Page 159 - Únete. Join us (Bienal de Venecia, 57 edición)

ThE COMING CITIzENRY MANUEL SEGADE
159
“The essential being of the world lies itself on the Front”. — Ernst Bloch1
Any given exhibition builds an access situation, aimed at eliciting adherence from its potential publics. In the field of contemporary art, every reading is constituent: a work’s interpretation entails a subjectivizing effect, a possibility for agency, which may cause viewers to become different from what they were before the experience. Thus installations are the unfoldings in space of events yet to come, displays of anticipation, which necessarily involve a shared responsibility on the part of both the artists and the visitors.
¡Únete! Join Us! is an “installation of installations“2 specifically conceived by Catalan artist Jordi Colomer for the Spanish Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennial. When a title is directly addressed to the public a communication channel is thereby opened, awaiting an action as response: The imperative mode in “join us!“, addressed to each individual person, is not simply an appeal but truly expects something from the viewer. This bid for allegiance, in the hope that visitors decide to take part, goes beyond the decision to enter the exhibition hall: It is a relational expectation. The series of videos, the array of architectural structures and the plastic objects within the pavilion are textual mediations through which the social relationships at an international event of this level are partially articulated.
If encounters with strangers3 normally govern everyday life in public space, and all relationships tend to morph into groups,
1 Das Prinzip Hoffnung (1959); The Principle of Hope, Eng. trans. by N. Plaice, S. Plaice and P. Knight, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996, p.18.
2 Like the superlative expression “king of kings“ (melek mĕlakîm in Hebrew), this term suggests an additional summation, a set of elements comprising a greater work.
3 See Julia Kristeva, Étrangers à nous-mêmes, Paris: Fayard, 1988.