Top 5 Biennale moments
1. Dan Graham and Atelier Bow-Wow’s powers combined!
Seeing these two (well three really) people work together on their tour of Sydney is one of those moments that only a Biennale could create.
2. Lines of Trees Pierre Huyghe
This one off work was a magical and engaging experience - viewed very early in the morning this was like opening the door to Narnia.
3. Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Murder of Crows
This work was one of the most emotional and engaging works in the Biennale of a special moment in sound installation in Australia.
4. Mike Rakowitz white man got no dreaming
Seeing Michael’s Rakowitz social architecture and art project first hand demonstrated what great art and great humanity are all about.
5. Cockatoo Island becomes a Biennale of Sydney venue - (once again).
Cockatoo Island was absolutley a crowd favourite and it was great to see so many people enjoying this amazing Sydney landmark and some great art as well.
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Edith Moss is a young Sydney writer and has written articles for a number of national and local arts publications. Edith’s main area of interest is contemporary art, design and architecture, she seeks to write about these areas for a broad audience and make contemporary art more open to the public. |
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Cultural Tourism
The biennale indeed offered many rewarding experiences!
However, I would NOT count the Dan Graham / Atelier Bow-Wow bus tour amongst them.
I personally found it shambolic, disorganised, and embarrassingly impoverished in information.
I felt trapped, on that bus, within a vortex of mis(dis?)information, ignorance and cultural cliches. Sadly, the suburbs are too often subjected to this kind of “tourism” from “culturally sophisticated” inner-urban types.
Graham and Bow-Wow seemed little interested in learning from the local context. It seemed they preferred to stamp their pre-formulated, stereotyped views of ethnic preferences for particular housing types, (largely imported from 1960s New Jersey) onto Sydney’s completely different historical geography.
The bus tour was a missed opportunity for cross cultural exchange. It stretched over half a day, and no doubt it was expensive to stage.
Dan Graham might have been better attending SquatSpace’s tour of Redfern - listening to locals (as did Michael Rakowitz) rather than lecturing (badly) at them…
Sep 8th, 2008
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