Koja je vaša dijeta? Uz 52. Venecijansko bijenale, 10. 6. – 21. 11. 2007
What is Your Weight-Loss Diet? THE 52ND VENICE BIENNALE - 10th June – 21st November 2007

Summary/Abstract: As in earlier times people made pilgrimage to great spiritual centres using selected itineraries of European regions, along the so-called holy routes to Rome, Santiago de Compostello, Jerusalem, today, with equal enthusiasm and focus, people make pilgrimage to great commercial and banking centres and to known world art exhibitions and festivals. This year, visitors were invited to the Grand Tour 2007 in order to attend the artistic events across Europe that occurs once every decade approximately at the same time: these are the Venice Biennale (June-November), the Documenta of Kassel (June-September), Art Fair - Art 38 in Basel (June) and Skulptur Projekte in Münster. The Venice Biennale is an influential mix of contemporary art, tourism and entertainment. It was underlined in his welcome address by the Chairman of the Venice Biennale Foundation, Davide Croff, who thanked to private corporations for their support and „their understanding for the values of the Biennale’s trademark“. The fact that visitors want to have fun is something serious selectors, such as René Block, this year’s selector of the Scandinavian pavilion, count with. In order to satisfy this need, says Block, one needs to emphasise the performative character of art that was confirmed by his very interesting selection this year. The organisation of this year’s 52nd Venice Biennale resulted in several other peculiarities: it included the greatest number of participating countries so far, the ever-growing number of national selections that participate for the first time and an exceptional number of the co-called collateral events. Furthermore, for the first time in the long tradition of this exhibition, the selector came from the United States of America. It was the art critic Robert Storr, who called his first selection of contemporary art Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind, which offered him broad and flexible enough a framework for the selection of both artists and works. Storr’s selection quite openly opted for those authors he deemed to have a distinctly critical attitude towards political, social and economic context in which we live and an accentuated interest in the conditions of development and shaping of individual and public opinions. A complex way of defining, (self)under-standing, shaping and media mediating of one’s own image and that of one’s nation are one of the central elements through which the meaning of existence and role of the Venice Biennale is analysed which grants it a tone of social engagement. The Venice Biennale was the only and the last Biennale of contemporary art in the world that is „nationally“structured and that has the institution of national pavilions. It is the card the Venice Biennale openly plays and the card that, at the moment -it inevitably plays provocatively. This secures a certain charm, yet it challenges every serious selection at the same time.

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