Venice Day 1

Over the weekend we took our first school field trip to Venice and it was amazing! While in Venice, we went to the Venice Biennale (arguably the best international art exhibition in the world) and to the glass mecca, Murano.

We started our journey aboard one of the fast bullet trains. We had never been on one of these trains before and I was really excited to ride one.

Although we were riding second class, it certainly didn't seem like it. The train was very nice and even had free wifi when moving! Apparently there was even food if we walked to the middle of the train. Ali and I learned from other adventures and packed some yummy sandwiches. The train ride would be 2 hours on the fast train. Even before we were there, Ali and I had a feeling we would want to return so we asked our teachers and they said for a train ticket on the bullet train it costs about 50 euros each way and takes 2 hours. A local slow train may be cheaper but will take twice as long. Time is money.

Along the way, we passed through the countryside as we traveled from Tuscany to the Venice region in the northeast side of Italy. When we got really close we passed over a really long bridge that connected Venice to the mainland. Yep, Venice is an Island.

 Actually, Venice is a group of over 176 small islands linked together by bridges. There are no roads, no cars, no mopeds, no bikes. Streets are canals and everything is a boat! As soon as we got out of the train station, instead of a busy street with buses, there was a busy canal with really teal, choppy water and big water taxis. I remember being shocked by how close the water was to the land. This feeling would continue throughout my entire stay in Venice.






























To get around in Venice we all got "Vaporetto" boat passes. Ours were valid for 36 hours, during which time we could take the "Vaporetto" (taxi boats) as much as we wanted all around the city.

In Italy, whenever you get a ticket for anything (a bus, train, etc.) you must validate it before using it. Usually, validation consists of putting your ticket into a machine that stamps it with a time and date. Failure to validate your ticket can result in fines if they check and see you didn't do it. Instead of someone collecting your ticket before you get on the train or bus, you just validate your ticket. In Venice, they have a "stampless" validation system for the Vaporettos. You just place the card over this reader and it reads it. Pretty neat!

 The Vaporettos can get pretty mobbed. Our teachers said to push our way through the crowd to get on.  It was pretty nuts!

On the Vaporetto ride I was stunned by the views of the city. Even though I was squished in the middle of a big crowd of people on this boat, I was still blown away by the magic of this city. There were NO roads and even sidewalks were rare. It was as if they expected you to walk on water to get to some places. Boats seem very popular here.

When we arrived at the stop for our hotel, there was a group of young people, loudly protesting something and thus lots of police nearby in case it got out of hand. In Italy, Protests are very common, especially among the youth. I think its really cool!

Our hotel used to be an old Monastery that took abandoned kids in and taught them to be printers and how to use a letterpress so they would have a future. They have lots of old printing equipment as decorations. The hotel is also more spacious than most Venetian hotels because it was a Monastery.

Letterpress "Furniture" I used this just on friday before we left.

Continuing with the wireless theme, our room cards for the hotel were used in the same manner that the Vaporetto tickets were. Each room had only one key and instead of keeping it with you, you would give it to the front desk whenever you went out of the hotel. In order to turn the lights on in your room, you had to keep the card inserted in a socket above the main light switch. It was an interesting and different system. You would never lose your room key this way and the hotel would never waste energy with lights on and no one in the room (unless they got locked out).

After we all dropped our stuff off at the hotel we headed out via the Vaparetto to the Biennale.

 The Biennale was in a park and our professor waited in line to get us all tickets while we waited. Ali and I were so ecstatic to be here and we have learned all about the Biennale at Alfred. It is a really big deal and going to it is important as an artist like us because some of the best contemporary artists in the world show there. We couldn't believe we were here!

The Venice Art Biennale is held every two years. Each country in the world (all the major countries) have a "pavilion" (building) in which the artist that country chose displays their work. The artist is supposed to be from the country they are showing in however we learned in school that some artists will not participate in the biennale if invited to because they don't want to be recognized as an artist from that country and they don't want to be tagged as a "Venezuelan" artist for example. If the viewer thinks of the artist as being a certain nationality, it could bring false pre conceived notions about their work and is not good. Besides, What makes Venezuelan art Venezuelan? What makes American art American? Nevertheless, the system is intended to get art from around the world and equally represent art from around the world to bring a diverse and amazing exhibition. This is the 55th Biennale and every Biennale has a theme and a curator. This year, the Curators theme was "The Encyclopedic Palace" where he created a "palace" in the main pavilion dedicated to the idea of knowing all knowledge in the entire world. Throughout history, there have been men and woman who dedicate their lives to knowing everything and it is always a futile effort. I think I have that desire! Today with the technology of the internet, it seems the desire to know everything is even stronger. This exhibition is all about knowing everything and so there was art from professional artists, philosophers, intellectuals, crazy people, shakers, amateur artists and many other people there. It was very interesting. The Biennale had a very lax photo policy so I naturally took some photos (but not too many). Before we saw the art we went to get some food at the coolest designed restaurant I have ever been in.....

Then it was off to the art. I will show you some of my favorites. If you can read the descriptions, the art makes more sense and obviously, you don't get the full effect unless you see it in person and think. To make things easier, I have cropped out the Italian and made the descriptions a little easier to read in photoshop.

 I love video Art! Moti is putting beautiful objects out of context by putting them "in orbit". Way cool and really pretty. It makes me want to work in film the colors are so rich and everything is so crisp. Ali and I are beginning to understand why our teacher Andrew hates digital.

Imran Qureshi paints "miniature" paintings and he is one of the artists I studied in Contemporary Asian Art History at Alfred. The paintings were very small and each one takes a very long time to paint. 

Eventually we started to get the point of the Encyclopedic palace and it is impossible to know everything. We watched a bit more of the Melvin Moti films and then headed over to the pavilions of the other Countries.

 The United States pavilion was really close so we decided to check it out. The artist even included the outside.

 During the exhibition, I really didn't know much about the artist who I believe to be "Sarah Sze". I really would have liked to see the artist statement here as these sculptures were amazing and I have not seen much like them. They looked like super complex puzzles and as we looked at them for a long time, you could see things that worked together. A light would reflect off of a mirror in a tub of water and then onto torn white paper that would reflect light back and cast an interesting shadow, or a perfect circle cut from a stack of lined paper and that circle balanced on top of a pile of sand. Throughout the exhibition there was a sense of taking things apart and reconfiguring them and of countless, endless, pointless, mess making, super precise work. We often wondered how these things were put up and how long it must have take to set this up. Everything was perfect in a strange way.

 This one had lots of movement in an abstract sense. on the top there was a spinning motor that kept a plumb bob spinning around just over the top of many of the objects. Everything is set up super precisely and perfectly balanced. If the plumb bob wasn't spinning just right, it would hit something and everything would fall over.

 These rocks were all over and they are perfect examples of the type of endless and precise work that seemed to be in this exhibition. I thought the entire thing was way cool and There was a sense of building in some of them because you would see american brands of tools and tools being used as part of the sculpture and at other parts there would be camping equipment and snack food. It was very interesting for sure and I want to see more art by Sarah Sze.

Another one I like was this Exhibition at the Nordic Pavilion. The artist, Terike Haapoja worked with a few other artists to create the works in the created natural space and it was really neat.

 This Inhale-Exhale piece uses things that I could do with my arduino except it is a brilliant idea and application for it.

 This "Community" piece is just amazing. Really neat how they projected right onto the floor. I wish I had a projector.
Eventually we stumbled upon my favorite piece of the whole show. Kimsooja, an artist I learned about in Contemporary Asian Art History at Alfred, had her "To Breathe: Bottari" piece in the Korean Pavilion. There was a line to get in and a wait to experience the second part of the installation once inside. Just the line on the outside was enough to discourage Ali and the other girl who was with us from going in but I had to see it and boy am I glad I did!

 This is the line that discouraged Ali. It was a little bit of a wait but nothing too serious. How could anyone resist a room full of rainbows and mirrors!?

After reading a short memo about safety and entering at our own risk, we were asked to take off our shoes just like I learned in Art history and I entered the room.

 The mirrors and ceilings were reflective so that there was an infinite space when you looked up or down. There was a steady droning sound playing as well as some breathing that would quiken and slow down depending on the sun. There were almost no clouds today in Venice but the sun was starting to go behind some trees so that could have affected things. With all of the noise playing, it was pretty loud in here and very bright.

 All of the windows had a coating on them that diffracted the light and cast rainbows everywhere. Where ever you looked there were rainbows and when you looked at people they had rainbows all over them. There was a white curved wall that formed an infinite wave when looking down at the floor.

 Looking outside was really neat. This guy made a bunch of rainbows move all around as he passed.

This room is reactive to the sun. It "breathes" with the sun and the movement of the sun. After staying in there for about 20 minutes, I started to feel very meditative and when looking around, I felt heavenly. I had a card with the number "4" that was given to me upon entering the room. It was 4 out of 40 and there was a lady calling four numbers at a time to go to the second part of the installation. The second part was just as amazing as the first and the two worked very well together as they strongly contrasted. The second part of the installation was a small, totally dark, sound proof, echoless chamber that a few people were let in for a minute at a time. When inside, there was no difference between my eyes being open or closed, it was pitch black. It was so silent, I could hear the ringing in my ears from my nervous system working. I sat in the room totally silent. I felt peaceful and as if there was nobody but me and my mind in the room (there were 3 or 4 other people in the tiny room with me). It was truly an amazing experience to me, especially after learning about it in Art History. Thank you Hope Childers!

 Continuing with the artists I learned about in Contemporary Asian Art History, Dissident Artist Ai Wei Wei was showing with a few other artists in I believe it was the German Pavilion. Ai Wei Wei was given the main room with his massive, "Bang" installation of reconfigured, antique chinese chairs. These chairs were handmade and used to be used in every household. With Mao's cultural revolution, the production of them plummeted and many of the wooden chairs were senselessly destroyed or thrown out in favor of a cheap, "modern", plastic or metal chair. These chairs have been reconfigured by Ai Wei Wei's team to show the chaotic nature of the modernization of China and the massive amount of people affected. It was a really neat piece that was so big, you had to walk through it to see the other artists of the exhibition.

 There were so many stools! It was a little disorienting if you focused on one spot for a little bit. They went in every direction. It was a very chaotic arrangement indeed.

 We stayed at the biennale until it closed at 6 and then we went to explore Venice a bit while we found our way back to Acadamia (the part of Venice where our hotel was). Venice is a beautiful city.

 We saw lots of Gondolas. We didn't ride on any however because they are very expensive. They are all over the city.

 We got to Piazza Di San Marco, the biggest and only real plaza in Venice. In Venice, all the other plazas are called, "Campo" because of the way the city is built. More about that in the Venice day 2 post. San Marco is the center of Venice. It is big and beautiful. It is also where people used to enter into the city before the long bridge was built that links the city with the mainland. You used to only be able to get to Venice by boat and you still can only reach many of the surrounding islands by boat.

 This is a big "clock" that has zodiac signs all around it and probably tells a bit more than just the standard clock.

 The Venice, "Duomo" was very elaborately and ornately decorated. The architecture in Venice is a mix between eastern and western architecture because the Venetians traveled so much and did so much trading. Unfortunately, much of the facade on the Duomo was being cleaned or restored or something and much of it was blocked by scaffolding. It was still really neat to see. More about the Venice Duomo in Venice Day 2.

San Marco is huge and I like how it is enclosed by the beautiful buildings.

After going down many crowded narrow streets and seeing lots of cool stores. Ali and I finally made it back to the hotel. We then went to find something to eat. With the sun setting, we finally settled on a small pizza place that we got a pizza to go. We took it and ate sitting on the side of the canal right in front of the water with reflections all over the water in front of us. We had a yummy waffle with chocolate on it for dessert and then we went to bed. We were tired, we walked all over and we were gonna have a big day the next day.
        Stay tuned for a "Venice day 2" post. I am super busy right now with Midterms rapidly approaching, and Ali's Mom, my Mom, my Grandma Dottie, and my Aunt Patty here. It is a balancing act getting all the work done and visiting with family. I want to get it posted however before we go on a fall break adventure though. Time is starting to really fly!