the only piece to make me laugh out loud so far

Lots of good pieces in Venice, but only one that literally made me laugh out loud, for about 20 seconds in this case.

It was in the American pavilion, a functioning ATM with a large pipe organ grafted to the top. I actually withdrew 160 Euros from my Egyptian account, and the organ played a scary little fugue in response. Everyone in the room laughs whenever this happens.

The prize-winning German pavilion is nicely weird indeed, just as I was told, but too cluttered for my tastes: little guidance to the viewer as to how to take it all in. Nice spectacle, though, set up like a church.

I enjoyed Mike Nelson’s Blair Witch Project-type house in the British pavilion, but the title (“I, Impostor”), while potentially brilliant in another context, did absolutely nothing for me here. A lot could be written about how titles enhance or degrade the overall experience of an artwork. I see the title as the best chance the artist (or the philosopher) has to guide our overall interpretation of the work, and few do it well. (One of the best in philosophy is surely Nietzsche. Almost all of his book titles are brilliant.)

Some people are apparently a bit annoyed by the French pavilion, but I love it and have been back several times. It’s “Chance” by Christian Boltanski, a series of enlarged baby photos running around on an intricate conveyer belt, one of them stopping from time to time and appearing on a monitor when a carnivalesque bell rings. I’m reminded by this show that I like intricate machinery; I liked the Turkish pavilion as well, for that very reason.

The Polish pavilion left me a bit confused. It seemed to be a literal call for the Jews to return to Poland, thinly veiled as a campy joke that the Jews should return to Poland. An imaginative political idea, perhaps, but I’ve never liked literal statements masked as jokes. But maybe I’m misinterpreting what was going on here.

Japan did a tsunami-themed piece, but I didn’t find it nearly as overwhelming as it could have been, given how powerful even flat-out Japanese tsunami video footage is.

In the end, I suppose I would have voted for the French piece (Boltanski), but the German piece is a worthy victor. It was certainly the weirdest thing I’ve seen here. Just a bit too cluttered with images and ideas.