The Probable Trust Registry: The Rules of the Game #1-3, 2013-15. Installation and Performance. Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation.
Now that the dust and hype (and a bit of rancor) has settled from the recent Venice Biennale, “All the World’s Futures,” it’s interesting to note the unforced but powerful conversation held between the work of two celebrated, hugely influential American artists who showed – Adrian Piper and Joan Jonas.
Piper (who now lives and works in Berlin) won the Golden Lion for best artist in the international exhibit but hasn’t gotten nearly the press coverage of Jonas, who’s been the subject of glowing profiles in the New York Times and the Guardian, as well as the subject of countless art blog posts across the cyber webs. Piper won for her installation The Probable Trust Registry, which consisted of three hospitality desks, each one inviting participants to commit to one of three personal manifestos for living in the world from now on:
“I will always be too expensive to buy.”
“I will always mean what I say.”
“I will always say what I am doing to do.” (sic)
A conceptual artist and a philosopher (in 1987 she became the first tenured African American woman professor in the field of philosophy,) Piper’s work has long challenged comfort zones around race, gender, and sexuality, positioning her own questions and observations within the big-picture context of existence itself. The new work underscores the urgency of personal integrity in day-to-day living if we are to save not only ourselves, but the planet.
They Come to Us without a Word, Installation view. Photo credit: Moira Ricci.
Jonas’ They Come to Us without a Word, according to her website, “evolved out of an earlier work, Reanimation, first presented as a performance in 2010 at MIT, where [she] has taught for 15 years. Reanimation was partly inspired by the writings of Icelandic author Halldór Laxness and his poetic depiction of the natural world. They Come to Us without a Word evokes the fragility of nature, with each [of four rooms] of the Pavilion employing specific elements, such as bees or wind.”
The description continues: “Fragments of ghost stories sourced from an oral tradition in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, form a nonlinear narrative linking one room to the next. Fragments of ghost stories sourced from an oral tradition in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, form a nonlinear narrative linking one room to the next. ‘Ghosts are very much alive there, as in all parts of the world,’ Jonas states. ‘We are haunted, the rooms are haunted.’ In each of the four rooms of the Pavilion there are two video projections—one presenting the main motif of the room and the other the ghost narrative, a continuous thread running through the exhibition spaces.”
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Juxtaposing the work of the two women – one black, one white; both of whom have been working at their craft for decades, building sterling reputations along the way – is to see a single conversation emerge about the fragility and tenuousness of our world, and our part in preserving it. Of course, that is true of the Biennale as a whole this year (which is especially notable for the number of women artists on deck.) Okwui Enwezor, the Nigerian art critic, poet, professor of art history, and curator, who curated this year’s festival was praised for his vision by Piper in her acceptance statement:
“It is Okwui’s vision and deep insight into contemporary art as the scalpel for dissecting the tectonic shifts of cultural capital, production and value, to which I am most deeply grateful for my participation in this year’s Venice Biennale. This exhibition is the game-changer for any and all future exhibitions anywhere that aspire to be international; and none will be able to lay claim to that title without consulting and learning from his magisterial achievement in this one. It is a privilege to be a part of it. My gratitude for Okwui’s inspired and brilliant curation of my work knows no bounds.”
The Probable Trust Registry: The Rules of the Game #1-3, 2013-15. Installation and Performance. Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation.
Of course, not everyone has been on board with the programming. Writing for ArtNet News, Benjamin Genocchio kicked off his review of the Biennial with this:
“Okwui Enwezor pledged to reimagine the Venice Biennale, and his curated exhibition split between the Arsenale and Italian pavilion in the Giardini proves him to be a man of his word. He has delivered what can only be described as the most morose, joyless, and ugly biennale in living memory; a show that, in the name of global action and social change, beats the visitor up with political theory rather than giving us the pleasures and stimulation of great art. His vision of the world is bleak, angry, and depressing.”
Yeah, that kinda sounds like the world we’re living in.
Ernest Hardy is a Sundance Fellow whose music and film criticism have appeared in the New YorkTimes, the Village Voice, Vibe, Rolling Stone, LA Times, and LA Weekly. His collection of criticism, Blood Beats Vol. 1: Demos, Remixes and Extended Versions (2006) was a recipient of the 2007 PEN / Beyond Margins Award.
