Latifa Echakhch discusses her Venice undertaking
IN DEVELOPING THE PROJECT for the Swiss pavilion, I knew I wished to make a radical break from what I had been doing earlier than. The Venice proposal was a possibility for me to unlearn my method of working as a visible artist and strategy the exhibition as a musician. To assist me, I recruited the curator Francesco Stocchi, who, in his former life, was a DJ of dub music. I additionally invited the musician and composer Alexandre Babel. I understand how I undertaking visible artwork in area, however I puzzled what occurs in his mind when he’s projecting music.
I learn all this implausible historical past of sound and composition. I took singing and piano classes—the whole lot I might to shift from working like a visible artist to working like a musician. Music is extra immediately linked to the thought of time passing. You may really feel it in your physique. If you share a portray or sculpture, you see the world round you and also you give it again by means of your art work. This technique of sharing music is rather more instant.
The concept for the pavilion is easy: I would like individuals to really feel as if they simply left a live performance. I need to talk what it’s to really feel and play music, the way it impacts your physique, the way it types recollections. The second you step out of a live performance is a second of transformation, and I wished to seize that. I began with the impression individuals will take away from the present moderately than with the works themselves. It’s like I’ve been making ready not an exhibition, however the reminiscence of exhibition.
I used to be fairly aware of the Biennale’s cyclical nature. The pavilion is empty more often than not, and you then arrive together with your stuff and set up it, and you then pack it up and depart, and one other particular person arrives with their stuff. It’s a cycle of dismantling and promoting. I wished to simplify that. We’re working with a sustainability firm known as Rebiennale. Most the whole lot we use—partitions, acoustic panels, wooden—comes from earlier editions. And after the exhibition closes, it should all be recycled once more. This may assist us use your complete area, indoors and out, in order that it’s not only one alpha room. This implies, after all, you open your self as much as different cycles, like daylight and surrounding sounds.
—As advised to Kate Sutton