Australia Pavilion, Marco Fusinato, Desastres – 59th Venice Art Biennale 2022
Marco Fusinato, Desastres, the Australia Pavilion, 59th Venice Art Biennale, installation view; photo © Riccardo Bianchini / Inexhibit.
Australia Pavilion, Marco Fusinato, Desastres – 59th Venice Art Biennale 2022
At the Art Biennale 2022, Australia presents Desastres, a performance/installation by Marco Fusinato (1964, Melbourne), a multidisciplinary artist and experimental musician whose works include installations, photography, objects, live performances, and recordings.
The title of the installation is a reference to Goya’s painting Los desastres de la guerra (The Disasters of War).
The immersive installation is composed of two material elements – a freestanding floor-to-ceiling LED wall and a wall of amplifiers – and of Fusinato himself, who will improvise various loud noises and discordant sounds with an electric guitar for the entire duration of the Biennale. At the same time, the artist generates images through a custom-built control unit. Fusinato also brings into the pavilion various objects that will trigger an expanded approach to the work including a 17th-century Italian painting of a decapitated head.
“My idea of activating the audience is to remind them that they are alive. That they have a pulse” Fusinato says.
The effect is both disturbing and hypnotically fascinating; the noise volume is so high that the visitors can feel it physically; this makes a strong contrast with the bare setting of the pavilion, which has been left almost empty, except for the video screen, the amplifiers, some electronic equipment, and the few objects brought in by the artist, with Fusinato simply sitting, almost motionless, on a crate.
The black-and-white images continuously running on the screen are semi-automatically sourced by putting a sequence of words into various online platforms.
Marco Fusinato, Desastres, Australian Pavilion, 59th Venice Art Biennale, installation views; photo © Riccardo Bianchini / Inexhibit.
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