It gives us a glimpse into what has been happening in Venice since June 4th, and what will be continuing until Novemeber 27th.[i] If you are a visual learner, you can also check out a slide-show that features the artwork of “Gloria,” the American section of the Venice Biennale, on The New York Times website.[ii] The Venice Biennale is a major art festival, and the exhibits being put on this year are particularly helpful for giving us a sense of what leg of the United States is being put forward on the international art scene.

I want to focus specifically on the centerpiece of the exhibit.  In the middle of “Gloria” lies a 60-ton tank, turned upside-down with a treadmill on top of it.  For fifteen minutes every hour, an athlete climbs up to the treadmill, turns it on and runs.  He just runs.  Meanwhile, people crowd around and watch him run, far up in the air on a former instrument of destruction.  I wonder how long people watch for, and what they do while he does his job.  Surely, they snap a few photos.  But then what?  Are they struck by the bizarreness of the artwork, or does the implied criticism ever rise to the level of cognition; do we ever realize what Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla are trying to tell us?  Before we move forward to this question— which goes to the very heart of rendering political lessons in artistic form— we must ask a more basic one.  What IS the point of watching a man run on top of a treadmill?  This is what Roberta Smith, an art critic for The New York Times, has to say: “’Gloria’…has a clenched, unforgiving energy.  I don’t much care for it, but its starkness has stuck with me.”  Furthermore, Allora and Calzadilla “offer an angry, sophomoric conceptualism that borders on the tyrannical and that in many ways mimics the kinds of forces they recognize.”  Here, the subtlety of successful art is places in contradistinction to over-the-top, tyrannical art— art that, to use a metaphor from music, opts for noise rather than sound.  From a viewer’s perspective, “Either you can instantly parse them [their exhibits] or they are impenetrable.”[iii] For Smith, the point of the piece is lost, even while it is beating you over the head.  The centerpiece (called “Track and Field,” by the way) is characterized more by violent juxtaposition than subtle artistry.

I have not seen the exhibit, and it disheartens me that her review was a negative one.  I feel especially bad for the people who had to move the tank to the place of the exhibit.  But, I should say,  it seems to me like “Track and Field” has something to say about the American understanding of politics— not about the politicians themselves, but about how American citizens have learned to cope with, and to interpret the actions of their politicians as well as the occurrences on an international scale.  Not only do Americans choose to draw attention to the daily routine of exercise rather than to the ongoing military catastrophes, but the process of forgetfulness is based on the surmounting of catastrophic images.  In the face of the everyday, we tend to lose touch with the larger social and militaristic issues that continue to exist.  We go on with our lives because we have become especially adept at creating an illusion: that the tanks are useless, turned-upside-down.  This gives the military world a feeling of strangeness, a our daily lives are based on obviating the worries resulting from military struggle.

The world that we turn upside-down, and thus estrange from ourselves as a world apart, is what we stand upon when we turn our attention to the everyday.  We ignore what happens every day over there— Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, &c.— in favor of what happens every day over here.  It’s just simpler that way.

JASON GULYA


[i]Go to http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/arts/design/allora-and-calzadilla-at-venice-biennale-review.html?pagewanted=all.  Also of note is Roberta Smith’s earlier piece, entitled “Artists Decorate Pellazos, and Vice Versa,” found at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/arts/design/the-54th-venice-biennale-sedate-and-pumped-up-review.html?pagewanted=all .

[ii]Go to http://nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/07/09/arts/20110709-ALLORA.html?scp=1&sq=gloria&st=cse.

[iii]These quotations are from “Combining People and Machines in Venice.”

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.