News • Announcement
Inauguration of Venice Biennale Australian Pavilion
DESASTRES by Marco Fusinato opens at the Australia Pavilion for the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia
Artspace is pleased to announce that DESASTRES by Marco Fusinato has opened at the Australia Pavilion for the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Audiences around the world can also experience part of the project via a public livestream on Saturday 23 April, and follow the durational performance for the full length of the exhibition at the Instagram channel, @desastres_desastres, and the project’s website, www.desastresdesastres.com, where samples of Fusinato’s performance are released daily.
To view the livestream on Saturday 23 April at 6.45pm (AEST) click here.
Curated by Artspace Executive Director Alexie Glass-Kantor, DESASTRES will be live for the entirety of La Biennale Arte 2022. The work is an invitation for audiences to come together within a highly intense concentration of energy. What can’t be seen can be felt: sound as physical matter creates a transformative experience.
In this large-scale, immersive artwork Fusinato improvises slabs of noise, saturated feedback and discordant intensities on electric guitar, triggering a deluge of disparate and disconnected images on a freestanding floor-to-ceiling LED wall. The images are sourced via a stream of words entered into an open search across multiple online platforms. There is no theme as such, rather the immersion of sound and image is open for audiences to interpret and make sense of. The intent is to create some kind of hallucination, elation in disorientation and exhaustion from confusion.
In the installation, Fusinato uses equipment associated with spectacle as a form of sculpture. The work is unique every day it is initiated and, as it unfolds, will radically transform the physical experience of each audience member. The pavilion is simultaneously a de facto studio and a space for research where the artist can test cause and effect in real time.
DESASTRES is a culmination of Fusinato’s interests in experimental music, underground culture, mass media imagery and history painting. The performance explores the topics of labour, perseverance, and absenteeism through his ongoing presence (and absence) in the space. The title is influenced by the output of Japanese doom metal band Corrupted, whose lyrics are always written in Spanish, and the context in which Goya made his series Los Desastres de la Guerra (1810–20).
The Australia Council for the Arts is the Commissioner for Australia's National Participation at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
For more information:
www.desastresdesastres.com
www.australiacouncil.gov.au
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Instagram @desastres_desastres
@AusatVenice
Facebook @AusatVenice
Key Reviews
https://artreview.com/nothing-is-universal-not-even-air-marco-fusinato-on-representing-australia-at-the-59th-venice-biennale/
https://www.frieze.com/59th-venice-biennale-national-pavilions-preview-2022-part-one
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/02/25/most-people-wont-like-my-work-marco-fusinato-artist-representing-australia-at-the-venice-biennale-unveils-pavilion-plans