notes on Manifesta7 - the approach to the public

Last week I went to Manifesta7 (again!) as I wanted to see some of the works better than how I did during the opening days. I have to admit it was much better this way (no more than...let's say 7 visitors in each one of the venues?!)

I have enough topics about it to fill this blog for weeks so I guess it's better to write different posts.

What I noticed immediately is that the different curatorial approaches were so evident in the different venues.

Rovereto was almost didactic: each work had a short text and info about the artist. The visitors had a lot to read before they started looking at the works.

Trento was completely opposite (I guess how does a "normal" visitor react to something like this - someone told me they felt completely lost).

Bolzano had the same short text (this time in 3 languages: don't forget the German translation please!) while Fortezza was something I really couldn't explain. The infos on the works were so hard to find that at some point I gave up and just wandered around.

It's not so important to discuss from my point of view, but I would really like to think about a visitor that does not know anything about contemporary art. Some of the venues really tried to reach the public while other were rejecting it completely, and this is something I don't really feel as a right position. I don't want to sound obvious, but as long as we will have exhibitions like this everyone in Italy will say they don't understand contemporary art and that contemporary sucks. (You should have read the comments of people outside the venues after 1 month of exhibition!!!)

One more thing I would like to say is about the ordinary maintenance of the exhibition: after one month the exhibition looked already like it was 3 months old.

The works in Rovereto railway station were mostly damaged. Seems like no one is looking after them, I guess they expected this when they decided to show part of them in a place which is so crowded (and where people didn't choose to see art) but I think most of the damages could be avoided. It's almost the same for Trento: the day I visited it a lot of works were closed because I guess the people that were working there didn't know how to use it: when they changed their working turns, the new staff put everything back to normality.

It's such a huge event, I guess this should not happen. Uhm.

(But I still have lots to say about it, also a lot of good things! So I will be back soon)