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Yael Bartana. Andromeda´s Tree, 2006. Videoinstallations. Courtesy: Sommer Contemporary Art.
including a notebook of images and artist’s projects specifically developed for this book. In December, the annals of the six seminars organized throughout 2006 will also be published: “Marcel, 30,” “Architecture,” “Reconstruction,” “Collective Life,” “Barter,” and “Acre.” The educational project, led by Denise Grinspun, created five nuclei of debate about contemporary art with the collaboration of the Unified Education Centers in the city’s peripheral areas, along with a dossier of educational material designed for primary school teachers, which was distributed for free. Also, the very large guide corps received strict training during the months prior to the opening. The Biennial wants to widen the range of visitors, usually concentrated among the affluent, and to spark the interest of the less fortunate. What the benefit would be is still undecided. A general tour of the pavilion’s three floors offers a constant shift from photographs to videos, from videos to installations, and from installations to drawings. The arrangement does not follow traditional criteria such as nationalities, genres, or similarities in language. As usual, larger works occupy the space of the first floor. Upon entering, visitors find a moving installation by the South African
Narda Alvarado. Olive Green, 2003. Video-performance. 4 min, 30 s. Photo: Juan Pablo Urioste, Patricio Cooker.
artist Jane Alexander (born 1959). It is a rectangle of live grass, surrounded by a double wire-mesh wall; between the two walls, the floor is covered by work gloves and sharp tools such as machetes, sickles, and hoes. Four uniformed men guard the installation. Inside, on the grass, there is a strange being—half man, half gray bird, solitary and mute. The interviewer Steven Matijcio highlights the “undeniable visual quality that fuses horror and seduction.”2 The work is a powerful image of apartheid and of all the ghettos the human race insists on establishing. An installation by the Paris-based Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn (born 1957) also deals with horror and seduction and is found on the same floor. With an almost unbearable crudeness, Hirschhorn approaches an issue that is inherent to life itself: violence, i.e. the element that makes “living together” difficult.3 A large space formed by tall walls made of pieces of cardboard joined by adhesive tape contains many tables and shelves, filled with books by philosophers and thinkers from Hegel and Kant to Deleuze and Habermas, tied with the same tape that ties a vast number of work tools: hammers, saws, picks, nails, and bolts, as well as video monitors and graffiti; one of the latter reads “Los insensatos.” The overcrowded space almost induces claustrophobia. In each
bundle of sealed and thus negated books and tools, there are revolting photographs of corpses, or segments of them, visibly crushed, bloodied, barbarously mutilated. The sealed and useless books, the unused tools, and the photographs trigger a reaction of fascination and horror. Conceptually and visually, this is the most violent work in the Biennial and the one that most radically denounces human beings’ inability to live together. In comparison, the city of sugar— inspired by the state of Pernambuco— presented by Mechac Gaba (born 1961, Benin) seems like child play; the Germany-based artist asserts that in order to coexist, what is required is harmony, sweetness, and love. Alongside it, the Brazilian artist Marepe’s chains of umbrellas suspended from the ceiling and pyramids of cloth rollers lend an entertaining and harmless note in this section. Ivan Cardoso, a Rio de Janeiro filmmaker, pays direct tribute to his friend Oiticica, both in his short films and in a light table entirely covered with filmstrips. “Whenever I want to see Hélio alive, I see my films . . . In my films he hasn’t died.”4 In the section opposite the entrance and in the middle of the upper level, one finds a number of interesting works. Washing, a beautiful series of seven large photographs literally washed to the point that the images