Venice Biennale 2007

VENICE AGENDAS V, 2007
Artists, Gossips and Critics

JUNE 7,8,9 2007, 9.00 – 11.30am. Metropole Hotel, Riva degli Schiavoni, Venice

Prof Robert Storr

This was the fifth consecutive 'Agendas' to take place at the Venice Biennale. Venice Agendas is now regarded as a crucial forum for the exchange of ideas generated by the Biennale. At Agendas 2007 leading artists, critics and commentators addressed the question of how artworks constitute and promote debate, considered the potency of art world gossip, in a panel discussion with Robert Storr, the Director of Venice Biennale 2007, discussed his ambitions for an ‘art in the present tense’.

Venice Agendas V also addressed a paradoxical aspect of Storr’s vision for the Biennale, namely that while offering the thesis that debate is good, and that debate is a central purpose of the Biennale, Storr also suggested, with his emphasis on the experiential, immediacy and on correspondences between art works, that certain kinds of curator-led debate may no longer be viable. Venice Agendas V offered its three constituencies of artists, gossips and critics as sources for the re-examination of the value of debate in an art world context. On June 7, a panel of artists offered a variety of arguments and positions on the quality and validity of art as a means of constituting debate, including the notion that ‘the artist debates the world’, the idea that debate in art relies on a problematic sufficiency of differences and marginal positions, debate as a set of ‘instructions for art’, and debate within art as a means for the ‘consumption of optimism’, in the absence of political engagement. On June 8, an observation made on the previous day, that the word for debate has its etymological roots in the word for ‘sound’ or ‘noise’, provided the cue for a discussion which listened to the ‘noise’ of gossip for hidden elements in the constitution of debate.

The garden at the Metropole Hotel

On this day, the value of gossip as productive of intimacy, contact, love and friendship was discussed, as well as the potential of gossip for the construction of a polyphonic debate in art historical discourse. More malign aspects of gossip emerged in a discussion of the reinforcement of normative values by means of unverifiable statements, and of gossip as a lubricant for ‘speed-dating’ and ‘speed-curating’ in contemporary art. On June 9, the first Venice Agendas panel to engage in a live debate on the current Biennale exhibition with its Director, addressed the relation of individual artworks in the exhibition to curatorial strategy, curatorship to public mission, and the constitution of audiences to the growth of Biennale culture worldwide. It is also important to note that Venice Agendas V was the first Venice Agendas event to be webcast via the Wimbledon College of Art website, with a link to the ‘Audio Arts’ page of the Tate website, thus bringing Venice Agendas back to its roots in the ‘on the hoof’ interviews made at previous Biennales by Professor Bill Furlong, for Audio Arts magazine.
Dr Malcolm Quinn (Co-Ordinator, Venice Agendas V)

The garden at the Metropole Hotel

Venice Agendas V is organısed by: Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London; Audio Arts (London), Newport School of Art Media & Design, University of Wales; Visual Research Centre Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee (Scotland); Edinburgh College of Art (Scotland), Sheffield Hallam University (England). In collaboration with The British Council, (London) and 1:1 Projects, (London and Rome).

IS ART A FORM OF DEBATE? (7 June 2007)
'There is an optimism deficit, almost, and at the same time as this optimism deficit increases, we need a way to consume the optimism.' (Richard Grayson)

GOSSIP, RUMOUR AND ANECDOTE (8 June 2007)
'Gossip becomes increasingly visible as the discursive glue which maintains the art world as a world, one that we can talk about apart from others.' (Dr Gavin Butt)

‘ART IN THE PRESENT TENSE’: A LIVE DEBATE (9 June 2007)
'This exhibition is a statement on behalf of experience.' (Professor Robert Storr)

Conference Room

Learn more about previous and forthcoming ‘Agendas’ events at Tate Britain, The National Theatre London, the Wellcome Trust and the Edinburgh Festival:

click here for Main Agendas website

VENICE AGENDAS V: FIVE SIGNIFICANT FACTS

ONE
Saturday 9 June , Biennale Director Robert Storr joined the Venice Agendas panel, and engaged in debate on his exhibition ‘Think With the Senses, Feel With the Mind’, with Joseph Backstein (Director of the 2007 Moscow Biennale and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Moscow), Professor Michael Corris (artist, writer and Head of Art and Photography at Newport School of Art, Media and Design, University of Wales, Newport), Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton (writer, critic, curator and former Director of Visual Arts, Arts Council of England), and Angela Vettese (Curator, Critic and Professor of Contemporary Art, University IUAV of Venice). The panel was chaired by the art historian and critic Professor Mel Gooding.

TWO

This was the first time that anyone has tackled the subject of gossip at the Venice Biennale, and its role in building careers, constituencies, legends and myths. Gavin Butt, author of ‘Between You and Me: Queer Disclosures in the New York Artworld’ (Duke University Press: 2005), was debated the role of gossip in art with writer and Bloomberg Space curator Sacha Craddock, journalists and academics Ian McKay and Francesco Ventrella, and art impresario Richard Demarco CBE, the subject of a film by BAFTA-award winning filmaker Samir Mehamovic, who also filmed other participants in Venice Agendas.

THREE

Three Biennale Directors took part in Venice Agendas V – Richard Grayson (Director of the Sydney Biennale 2002, on 7 June), Joseph Backstein (Director of the Moscow Biennale 2007, on 9 June) and Robert Storr (Director of Venice Biennale 2007, on 9 June).

FOUR

On day one of Venice Agendas V, Dan Perjovschi , one of the artists selected for Robert Storr’s show, scrutinised the value of ‘art as debate’ with an international panel of artists , academics and curators including John Beagles, Polly Gould, Richard Grayson, Cesare Pietrouisti, Jaspar-Joseph Lester and Sharon Kivland.

FIVE

The Venice Agendas symposium has featured at every Venice Biennale since 1999, and has been developed out of Professor Bill Furlong’s ‘Audio Arts’ cassette magazine of interviews with artists, first published in 1973. He has made recordings at the Biennale since 1984, which has included the British representative on each occasion. The ‘Audio Arts’ archive has been acquired by Tate Britain, and is the subject of an exhibition ‘Audio Arts: Bill Furlong’ currently showing at Tate Britain until 27 August 2007. A small part of the vast Audio Arts archive can be accessed online at: http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/audioarts