We know it has been February 23rd since The Bronx Museum of the Arts
announced that Sarah Sze was chosen to represent at The Venice Biennale for The
USA at the upcoming 2013 Venice Biennale. The Biennial Project did not report to you about this then because we were busy that week doing our thing
at The 2012 Whitney Biennial and throwing ‘a time’ at The First Windsor-Whitney Biennial.

The Biennial Project is all balls out not only because we love, love, love her work - we are doublly proud because Ms. Sze (pronounced ZEE) is, you
know, a Bostonian, born and raised right here in capital city of the Bay
State, the home base for us, The Biennial Project.

Wicked fuckin’ pissa!!

Let’s make a Packie Run and buy some scratchies,and get retarded.

Sarah is no average chowder head. She comes from a notable family. Her great Grandfather, Dr. Alfred Sao-ke Sze was the first Chinese ambassador to the
US and her Grandfather Szeming Sze confounded The World Health Organization.
Grandma Bessie Li was a pianist. Her Dad Chia-Ming Sze is a
Chinese-American architect whose firm is located at 326 A Street in Southie.
He designs lots of municipal projects around town. He can be reached at
chiaming@szearch.com or by phone 617-451-2727. Sarah’s Mummy is Judy Sze and
like most of Boston is of Irish descendent and is a retired schoolteacher.
We would never want to label her Lace Curtin. Judy's father was Alexander
Mossman, known as Sandy, an advertising executive who was Brookline Rat born on December 28th, 1897. Her Bother David Li Ming Sze  attended Buckingham, Brown & Nichols in Cambridge and is now a general partner at Grey Lock Partners a private Equity firm located in San Mateo, CA and sits on the boards of Facebook, LinkIn, and Pandora to name a few.

Sarah grew up on Beacon Hill in a 4 bedroom, 1890 mansard-roofed house
located at 44 Pinckney Street. According to Zillow the 3.242 sqft house is
valued at $2,165,447 and the 2012 property taxes were $24.197. Her folks
still live there. It's not the Triple Decker we are used to but we are sure
it has tons of chacta ­you knows.

Sze attended the Beacon Hill Nursery School with the other Brahmins at 74
Joy Street. Beacon Hill Nursery School which was founded in 1955and whose primary mission is:
"to nurture our students' innate curiosity and lay the foundation for a
lifelong love of learning. We believe that children who develop strong
self-concepts and social and emotional skills are most successful both in
school and later in life."

Sarah left the Hill to further her education on the other side of the
Charles at The Shady Hill School at 178 Coolidge Hill in The Peoples
Republic of Cambridge. When Sarah Sze started as a Beginner at Shady Hill in
1973, a teacher described her as being "good at imaginative play." When she
graduated from the school's ninth grade in 1984, a teacher commented on her
"considerable artistic ability."

After Shady Hill, Sarah went on to Milton Academy which is a coeducational
independent preparatory boarding and day school in Milton, Massachusetts
consisting of a grade 9­-12 Upper School and a grade K­8 Lower School. Milton
is noted for its prestige and strong academic programs, having produced many
notable alumni, including Nobel Laureate, T. S. Eliot, several members of the
United States Congress, Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts,
Saturday Night Live comedian Jenny Slate, James Taylor and a handful of
Kennedy's.

 The Biennial Project knows of this institution as Mouth-on Academy because of the oral sex scandal that happened there a few years back when a 15 year-old female student gave head to five boys on the Hockey team, one right after another.

We like to think of Sarah as a teenager in the 80s hanging out in the Pit in Harvard Square or The Rat in Kenmore. She’d be rockin’ out to Tracy Chapmen or The J Geils Band, spraying her locks into a Hair Wall otherwise known as The Quinzee Claw or the Revere Claw.

Sarah Sze was invited back to Milton in 2007 to be the graduation speaker
when she gave the students permission to fail or be failures. Sarah’s sick
nasty work entitled ‘The Edge of One of Many Circles’ is a permanent
installation at Milton Academy’s Schwarz Student Center. Sarah installed
it in 2006.

After graduating Summa Cum Laude from Yale University in 1991, Sarah spent
a year in Japan working in Television and studying ikebana, which is Japanese
flower arranging. In 1992 she once again donned her skally and returned to
Taxachusetts where she worked in a Boston public school art-education
program and painted on weekends.

It was that she met her Barney husband Siddhartha Mukherje while he was at Harvard Medical School. He then worked at Man’s Greatest Hospital, MGH .He authored the 2010 book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and was described by TIME Magazin, as one of the 100 most influential books of the last 100 years, and by the New York Times magazine as among the 100 best works of non-fiction.

Unfortunately New York City attracts Boston artists like flies on shit and
Sarah and Siddhartha moved down to the big apple so she could attend SVA.

Whateva!!

In 2002 Sarah hopped on ‘the Pike’ and returned back home to Boston as
the second resident artist to participate in the series RSVPmfa, in which
artists are invited to respond to and work among the collections,
architecture, and grounds of the Museum of Fine Arts. At the MFA she selected the
activity-filled West Wing entrance, which extends to a second floor that is
visible through an elliptical balcony. Fascinated by the energy of the many
distractions in this area, as well as by the movement of the viewer through
space via escalators, Sze had a field day constructing her piece to unite
the first and second floors. It was anchored on a corner of the second floor
and swept up into the barrel vault above spanning the space above the first
floor and descending from a supporting column to the floor of the lobby. On
the first trip home Sze was greeted by Beacon Hill neighbors at a party
sponsored by the Beacon Hill Village.

Maybe she was craving a Regulah at Dunkies! Because Sarah banged a U-ie again in 2004 and returned to Red Sox Nation to put up the permanent installation ’Blue Poles’. This piece is a whimsical miniature fire escape on the front of MIT's Sidney-Pacific Graduate Residence. The work, commissioned by MIT's Percent-for-Art Program, is titled "Blue Poles", in honor of Jackson Pollock's 1952 drip painting by that name. This is totally ‘the shit’ and it is made of small blue steel ladders, balconies and stairways welded into fire-escape-like clusters, "Poles" climbs to the roof of the six-story building from just above the front door. In designing "Blue Poles," Sze said that she was inspired by her childhood memories of fire escapes on apartment buildings near her home. Those rickety iron or wooden structures, used both as places to relax and as escape routes, are rarely found on new buildings; "Blue Poles" reconnects the Sidney- Pacific residence to its urban past and to the myriad ways people adapt to crowding, anonymity and summer heat. Sze made "Blue Poles" during a yearlong residency at Alexander Calder's former studio in Sachet, France. Sze described her own work as related to Calder's in its focus on gravity and air and play. Some people thought this looked sketchy but we, The Biennial Project say that Blue Poles is The Pissa!!

Sarah must have been craving some jimmies from JP Licks and candle pin bowling because once again she took the Salt and Pepper Bridge ‘across The River’ to install ‘Model for Corner Plot’, Agassiz House, Radcliff Yard,Cambridge, MA.

This was Wicked Frickn’ mad

.

So don’t we know that Sarah loves that dirty water because last year she returned once again to Boston not only to root for Da Broons, but also to do a residency with The ICA with Trajai Harrell in which she produced The Untitled
Still Life Collection, a dynamic exchange between visual art and dance. This
was made possible by the Contemporary Art Centers (CAC) network administered
by the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA).

Given the recent presence of The Biennial Project just about everywhere you turn in the Art World, one might be tempted to think that it really is ALL about us. 

But in addition to showcasing our own ground-breaking work to the world, we have been busy working for the betterment of mankind. 

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve the lot of the non-famous many, we recently took our campaign against swine flu and other evil-doing microbes to the masses in San Marcos Square (Venice, Italy). 

Now, you may have wondered if there were activities that were prohibited in San Marcos Square, and we can tell you at this point with certainty that there are at least two.

The first such activity is handing out promotional materials, even those clearly dedicated to the improvement of the human condition. 

The second activity that is “forbidden! forbidden!” (to quote Venice’s finest)  in San Marcos Square is feeding the birds.

This is the case even when such bird feeding efforts arise from the sincerest desire to improve the lot of Our Friend the Pigeon,

and not any crash attempt at publicity or sympathy from the animal lovers of the world. 

But no, the pigeons will not be fed. On this point the Police were clear.

So, rather than risking further discoveries on other activities prohibited in San Marcos Square, off we went to spread our message of good will and hygiene to the denizens of some of Venice’s less highly regulated public squares.

As always, out efforts were well received, especially by Venice’s cognoscenti and glitterati, who know a good world-betterment campaign when they see one.

Afterward, we rested.

For more of our exploits in and around San Marcos Square, check us out on YouTube:

With great emotions, this day marks the close of yet another Venice
Biennale. Soon, Thomas Hisrschorn's crystal meth nightmare entitled ‘Crystal
of Resistance’ and Tabaimo’s soothing dream 'Teleco-Soup' will be laid to rest
like all of the other beautifully provocative art we saw all summer and
fall.

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely
unhappen.  ~Edward de Bono

We offer a pat on the head to our good friend and colleague Bice Curiger for a job
well done with La Biennale di Venezia 54 entitled ILLUMInations (spelled
with a Capital I, capital L, another capital L, big letter U and finally a
capital M) We agree that the utopian, neoliberal idea that we can escape
such boundaries is what curator Curiger attempts to support with a hint of
neo-romanticism(even if she could not find us space in the Arsenale).

Hopefully Bicey took some time off this fall and took our advise and used our cottage at Kennebunk Gallery Motel & Cottages in Kennebunk, Maine which we
call The Compound. The Kennebunk Gallery Motel & Cottages
is a family owned complex in the "heart" of the Kennebunk and they honor a
AAA discount. We told her to take  advantage of the off season rates which
include accommodations in the Small Cottage for $55.00 for two adults, the
two bedroom cottage for $95.00 or the motel room which is
$55.00 a night for two adults.This price includes FREE beach parking passes
FREE morning coffee served in the office. Kennebunk Compound Website

Anyhow with all this closing stuff of the Biennale going on we can't help
but remember the good time we had hosting the Closing Ceremony for the 53rd
Biennale.

Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the
things you never want to lose.  ~From the television show The Wonder Years

Here is a You Tube Video of our esteemed event during precious  last hours
of The 53rd Biennale entitled 'Making Worlds'.

We also want to celebrate this occasion as the evening we were enchanted for
the first time by one of our most treasured, ardent and colorful fans, VITO.
Vito occupies a permanent place in our minds and hearts for his performance
of ‘We Are The World’  with Laura at the end of Closing Reception for the 53rd
Venice Biennale hosted by us, The Biennial Project. After our our party we
were woeful because in all the excitement we lost his contact information.
Well the despair absconded because this June Vito showed up to our Boston
Online Biennial Reception during the opening week of this years Biennale!! He brought his own theatrical performance and did a reading of Oscar Wilde.

Vito also brought it all home and he and Laura conjured up their best drunken Donny and Marie and revisited the musical splendor from two years before.

We were electrified by his presence and his encore performance. Sadly, once
again we lost his contact information.

VITO PLEASE REACH OUT TO US!! WE NEEDAND MISS YOU!! WE PROMISE WE WILL BE GOOD FROM NOW ON!!

  A good performance, like a human life, is a temporal affair‹a process in
time. It is good as a whole through being good in its parts, and through
their good order to one another. It cannot be called good as a whole until
it is finished. During the process all we can say of it, if we speak
precisely, is that it is becoming good. The same is true of a whole human
life. Just as the whole performance never exists at any one time, but is a
process of becoming, so a human life is also a performance in time and a
process of becoming. And just as the goodness that attaches to the
performance as a whole does not attach to any of its parts, so the goodness
of a human life as a whole belongs to it alone, and not to any of its parts
or phases.
Mortimor J. Adler

When we arrived at The Venice Biennale Opening Week we were not looking like the emaciated, malnourished, fabulous artists we felt we were on the inside. We all know that 'skinny artist’ equals ‘famous artist' and ‘fat artist’ equals a ‘plein-aire-artist-taking-classes-at-a-local-mid-western-community-college’. I swear, The Biennial Project are the skeletal, chain smoking, debilitated dilettantes waiting to get out of our American, processed-food-built-up, flabby shells. Well, without having shed the necessary kilos, we had no choice but to simply show up to The Biennale with our chins held high (both of them). We would employ our dazzling personalities and surround ourselves with our well-connected friends to cover up our shame. Miss a moment of fun - NEVER!! Also there are always plenty of attention-seeking curators to place in front of our bloated bodies while the cameras of the international press followed our every move.

After a few days of appearing at all our friends’ events, we started to notice that we were able to button the snaps on our pants. The indentations on our skin from our too tight undergarments were not as red, deep or long lasting when we undressed. Could it be that were shedding kilos in the mist of The Venice Biennale? We were!!
Here, at the Venice Biennale, The Biennial Project was finally emerging as the gaunt, twiggy phenomenon you all know us to be.  Below are a few thoughts on how you, too, can champion the bony, lanky appearance of a famous artist at the Venice Biennale.

When hungry, stop in the first restaurant you see with a free table. Chances are pretty good that the food will be uneatable and over-priced. It seems to us that no matter where you find yourself noshing in Venice you will get the same meals, made with no love, for five times the cost of what you would spend at home. We have a theory that there is one central kitchen located way beneath the island that sends the same microwaved meals to all the restaurants via conveyor belt. After a few days of grazing like this, the sight of another over-priced, over-microwaved, frozen pizza will make your stomach turn and you will start to notice yourself skipping meals.

While in the Giardini forget eating at all!! There are only two places to buy food and they each seem to be understaffed. You have to decide if you want to remain famished and possibly look at some art or if you want to wait in line for hours either in the stuffy, over-stimulating café or wait outside in the hot, Italian sun. We had the very special privilege of waiting in the pouring rain for hours only to get yet another over-microwaved frozen pizza for twice as many Euros then we would have paid outside the gate. The Powers-That-Be will not even let you leave the Giardini to scrounge for food outside of the gates without having to pay entrance again (for those of you who have to pay entrance).

 
The moment we landed in Venice we started to burn more calories than we normally do sitting on the couch watching The Biggest Loser. As most everybody around the world knows, there was a vaporetto strike during the opening week. Upon landing in Venice we learned that the only way to get to our fabulous Villa was by huffing through the byways of Venice dragging our luggage behind us. The first Bridge coming from the bus Station, the newest bridge in Venice, Ponte della Constituzione  (but nearly everyone in Venice calls it the Ponte di Calatrava) seemed to be designed to punish the out of shape, over-packed, American tourists. The tiny, little steps built into the Ponte di Calatrava made it extra hard to drag a rollaway suitcase. After crossing the bridge you have to pay attention to every bitty sign or risk getting lost in the labyrinth of itsy-bitsy, little streets. It took one of our crew 8 hours to get from the train station to the villa, pulling their bags in the hot, hot Italian sun. It is like a Boot Camp workout. Hence, thinner us.

Another calorie burner is finding the National Pavilions or Collateral events located outside of the Arsenale or Giardini. Those of us who are fortunate enough to partake in The Biennale year after year know some of the most fantastic art is located in satellite venues all over Venice. Finding these diamonds in the rough can sometimes lead to hour upon hour of walking in circles trying to navigate the tiny often-unmarked streets of Venice. This is a fantastic way to see Venice but not so fantastic on your already swollen, blistered extremities. Some countries like Latvia for instance put arrows on the ground to guide you in the direction of the exhibitions. This is great unless some prankster turns one of the arrows around to face you in the wrong direction or a well-meaning friend decides to bring you the arrow from your country of origin as a souvenir. Such actions make finding the art very difficult.

The New Zealand Pavilion location appeared pretty straightforward. Palazzo Loredan dell'Ambasciatore is located right on The Grand Canal near the southern entrance of the Academic Bridge. When we traversed over the prominent interchange, we started to follow the well-intended arrows until they sort of just stopped. Jokesters or nationalists were at hand. We were also flustered by a lollygag of lingering, gorgeous Italian High School students on break who aroused us by the erotic smell of Italian teenage pheromones blended with cheap perfume. Venice holds so much for us!! Being as confused and distracted as we were at this point, turning around when lost was not an option. After all Michael Parekowhai, who represents New Zealand, always shows up for our shit. Plus we heard great things about his intricately-carved red Steinway concert grand piano and two concert grands fabricated in bronze supporting two cast bronze bulls entitled On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer. Furthermore, we adore New Zealand wine (especially free New Zealand wine). After trolling around the dead-end alleys of the Dorsodoro neighborhood for an hour or so we finally managed our way into the Palazzo. Our persistence burned off thousands of calories and we were also treated to some live piano music.

 
Another calorie-burner was finding our new friends who were showing at the Central Asia Pavilion in their exhibit entitled Lingua Franca. The Biennial Project has always had a special camaraderie with the former Soviet Asian Nations like Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan or any of the other 'stans’. We love all the stan countries. We knew exactly the location of this pavilion being positioned near The Palazzo Grazzi and the pavilions of Iran, Estonia, and Slovenia. We partied hard with the Slovenian accordion players our first night in town. Even if we knew where to find them we did not know that The Central Asian Pavilion was located on the very top floor of the Palazzo Maipiero on San Marco 3199-3201. Climbing the narrow stairs to see the work of our friends Natalia Andrianova or Artyom Ernst reminded us of our hike up Zailisky Alatau Mountain overlooking the beaches of Lake Issyk-Kul. outside of Almaty, Kazakhstan. We took that excursion last April with the artists Said ATABEKOV, Galim MADANOV and Zauresh TEREKBAY. I guess they were getting us ready for 160 stories ascent to see their work at the Biennale. None-the-less, this climb yielded us firmer, perkier, European-style asses that promote the important work of The Biennial Project.

Being squeezed into small spaces will make you thin as well. You know how they say that fish grow to the size of their bowls; well, The Biennial Project resides in the huge open expanses of America. Knowing it is wasteful to take up as much space as we do in our giant McMansions with bathrooms the size of whole neighborhoods in Kolkata, our bodies none-the-less adapt. American asses spread out all over our so-called wide-open plains. When in Venice we really feel our girth the first time when we step into a shower or sleep in a small bed. This makes us feel uncomfortable and….well, FAT. Subconsciously, I think we eat less simply because there is no room for us behind the tiny, little tables, in the tiny, little cafes. When someone guesses that we are American on the overcrowded vaporetto, we say to ourselves it is because of our distinctly American shoes(sneakers). Really? In truth we know the Europeans recognize us because we are huge. They are really thinking that we are taking up way too much space on the vaporetto and they hope against hope that we will spread our weight out evenly around the boat to avoid capsizing. This, in turn, makes us feel shame and we react by eating less.

So yes, The Venice Biennale is a great place to get thin. In Venice you can walk your asses off, starve, smoke and loosen your bowels by drinking too much. You actually never have to take a solid shit ever again!! The crappy, over-priced food looks especially unappetizing after a night of free vino. After skipping a few meals your body adapts and you eventually don’t feel hunger anymore. You actually start to enjoy the high you get from the out-of-wacky-glucose-levels reinforced by the terrific compliments you get. Nicotine speeds up your metabolism as well so smoke away. The more you inhale, the thinner you get!! Who needs The Biggest Loser Ranch in Fitness Ridge, Utah????  Simply spend your money on a trip to the Venice Biennale and smoke and drink too much. You, too, can come home undernourished, bony and ashen like a true successful international artist.

2011 VENICE BIENNALE: THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

By Bo Petran

I’m in Venice – at last – and, with its subtle mists and roaring crowds, it does not disappoint. I have seen my first ineffable sunset and have had the various parts of my anatomy shoved by an indifferent attendant into an impossibly packed vaporetto. So I’m in Venice and pretty indiscriminately happy, wandering around the ‘back-behind’ of mobbed St. Mark’s Square, escaping from the sun and heat and screaming masses of people, who, as Henry James observed a century ago, should immediately leave and let me properly enjoy all this alone, when I happen on the big red “Biennale” pennant outside an old building, church, whatever, and enter, mostly just to get a rest.

The place is dim, quiet, cool, and a bit of a ruin, stripped to its architectural bones, former function unrecognizable.  I climb the stairs to the loft and settle into a room-sized beanbag, and all I want or expect is about 15 minutes of peace.  Luckily not to be had.

As I become accustomed to the light, I see around me people transfixed by a large screen cycling into a new showing of Singapore’s ‘The Cloud of Unknowing,’ which turns out to be the trippiest experience one could possibly have without aid of hallucinogen or other radical brain alteration.  And no one already present is leaving.

The video cycles through six apartments in a low-rent neglected urban high-rise, showing its largish occupants, 4 men, one woman, and some vegetation, at various mostly ordinary occupations leading up to – what is this? — their envelopment by cloud emanating from various parts of their apartments, from the bookcases, appliances, furnishings.

It’s a wonderful set of contrasts between the ‘nothingness’ of the cloud and the persistent bulkiness of the humans (and possibly the plants as well), the mundanity of their quotidian existences and the magical things that happen to them as they’re being engulfed, the silence of the solitary, monastic modern high rise cells otherwise known as apartments, and the joyous uproar of a drummer exuberantly banging things from a zone somewhere between monastic gongs and pure rock and roll.

As the cloud descends, dreaming man is sucked into white-sheeted bed, drummer is subsumed by torrential rains, and moss-filled apartment just plain luxuriates … I think.

Giving away the end – since it’s not likely to be in the local multiplex any time soon – as the screen fills with luminous cloud turning to pure light, the dark-ribbed old wooden loft begins also to fill with all-obscuring cloud.

One other point, about going to Venice.  Getting there cost an obscene amount of money and was a hard thing to decide to do in these times.  For anyone who still contemplates the purchase of, say, that big i-thing, using the logic that these things are tangible and lasting whereas some vacation will be over in a matter of weeks,

my advice is to go for the real lasting thing, the trip.

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