Behind three walls at the Arsenale: Raissnia, Gates and K

Perhaps Biennales are really for those who can stop to look despite the crush—the crush of a traveller’s expectations and limited time, the crush of visitors ‘doing’ the Biennale, the crush of curatorial polemics. Behind three walls at this year’s Arsenale, I found three works particularly worthy of my time: Raha Raissnia’s Longing, Theaster Gates’ Gone are the days of shelter and martyr, and Hiwa K’s The Bell. They were welcome in the onslaught of what was, to me, a treatise on the fuckedness of the world, which gave no new(s) to me. It was in the less obvious—the sideways glance, the force of the open hand and not the fist, that the pathos and complexity of humanity came through, and the sensorial experience of the artwork connected me to a concept of practice, and to countries, peoples, and--on reflection--plights. And it was in the video-based that I reflected on the possibilities of Biennales, which is interesting given that, over the last decade, this type of work has been slated as too demanding of peoples’ time, too unlikely to get attention, and unlikely to be well positioned and seen. At this year’s Arsenale, I am intrigued by the fact that video works enriched my experience the most, and that this is, in part, because they allowed something more, away from the irrepressible volume of show.
On entering the Arsenale I found rows, almost tracks of works, that had you doubling up and back, stretching on for what seemed forever. I was looking at works, some by artists I admired, and feeling disappointed, pressured, and, although I would not immediately rest on this word: underwhelmed.
Down one track less travelled, I came across Raissnia’s Longing, projected onto a large, high black wall within a slightly makeshift 3-walled room of black walls. It didn’t feel like a particularly well-made space, but it was on the far side enough to be quieter and I could sit and stop. I was immediately taken with the sensorially rich nature of the work, particularly the glancing treatment of the imagery and the wonderful aesthetics of 16mm film. It had the sense of being filmed through time, with all its slips, glitches, blur, and ambiguities. There was a hand, a foot on a pavement, the presence of the body, a solitary person, a gathering of people, some sort of movement, or not, the presence of the city, all in a rolling montage of framing and possible reframing. I stayed put, soaking it up in the spirit of its title, interrupted only by the odd passerby, trooping past with a glance and an ‘oh, it’s about the Iranian war,’ as if that did it, summed it up, slotted it into the catalogue of catastrophes. But it didn’t, and I stayed to watch.
Going on, down the farthest track, I come across a wall carefully constructed of black slate tiles. It seems to completely fill the space in which it sits. I look at it, shake my head and walk past, then stop, go back, and investigate. At the farthest end, there is a small gap all-but-hidden by a pillar. Hoping for ingress, I slip through and around the corner to a large dedicated viewing space that opens to the only light of its massive projection and the sonorous impact of its music. In front of me is the interior of a half derelict (destroyed?) and abandoned gothic church, a dark and vaulted space that is being made into a sound chamber by a man with a cello and a voice. He pulls out a melody in string and vocal chord, composing forward and back with spiritual, blues, and jazz, as part rumination, eulogy and hopeful ballad. Accompanying him, and stomping out the space, are two extraordinary men, almost unseen in this interior with the melding of their skin, hair and clothes. They gather momentum, lifting, picking up, dropping and throwing around weighty wooden doors, heaving them up onto shoulders, into the air, letting them drop as dust-cloud-forming percussion, as some kind of missive, on the stone floor. They pair up, alternating drops at more of a crouch. They speed the beat of it up, and play with syncopation in a run of effort and response. Then they stand and drop doors together, resting the bottom edge on the floor, arcing them over. It’s mesmerising and I don’t know where I am, except uninterrupted at the centre of this performance.
I can’t remember but I think I doubled back to see K’s The Bell. It was tucked on the other side behind a long and especially constructed white wall, and again I could sit and stop. I was drawn in by the bell, a massive bronze/gold coloured object and instrument in its cradle at the end of a long rope lying across the floor of the space. I look around. No-one is looking and I pick up the rope and pull on it a bit. Not a budge; boy that thing is heavy. Behind it, two video works play side by side. They have the sense of the raconteur. Subtitled, I can follow the dialogue of local people, in a dry land, on one side making the bell in front of me, on the other collecting and melting down metal in what I learn to be a complete industry involving men from boyhood. I do not make the connection that the metal being melted on the right, including the scrap of weapons, is the metal being used on the left: I learn that from the artist’s video later. But I like this, this linking and slight indeterminacy, particularly as I become mesmerised, once again, by the careful, yet familiar, process of making the bell, in which I sense the long tradition of sand and lost wax casting and the making of sculpture. In front of me the bell sits and I sit too, for over half an hour as the work runs. Yes, there is political content, and I think on many things to do with Iraq, Iran and the Middle East. But this, like the waiting bell, emerges over time.
I find a few other works that also impress me, for other reasons, particularly, Newell Harry’s Black Sabbath and other anecdotes and Ricardo Brey’s Every life is a fire. And then a cacophony starts up, an impossibly loud ringing bell, an incredible bouncing around of the vibrations of sound, an onslaught of timbre. And then I’m running, back through the Arsenale at a pace and arrive to see one of the Biennale attendants ramping up the bell. I’m shocked by the sound. I’m shocked by the treatment of the attendant—she has the thing flying in a full exploration of the pendulum and I hold my breath half expecting it to take off from its cradle, while another attendant eggs her on and congratulates her as if they have been involved in a competition over it, for the last few days. But it rings full-on and the sound is extraordinary, a finely crafted instrument released, albeit with what seems to me the non-respect of the carnivale. It is still in my ears after I’m ushered from the building and the exhibition closes.
I only got as far as Ricardo Brey (optimistically, about halfway)! I tell myself that I will go back before I leave Venice in five weeks time. But I run out of time and I don’t go back. I tell people to look out for three works, not so easy to find, but easy to spend time with.

Raha Raissnia, Longing (excerpted photos of installation)

Theaster Gates, Gone are the days of shelter and martyr (excerpted photos of installation)

Hiwa K's bell ringing in the Arsenale