The Biennale. . .Si! si.si!

Anne here-
By far the most fun we had at the Biennale yesterday was watching Los Torreznos at the Spanish pavillion performing "Electorial Night" as part of "Paridise Broken" ( only in Spanish.) The last bit of the 35 minute video performance was the two artists weighing in on other artists. "Pablo Picasso. . . non! non.non. Los Torreznos. . Si! si. si. Jasper Johns. . .Non! The whole thing is hysterical, as is the rest of what we saw of them. You can find clips on the web, and we recommend you do. Los Torreznos (Rafael Lamata and Jamie Vallaure) deal with repetition, sound and meaning, how one effects the other, or so it seems to us. They are also very, very funny.
In the Italian pavillion, which serves as the international pavillion we saw works by Louise Bourgeois, Rainer Ganhal,Jenny Holzer, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol Dewitt, Elizabeth Murray, Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter, Susan Rothenberg, and many others, each given their own room in the pavillion, a lovely expansive space in which to view the work. We took out from there and wandered without a game plan, we managed to land in the British pavillion which featured Tracey Emin; The Korean- Hyungkoo Lee; Canada-David Altmejd ( Scott-look up this guy, amazing, Hyungkoo Lee too for that mater); France- Sophie Calle, Isreal-Yehudit Sasportas; Japan- Masao Okabe; and the good ol' USA- Felix Gonzales Torres, who is actually an imigrant from Cuba. We saw others too. Cheif among them was the African Pavillion, which was a first this year, which housed many artists who worked around the theme of "the unseen, seen".
Speaking of seeing, it was a lot to take in and I could write pages about each exhibit. We took pictures and picked up catalogues whereever they were free and I'm sure we will spend the next year at least decompressing from this as well as everything else we've seen here these past two weeks.
It is our last day here, so hard to believe! We are off to the Accademie (every town has one)today to round out our time. It is a spectacular day and I know we will also spend part of it wandering one last time through the narrow winding streets ( if one can call them that) of this ancient, lovely city. We are melancoly and anxious to be home at once. We look forward to spreading accross our own beds, or any bed since you can't spread accross a bed in Italy without hanging off both ends. But we will miss Italy, we know, and reflect on it with only the fondest thoughts.