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from Lyon: Pedro Cabrita Reis

The Bichat Warehouse, a previously abandoned garage tucked away in the more industrial portion of the city of Lyon, France, houses a single work produced specifically for the site and the Biennale. Fluorescent lights installed by the artists Pedro Cabrita Reis, a work titled Les Dormeurs/The Sleepers, occupy every area of the building through hanging, laying, and tilting. While some lights follow the straight architecture of the space, along the support beams and across pipes and railings, along the support beams and across pipers and railings, others float in space or partially rest on the floor, some hanging horizontally from the ceiling and others meeting the floor on one side and remaining by the overhead electrical chord. The shrubs growing out of the dirty concrete floor remain, as do the cigarette butts, posting on the wall, and a few old scattered aluminium cans.




While the light fixtures immediately provide a sense of stimulation, a supposed “uniqueness” to an otherwise popularly considered banal or even dead space, they also serve as pace markers, their precarious positioning throughout the expanse of floorspace forcing the viewer to move slower and with more consideration.



Inside is a relatively quiet sound, a shelter from the city. A prolonged visit can affect a basic understanding and appreciation for the structure the lights are housed in, their relationship being a symbiotic one in creating a contemplative atmosphere. Not a simulation of a dirty warehouse, The Bichat is authentic in it’s character and, to Reis’ credit, the temptations of vast space did not persuade him to make an offensive intrusion. Rather, the structure serves more as a nesting ground for the fluorescent tubes, utilizing atmospheric and architectural attributes already present without inciting a dramatic physical alteration.



Although the viewer isn’t necessarily presented anything new, this work echoing the likes Donald Judd and minimalist aesthetics, perhaps the most rewarding aspect of this work is the showcasing of something which is old, neglected and forgotten, treated in such a way for it begin again in being a space of activity beyond it’s natural process of aging. Through the external forces of animation on part of the artist and electricity, Reis manages to highlight pre-existing conditions within The Bichat Warehouse. In the fact that the warehouse is not transformed, only accompanied through a contemplative intervention, a spectatorship is allowed in, the workings of the art event opening up urban space formerly deserted. This is the first year the warehouse, most famously an arsenal built in 1916, was incorporated into the Lyon Biennale, becoming part of the corporeal map of sites. The antecedently abandoned becomes an attraction through the process of art. In this idea lies a potential purpose for arts contemporary existence.

from Lyon: Lin Yilin

A man travelling down a busy-street in broad daylight, shackled to himself, his wrist bound to his ankle through handcuffs, speaks to a societal condition, a current state of affairs. Past countless pedestrians and manned vehicles, an actor walks obviously impaired, either stared at or ignored. No assistance provided, no concern expressed.

This is a performance; to be more precise, this is a re-enactment of a very real event witnessed by Chinese artist Lin Yiln in his own country in 2006. Yilin was affected by the watching of such an occurrence, a supposed criminal handicapped through the physical restraint placed on him by the plainclothes officer accompanying him down the street. In this event the artist recognized a public indecency, a humiliation of such power that it raised some very basic yet important questions about the everyday scenes of absurdity and the roles we all take in shaping such circumstances.

“All I want is for the public to think of the situation of humanity today,” Yilin says. In recreating the situation, Yilin followed a handcuffed actor, recreating the original scene only with the presence of a police officer or official, trailing him with a video camera. No questions were raised about the man or him being recorded.

The video was displayed along with a large series of still photographs. The imagery expounds upon the same sombre point, serving to remind or even force the viewer to deal with the content that’s presented, to make sense of this handcuffed man. The work itself is titled One Day, elucidating the reality of the replication, helping to assert the felt significance through a perceived lack of collective specialness. In reflection, the poignant question of how human behaviour and social norms could lead to an acceptance of persons publicly stripped of their dignity and what this means for our capacity to empathize.



Lin Yiln remarked, “We are both actors and spectators.” Just as easily as such an objectification could be placed on an individual, so could the reverse happen, where all are in turn subjected to a previously spectated event. In the artists’ assertion, responsibility is mutually shared as are the roles of power and manipulation. Without any direct ethical statements, wrongness can be understood through a removal of a basic right, that being to stand up straight.

In this work, no defence is made for the criminal, the circumstances, or society at large. Rather, this is just a portrayed reality to be individually processed. No conclusions are provided, no particular point directly stated. In the honesty of recreating, the evidence exists for the remarking upon the real, the moving and captured image of arrest becoming powerful in it’s presentation, possibly allowing for a greater moment of consideration than could be achieved in real time.

from Lyon: Agnès Varda and her huts

In Agnès Varda’s most recent film Beaches of Agnes, the eighty-year old visionary recounts her life from childhood to the present, dramaticizing personal romances, her own films, and profound moments of imagination. Utilizing old footage, surreal re-enactments of past events, and personal monologues, a story is told of a life well-lived, an autobiographical account absent of staleness or convention.

Included in this memoir are Varda’s recent art installations, a newly explored creative avenue for the senior film maker. Called Les Cabnes d Agnès or Agnès Huts, the structures are occupiable spaces of different themes. Of the three displayed at La Sucriere in Lyon, France, one provides beach chairs on sand facing the interior projection of one of Varda’s newer films, a collage of beach imagery with mirrors and a young nude couple intimately engaged on an ocean front hammock, accompanied by raw footage of natural disasters and crowds of people in panic. A second hut features thirty portraits of women across from the same number of portraits of men, each photographed with a picture of a beach shore behind small enough so as to not totally obscure the actual surroundings.



However, most remarkable of Varda’s artworks is her “Cinema Hut”, a transparent hut with four walls made of 35mm film from an old movie she had shot and self-described as “a flop”. Inside are the old film canisters used to once hold the reels, now stacked on top of each other suggesting a place to sit. This particular hut is essentially made from a movie, the discarded film being construction material for a new purpose with it’s display still remaining eminent. It’s fragility is matched by it’s sheer volume of images, each individual frame on display taking on a physical quality unlike it’s projected counterpart.



“It’s cinema because the light is held by the images,” says Varda. The “Cinema Hut” is in it’s essence a new way to experience film, to be really inside and surrounded by it. There is an elegance to it’s construction as well as well as the reels tightly draping over the steel frame, carefully placed so as not to overlap or leave gaps in between. The images making up the building can be seen from both inside and out, the entire structure essentially being diaphanous through hundred of thousands of frames.




Perhaps, the gesture is most artistically conceived part of this work, the lending of a feature-length film, a series of moments in history portrayed by actors of the past, disposed to a presentation that is so removed from the original idea of intent, yet somehow still true to it. Through the hut, the movie is again seen, no longer uncared for or idly resting, rolled up in it’s metal canisters. Its removed from it’s spool and subjected to light, once more activated for an audience.

Lyon Biennale: Intoduction and Sarah Sze/Takahiro Iwasaki

The 10th Lyon Biennale, titled “The Spectacle of the Everyday” and curated by Hon Hanru, is considerably smaller than its Venice elder. Thus, this particular Biennale is more manageable, less of an overwhelming experience but, in all probability, likely to be working towards such an end. The most marked differences from Venice is the absence of international pavilions. Also, the Biennale has yet to transform the city in the way that Venice, one of Italy’s most tourist-heavy cities, is practically littered with art every other year. Albeit, there are similarities in each Biennales invested interest in international art, as it seems to be a necessary component of any large representation of contemporary art. There are even repeated works (Mark Lewis is completely talentless). The themes are also revolving around similar ideas of the everyday, possibly more of a reoccurring trend at this point rather than an actual platform for operations.

While the Musuem of Contemporary Art of Lyon hosts a sub par collection of whitewall work, the La Sucriere, an old sugar factory, provides room for some more interesting investigations and exists in a part of the city less travelled, further from the beaten path from its primary Biennale counterpart. In fact, it could be considered a difficult venue to locate by foot, surrounded by large construction projects and with minimal signage. Still, there is a value to places such as these, encouraging engagement with the city, as can also be seen at The Bichat Warehouse and less at The Bullukian Foundation.

As the theme of this entire Biennale revolves around an interest in the everyday, it would be appropriate to begin by briefly citing two examples from the collected works which start to describe one of the more literal examples of dealing with the subject in two drastically different approaches.

Sarah Sze’s Untitled (Portable Planetarium) is an operational sculpture, producing an image of stars on an adjacent wall. Elaborately conceived of numerous non-conventional construction items (toothpick box, sponge, light bulb), the artist creates something of a masterpiece of the makeshift. The sculptural presence of Sze’s work is strong, the structure occupying it’s own corner, taking up space and generating sound from the small motors and fans scattered throughout. Simple materials expounded upon each other create an overall intricacy, a form which is at once precarious and random as well as completely sound and organized. Addressing this work as a means to an end would be to disregard the in-between which seems so critical to the process carried out through it’s formation. Through the works complexity lies an intelligent appreciation for the simple, the everyday possibility of objects.

The bathtowel on the small wooden desk becomes a black, mountainous landscape through Takahiro Iwasaki’s delicate work. On a hillside sits a lone tower, made from the very threads of the towel. This is an artful transformation of the subtlest kind, the elevating of an everyday material to a point where its first recognized and, upon closer examination, reconsidered entirely. The strength in this work is the utter simplicity enacted through the final presentation, where a slight adjustment to appearances incites the imagination of the viewer so as to assist them in visualizing a world already in existence, hidden through its ordinariness but inviting in it’s realized possibilities.

more from Lyon Biennale to follow...

from Venice: Mike Bouchet's home and Joge Otero-Pailos' wall

Concluding the writing on the 53rd Venice Biennale, I would like to address two final works.



Included among the special artists projects of the 53rd Venice Biennale, Mike Bouchet’s American suburban home sits in the canal outside of the far-end of the Arsenale. Mildly inconspicuous in it's position, the structure is far enough in the distance, removed from the banality of much of the art display, that it could nearly be overlooked or not seen at all. However, upon noting it's presence, the erection becomes quietly spectacular, not quite the pink elephant in the room (or water) but certainly in the realm of the novel and outlandish.

A two-story family house, the garage and front-steps are on level with the water’s surface. The nearby surrounding are small boats and a large ocean vessel. In the not-too-far distance is a docking platform in front of an old warehouse building (presumably once used for trade and currently serving as additional venues for various exhibitions). The prefabricated structure is physically inaccessible, only to be viewed from a distance. Displaced and made impossible to closely examine, the visual impact derives an iconic image of the U.S; odd and lonely, lost in it’s lack of sameness typical for such a suburban staple.



The piece is essentially a ready-made, removed from it’s original context and re-posited in an unaccustomed setting. Possibly it begs the question of place, a distinctly American house resting in Venice, Italy (a city built on water and steadily sinking). Through it’s objectification, it’s utilitarian purposes removed through it’s subsequent display, it can still be recognized for precisely what it fails to be by a definition of location: American/suburban/home. Albeit, it can still very much be recognized for what it logistically defies, calling attention to simultaneous acknowledgment of place and placelessness.

In as much as we can define Bouchet’s work as an American suburban home, it would be an impossibility to clarify such a statement. In the inexplicable perception of perceived infinity that is the U.S. suburbs, an individual structure such as one implemented by the American-born Bouchet becomes unidentifiable beyond it’s most basic understanding. In it’s recognizability exists it’s lack of significance, a complete absence of awareness beyond the definitive façade.




A large latex sheet becomes subjected to the poetic action of document and study through cleaning by artist Jorge Otero-Pailos. Utilizing a yet-to-be restored wall in the historic Doge Palace of Venice, Italy, a certain residual history is recorded effecting a striking resemblance to an afforded mass despite the materials given thinness. The work presents a forward gesture of discussing a building, it’s history of time and use as well as it’s capability to produce a visual mark outside of it’s self.




To portray the wall, Otero-Palis acted directly towards it, addressing it through essentially a version of rubbing. The scale of the final piece is such that a skin has been peeled off the entirety of the walls surface and hung for display. It can be viewed from all sides, it’s visual heaviness far outweighing it’s actual physical weight. The process involved in it’s making is a transference of layers, a depository of information to a blank front.

In evidencing an accumulation and use, this work becomes another layer, another surface which also manages to acquire yet further purpose through it’s application. An immobility and uninterrupted preservation of the architectural space is advantageous to the artist. This leads to the suggestion that spaces such as facades can become collections by themselves through unmediated subsistence, that through sitting they can begin to reveal a language and account of prior circumstance.

from Venice: Carsten Höller - slides

Carsten Höller’s photographs serve as references to his sculptural lineage, most famously his slides, titled Test Site, installed in the different levels of the Tate Modern in 2006.

What this work explores is themes of human experience specifically related to physiological effects. In fact, Höller comes from a scientific background, holding a doctorate in biology. In effect, the slides were installed to emit a sensory experience for participants, a physical sensation to be accompanied by a psychological feeling of jubilation.

The imagery of architectural spaces reinterpreted as playscapes are imaginarily enhanced through the proposal of a pen drafting out the course of various slides suggesting an intervention, a hidden purpose revealed through diagrammatical renderings overlain physical spaces pictorially displayed. The renovated images provide series of separate courses, lines of navigation alternative to predisposed tendencies.

In it’s essence, the slide presents an option for a predisposed inclination, to move. As an object of recreational equipment, the motion suggested is based not of necessity but of a desired displacement of site connected to its position of initial propulsion. The slide is an impetus which purpose is to serve as an intermediary construction between one place and another, markedly accentuating each point in the process.

(photo courtesy of Brandon Boan)

A case in point of the slide as conveyor would be the water park. In a reimagination of open space, both in height and length, a suggestively industrial structure is built on a piece of flat land in Keskemet, Hungary for the sole purpose of going down (note: the water park is also, like many of it’s kind, built alongside a river). Travel significant only for it’s own sake, an integration into another physical body through an altered moment.

(photo courtesy of Brandon Boan)

In the water park, an intervention is made among empty space, in the slides physical manifestation as well as the area between the entrance and exit. Further purpose is activated by participants. This is the nature of sliding, as slides are otherwise insensate structures and thus the space they occupy meaningless. Typically, purpose is derived through immediate use, through the exercise of expansive application.

As slides permit a recontextualization of varying understandings of space and a separate stage for mobile discretion, its not far off to imagine these conveyers integrated into the flow of an urban arena. Perhaps a reminder of industrial design, as seen in the defunct sugar factory serving as a major venue for Lyon, France’s Biennale, can serve as a reminder of the true nature of the slide removed from strict recreation, to serve as a arbiter of material goods, succinctly bridging one place to another in a single direction.

Into the streets of Lyon removed from the art spectacle, a slide is present along the path adjacent to the Saône River. This is among several pieces of recreational equipment spread out along the expansive walkway park, among skateboard ramps, outdoor gym equipment, and concrete blocks modelled after beach lounge chairs. With an entrance on level with the sidewalk and an exit out onto the wide foot and bike path popularly travelled, it can nearly be imagined that this slide is merely an alternative to the stairs rather than part of a small playscape. Albeit, what can be ascertained is that this is an example of a playscape integrated into an urban setting in such a way that it almost becomes part of it rather than it’s own separate demarcated zone of activity.

Using Playscapes (a blog dedicated to playgrounds and their design and application) as a reference allows for an imaginative understanding of the history and possibilities of this terrain of traversing. Featured among many entires are group slides, octopus slides,traditional slides in modern form and also their bold elaborations. Also present is playscapes by artists, including Carsten Höller's work, as well as art reinterpreted as playscape.

Considering the intermediary disposition of a slide and it's resolute positioning towards movement, the slide can be imagined in the form of a physical intervention of a site, as a means of creating a playscape among the already existing design of a site. It's an appropriate construction for it's simplicity, the utilization of the basic forces of gravity, and it's comprehended conceptual significance. The slide does not necessarily itself move, but it will move things, as this is what it exists to do as a it operated mainly as a point of mediacy, a stationary operator of momentum.