Day 8

(June 3, 2011)

Today (well yesterday, I am a little late posting this!), we slept in a little bit. Everyone in the house is gone to Florence for the weekend except for a handful of us. It is quieter in the house and it's pretty nice to have it to ourselves. Lilly and I went to the grocery store in the morning and got lost a little bit, but found our way back eventually! :)

We came back to the house for a bit, and then Lilly wanted to go see Accademia because she missed the first day when we went as a group. Emily felt sick and slept really late, so we were all left to our own vices. We left around lunchtime and I spent a couple hours walking around looking at different National pavilions and collateral events. I went and looked at Armenia, Iceland, and Azerbaijan. As far as collateral events I looked at Anastasia Khoroshilova's "Old News," ArtSways New Forest Pavilion, and briefly checked out "Cracked Culture?." Other things I saw was a solo show by Polly Morgan, a show called "Atlantis," that was in the same area as Iceland and Armenia, and I tried to get into the Barry X Ball show but it was inside a museum that I figured we would probably go together as a group one day. It was nice just roam around by myself and taking the time to check out the work that I was really interested in. I definetly want to go back to a lot of the Pavilions I have been to already, just to take it all in for a second time.

Awesome photos in a show called "Atlantis"

 I really liked the Iceland and Azerbaijan pavilions today. At Iceland, there was an audio sculpture called, "Excorsising Ancient Ghosts." There were headphones strung from the center of a terra-cotta clay pot you would sit down and listen to an audio recording. The recording was of a man and woman making love and they were reading from various ancient, political and philosophical texts. It was disturbingly beautiful, and actually a favorite of mine from everything we have seen. Sitting there listening to this audio felt vouyeristic and made me feel like an intruder to an intimate situation. The fact that the "readers" were interacting physically, and at the same time reciting some seemingly contradictory statements, heightened my experience. It seems perverse, but you can't really understand unless you experience it, which is also the case for a lot of work here at the Biennale.

Probably one of the best works I have seen yet. Audio sculpture from the Iceland Pavilion.

Part of the Iceland exhibition. "Your country does not exist."

  I am really digging some of the neon-light works I have seen. This has been one of the best.

Azerbaijan pavilion

Azerbaijan pavilion

Beautiful courtyard outside the Azerbaijan pavilion.

Lilly and I went to dinner a delicious little restaurant and had a lot of fun. I feel like we bonded pretty well and had some interesting conversation. We went out to Campo Santo Margherita for drinks and met some pretty cool international people there. Some from Belgium, France, Greece, Poland and even met some cool Italians (that spoke really good English!!). It was a fun night.