The Venice Biennale

This is the show to which I was really looking forward, the beginning of the series on the 55th Venice International Exposition, known as the Venice Biennale. In my haste to get the Global Art Affairs Foundation's Palazzo Bembo Collateral Event into the schedule as early as possible, so that most of the duration of the exhibition will still be left (it runs to November 24), I placed this early in my series of shows on our last Italy trip. Rather than wait for us to organize all the Venice Biennale pictures in good order, I started the process with a few photos, but all of our videos of the Palazzo Bembo part. Labeled as the Venice Biennale, Palazzo Bembo, Parts 1, 2 and 3 viewers will see what a well-known, extensive, and brilliant exhibition at the Biennale looks like first hand. I discard a couple of videos, because there was too much extraneous noise, or some other reason, and wound up with a total of 19 videos organized into the three shows. This first program represents a nice introduction complete with some footage of the Grand Canal, the overview of the second floor of the exhibition, an interview with the President of the Foundation, Karlyn Dejongh, and an extensive gallery talk by one of the participating artists. The next two broadcasts Friday, July 19 and Friday, August 2 (skipping a week) will feature short gallery talks (anywhere from four minutes to more than eight minutes) of 16 artists from all over the world. It will be very special because the videos are a creation of not only me, but the artists as well. The people are charming, interesting, and fascinating representatives of their special brand of magnificence. I will not be able to indicate in this blog who are there until I get their permission to use their names. The art is very special and the interviews are very much Alan's Italy, a relaxed, down-home, informal jaunt through the wonders of Italy.

Of course, nothing I ever do occurs easily and this show was no exception. During the presenting of one of the videos, I noticed a period of several seconds when I spoke some words that I didn't wish to broadcast. My intention had been, before the show when I was putting the whole thing together, to mute the sound for the period of perhaps 15 or 20 seconds, but, alas, forgot. Even though the show had already gone out to my local audience, since not too many people watch the show live (if any ! actually most watch it locally in the repeat mode during the following week), the most important thing was that those few seconds be removed, or certainly the audio part. The whole weekend I had two computer specialists try to figure out how to mute that brief segment and they failed in their attempts, and then asked my engineer to do the whole show over with me on Monday. That was accomplished a few hours ago, and was the reason why this blog, as well as the posting of the Youtube video, was delayed. As I write this, the video is uploading to Youtube. Whew ! Yet another adventure in broadcasting.

Please tune in to Alan's Italy Show # 70, which should be there soon, and also look out for # 71 and 72. These three shows and others on the main part of the Venice Biennale at Arsenale and Giardini will provide a really excellent survey of what the visitor gets to see at this incredible international exhibition.