1907... The After Party

The Belgium Pavillion was by far my favorite at the the 2008 Biennale of Architecture. Void of draftings, models, text and more text, the installation was about architecture, space, light and how your experience within it.

This past year marked the 100th birthday of the Belgium Pavillion as it it was built at the Giardini site in 1907.

As you walk up to the pavillion, you are taken through an enormous steel structure that wraps around the facade of the building, hiding it from view. The galvanized steel structure is dark other than the pin-hole punched light that shines in from outside. Once inside, you are transfered to a spaceous, naturally lit pavillion filled with confection colored confetti.

There is nothing to study in the room, just a few simple framed chairs for sitting in and relaxing. One photograph is displayed at the back of the pavillion. The photo, Terrasse by Thomas Demand, provides the inspiration for the installation. The photograph shows a dark room with a table set, lit only by round, jewel toned paper lanterns that glow and seem to float in the room.

The confetti from the pavillion was scattered not only throughout the biennale by way of visitors' shoes, but also throughout the streets of Venice, further adding to it's irreverence and playfullness.

Wikipedia Art: Media Graffiti or Exquisite Corpse?

Wikipedia Art, posted today by Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern on the Wikipedia site, invites collective bloggers, editors and artists to collaborate and begin creating the conceptual art piece via contributing directly by editing the topic and and off the site via writing about it. Wikipedia madates that entries are sited from credible sources, so the piece can not exist without participation from both outside and within the actual entry. Wikipedia Art as a conceptual piece, takes information gathering, documenting and archiving and appropriates these art practices to the parallel structure of Wikipedia.

Often criticized for having compromised integrity for viability, Wikipedia as an encyclopedic reference is vulnerable to vandalism of information through unreliable sources and less that scholarly authorship. The intervention isn't just a conceptual, interactive work in it's practice of contributing, editing and sourcing - but acts also as media graffiti and commentary on the site's inclusive yet nonobjective practice.

The discussion to remove the entry from the site states that Wikipedia is not an art platform for circular referencing, but an online encyclopedic resource. I encourage you to participate.