Photo by Jacopo Salvi – courtesy La
Biennale di Venezia
The 57 Venice Biennale
The Golden Lion
German Pavilion – Anne Imhof
Golden
Lion for Best National Participation went to Germany for a powerful and disturbing
installation that poses urgent questions about our time. It pushes the
spectator to a state of anxiety. An original response to the architecture of
the pavilion, Anne Imhof’s work is also characterized by precise decisions about
objects, images, bodies and sounds.
The
Jury was chaired by Manuel J. Borja-Villel (Spain): Francesca Alfano Miglietti
(Italy), Amy Cheng (Taiwan), Ntone Edjabe (Cameroon), and Mark Godfrey (Great
Britain).
The
German Pavilion
Faust
– Anne Imhof
“The
contemporary biopolitical body is no longer a one-dimensional surface on which
power, the law, control and punishment are inscribed. Rather, it is a dense interior, a site for
both life and political control exerted by means of exchange and communication
mechanisms.”
Suzanne
Pfeffer
curator
Anne
Imhof’s site specific disquieting German Pavilion was curated by Suzanne
Pfeffer. Faust is both a 5 hour production and a 7 month long scenario
comprised of performance dynamics, sculptural installations, painterly touches,
and rigorously choreographed visual axes and movements that encompass the
entire pavilion. Faust belongs to an unconditioned present, the essence of
which is conveyed instantly to the audience.
“Suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of
various constructions of power and powerlessness, capriciousness and violence,
resistance and freedom. Outside the territory of one’s own, dogs guard the
house… The dog in the kennel, the dog and its master, the dog and its companion
– these pairings are evidence of how cultural change has altered power
relations. They are a symbol of the changing constructions of nature: Where there used to be a dualism between nature
and culture, the world now presents itself as a kennel.”
“The
heightened floor elevates bodies and modifies spatial proportions. Next to us, above, us, there are the bodies
of individuals, the bodies of the many.
The performers, elated and degraded, move across, below, and atop the
pavilion.”
“The
performers’ bodies are reduced to bare life.
They can be analyzed in terms of their sexual economy. Masturbation as regression and resistance,
as the death of sexuality and, at the same time, an image of sexuality served
up exclusively for visual consumption.”
Yana
Popravka and Andreas Dornbacht
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