Day 7 Friday 9/25 Francois Pinault collection, Collateral  Exhibitions and National Pavilions in the Dorsodro/Guidecca and the Island of San Giorgio.
Today, the new Punta Della Dogna warehouse and the empire of Francois Pinault. The warehouse has been empty and derelict for decades before Pinault, who had bought the Palazzo Grassi from the d’Agnelli’ family in the 1990’s, has again worked with japenese architect Tadeo Ando to create a state-of-the-art contemporary art museum. I have a conflicted relationship with this kind of activity; on one hand it is uplifting to see such a beautiful conversion of a wonderful building and so much care an attention going onto the display of art. On the other hand such private-collector institutions have a perculiar psychopathy, a paranoid fantasy of complete control and a queasy celebration of pure ownership that can quickly overwhelm the work displayed. Both of these emotions came to the fore at Punta Della Dogana. The first room, with Rachael Whiteread,  Felix Gonzales Torres and Maurizio Cattelan is a stunning space, with the natural brick of the space in contrast with the silky concrete of Ando’s floor. 
The stand-out installation for me, which exemplified both the glory and  ugliness of this level of art making was Mike Kelley’s All The Kandors, a vast darkened space filled with life-sized replicas in glass and resin of all the Bottle Cities of Kandor. So beautiful and so tactile (though one mustn’t touch), so expensive and so ridiculous that you can only gasp in awe at the audacity and craftsmanship in the same measure. Similarly with Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Fucking Hell upstairs; like Nauman’s legendary proposal for a Hamburg memorial to the holocaust, the Chapman brothers crafted the perfect war memorial, expressing in the most overwraught manner possible the futility of ever atoning for crimes committed by presenting the most finely crafted, most expensive, and most ueless, pointless and empty gesture ever conceived. Their tasteless phantasy of revenge is a deliberately heavy-handed and stupidly obtuse refutation of any notion of closure. Ever. However some works simply felt ill-placed such as Fischli and Weiss, and Charles Ray. This was billed as an exhbitiion drawn from the Pianault collection, entitled 'Mapping The Studio'; but it's clear that the Punta with the Palazzo Grassi are bidding t become one of Europe's premier contemporay art spaces; in some way a shame that they are restrcited to one man's collection.
Walked past Charles Ray’s Boy with Frog (and image plastered all over Venice; it seems that Pinault is really vying with the Biennale for the attention of the contemporary art hordes), and then down the Zatterie del Gesuitti. The Unknowable Community (presented by Catalunia, Spain) at the Magazzo Del Sale was an internet-based recording project, which like others of that genre really demands too much time spent by the viewer. Moving into the depths of the Dorsoduro, we finally found the decaying Palazzo Zenobio, a hotel and Armenian college. Here there were  3 more Arte projects the Syrian Pavilion, a photograph show from the Korean artist Atta Kim, and The Tip of The Iceberg, a fascinating exhibit of the (widely considered to be fake) Francis Bacon drawings curated by Edward Lucie Smith. In addition there was the second half of the FYC Macedonia Pavilion, and the Armenian Pavilion. While the Armenian’s disappointed with some sub-Chagall painting Macedonia exceeded with Fifty or Fifty by Goce Nanevski, a vast bank of numbered tumblers, a cross between an abacus and the Enigma machine. Atta Kim’s photographs were beautifully displayed and eloquently addressed the same themes of time and displacement as Nanevski, while it was great ton see the Bacon drawings (since the Tate declared them fakes, they  became really hard to see), and make up my own mind. They’re classic fakes, but the curious thing about faked work is why and by whom?
Back out to the Zattere , then by bus over the Guidecca district. Here, next to the Women’s Prison was the old convent of Cosma e Damiano, site of the first ever Palestinian Pavilion, curated by Salwa Mikdadi. The Convent is now a performing arts school, and the show was beautifully installed in a light and airy stone built room that evoked the architecture of Palestine. The exhibition had attracted some attention through the project of Emily Jascir stazione, who had proposed to re-named at the Vaparetto stops of Venice in Arabic script. This had been fully planed, but was pulled at the lat moment by the City Council; a more eloquent statement of the politics of script/language could not be made. All the artists Jacir, Taysir Batniji, Shadi Habib Khan, Sandi Hilal, Jawad Al Malhi and Khalil Rabah provided thought-provoking and accomplished work; special mention to Taysir Batnaji’s Hannoun (Poppy) and Khalil Rabah’s Palestinian Biennale of 50th villages, celebrating the architectural and cultural heritage of 50 villages in the West Bank. Unlike other ‘national’ pavilions, the Palestinian presence was a brave an successful attempt to articulate real and current issues to do with nationhood for a group of people who’s only heritage is their sense of that nationhood. We were keen to locate Welsh Pavilion down by the new Gothic Stucky Hilton, but the video work Dyddiau Du by John Cale (yes, that John Cale...the Velvet Underground) was uncomfortably hung in a confined space, and while contrast between Snowdonia and sun-drenched Venice was delicious, the cut up movie did not hold my attention while Cales’ pink bobble hat unfortunately did. The piece was to be mediation on Cale’s relationship with the Welsh language, but again there seemed to be difficulty in managing the images, and allowing them to say what was wished to be said. Back down the Guidecca to the Azerbaijan Pavilion Cogito Ergo Sum in the gym of the Centro Cultra Zitelle (City Cultural Centre); while the space fought against the work with institutional carpeting and stacks of chairs, we were impressed by the Khatt Art Group and the virtual carpets project. Wales, Azerbaijan and Palestine were all developed with Nouva Icona, a Guidecca Venetian-based non-profit for cultural events; this seems ti be the key to getting these smaller paviulions produced anfd giving countries such as Wales or Azerbaijan access to the Biennale.
Over to the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, were, again thanks to the Biennale the Palladian Cloisters of the box hedge and the cypresses were open to the public for just 2 days. Again another secret haven of peace away from the crush of the church. Thanks to our ACV passes, we then took a vaparetto back clockwise all around the main island, past the cruise ship berths (Some of those ships are riculously large! While they might reduce the pressure on hotel space they certainly add to the day-trip crush, and the swell as they pass down between the Guidecca and Dorsoduro cannot be good for the city's foundations), under the new light rail from the berths to the P,Roma (more EU money on tourist access to Venice), and the new Calatrava Bridge over the grand canal. Stopped at Guglie, and then walked through Cannaregio district to connect with the Krossing Pavilion at San Leonardo (sponsored by the cultutral organisation Marco Polo System) that was holding a two-day salon-style event for Kurdistan. Again, superb to see agencies working with national (and national groups) to use the Biennale platform to present aspects of their contemporary culture; Venice as crossing point for culture as it has been for centuries, and fascinating counter point to Pinault, a presentation of art a luxury commodity; the trade of Venice for centuries

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