True? Important? False?
Hierarchy of Information in Films and New Media at the 58th Biennale di Venezia
with: Korakrit Arunanonchai, Darren Bader, Cypriend Gaillard, Kahlil Joseph.
by Alexis Loisel-Montambaux
originally published on CultureFuture.net
December, 2019
The 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is finished. What do we remember of it?
At the public press conference, the curator Ralph Rugoff mentioned the theme of fake news and this was a theme which was then largely highlighted by journalists and critics. In the context of standardisation of opinions through mass social media, viral web contents, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, fake news issues need to be raised.
This challenges us to wonder not only what is truth and what is not, but also to question the distortion of information, its sources and its use. Furthermore, the nature of the information should be questioned, leading to evaluate its degree of importance.
Therefore, two hierarchies of information can be identified: one in the form of the degree of veracity of the information and one based on its degree of importance. Both concepts will be discussed through artworks from La Biennale.
Darren Bader
Before the opening of La Biennale, Darren Bader, Scott Mendes’s VENICE!, 2019, was announced to be the first augmented reality (AR) work ever made for La Biennale 1. Bader’s posters at Giardini and Arsenale encouraged us to download an app to access the work on the following website: https://www.scottmendesglobal.com/
Screenshot from Darren Bader https://www.scottmendesglobal.com/
2019-ongoing
Courtesy the artist
The artist played with our patience throughout the whole biennial, regularly updating the webpage with strange excuses for the late release of the app… which ultimately never became available for download. From the press release of La Biennale to the international press articles, to posters inside the exhibition, visitors had to reconsider the veracity of the information, admitting that the announced app was just a joke and the announcement process the artwork itself. What could be seen as official sources of information, was in the end used by the artist to spread false information, challenging our trust, playing on our expectancies for a digital experience.
Cyprien Gaillard
Entering the lighthouse of the Arsenale, we are faced with a video of a crane on a boat dropping former subway carriages into the ocean accompanied by an energetic soundtrack creating a dystopian tonality. Zooming in on the video shows the name of the city of New York. We are induced to feel anger as we are witnessing an ecological disaster. Cyprien Gaillard’s loop video Ocean II Ocean, 2019, plays with our feelings, plays with contrasts. The next scene shows the floor of the ocean, inhabited by a whole ecosystem: fish, turtles, sharks living in the former carriages. We realise that we are in fact wrong: what we initially perceive to be an ecological disaster is in fact a way of balancing the destruction of the real coral reef.
In the other part of the video, the camera focuses on parts of the marble in the metro stations in Russia which display shellfish fossils. It's a loop: in the US, subway cars finish inside the ocean. On the other side of the world in Russia, ocean sediments finish inside the metro stations’ marble.
Cyprien Gaillard, Ocean II Ocean, 2019, HD colour video with sound, 12’ loop
Courtesy the artist
Gaillard’s video incites our critical sense, and pushes us to reconsider our first opinion. We now know where New York's MTA subway cars end up and why. The artwork becomes a source of information if you watch the video entirely (12 minutes), or misinformation if you watch it partially. It challenges our boundaries between entertainment, piece of art and information.
Kahlil Joseph, with BLKNWS, 2018-ongoing, deals with similar issues. From a clip by Björk, to an interview of Arthur Jafa, to an Instagram video of a family singing acapella reposted on social media, the diptych video installation mixes news and entertainment, focusing on Black American life. There is a clear absence of hierarchy between the diverse types and sources of these images, blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction.
Inside the Slavs and Tatar’s installation with resting plastic chairs, at Arsenale, BLKNWS was shown without sound, as in a waiting room, reinforcing the idea of a continuous news channel in which all images become a moving background of equal importance.
BLKNWS incites us to push out strict divisions between entertainment and information, and highlights the complex nature and components of both culture and information: what degree of attention do we give to news? How long do we spend on advertising content? Is a viral amateur video of daily life considered as information?
The work questions the absence of proportion between the degree of importance of the visual content and the amount of time we spend watching it.
Kahlil Joseph
Kahlil Joseph, BLKNWS, 2018-ongoing, two-channel video installation
Courtesy the artist
Korakrit Arunanondchai
Korakrit Arunanondchai, in his 3 channel video installation made with Alex Gvojic and boychild, No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5, 2018, also used existing images from public news. At the center of the video, the artist focuses on the events surrounding a group of 12 boys trapped in a cave in northern Thailand in 2018 2. He shows how the different power structures transformed the rescue operation into a story with multiple versions, trying to turn it into a part of a grander historical narrative. From the armed forces intervention, to the monks story, to Donald Trump's tweet, the work shows the mise-en-scène of national unity around an event reaching international political stakes.
In this manipulated rescue story, truth, distortion of reality and fake elements become difficult to distinguish.
Korakrit Arunanondchai & Alex Gvojic,
No history in a room filled with people with funny names 5, 2018, video with boychild: 3 channel video, 30'44'', music producer Aaron David Ross; installation: mixed seashells, tree branches, laser harp, hazer, resin, LED lights, fabric pillows. Courtesy the artists
Korakrit Arunanondchai, Darren Bader, Cyprien Gaillard and Kahlil Joseph were part of the 30% of artists who displayed artworks including films or new media in the exhibition curated by Ralph Rugoff. The artistic use of films and new media to discuss the nature, the sources and the use of information, is a form of mise en abyme of the most popular information channels: TV and the internet.
Among the huge amount of images and information we look at daily, we all are incited to make hierarchies, in the form of the degree of importance and the degree of veracity of information.
Is an artwork a source of information and awareness? I definitely think so. This biennial encouraged us to sharpen our critical sense while analysing our times.
1 - “Ralph Rugoff’s moment”, Christie’s, May 7, 2019:
https://www.christies.com/features/Ralph-Rugoff-curator-Venice-Biennale-2019-9866-1.aspx
2 - Muktita Suhartono and Richard C. Paddock, “Soccer Team is Find Alive in a Thailand Cave Rescue”, The New York Times, July 2, 2018:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/world/asia/thailand-boys-rescued.html
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