As this year’s Biennale di Venezia, which is pretty much one of the most beautiful and inspiring exhbitions in recent years, goes into its last month, here is a little snippet by its curator Massimiliano Gioni, who we dedicated an issue to in 2006, when he curated the Berlin Biennial with Ali Subotnick and Maurizio Cattelan – 7 years old and yet still relevant:
‘Maybe to engage less on intellectual questions and to focus a bit on the pragmatic aspects, which does not mean that we’re stupid, but to engage the theoretical aspect through the pragmatic or even, if one can be very ambitious, through the poetic. Maurizio would never name it this way but I think that was important to us all, and maybe, to have a little fun. For us and the artists involved, we hope it is also about having an interesting experience, a chance to work closely together. We are really, really engaged with the artists. See, the best feedback we could get so far is people saying, ‘Yes, it’s great. We’re dealing with YOU, we’re in a strong dialogue.’
Maybe the show will be shit, but at least we know that it was not done just by name-dropping, but by getting involved as much as we could. It is a privilege to be able to work with many people we had never worked with before and with others we had always dreamt of working with. It’s important to engage with people and with artists, and to devote time and energy to them.’
