The Future Is Already Here—It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed (review)

The title of this year’s Biennale of Sydney, The Future Is Already Here—It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed, is attributed to the American/Canadian science-fiction writer William Gibson. For those of you not familiar with the science-fiction genre, Gibson is famously credited with inventing the term “cyberspace” and was a founding member of the cyberpunk literary movement. So, armed with this title, the director, London-based German Dr. Stephanie Rosenthal, has attempted to make connections and observations about our shared contemporary world.

This broad theme was divided into seven subthemes, or “Embassies of Thought”: The Embassy of the Real at Cockatoo Island, the Embassy of Spirits at the Art Gallery of NSW, the Embassy of Disappearance at Carriageworks, the Embassy of Translation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Embassy of Transition at the Mortuary Station, the Embassy of Non-Participation at Artspace, and the Embassy of Stanislaw Lem. While this might seem cumbersome, it was actually a clever framing device that allowed what are essentially seven discrete exhibitions, located across Sydney, to operate almost as a cohesive whole.

For the past several biennales, Cockatoo Island (the Embassy of the Real) has been the premier exhibition site. Sitting in the middle of the harbor, this island has a layered history—from colonial prison to naval dockyard, and now to being listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site—and offers strange and quirky spaces beyond the white cube of the conventional gallery or museum space. Some artists’ work benefits from this less-pristine environment, but more often than not works are lost in the scale and majesty of what is a hymn to nineteenth-century industrial engineering. This was all too evident in the work of the Korean artist Lee Bul’s “Willing to be Vulnerable” in the main Turbine Hall. In an attempt to compete with the architectural scale, Bul filled the hall with an inflated object reminiscent of the doomed German airship the Hindenburg and other memorabilia, but instead created a confusing assortment more akin to a disused fun fair.

Also on Cockatoo Island, but in a more conventional space, is perhaps the most compelling and insightful work in this year’s biennale: “Victory Over the Sun” by Australian artist Justene Williams in collaboration with the Sydney Chamber Opera. The work is a reimagining of the 1913 opera (of the same name) by Russian futurist composer Mikhail Matyushin, with costumes and stage design by Russian artist Kasimir Malevich. While drawing on the original storyline, Williams has reworked the opera, using an ensemble of players and a prancing mobile choir to pay homage to a failed Sun God. Through our present day lens, this performance offered the opportunity to reflect on the West’s insatiable greed and endless use of the world’s resources at the expense of other societies and the global climate.

The Japanese artist, Taro Shinoda, is the anchor for the Embassy of Spirits (at the Art Gallery of NSW). His work, “Abstraction of Confusion,” reflects his education in Japanese horticulture and his interest in karesansui (traditional Japanese gardens), and continues his recurring themes of meditation or contemplation and change. This installation is grand in scale, with the floor and walls covered first with red ochre and then with a thick coating of white clay. As the clay dries over the duration of the biennale, it begins to crack and reveal the red ochre. According to the artist, the use of red ochre reflects the influence of his 2015 visit to Arnhem Land, where he experienced the red landscape and the Aboriginal belief system of the traditional owners, and saw how those beliefs differed from his own, and more broadly, from Western notions of spirituality. To allow us to contemplate these contradictory belief systems, a meditation platform with a tatami mat for visitors to sit on was built out into the center of the room, allowing them time to consider...