Erica Gilbert-Levin  NOTE: THIS IS STILL "IN-PROGRESS"! NOT COMPLETED! Thanks!

American National Pavilion

"Gloria"

Artist Collaborative: Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla

Commissioner and Curator: Lisa Freiman

Choreographer: Rebecca Davis

Performers: Olympic gold medalist [Dan O'Brien (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_O'Brien)] (Decathlon, 1996), Olympic silver medalist Chellsie Memmel (Women's Gymnastics Team, 2008), and U.S. All-Around champion David Durante (Men's Gymnastics, 2007)

Organizer: Indianapolis Museum of Art

Presented by: the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State

Funded by: Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, Hugo Boss, and collectors and philanthropists worldwide

At this year's Venice Biennale, the American Pavilion features six new works by a young Puerto Rico-based artistic duo, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla – the first-ever Puerto Rico-based artists to represent the U.S. at the Biennale and also far from the "household names" that have served this role in years past (see The New York Times). Collectively entitled "Gloria," the exhibition was organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, commissioned and curated by Lisa Freiman, and presented by the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State.

"Gloria" employs performance and installation art, including appearances by noted members of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field and Gymnastics Teams, as well as sculpture, video and sound elements, to "analyze contemporary geopolitics through the lens of spectacular nationalistic and competitive enterprises such as the Olympic Games, international commerce, war, the military-industrial complex, and even the Biennale itself," according to a description provided by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. In a departure both from the "tamer" character of previous years' submissions by American artists (see The New York Times) and from the "rather traditional" undertone of this year's Biennale, which "does not take too many chances," according to Joseph Backstein, "Gloria," in contrast, is fraught with political tension and, in the words of National Public Radio commentator Christopher Livesay, is "destined for controversy."

Indeed, the very title of the exhibition, the Italian and Spanish word for "glory," encapsulates "military, religious, spiritual, Olympic, economic, and cultural grandeur, and points to the pomp and splendor of the national pavilions," notes Art Slant Worldwide. In so doing, according to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the works "pose important questions about the relationships among art, politics, and international identity," as well as "national identity, democracy, militarism, and freedom."

The six installations include Track and Field, Armed Freedom Lying on a Sunbed, Body in Flight (American), Body in Flight (Delta), Algorithm, and Half Mast/Full Mast. "Track and Field" features a real-life athlete from the American Olympic Track and Field Team running in a seemingly endless marathon atop an upturned British tank outside the American Pavilion. A statement about the futility of America's militarism, the work also seems to comment on the nature of the Biennale itself: The Venice Biennale, remarks Livesay of NPR, "kind of feels like a war zone. So when you get to the American Pavilion and see a 60-ton British tank turned upside-down, it almost looks normal." Freiman explains to The Daily Beast that "Track and Field is "really just about running in circles." It also underlines, according to The New York Times, "the notion of pushing the limits," a theme that relates to the out-of-control nature of militarism, war, capitalism, and America's inexorable ambition to dominate global culture, as well as to the effort by the artists themselves to take risks in the high-stakes context of an art market, epitomized by the understated apoliticism of this year's Biennale, that could very well punish them for their political edginess.

"Track and Field"

Track and Field in action

"Algorithm" features a 20-foot-tall wooden pipe organ, sans keys, knobs, or pedals, housing instead a fully functioning ATM. "You activate the music with your bank card," explains Livesay. "The experience is majestically profane," playing on the absurdity of American consumerism and commercialism as they overpower the last vestiges of art and beauty in a global world. To the artists, the image is perfectly fitting for the physical context: The "Palladian pavilion [in which the American exhibition is housed], built in 1930, reminds them of a wealthy regional bank," writes The Daily Beast. "'And we liked the idea that the U.S. pavilion was the only place in the [Biennale] were you could get cash,'" adds Calzadilla.
Algorithm

Allora on "Use of Sound" in Algorithm

In "Body in Flight (Delta and American)," real-life athletes from the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team perform breathy, slow-motion acrobatics on and around business class seat replicas from Delta and American Airlines. Choreographer Rebecca Davis, in the video "Details of Motion, Bodies in Flight," speaks of her intent to "keep the relationship between the performer and the seat always evolving." The Indianapolis Museum of Art blogger comments on "how pulled in the audience" is to this performance; 99ys.com points to the piece's reference to classical Greek and Roman idealizations of the human mind and body; and The Daily Beast's Gopnik remarks on the "bizarrely forced marriage of amateur athletics and commercial aeronautics," which draws an "obvious parallel between the fleets of planes nations send out as 'their' airlines (what other industry concentrates as much on national identity?) and the fleets of athletes that fan out on just such planes as they 'take' the world for their country" and underscores "the strange nationalism that joins sport and industry, and which most of us pass over as natural." But, as in all the works in the exhibition, "Body in Flight" moves beyond such "obvious" political statements to self-consciously lay bare the role of the artist in a globalized art market: Gopnik compares "the two sweating gymnasts to two artists – to Allora and Calzadilla, just as a for instance – who are laboring at art and likewise representing the nation at a host of global art 'meets.'"
Body in Flight (Delta)
Body in Flight (American)

Allora on Body in Flight: "Rest and Motion"
Half Mast/Full Mast
Armed Freedom Lying on a Sunbed

The works of "Gloria" were "developed specifically "in response to the U.S. Pavilion site," according to an explanation offered by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The American Pavilion, located in a "Paladian-style structure" designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich, opened in 1930, and purchased in 1986 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, boasts a "prominent position" within the Castello Gardens, where the Biennale's national pavilions are presented. Its prominence befits its presenting nation, which dominates the world in a political, cultural, economic, and military sense – and, of course, it is this unrepentant dominance that the artists of "Gloria" comment so intensely upon. It strikes me as ironic that the artists themselves, as U.S. citizens, benefit from American prominence even as they utilize that prominence as a critical weapon against such dominating practices. This irony might reflect the complex position of artists in the contemporary global art market: They may seek to question and challenge conventional paradigms, systems, and structures, but in order to access artistic venues in which to communicate such messages, they are compelled to establish a sufficiently prominent reputation within those very systems – specifically, within the art market. But it is actually this tension – the very ability of artists to establish themselves as anti-conventional – that facilitates their claim to legitimacy within the art market. Olav Velthius explains in The Art Newspaper: "[By] ignoring commerce, by showing an autonomous interest in art, in experimentation rather than mundane monetary matters," artists "[accumulate] symbolic capital," which "can be converted into economic capital"; and so, artists benefit from the very capitalistic system they challenge in their creative work. The efforts of Allora and Calzadilla, then, fit right into the dynamics of the contemporary global art market.

For more information, please consult the following sources:

The Art Slant 

Art Daily

PBS

Indianapolis Museum of Art

99ys.com 

The Art Newspaper: "Artists get political for Venice Biennale 2011" and "The Venice Effect"

Flickr

National Public Radio

The Daily Beast

Nuvo.net

The New York Times 

USA Gymnastics