60th Biennale Arte

Venice: Flight, downfall and spaceship

"Swan Lake" in the Austria Pavilion(Bild: © Markus Krottendorfer and Bildrecht)

The art biennale in Venice is about to officially open - it will take place from April 20 to November 24. The Austrian pavilion is dedicated to the language and forms of expression of non-violent resistance. 

Anna Jermolaewa calls her work "A Language of Resistance". Born in Leningrad in 1970, she had to flee the Soviet Union in 1989 and found a new home in Austria. She summarizes her experience of flight and migration in several focal points.

In "Rehearsal for Swan Lake", she created a video installation together with the Ukrainian ballet dancer and choreographer Oksana Serheieva, which stages Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" as a Soviet instrument of distraction and censorship. Dancers rehearse for the change of power in Russia, as Russian television once played "Swan Lake" on a continuous loop after a regime change in order to conceal unrest.

Anna Jermolaewa and Oksana Serheieva, rehearsal for "Swan Lake", 2024(Bild: Franziska Trost)

In the post-war era of the Soviet Union, new music trends such as jazz and rock, especially those coming from the USA, were not allowed to be kept in domestic record collections. However, creative sound technicians quickly found a way out and were able to engrave soundtracks into discarded X-ray recordings. They found masses of X-ray films in hospital waste, so that the frowned-upon music could be captured on numerous bones and rib recordings.

The "Music On Bones" soon sold like hot cakes on the black market. Jermolaewa staged another room in the Hoffmann Pavilion in Austria with such bone images.

X-ray images as sound carriers on a record player: symbolic circumvention of Soviet censorship in the Austria Pavilion at the 2024 Biennale(Bild: zvg)

Anna Jermolaewa's installation "Ribs" from 2022(Bild: © Markus Krottendorfer and Bildrecht)

A spaceship and Turkish earth play an important role in the German pavilion "Germania". The main entrance is filled with earth. A dark installation opens up via a side entrance. Ersan Mondtag, an artist and director living in Germany, mixes actors and music with multimedia artist Bartana Videos to create gray images that visitors can literally enter over several floors.

Mondtag is commemorating his grandfather Hasan Aygün, a Turkish factory worker who died of cancer in 2001 after many years in a Berlin asbestos factory. Anatolian earth is strewn under and in front of the pavilion, in the pavilion actors lie on the floor like corpses in a neglected workers' apartment.

(Bild: zvg)

In the Germany pavilion "Germania": actors lie like corpses, the visitors have to walk around them, they are part of the gloomy staging.(Bild: zvg)

Everything is contaminated, the way out is offered by a spaceship on which an artificial, better world has been created. "Last Generation" criticism echoes, but it remains unclear why the spaceship has to take off into space to create a better world. Nevertheless, the images are very strong. The prospects are less good, no way out is shown. Migration and destruction are staged, the world is at a crossroads, where it is going remains completely open. Is there really only doom left?

The Israel pavilion remains closed.(Bild: zvg)

The traces of terror and war are particularly present at the Israel pavilion, where a sign in front of the closed entrance indicates that the pavilion will not reopen until there is a ceasefire and the hostages are released.

(Bild: zvg)

Influences of international cultures: the art of Jeffrey Gibson in the US pavilion(Bild: zvg)

Warmer images are shown in the America pavilion. Jeffrey Gibson uses colorful images to create a framework for American, indigenous and international cultures. The US artist lived in South Korea and Germany for many years.