Even though La Biennale di Venezia takes place every two years between May and November, mostly of articles and reviews of it take place in the first few weeks, clogging specialized media and social networks, letting down the expectations in the following period. In the case of the 57th International Art Exhibition, this happened even more precisely after May 10, the date that marked the beginning of the crazy three days of excitement for the preview, where in addition to seeing the pieces of the national representations and the special selection of the Nine Trans-pavilions (Pavilion of Artists and Books, of Joys and Fears, of the Common, of the Earth, of the Traditions, of the Shamans, the Dionysian Pavilion, the Colors and the Pavilion of Time and Infinity) curated by the French Christine Macel, along with artists, curators, journalists, critics and everything that come to mind that may be there in those days, you can also hear and read about which is the favorite Pavilion to win the Golden Lion.

German Pavilion, Anne Imhof. Performer and visual artist. Friday, May 12, I get up and the first thing I see in my social networks is the news that what had been predicted had happened. So it was not a big surprise for anyone, but a lot of hustle: on the side of those who shared this decision, and those who began to criticize without any delay.

I was very lucky of to see it exactly the day before the news. The thing is why after almost two months I can sit down just now and write about “Faust”. I’m back to Thursday, May 11th. I wake up at the right time for arriving relatively early at the Giardini. Strangely enough – or I think that was good luck in those days if someone believes in such things – it was quite bearable the line to enter to the controversial building that houses the German representation, built at first as the “Bavarian Pavilion” in 1908, designed By Daniele Donghi. Soon it became the “German Pavilion” in 1938, after a neoclassical makeover by the Munich architect Ernts Haiger, a character very close to the Nazi regime. With all these antecedents, the construction has been charged with controversies and criticisms, even getting to be requested its demolition, since it would not be able to lodge the representation for the country within the contemporary context.

And so it is that this strange image of the German building comes to you, turned in a (strange) house because is guarded by Doberman dogs. I must say that I did not have the necessary schedule information – if you can talk in those terms – of this continuous performance. I already had visited the pavilion the previous day, but not with the piece in development, only being able to see the conditioning that was made, being an installation in its “beta state”, and where every day were left the remains and traces of it what had been the performance of the day.

“A room, a house, a pavilion, an institution, a state. Glass walls and glass ceilings, fluid and crystalline, permeate the room as if it were one of the centers of the financial power. The boundaries of the space disclose everything, making it both visible and subject to control. The heightened floor elevates bodies and modifies proportions.” This is how it is initially described the space in the text written by the curator of “Faust”, Susanne Pfeffer.

“There is no stated start; there are no explicit limits or places assigned to anyone. A tumult of people with a certain fear disguised as expectation: not knowing exactly what they will see, not knowing if they will be involved in the piece, or simply the fear of not understanding.”

And so it is. This pavilion, loaded with a history, is not only the home of the German performer’s work, but also represents the real establishment, the new alienation and the uncaring anguish and desperation.

There is no stated start; there are no explicit limits or places assigned to anyone. A tumult of people with a certain fear disguised as expectation: not knowing exactly what they will see, not knowing if they will be involved in the piece, or simply the fear of not understanding. We are all scattered trying to locate ourselves in the place that best suits us or agrees. This is very important if we want to observe everything from a distance or approaching as much as we can, and thus, in some way, try to achieve what the performers will be doing-feeling.

The heightened floor of thick glass no longer makes me feel as if I were in a shed to experiment with humans, even acquires an aura of mall with all these people minimal dressed or very avant- garde, or with PhD face. If it were not for a particular laboratory smell generated by the actions and elements used on the previous day. The curiosity to inspect the objects that lie under the transparent surface is forgotten when through an extremely careful audio system arranged in the ceilings of the pavilion, it sounds music, sounds and sensations composed by Billy Bultheel, that without separating of what is “Faust “, Is a piece itself, fitting absolutely with this orderly chaos.

“We must decide where to go and who or what to look at.”

The frames that once worked as doors to separate the different rooms, become windows that do not allow to be observed cleanly are distorted by being a peephole that interferes in the exposed life of others, the interpreters of “Faust”, the rest of the spectators; simply you are just there. Once again we must decide where to go and who or what to look at. My humanity and instinct lead me to one of the first rooms / cube where it seems that everything is starting: a blonde guy nothing androgynous, does actions that are part of daily routines of any person, undoubtedly modified by the “ethos” that combines the art piece. Strong movements, but sober at the same time. He washes his hands in a sink. The room is crowned by the large and repeated serigraphs of Eliza Douglas, another of the performers, who are displayed just like a muse. The beat is intense, the feeling of uncertainty and grandiloquence of what I’m seeing is growing, and starts sounding the distorted electric guitar which in the next room plays the same Douglas – yes, the rooms are continuous to each other, separated by glasses that are part of the structure formed with the platform that raises the floor a few meters. The gazes and the bodies of the spectators are moved as well as the bodies and movements of the executors, and while one walks towards Eliza Douglas and Franziska Aigner are (another of the performers), the first guy of the sink with others move skillfully in that world that lies beneath the glass floor, one parallel to all of us inside there.

Franziska dressed in sport shorts and socks, begins to wet with water coming out of a thick hose to her partners in this section of the performance in the room, including Eliza who is lazily lying face down on the floor.

Although everyone are paying their attention on taking the respective photos and videos of what is happening there, gradually the attention begins moving to those who are placed on a pedestals of glass to wall, such as living sculptures without any intention of mimesis. Only represent, or rather present the state of the model that has been formed and imposed by the contemporaneity. They are young, but not teenagers. Each one already has their own professional background, where in many cases it is not directly related to art. For example Aigner comes from philosophy and Douglas worked as a model.

About “Faust” has already been said quite a lot, mostly have been critic that do not stop my attention: many of them are what Imhof exactly wants to appeal in this performance, where its particularity is that it does not want to be a reflection of the life and reality as such, but as they are being transformed and transgressed in a time where anguish, fear and anxiety are characteristics as normal as the awakening itself.

Were created cartoons laughing of the outfit: that is the outfit that society encourages and asks to the individuals, that is the image that is demanded; those ideal “associated characteristics” imposed by the leading brands that impose trends.

“Although everyone are paying their attention on taking the respective photos and videos of what is happening there, gradually the attention begins moving to those who are placed on a pedestals of glass to wall, such as living sculptures without any intention of mimesis. Only represent, or rather present the state of the model that has been formed and imposed by the contemporaneity.”

Looking like a model without being one, but being cooler than any of them. Curb antipathy and laziness. Reinforcing individualism and enhancing egos:

“Weltschmerz, the artist’s heroic melancholy, has long joined the enemy, the world, where it spreads as the depression of the masses. Neurosis was the aliment that signaled the cost to the individual of the identification expected by society with the role models of a certain social order. Depression, by contrast, is the pathology that highlights the cost associated with the interpellation to the individual to invent -and keep reinventing- himself or herself beyond society’s models.” In the text “Dark Play: Anne Imhof’s Abstractions” Juliane Rebentisch succeeds in extracting in these lines the contemporary nihilism that moves and traps individuals, generating a mass dominated by these states, who at the same time are individuals who are alienated not only from The others or the objects, but of themselves.

And that is where the importance and peculiarity of this performance lies; beyond the mirror of life, is about the transformation of life, where the subject alienated and transgressed of himself or herself, plunged into the anguish of becoming just in an another commodity and where repulsion is given as artificial forms of improvisation. For each of the times that “Faust” is done, Imhof fully trust on her team to following this freedom of being able to display to the viewer this representation of an unpremeditated structure, but it does want to reflect this requirement to adopt and comply with a role, and a character who is in constant observation and judgment – or prejudice – and so in each of the movements or actions, they act as if no spectator existed, appealing to this repulsion turned into lethargy and indolence within the system. Actions dialectically constructed between performers, or between each of them and some element that channels the power of the system. Reluctance that for example, is interrupted when Eliza Douglas or Franziska Aigner stick a microphone in their hands (as if it were a survival device) to vocally interpret compositions made with Bultheel and Anne Imhof, where they seem to scream for help with a tone of desperation that leads you to contain the respite and the anguish.

“It is as simple as going out to take a look at the street. Or even better, stay at home and see how everything happens – apparently – through the virtual and latent platforms that the system has imposed us in a sneaking way.”

“Faust” still keeps rumbling me as one of the best performances and pieces that I’ve seen. It is contemporary as few works have been able to achieve, the repulsion and neurosis are executed clean and aesthetically. It does not need to employ a formal entropy code, but uses the same urban and socio-cultural codes of today. And for that reason I am not left to cause amusement or astonishment the criticisms in front of its spectacularity (in a Debordian sense) and its fashionism.

It is as simple as going out to take a look at the street. Or even better, stay at home and see how everything happens – apparently – through the virtual and latent platforms that the system has imposed us in a sneaking way.

The sacrifice “alters, destroys the victim, kills it, but does not neglect it.” [1]

 

[1] Sarah Kofman, Mélancolie de l’art (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1985), 16.

 

Caption 01: Billy Bultheel and Franziska Aigner in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artis

Caption 02: Eliza Douglas in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 03: Eliza Douglas and Franziska Aigner in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 04: Emma Daniel and Lea Welsch in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 05: Emma Daniel in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 06: Franziska Aigner and Emma Daniel in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 07: Emma Daniel and Franziska Aigner in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 08: Billy Bultheel in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 09: Billy Bultheel in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 10: Franziska Aigner and Eliza Douglas in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 11: Franziska Aigner and Eliza Douglas in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 12: Eliza Douglas in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 13: Lea Welsch, Billy Bultheel, Emma Daniel, Franziska Aigner and Mickey Mahar in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 14: Josh Johnson in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 15: Eliza Douglas in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 16: Eliza Douglas in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 17: Eliza Douglas and Franziska Aigner in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist

Caption 18: Eliza Douglas in Anne Imhof, Faust, 2017
German Pavilion, 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
© Photography: Nadine Fraczkowski
Courtesy: German Pavilion 2017, the artist