Page 50 - La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
58TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION

NEW ZEAL AND
Post Hoc

POST HOC VISUALIZATION; Commissioner: Dame Jenny Gibbs.
ARTIST DANE MITCHEL W1. Curators: Zara Stanhope and Chris Sharp.
CAPTION: DANE MITCHELL, POST Exhibitor: Dane Mitchell.
HOC 2019, DIGITAL WORKING Venue: Palazzina Canonica, Riva Sette Martiri
DRAWING © THE ARTIST.

In the New Zealand Pavilion, located at the Palazzina Canonica – the
former headquarters of exhibition partner the Istituto di Scienze
Marine (CNR-ISMAR) – Mitchell has installed an anechoic chamber,
or echo-free room, to transmit his broadcast. An electronic voice
utters the names of vast lists of bygone phenomena composed of
millions of entities, which the artist has researched and catalogued.
Ranging from extinct plant species and extinct oceanic mammals,
lost islands, former national anthems, forgotten languages, obsolete
media formats, impossible colors, lost archives, abandoned laws
to disbanded political parties (to name just a few), the colossal
inventories revive, if only for a moment, diverse muted histories.
The inventory of missing things is so large that Post hoc never
repeats the names it broadcasts throughout the entire duration
of the Biennale Arte 2019. Indeed, Mitchell’s lists are ultimately
open-ended and incomplete and will continue to grow beyond
the exhibition. Variably meticulous, arbitrary, and subjective, the
process of constructing the lists has also relied on the availability
and veracity of multiple records; therein Post hoc signals the
contingent process of constructing history and knowledge in this
post-truth moment. (excerpt)

NORDIC COUNTRIES
Weather Report : Forecasting Future
ANE GRAFF 2019 STATES OF Commissioner: Leevi Haapala / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma / Finnish National Gallery, Katya García-Antón /
INFLAMMATION DETAIL OF A Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), Ann-Sofi Noring / Moderna Museet.
WORK IN PROGRESS VARIOUS Curators: Leevi Haapala, Piia Oksanen.
MATERIALS PHOTO: RH STUDIO
COURTESY THE ARTIST. Exhibitors: Ane Graff, Ingela Ihrman, nabbteeri.
Venue: Giardini
The exhibition Weather Report: Forecasting Future in the Nordic
Pavilion is themed around the complex and varied relations
between the human and nonhuman in an age when climate
change and mass extinction are threatening the future of life on
Earth. When imagining the future, humans face the responsibility
of acknowledging multispecies entanglements and the need to
renegotiate existing interspecies relations.
It is often difficult for humans to notice life forms that exist on
a scale different from theirs, such as microscopic organisms,
the slow workings of toxic agents, or durational processes of
decaying organic matter. By heightening the visitors’ awareness
of the materiality of the space and the artworks, and by
assimilating their bodies to other life forms, the exhibition
attempts to establish a connection with more-than-human
agencies.
The biennial gardens are bordered by the Venetian Lagoon, a
tourist-infested city, and hubs of mainland industry, all spurring
contemplation of the eco-crisis, the erosion caused by centuries
of mass tourism, and the survival prospects of marine species
native to the lagoon, which compete for space with massive
cruise ships. The pavilion itself is susceptible. (excerpt)

50 WORLD of ART