The Stories that Need to be Told: 56th Venice Biennale

In an essay for Platform Videobrasil, "The Individual Stories and Shared Histories of a Global Narrative," I discuss the predominance of narrative forms in contemporary film and video. This particular topic provides an interesting frame of reference in relation to the 56th International Art Exhibition All the World's Futures (2015), curated by Okwui Enwezor and organized by La Biennale di Venezia. In this exhibition narratives unfold within an expanded framework that also includes performances, interventions, concerts, and live readings. Enwezor's investigation of the state of things is defined by a multidisciplinary approach that defies strict distinctions between what is or should be considered art. He extends the notion of artistic practice beyond the strictly visual in an exhibition that reveals a multiplicity of interrelated narratives.

The interconnectivity of seemingly disconnected situations and stories throughout All the World's Futures contributes to an exhibition that is simultaneously fragmented, overlapped, and intertwined. The result is a complex structure of stories that exists between past and present, combines shared histories with personal stories, and ranges from the highly visual to the completely invisible. Throughout the exhibition past and present are in constant ebb and flow, as contemporaneity is influenced by history, memory, loss, absence, and displacement.

Glenn Ligon, A Small Band, 2015. Neon and paint, 74 3/4 ഗ 797 1/2 in. Courtesy the artist; Luhring Augustine, New York; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London. © Glenn Ligon. Oscar Murillo, signaling devices in now bastard territory, 2015. Twenty flag paintings of oil, oil stick, thread, and dirt on canvas. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner Gallery, New York / London

A labyrinthine path between two gardens—from the Giardini to Il Giardino delle Vergine—is illuminated with works that tell the stories that need to be told. These stories relate to distinctions of power and class hierarchy, social injustice, mass migration, absence, and loss. In the spirit of Edward Said, topics of displacement and exile abound in works that are woven together from the ragged, yet beautiful threads of daily life as influenced by the long-term effect of history and its implications on what plays out in the present. These narratives are punctuated by an abundance of words, text, and literary references that are written, spoken, sung, recited, projected, sculpted, drawn, whispered, murmured, or simply inferred. With the Arena as the central axis of the exhibition, conceived as a gathering place for continuous live readings, songs, recitals, and film projections, Enwezor clearly defines his curatorial agenda.

Among many highlights in the Arena programming is Joana Hadjithomas's and Khalil Joreige's live reading of their artist book Latent Images: Diary of a Photographer (2009–15). The work involves a two-hour performance featuring actors who read a 1,312-page book aloud by first cutting open and slowly turning each page as they describe a series of invisible photographs. Latent Images includes thirty-eight photographic plates, selected among hundreds of reels of film originally exposed but until now never developed by a fictitious Lebanese photographer, Abdallah Farah, between 1997 and 2006. The actual photographs are invisible, replaced

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, 177 Days of Performances of Latent Images, 2015. Performances and timeline of 354 books, 177 metal shelves. Courtesy the artists

Charles Gaines, Sound Text #2: Steal Away, 2015. Graphite on printed paper, single channel video, monitor. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. © Charles Gaines

by detailed descriptions of the photographs from the photographer's meticulously detailed notebook. His photographs are thereby read to us rather than shown to us, and we are left to imagine the photographs as we focus our attention on the spoken word. The images that we conjure up in our imagination tell an interesting story about the photographer, as well as political and social stories about postwar Beirut. According to the story in the exhibit, Farah was prevented from developing his films due to lack of basic photographic supplies. Nevertheless...