展览：第60届威尼斯双年展德国馆
策展人：卡格拉·伊尔克
艺术家：雅埃尔·巴塔纳、艾桑·蒙塔格、迈克尔·阿克斯塔勒、妮可·卢里耶、罗伯特·利波克、扬·圣维尔纳
展期：2024.4.20 - 2024.11.24
地点：德国馆和拉切尔托萨岛，意大利威尼斯
Exhibition: 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia
Curator：Çağla Ilk
Artists：Yael Bartana, Ersan Mondtag, Michael Akstaller, Nicole L'Huillier, Robert Lippok, Jan St. Werner
Duration: 2024.4.20 - 2024.11.24
Location: German Pavilion & La Certosa, Venice, Italy
妮可·卢里耶的作品以不确定性、归属性和通信编码为基础，在她的装置作品《邂逅》（Encuentros）中，她开发了一套声音收发系统，将岛屿的声音转换成不同的频率，并将人造声音与自然声音混合成一个声学空间。该系统由矩形听觉膜状装置组成，这些装置对它们附近的声音做出反应，根据传输和接收的相互关系来激活一个声音系统。从这个意义上说，《邂逅》是一种永恒而动态的呼唤与回应，是一种即兴建筑。其中倾听/接收的行为是基础，膜状装置生产和接收共振，并对它们进行分离与连接。它们栖息在岛屿上，并与这个环境的（自然和人造）声音进行持续的对话，从而使边界模糊，转化为一种介于两者之间的声学状态。通过她的作品，妮可·卢里耶挑战了我们对归属性的理解，打破了曾经是什么、以及可能成为什么的界限 —— 一个重新配置的物理性及理论性场域。
“界阈”也是德国代表团第一个离开德国馆的展览（德国馆是位于贾尔迪尼的一座具有纪念意义的历史性建筑）。这一向外的举措不仅是对具有法西斯主义风格的国家社会主义建筑的一种处理方式，同时也是对于双年展花园里民族国家取向的一种反对信号。1199 年，岛上建起了一座奥古斯丁修道院，1424 年，修道院和教堂被移交给佛罗伦萨的天主教加尔都西会，他们给这座岛命名为拉切尔托萨。教堂于 1492 年重建，参与修建的包括提香和丁托列托。拿破仑统治时期，教士们被迫离开该岛，它开始被用作军事弹药库，1968 年军营被清空。修道院的废墟与众多的堡垒和城墙仍然讲述着岛上丰富的宗教和军事历史。
如今，拉切尔托萨岛作为威尼斯市向公众开放的公园，成为各国围墙领土的对立面。因此，“界阈”的第二个展览空间拉切尔托萨岛与主展馆和贾尔迪尼展开了批判性对话。宏伟的建筑与非物质的声音媒介形成鲜明对比。回想起来，走出建筑时会产生一种共鸣，这种共鸣从拉切尔托萨岛回荡到主展馆，将这一出走也变成了另一种进入。在这种语境下，贾尔迪尼的国家结构和主展馆本身被巧妙地解构了。拉切尔托萨岛上展出的作品开拓了全新的体验空间，吸引人们去关注看似平淡无奇的日常声学现象，挑战了我们对当下和周围环境的认知。船的噪音、树上的风声、海浪的声音、鸟儿的鸣叫，以及其间令人不安但又和谐的乐曲，都在引导着我们的行动，质疑我们聆听的方式。这就是一个有关于未来的共同愿景：我们学会倾听这个脆弱而受伤了的环境、倾听我们自己和彼此。
迈克尔·阿克斯塔勒、妮可·卢里耶、罗伯特·利波克和扬·圣维尔纳在他们的作品中对空间进行了重新配置，从远处看，展馆就变得无效了。什么是里面的，什么是外面的？从界阈的位置看，这种区分是模糊的。在拉切尔托萨，我们必须调整我们的感知工具，让自己行动起来，随着脚下迈出的每一步，语境都将产生变化。身体变成了一个共鸣室，成为不同状态之间的界阈。当我们看到一座废墟、一滩沼泽、一处碉堡碎片，或者一片湖边森林时，我们自以为所知的那些事物，都因作品与景观之间极为丰富多样的交互而产生矛盾、强化、混淆和扩展。
在拉切尔托萨岛上，这种空间成为一种物理体验。在《邂逅》中，妮可·卢里耶开发了一个发射接收系统，将岛上的声音转化为不同的频率。岛本身的声音是妮可·卢里耶作品的中心源，膜是聆听和寻找邂逅的实体。它们栖息在岛上，通过频率与拉切尔托萨的环境进行交流。
如果我们的未来也取决于我们如何讲述我们的历史，那么在界阈中的感知时刻至关重要。从那里展开的画面绝非平静的、静止的。这座宏伟的建筑中曾有人居住，过去在游客之间移动，表现得与计划和预测不同。在亚尔·巴塔纳的作品中，我们被卷入一个压倒性的图像世界，直到我们意识到未来正在发生，而我们却不在场。而在拉切尔托萨岛，我必须移动、倾听，才能发现。
为了追溯我们的起源和历史，并与威尼斯的这些地方进行对话，我们共同设计了“界阈”，这是一部承认我们自身局限性的跨学科作品。在这个合作网络中，我们利用墙体，又将它们抛开，我们正在这个时代寻找看似不可能的某种希望。这不是出于可以改变世界的傲慢信念，而是出于对世界的绝望，我们试图将自己成为那些希望的根基。
(The following is excerpted from the official press release of the German Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale)
Under the title THRESHOLDS, the contribution to the German Pavilion 2024 narrates history and the future from various artistic positions.THRESHOLDS are places where no one can stay – places that only exists because one thing has occurred and another still awaits. THRESHOLDS are crossings, lines between places and times. THRESHOLDS are there to be transcended. In a time of uncertainties and catastrophes, boundaries and thresholds hold a particular meaning. As a loaded space of experiencing and suffering, as a camouflaged place of division, the border is also and always a provisional space. For it is the border in its divisive and obstructive nature that makes us aware of the provisional nature of human existence, and of what can potentially await us. For only in its existence as a line can it become a threshold, a place that dreams of a shared future starting from the here and now. Threshold’s contribution aims to engage with this border, becoming a threshold, and the dreams and stories associated with it.
Thresholds is the first exhibition from the German representation to leave the German Pavilion, the monumental and histori- cally fraught building located in the Giardini. This outward step is not only a way of dealing with the totality of the fascist architecture of the National Socialist building, but also, at the same time, a signal against the nation-state orientation of the Biennale's garden. An Augustinian monastery was founded on the island in 1199 and, in 1424, the monastery and church were handed over to the Carthusians of Florence, who gave the island its name. Those who worked on the church, which was rebuilt in 1492, included Titian and Tintoretto. Under Napoleon the monks were forced to leave the island. It began to be used for military purposes as an ammunition depot, and in 1968 the barracks were emptied. The ruins of the monastery and numerous bun- kers and ramparts still tell of the island’s eventful religious and military history.
Today, the island of La Certosa, as a park open to the public in the city of Venice, serves as a kind of antithesis to the walled territory of the countries representing themselves. Thresholds’ second exhibition space thus engages in a critical dialogue with both the pavilion and the Giardini. The monumentality of the building is contrasted with the immaterial medium of sound. Moving out of the building creates, in retrospect, a resonance that reverberates from La Certosa back towards the pavilion, turning this step-out into a step-in as well. In this context, the country-construct of the Giardini, and the pavilion itself, are subtly deconstructed. The works exhibited on La Certosa chal- lenge our awareness of the present and the environment around us by opening up new spaces of experience and by drawing atten- tion to everyday acoustic phenomena that seem banal at first lis- ten. The noise of a ship, the wind in the trees, the sound of the waves, birds chirping and, in between, disconcerting and simul- taneously harmonious compositions guide our movement and question our ways of listening. This is where a vision of a shared future begins: where we learn to listen to our fragile and wound- ed environment, to ourselves, and to each other.
(The following is excerpted from the curatorial article "When the Dreams Sleep" by Caglar Ilker, curator of the German Pavilion)
— Çağla Ilk
The path from the dock to the island of La Certosa passes over a long pier. It’s an in-between area that reveals stunning views: Sant’Elena and the city on one side, the island on the other. It’s not clear where the island actually begins, it’s not clear if I’m heading towards the future and leaving the past behind or if I’m on my way from the fu- ture to the past. This is also where the idea emerged for the title of the German presentation at the Biennale: Thresholds.
In a time of global crises and wars, we asked ourselves the fol- lowing question: What do places of solidarity look like? How can we leave behind the nation-state spatial constructs and ways of think- ing? Change begins when I become aware of the temporary nature of my position. When dreams sleep on the threshold of awakening. The position of the threshold is this kind of temporary place be- tween a past that is disappearing and a future that we have not yet entered. How can we succeed in creating a situation of transition out of the hard boundaries set by the German Pavilion with its dom- inating walls, a situation that opens up the gaze, stretches the mo- ment, and turns a line into a threshold? How can a complete narra- tive be told in fragments? Perhaps the notion of the threshold helps to question the practice of logic.
In our work, Thresholds signify the awakening of a longing for the deterritorialization of the political imagination. We are wit- nessing an extreme formulation of confinement in nation-state, ter- ritorial thought that dominates our discourse on history and thus on the future as well. For many people around the world, living in the threshold between nationalities and affiliations is a traumatic and violent experience. Our exhibition aims to generate, from this experience, a position of insight and to transcend these borders for a moment. From the threshold, more becomes visible, perceptions and images are superimposed on one another. Louis Chude-Sokei, who theoretically influenced the preparations for this project as a chronicler, has pointed out the connection between the perception of the threshold and the experience of migration in his writings......
......The pavilion’s aesthetic posture of domination can only be robbed of its power when its boundaries are dissolved. The German exhibition, therefore, does not stop at the walls of the German pa- vilion but takes a boat and crosses over to the island of La Certosa instead, where visitors land on the threshold between cultural and natural landscape, in a perceptual space that obeys other laws. The island is not a pristine, untouched place, it has a human history and a natural history, it whisks you away into a fragile situation in which non-human nature tries to cope with the ruins of human culture.
In their works, Michael Akstaller, Nicole L’Huillier, Robert Lippok, and Jan St. Werner undertake reconfigurations of space that invalidate the pavilion from a distance. What’s inside, what’s outside? Seen from the position of the threshold, these categories are muddled. On La Certosa we must adjust our tools for percep- tion, we must set ourselves in motion and, with every step we take, the contexts of meaning change. The body becomes a resonance chamber, the threshold between different states. What we think we know when we see a ruin, a swampy landscape, a bunker frag- ment, or a forest on the shores of the lagoon is contradicted, rein- forced, confused, and expanded by works that interact with the landscape and with each other in extremely varied ways......
......I consider the pavilion’s architecture to be a lie, a dangerous fairy tale of apparent harmony. With Thresholds, we encounter this harmony through asynchrony and temporal ambivalence. We cannot curate the present, but we can create transient, disparate perceptual spaces that disturb the certainties constituting our self-confidence in the present.
On the island of La Certosa, these spaces become a physical experience. In Encuentros (En- counters), Nicole L’Huillier develops a transmitter-receiver system that translates the sounds of the island into varying frequencies. The sounds of the island itself are the central source for Nicole L’Huillier’s work, her membranes are feeling and listening entities in search of an encounter. They inhabit the island and enter into communication with the environment of La Certosa on a frequency level......
......If it is true that our future also depends on how we tell our history, then the moment of perception on the threshold is crucial. What opens up from there is everything but a calm, static picture. The monument is inhabited, the past moves in between the visitors, acting differently than planned, than predicted. In the spheres of Yael Bartana’s vision, we are swept away into an overwhelming world of images until we realize that the future is happening with- out us there. On La Certosa I must move, engage in listening in or- der to discover.
In recognition of our origins and histories, and in dialogue with these places in Venice, we designed Thresholds together as a transdisciplinary work that acknowledges our own limitations. In this collaboration as a network that uses walls and leaves them behind, we are seeking something like hope in times that offer no grounds for it. Not out of the hubristic belief that we can change the world, but out of despair for the world, we attempt to be those grounds ourselves.
