Recent controversial biennials in St Petersburg and Sydney summon memories of Venice ’68, the turbulence of which was captured by late photographer Ugo Mulas
The banner reads ‘Portere Operaio’ (Workers’ Power). Behind the throng of flag-waving protesters you can make out the somewhat calmer waters of the Venetian Lagoon. The year is 1968 and Ugo Mulas is in Venice to photograph the Biennale, an event he first documented in 1954. It will be the most turbulent he ever experiences.
Established in 1895 with the goal of creating a new market for contemporary art, the biennale is now a bloated bourgeois toad pushing art as a mass commodity in the eyes of some. A 1930 statute handing control of the event to the state only adds fuel to the fire. In a year of mass political and social upheaval, the atmosphere at the world’s largest biennial is charged.[/one_half]“It represented a pivotal moment in the history of exhibitions,” says Lorenzo Fusi, director at Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery. “The statute of the Venice Biennale hadn’t changed since its inception. The world, meanwhile, had. It was largely a non-committal and politically a-critical event in historical denial.” The build-up was characterised by brutal police crackdowns, unfinished pavilions and artist boycotts. Anti-war banners were draped across artwork; some were turned around: “The protests inside and outside the exhibition venues were against the establishment and the decision to militarise the event so as to prevent diverse forms of dissent (workers, trade unions, students, intellectuals) uniting in coalition. I don’t recall other events of this scale, where participating artists felt compelled to turn the work around and write on the back of their art on display “the biennial is fascist” (as Gastone Novelli did).”
“Biennials pick and choose the images they think are more suitable for transmitting their own history and legacy.They claim the right to inscribe their own visual history”
Mulas’ photographs form part of Open Eye’s contribution to this year’s Liverpool Biennial, an exhibition examining the photography of, well, exhibitions. Titled Not All Documents Are Records: Photographing Exhibitions as an Art Form and curated by Fusi, it also features work from Hans Haacke and Cristina De Middel. 2014 has already seen biennials in both St Petersburg (Manifesta) and Sydney become heavily embroiled in controversy, related in the former to the situation in Crimea and Russia’s LGBT stance and in the latter to the event’s links to a company called Transfield Holdings, who run a network of immigration centres across Australia. There have been resignations and boycotts aplenty, but nothing compared to events on the Giardini 46 years ago.
“In general, biennials commission professional photographers to take installation shots so as to officially chronicle and document their events. They pick and choose the images they think are more suitable for transmitting their own history and legacy,” says Fusi. “In essence, they claim the right to inscribe their own visual history. Our show interrogates the legitimacy of this position: we are asking if there is room for an alternative narrative for these events, besides the official one, and if art can open up the ‘closed records’ biennials produce and re-write them as documents in progress.”
Venice ’68 opened on time and the protests died down – as promised – as the police presence receded, but the effect was profound. The event Mulas continued to photograph until 1972 (he died in 1973) had a stronger agenda moving forward and in 1974 the newly appointed President of the Biennale, Carlo Ripa di Meana, decided to dedicate the entire biennale that year to Chile, against the dictatorial regime of Pinochet. “You can easily see how radical and pivotal the change was… from fascist to anti-fascist,” says Fusi.
Fusi believes biennials “have become somewhat ‘domesticated’” with “socio-political and intellectual discussion now happening elsewhere – the web and social media, for instance”. However, events in St Petersburg and Sydney demonstrate the spirit of ’68 is still just about alive, he says: “This year there were two perfect examples of dissent and antagonism within two biennials. I don’t think the art world, or art system, as I prefer to call it, is completely dead, yet.”
Not All Documents Are Records: Photographing Exhibitions as an Art Form runs until 19 October
