[-empyre-] Fwd: Re: Biennales Plus and Minus

[Timothy Murray]

Before Simon gears up for an exciting month on Reclaiming Creativity 
as Agent of Change, I want to thank all of our guests in June for 
their provocative postings on Biennales Plus and Minus.

Renate and I apologize for our silence of the past week.  We are in 
Venice and experienced unanticipated wireless glitches, which since 
have been resolved.  We are hear to hold a 4 day seminar between 
colleagues at Cornell and Duke Universities on the the question of 
the Biennales in the Digital Age, which has included many of the 
participants of this past month's discussion.  Our seminar, as our 
month on -empyre- winds up tonight.

While Renate and I have been relatively disappointed by the national 
pavilions in the most legitimized spaces of the Biennale, the 
Arsenale and Giardini, which we feel to have generally promoted  more 
confused nationalistic hype and artistic commerce than thought, 
reflection, or political change,  we leave renewed in our enthusiasm 
for the global discursive interfeace provided by the biennale concept.

Most rewarding for us were visits to the Pavilions of Iraq and Iran, 
both in dusty marginal places, well separate from each other, but 
whose gritty work commented both on their own internal struggles and 
on the tenuousness of daily life in a middle east beset by war and 
struggle.  Similarl provocative statements were made by the Pavilions 
of the former eastern block, such as Romania and the Russian 
Federations,  and Cuba.   The sad reality, however,  is that the 
majority of the visitors to the two authorized sites of the Venice 
Binnale arent' likely to wind down the alleys and climb the  6 story 
walkout to encounter the truly dialogical work.

Also wonderfully evident, as if a constant ghostings, is the 
graffitied presence throughout the Biennale areas and bridges of the 
Stateless Immigrants Pavilion on which we spent time earlier inthe 
month.

What's spectacular is that this month's discussion theme on -empyre- 
picks up on these very points of "Reclaiming Creativity as Agent of 
Change."   Thanks again to all who posted and lurked during the 
relaxing month of June, and thanks as well to Simon for staging such 
a provocative topic for our discussion this month.

All our best, Tim and Renate
-- 
Timothy Murray
Director, Society for the Humanities
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
A. D. White House
27 East Avenue
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853