When I arrived in Palermo by a ferry from Naples the Aquarius was still languishing in the Mediterranean with more than 600 people on board. Italy’s newly elected leader Matteo Salvini wouldn’t give permission for the rescue boat to land on Italian shores. I thought often of this event – these unwanted individuals plucked from the sea – as I navigated Manifesta 12 .
When I applied for the a-n Biennial Bursary I’d done so with curiosity and some cynicism – how can art address migration and climate change, the themes of Manifesta 12, in meaningful ways? Surely the whole notion of a biennial, attended by mobile, relatively affluent people, is an Art World mechanism with a massive environmental footprint and limited social impact? I was to be surprised by the scale and intensity of Manifesta. A month later, I’m still thinking about the works I encountered in Palermo.
Conceived with the title The Planetary Garden: Cultivating Coexistence, Manifesta 12 draws on French botanist Gilles Clément’s description of the world as a ‘planetary garden’ in which humans are gardeners, caretakers of the earth and each other. The event also takes inspiration from a painting by Francesco Lojacono – View of Palermo (1875) – in which none of the botanical species pictured is native to the region.
A focus on Palermo as existing at the crossroads of cultures, bearing the traces of multiple identities and histories, is woven throughout an impressive programme of performances, installations, talks and exhibitions in spaces around the city and further afield.
What most excited me was the site-specificity of the the work, much of which is the result of new commissions. This engagement with place was palpable and a real strength of the biennial. I’d sort of expected artwork and artists to be parachuted in and then airlifted back out in November, but there is evidence of sustained research, connections with local people and organisations, and responses to the unique architecture of each venue.
Initial research for the biennial was conducted by OMA and is presented in the form of the Palermo Atlas – a publication that presents an overiew of the social and geographical territory of the city. This preliminary study, and the decision to enlist the curatorial assistance of ‘creative mediators’– has resulted in events across the city: in churches, squares, semi-derelict palaces and oratorios. The ‘hub’ of the biennial is located in the formerly neglected Teatro Garibaldi, which has been reopened particularly for this event.
The city itself is on stage. As you flow around town you become integrated, a participant rather than just a spectator. The sense I had was of a city on the cusp of change, a city moving away from its associations with mafia and criminality, a city looking to position itself as pro-Europe and pro-immigration.
Among the highlights are the works on display at Palazzo Butera. ‘Wishing Trees’ – a compelling new commission by Swiss artist Uriel Orlow – uses Palermo trees as a point of departure to consider histories of the city, and comprises video, photographs and installed objects.
A subtle intervention by Renato Leotta – ‘Notte di San Lorenzo’ – consists of a room whose floor is covered in terracotta tiles that bear the marks of lemons that have fallen from trees. The gestures and cycles of nature are inscribed in the tiles, a record of time passing.
I also admired ‘Night Soil’– an experimental documentary in three parts by Dutch artist Melanie Bonajo. This was one of the small number of works I encountered that were not new commissions. I went back several times to ensure I saw this lengthy piece in its entirety, albeit in a fragmented way. I am not usually partial to ‘video art’, favouring tangible things, but this film greatly moved me. It is a visually intriguing exploration of themes concerning alienation, female empowerment and our dissociation from the earth, interweaving numerous narratives. A line I still remember: Speak to every living being as your relative.
The works brought in by Manifesta’s ‘creative mediators’ are curatorially strong and have a reason to be here. Lydia Ourahmane’s installation ‘The Third Choir’ at Palazzo Ajutamicristo is a previously exhibited work that consists of a number of empty oil barrels exported from Algeria in 2014. Mobile phones inside each barrel transmit a sound piece. This is the first artwork to have been legally exported from Algeria since 1962. The two ring binders filled with documentation pertaining to the complexity of arranging this export form an intrinsic part of the piece, making visible the invisible trajectory of the work.
One of my favourite places on my Manifesta itinerary was the Orto Botanico: an incredible garden filled with magnificent trees. The artworks here are sensitively placed but it is hard to compete with nature’s masterpieces. I felt these exhibits were eclipsed by the sight of the aerial roots of the ficus macrophylla and countless beautiful blooms.
I joined a press tour of the ZEN project, about half an hour north of Palermo. ZEN (Zona Espansione Nord) is a social housing project that has suffered from chronic lack of investment. It is, to be blunt, totally bleak. We walked through mounds of rubbish, tangled undergrowth, drab apartment buildings in serious disrepair. No plazas, no bars, no shops, no shade, not even a bench to sit on.
It is a forlorn place, without public space. We came to a small garden, the most noticeable feature of which was the absence of rubbish, and were told that the local community had worked closely with Manifesta to clean this piece of land and start planting it.
I’m still unsure what I think about this. At the time, I felt uncomfortable, arriving in a bus with international Art People and poking around in other peoples’ neighbourhood as if their poverty were an ethnographic exhibit. The fact that my tour guide was a young ZEN resident who seemed genuinely enthused about our presence alleviated my anxiety somewhat, but not entirely. Whether or not this project will help to catalyse much-needed change for this community, beyond the surface-level, remains to be seen.
While the ZEN project encapsulates Manifesta’s gardening theme in a very literal way, I don’t know whether this is art or social work. Is it art, to plant a garden? I have thought both YES and NO. I can’t make up my mind. But perhaps that uncertainty is in itself valuable. This blurring of disciplinary boundaries was to arise over and over again during my time at Manifesta.
Here is what I wrote in my notebook across various exhibits:
ART AS JOURNALISM
ART AS SOCIAL WORK
ART AS RESEARCH
ART AS DOCUMENTARY
ART AS ACTIVISM
ART AS PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT
ART AS THERAPY
ART AS EDUCATION
ART AS RECLAIMED CIVIC RITUAL
ART AS SUBSTITUTE
ART AS POLITICS
ART AS CULTURAL WORK
Is it positive that creative practice is being harnessed in service of social issues? Or is it a somehow deadening result of the economic imperative to be constantly productive and useful in measurable ways? Maybe it doesn’t matter, if the outcome is any improvement in our socio-ecological health.
A number of performances such as the ‘Palermo Procession’ by Marinella Senatore and ‘Tutto’ – the Quattro Canti confetti display by Matilde Cassani – were light-hearted spectacles. While they were participatory and fun, I felt they didn’t live up to the deeper symbolism attributed to them – about community, togetherness and cooperation. ‘ART AS RECLAIMED CIVIC RITUAL’ I wrote. Meaning: we have lost the festivals and feasts that once bonded us to seasons, soil and neighbours. Art rushes in to fill the cracks, but it’s somehow superficial.
The harrowing display at Casa del Mutilato is not to be approached if you are, as I was, in a tender mood. ‘Unending Lightning’ by Cristina Lucas is a six hour emotional gauntlet, a visual account of every air raid strike in history. The clinical coldness of this three-channel video installation is something that placed it in a grey area between art and historical research.
I was impressed by the innovative documentation and display of performance – a great strength of this iteration of Manifesta. Jelili Atiku and Masbedo at Palazzo Constantino are particularly memorable.
Objects used within these performances are presented alongside video documentation, thus extending the life and reach of these moments of live action. ‘New Palermo Felicissima’, a film by Jordi Colomer on view at the Fondazione ‘Casa Lavoro e Preghiera’ di Padre Messina, is another work in which a component of the original performance (in this case a wooden tiered seating platform) features in the installation. The documentation and (re)presentation of performance is a great interest of mine, and I was intrigued by the manifestation of ideas in multiple forms, the potential for numerous identities of a single work.
There is an emphasis on moving image at Manifesta. One of the themes of the biennial is ‘borderlessness’ – and there is something fitting about the use of digital media to navigate this topic. Immaterial data can flow in the world relatively unimpeded, while material bodies are more readily obstructed. Some of the video works have the feeling of documentary or investigative journalism: ‘Signal Flow’ by Laura Poitras is an installation of videos documenting the US military presence in Sicily, and the ‘Liquid Violence’ installation by Forensic Oceanography looks at the militarized border zone of the Mediterranean. Other works, such as John Gerrard’s haunting ‘Untitled (near Parndorf, Austria) 2018’ are more difficult to categorise.
I still want to know what art can do. How does any of this help those on board the Aquarius? A friend asks: should art DO anything? I agree that perhaps the burden of utility, functionality, is best kept away from creative practice. But then my next question is: if art has no ultimate purpose, can I in good conscience spend time looking at it, thinking about it and making it while people are drowning?
I don’t know.
I am the granddaughter of a refugee – a German Jew who fled Germany during WWII and made a perilous journey to Australia by boat. He arrived stateless and unable to speak English. While I was in Palermo he died. I felt my great sadness mingling with my emotive responses to the works I encountered and daily reminders of the ongoing refugee crisis. I am the granddaughter of a refugee, and what am I doing to help those now seeking refuge in Europe? What can I do?
At the very least, Manifesta 12 reassures me that there are thinking, feeling people out there making beautiful, frightening, contemplative things amidst the chaos of our present moment. I am grateful for this.
Manifesta 12 continues in Palermo, Sicily until 4 November 2018. m12.manifesta.org